Yea, that’s what’s so funny about it.
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AGREED.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Not really.
I think this is the big issue. Torb and Symettra could use work(and are getting it) but even with improvement they will never be good in every situation, they will always be niche by design.
People dislike that but that’s how a lot of games with multiple heroes work. There are some heroes that you bring out for specific comps(enemy or yours) or situations. There are some heroes who are just good in any situation and there are some top tier meta heroes.
A lot of people want Torb/Sym to be on the level of Tracer. The problem we’ve seen before with heroes who have lax mechanics is that if they have the power level of a high mechanical ability hero they tend to be overpowered or “annoying” to many people. Look at the Mercy rework, people’s complaints about Moira/Brigitte.
Heroes whose vast majority of their value comes from laying down a building are never going to be as viable as the generalists and they will always have certain limitations.
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Even in the specific places “niche” heroes are supposed to be good, other heroes are better.
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people just like to go “symm and torb are considered niche and they’re not even great in their niches” and assume that the same can be said for other members of the cast when it’s not true at all
prerework sombra and pharah are two examples of niche heroes that are very strong in their niche, so it’s more of a hero being undertuned than the fault of a hero being situational
Exactly, because if they would accel at their niche and be better than generalists, people will complain that they are free wins on these maps and thats not balanced, because they will be must picks then for these specific situations. So they keep them in a bad state. You CAN run them in their niche, but youre always better of playing a generalist.
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Ideally, they are heroes that work REALLY well in a very specific situation or certain maps, but have a much more difficult time being as well in other scenarios.
The problem is the “generalists” who don’t have niches (i.e. Tracer, Genji, D.Va, and Winston) typically end up performing stronger in those situations/maps than the niche heroes who belong in them do.
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I haven’t disagreed with that.
Yeah. They definitely could use work in their niche but they will never have the power of generalists heroes. That’s a great example with Pharah and Sombra and if they tune Torb/Sym we could very well see them more in most ranks of play and make it so that they aren’t automatically a troll pick on selection.
However approaching the upper tiers where people have teamwork and decent gamesense and builders will always be limited when people know how to work against their area denial.
Mobility in this game and all the barrier spam we have ensures that picking a builder can easily be counter picked as they lack that oomph that’s required to go against a lot of comps. As long as the builders don’t have the DPS of a damage dealer, the tankiness of a tank or the healing of a support they can’t be used in every scenario.
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I think the issue there is that anyone that doesnt like tracer genji or dva has to watch as others get to enjoy their 1 trick (while their favorite character isn’t viable.) In a perfect world every character could be played everywhere which would open up even more counter play and hero swapping and probably be really fun. But this isn’t a perfect world.
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I don’t see any reason not to make “niche” heroes good and their niche, while at the same time making them “playable” in other situations.
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I’ve thought of niche as more “Very good in a specific set of circumstances, but either terrible or average in others.”
Example: Orisa on 2CP defense. She’s pretty good at that bunker comp. But if you want to take her on attack at Hanamura, she’s not your best tank choice.
But for Orisa, at least she is viable in situations outside of her niche like escort maps or some of the KOTH maps.
For Orisa, her niche isn’t super narrow. It works out. But for some “niche” heroes they have such a narrow niche that they are pretty bad outside of it and almost too strong inside of it. That’s when you have heroes like Sym with a ridiculously high win rate but very little applicability.
I don’t know if every hero needs to be a generalist (though several are), but the niches shouldn’t be overly narrow. They should have multiple applicable situations they work in not just one or two.
Someone like Sym (just as an example) should be toned down in her specialty, but reworked to be applicable in more areas (not all situations necessarily but more).
Sombra and Pharah are terrible exampels because they arent really niche. They just work on some maps better than others, but they arent completely bad at their non-favorite maps. Most people who claim heroes as niche are only exclusively playable at their niche, or are automatically a detriment to their team.
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By design in a fps game with multiple approaches to maps area denial will always be limited. They will always be a worse choice in maps where you can easily play around their area denial.
Losing one tank, one support, or one high dps damage dealer is a huge deal and none of the ideas I’ve seen for Sym or Torb have come close to filling the gap losing one of those leaves.
I mean… I want to disagree with you… but I really can’t. I feel like what is really holding back this game is Blizzards reluctance to nerf the meta heroes. Every time they buff a non meta hero they have to make hasty revisions that leave them no better off than they were before.
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Let me put it this way. When they tried buffing both bastion and junkrat for their “niches”, they immediately became good in almost all situations (bastion was shortlived, but the point still stands).
A key that opens many locks is better than a key that opens just one.
I see it the opposite way. Both of those characters were overpowered for the exact reason I detailed in my first post.
Bastion’s damage reduction was high to the point it was absurd and it was just ridiculous to deal with him. Junkrat’s easy to hit mine made it so tires were going off all match and he was easily applying 120 damage to entire teams.
Any buffs that are just inherently powerful without making characters “work” for it are going to cause balance issues. That’s why the builders will remain niche, because most of their value comes from their buildings and if we make the buildings powerful they will either still be easy to kill or they will provide too much value for no work.
Sym and Torb definitely deserve outright buffs but they will never be generalists because they are tied to the value their buildings give.
That is certainly one use of the word but here is another definition as given by the dictionary that would apply to the game.
adjective
adjective: niche
1.
denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.
“other companies in this space had to adapt to being niche players”
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Only problem is the meta heroes are all highly mobile and there will be no sweet spot. If you nerf their mobility you cripple their characters completely, I just don’t understand why some are allowed to be F tier while some aren’t. Yea nerfing tracer mobility might make her F tier until you figure out how to fix her but it will be better for the game imo. Feels real bad to play A LOT of characters right now because of all the clutter that was added to the game to try and put the mobile characters in check. Funny thing is the mobile characters can still avoid the clutter and play uneffected.
You’ve had a lot of practice brushing off what people say, I can tell.
I see nothing incorrect in what I said. There is no reason they couldn’t have been less harsh with the bastion nerfs and let him be generally good instead of broken.