Love their playstyle! Extremely fun, not too hard to pick up, and they have a lot of dynamics to their kit. You can combo their abilities in multiple ways depending on the situation and have tons of outplay potential, without being absolutely gamebreaking. After the miss that has been Mauga, I am very happy with Venture and can’t wait to see how they settle into the meta!
The only issue I see is that a lot of their power is leveraged in the burst combo department, while their survivability is fairly low. This makes them very volatile, and also very strong on certain close quarters maps. In the future I believe we are likely to see some “rebalances” to lower the damage on of their primary + drill dash + primary kill combo as it feels pretty cheesy to 100 to 0 someone with it in less than a couple seconds. I understand ttk is usually low under the perfect circumstances for most heroes, but Venture’s is MUCH easier to setup and execute in a lot of circumstances.
In order to make up for this, I’m going to guess they’re going to increase Venture’s consistent damage by either giving them more survivability through their passive or buffs to other parts of their kit such as ammo pool or rate of fire. For right now, the honeymoon period is good and folks are still learning.
I enjoy the mechanics, however they’re very predictable.
Once the opposition gets used to their antics, it will be commonplace to see them getting shut down every game, and having to swap.
Venture’s burrow is telegraphed, the eruption is telegraphed, and both of those combined being their “get out of jail free” card tends to make them very predictable and easy to kill. They’re essentially defenseless during the animations, and once those animations are cancelled it’s almost always a death sentence.
As you said, the tradeoff is a very quick TTK if properly executed. They’re kind of like a glass cannon. High damage potential if not caught out, but also easily combatted if you’re situationally aware.
Not sure if I’d call them a glass cannon in a 1v1 engagement context. They get shields for using their abilities. They’re sort of like Sombra in the fact that they’re useless against a team that actively peels for teammates - or at least they die for attempting their burst combo. But anyone is glass when a whole team is focusing them.
They’re a lot of fun so far. Mobility with the drill is so much fun and very helpful. Sometimes shooting primary feels really weak especially when playing with like a sigma where people just want to poke all game. They have some advantages against the low mobility heroes. However there r ult can be countered by genji double jumping. So that felt really bad one game. But I don’t think they’re op. I know many don’t like being gun downed and killed with a combo. But if anyone should be combo killing it’s the dps role.
It’s a bit too early to tell how well balanced they are. We’re still at the point where nobody really knows how to play against them, right now it’s just “keep your distance”. I’ve found the best way to counter their ult without counter-ulting is just to rush at them and get in their face, the ult gets harder to direct up close.
Playing against them, they feel weak to me (playing support). Just keep track of them, watch where they pop-up, and at the very least take off enough of their health that they run, and at best, you kill them outright. Once they are exposed, they go down pretty quick.
Much of this is people just learning how to play them I suspect, so they’re a bit sloppy, and in time I’m sure they will get better, but right now, I don’t see them as much of a threat. Like Reaper, you just can’t let them get in close. Their ultimate can sting, but for all the deaths they suffer building up to it, they deserve to get a couple quick elims.
A fair portion of the Venture players I’ve been seeing in console/quickplay seem to have no trouble repeatedly escaping while racking up best-in-lobby eliminations. They seem pretty survivable to me, despite having a rather generous head hitbox. Mobility and the temp health generated by abilities matter. IDK if it’s a console performance or network quality issue, but Venture is quite difficult to track if they pop out of the ground at close range, even if you’re already looking up before they pop out. I frequently see nothing at all coupled to essentially no audio indication of which direction they launched. I find that concerning, and I think there is more to it than just a simple skill-issue on my end.
Their ultimate is probably too damaging for how easily it can hit.
I don’t know that anything is too severe such that there’s need for emergency nerfs, but as a whole I suspect Venture is at least somewhat overtuned.
As someone with many hours already on Venture on PC, I can safely say that it is hard for my enemies to track me while burrowed. Once I rush past a target’s feet, I’ve immediately gone into their blindspot, allowing me to pivot direction without their knowledge.
I think theyd benefit from more health. Just 25 shield hp (or 50 but take away 25 regular health) for a total of 275. They have a massive hitbox and ridiculously short range. With that I think theyd be pretty solid.