I must say that I’m always impressed by Violet’s skill and takes on things. It’s not often that a onetrick (or near to one) can objectively assess a situation involving their hero without bias.
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And Mercy is almost always the second or first most played in lower ranks and yet she has a 1% pickrate in GM (second to last) because she’s BAD. Low ranks have zero semblance of balance and can get away with most anything because they don’t have actual coordination/mechanics down there that result in hero potential’s being properly taken advantage of.
It’s not Blizzard’s fault that player perception is ignorant. People thought Mercy was “useless” after every one of her nerfs and would flame you for picking her (this happened to me every nerf) and then within 2 weeks she was back to being the must pick/top support. Josh Noh the balance dev wrote an entire forum post about this earlier in January and how player perception is often incorrect and leads to people asking for nerfs/buffs to heroes who don’t actually need them.
Literally I’ve seen people in lower ranks complaining about the Sym buff and Widow nerf today on Twitter and youtube comments because “Sym is OP” and “Widow is already bad”. Lower ranks players don’t understand balance, for the most part.
Agreed, super nice to see them be honest and level headed, even though their main is being nerfed.
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Strawman argument is strawman? They’re biased by meta, sure, and OWL players in particular tend to be adverse to changing away from their heroes because they have a monetary motivation to play safe and stick with strategies they know, but AFAIK there isn’t really a widespread argument that the pros seek to make their heroes OP anymore than any other rank. Even if there is, the forums don’t speak for me, and it wasn’t the point of what I was saying anyway.
Violet is a very high ranked player, and she’s extremely good at Brigitte. Short of them literally making Brigitte unplayable, Violet will probably be able to work around nerfs to her. So, yeah, shocker when she isn’t too concerned about them.
Stats (Brigitte has a low pickrate for a support in most ranks, and a high winrate, which is usually indicative of a weak hero who is only used in very limited scenarios in which their effectiveness is all-but-assured) and experience both. Up until recently, she had similar stats in Master’s and GM, too.
Also, I’m hard pressed to say that current Master’s/GM stats point to her being good considering it took them dealing some fairly harsh nerfs to Moira and Baptiste, and for her best tank synergy to become the meta, for her to reach the point she’s at now. And even then, she’s still being outperformed by some other supports (i.e. Ana, Lucio, roughly on par with Moira despite Moira being weaker). She’s relatively more viable because other supports are worse, but that’s largely an artifact of the support role taking a considerable hit to its raw power.
“5 less HP and 25 less Armor”
OH THE HUMANITY
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Er…no…she’s been extremely good and viable in GM since before the Moira and Bap nerfs. Violet was top 1-5 with her the season before the Moira nerfs even went on PTR, and she had a wonderful winrate still, she just wasn’t being picked a lot. Because of negative player perception, which has gradually melted away in GM but still persists in lower ranks. If anything, the Orisa and Sigma nerfs have benefitted her more than the Moira and Bap nerfs have.
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75-50 doesn’t matter much as getting the armor would still prevent getting 1-shot by hanzo on 200 health characters, and getting 1-shot by widow on 250 health characters.
The heal nerf imo is fine as it’s 10 hp per 8 sec nerf on sustain. But I kinda wish they don’t nerf the overall hp/cast on her and make armor pack last longer while heal less per sec accordingly.
Interesting. Blizzard is finally acknowledging that sustain is a problem. Can’t help but feel bad for Brig mains though. A nerf never feels good, but maybe the game is heading toward a better state in the long run.
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Citation needed (got anything to back that up?), and no, Violet being good with her doesn’t really count. There are folks who are good with all sorts of UP heroes, and a person who can take that hero to #1 also getting #2, #3, etc doesn’t really say anything about the hero, just that the person is talented and that they’re obviously willing to invest a lot of time. If Dafran one-tricked Torbjorn up to #1 in DPS, that tells us only that Dafran is extremely good with Torbjorn. If he also gets #2 and #3, all that tells us is that he has a lot of time on his hands–it doesn’t in any way indicate that the hero they’re using is actually good in general, because it’s still the same guy who we already established is extremely good with Torbjorn. And the reason there’s a negative perception of her in low/mid ranks is because she truly is just bad in those ranks–she requires significantly more babysitting than other healers, while also not seriously contributing more than, say, Baptiste or Ana in terms of overall value.
Also I acknowledged that it was a combination of shifts in the support/tank roster, BTW. You can re-read in the statement being quoted. Moira and Baptiste being nerfed hard did improve her standing in high ranks by making other heroes relatively worse (and thus her relatively better), and so did Reinhardt being the absolute meta tank. Not sure why you feel it necessary to re-state this like I didn’t acknowledge it.
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How is that a comparison to Brig being one of the lowest picks across ALL RANKS?
Eh, highly debatable.
Blizzard’s extremely questionable balance decisions, then (until very recently) not questionable at all poor communication with their community on direction of the game, can easily be linked to general ignorance on this game.
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You know what kind of sucks about the whole thing?
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If shes playable and it’s common knowledge then usually people want her nerfed.
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If shes below that threshold of playability and it’s common knowledge people no longer want her on their team
That’s like a lose lose situation.
Same goes for Symmetra btw
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At least Symmetra gets pity points since she’s been in the dumpster so long lol
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Overall my concern isn’t that she’s useless. I’m just hoping at this point it’s the end of nerfs to her for a while, because there’s a small nerf now doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be a sledgehammer later. Orisa got small nerfs until added up they made her useless. Sigma’s not in a great spot and at a time, his nerfs were baby nerfs, but added up, it’s not hard to see how he’s under performing. I’m scared for Mei because I personally think she’s balanced, but depending on how tides change, she could easily tip into being a dumpster baby. Baptiste started with a reasonable nerf, then got his ult charge nerfed, then the very next patch had every other part of his kit thrown into garbage tier.
That’s my worry. I’m even wary about Widow right now. People can get used to her charge rate nerf, but anything further is gonna make me uncomfortable. It’s not really the sledgehammer for Brig I’m worried about in this instance, again, but the death from a thousand cuts.
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Yea they dont know where the threshold is for powerbombing everyone with nerfs. The aggressive nerfing schedule should help with that, but some heroes are gonna be trash and hard to balance at Paladins power levels… nothing new ofc
If we leave statistics out of it, then brig is open to subjective reasoning, and I would assume that most of the playerbase would find her too easy for her reward
Thank you, people really out here saying Brig is trash and these nerfs dig her grave
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People also forget the recent armor nerf nevert. (-3 damage to -5 again)
Which was a huuuuuuuge buff to Brig specifically.
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Brig is what is called “balanced”.
Pickrates and winrates are fine and dandy, but you didn’t specify the time period those stats are from, rendering them meaningless. If Brig is so good now, that means before her last round of nerfs she must have been insanely good?
There is no “massive sustain”, and you listed no evidence of it anyway.
We are living in the DPS meta. 2:2:2 doesn’t matter. That’s why queue times are 10x longer for dps.
The problem with “power creep” is massive burst damage that cannot be healed or cannot be healed fast enough to make a difference in life and death. But this has not been addressed since damage heroes get marginal nerfs at best.
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Listening to “pro” players who have a direct and vested interests in certain heroes being broken and anything that hinders them being dumpstered explains a lot about why this game is so hilariously badly balanced
This is like the foxes having a third of the input on how the chicken coop should be balanced
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Her biggest problem might be the community. It’s unreal how much hate you still get from some people on your team and the nerf will amplify that.
Or it’s because dps are the pew pew shooty heroes
Acting like ranked has any showing of how good certain heroes are is a joke