Why are Baptiste perks so weak? Assault Burst Analysis

General Discussion
1

I’ve played Baptiste for over 500 hours and I’ve never had such a long losing streak until this last 2 or 3 seasons, I think it’s worth taking a look of the why.

I know he has been nerfed like 4 times in a row since season 9, but he was still a solid support even in the current flashy hyper-mobile DPS support state of the game, I feel like now it’s really difficult to get value with every one of his abilities besides the immortality field.

Regardless of all of that I’ve had no problem playing him to a decent level, but since the perks came to the game playing Bap feels like playing Dead by Daylight as a survivor, all of your perks as Baptiste are so underpowered compared to others it really feels like you have no good options.

I’ve been investigating since I started having these 6 game losing streaks in my days where i one trick Baptiste, and I’ve found this video:

Then I realized, wow Baptiste is terrible right now, it’s kinda crazy on its own that you have a 15 second cooldown ability that can be brought down to heal you only 60 HP (with the DPS passive), and in the best scenario is not even half of your max HP(120).

The fact that this ability the Regen Burst is 90% of the time going to heal you 90 HP makes me see why he is not as strong as before, but this is not even the problem, in fact I’m pretty sure this is intended, where I see the real reason why i feel so outdated is because of his perks.

Just think about it, why does the Assault Burst perk even heals at all?
It gives you 4 seconds of playing Soldier 76 (a hero outclassed in his role) for giving up the most important part of Baptiste kit, since if you don’t get healed you die, and if you die there’s no lamp, so i wouldn’t say the immo field is his most impactful ability.
In my opinion, the Assault Burst should do something more than just the damage, and the solution is very simple:

It gets rid of the 80 burst healing leaving you with the 40 over time, and only 30 every 14 seconds if you get sneezed on by a DPS, I think that at that point you better off not getting healed at all and have something else, for example, faster secondary fire as well.

Let’s play Blizzard dev, let’s say we increase Regen Burst cooldown by 1 second so it’s 15, and the Assault Burst perk duration is increased to 5 seconds so the downtime stays the same, and we make it so the healing secondary fire gets the 30% increase too, this would make up for a strong perk that sacrifices Baptiste survivability by a lot but skyrockets his potential to save his allies for a short window of time, specially with his Amp Matrix ultimate.

But why? Baptiste ultimate fell from probably the strongest support ultimate prior to season 9, to arguably the worst right now. You no longer consistently one shot squishies anymore with it, and that is probably the number one reason on why it was used in pro play.

Making you heal faster combined with his ultimate would give some power back to the Amp Matrix, only with the use of the Assault Burst perk, in exchange for Baptiste own survivability, at the same time making up for the Regen Burst instant healing loss, which also applies for teammates, while at the same time enhancing the usability of Amp Matrix for healing purposes, which is the only reason you wanna use it for nowadays.

Both Baptiste major perks are weak compared to other L3 perks of the supports, I think this would be a great way to give more strength to the Assault Burst perk without making it necessarily oppressive or unbalanced, and it would also make it not feel as much as a copy pasta of Soldier’s Stim.

Right now there’s no reason to go for the Assault Burst realistically, the moment you select it you will become the number one target for everyone in the enemy team, and 30% extra attack speed is not enough to win a 1v1 against any tank that jumps on you, you will always want to pick the Rocket Boots, and of course I’m not talking about quick play.

And speaking of Rocket Boots, it 100% should be able to be activated at any moment in the air, not just from the use of Exo Boots, this again, makes the use of the perk unnecessarily limited, just like the same problem with Assault Burst, let’s just think about it, it’s just Hanzo lounge on a greater cooldown, I don’t see why it would cause any problems if you could just use it off of regular jumping or falling.

There are many perks and heroes that absolutely need rebalancing and some are straight up terrible, but if we still have 6 blink Tracer and free double Nano in the game, why are we so conservative on some other perks? If we have Mei shooting icebergs out her blaster and Torb shooting trucks out of his gun why can’t we have Baptiste Halo 5 thruster pack? Baptiste is a Halo reference on his own anyways.

Jokes aside, this is my suggestion on Baptiste perks and how to make them slightly better for the experience, and more in line with the better perks.

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2

Bap healing himself for 120 isn’t exactly bad, especially since that’s only for 2 seconds after taking damage from specifically a damage character.

Juno and Zen can’t self heal at all without the passives and Ana also heals less on a now 14 second cooldown.

If Bap’s self heal is a big problem for you, you’re clearly doing something wrong.

3

I didn’t read all of it, but he has not been nerfed a bunch since s9. He was nerfed prior to it, and has mainly been buffed since.

2/13/2024

  • Health increased from 200 to 250.

3/12/2024

Immortality Field

  • Minimum health threshold decreased from 25% to 20%.

10/15/2024

Biotic Launcher

  • Primary fire recoil reduced by 30%.

12/10/2024

Regenerative Burst

  • Cooldown decreased from 15 to 14 seconds.
  • Radius increased from 10 to 12 meters.
4

You’re missing the point here, Ana nade heals less on the same cooldown, but it’s the strongest cooldown in the game, you WILL want to use it on the enemies 99% of the time because of how strong it is, if you use Bio Nade for self healing you’re wasting it, Juno has no way of self healing, but she has arguably the strongest self mobility of all the supports and a TINY hit box, she does not need any self healing she’s like Kiriko, Zenyatta does not have self healing options but he has shields, which trigger faster than the regular global self healing, and let’s not forget that Zen has three times the damage potential that Baptiste has on the neutral, Zen not being able to heal is part of his fantasy of a glass cannon, do you understand?
If Baptiste has a a self healing ability is cause he needs it, and nerfing it is like nerfing the damage on Zen or the speed on Lucio, it loses purpose.

Again, you’re missing the point since I’m not saying he should heal himself more, I am literally pointing out a way to compensate in a different way for that healing loss

5

Baptiste’s heal pulse also heals everyone around him and in a much larger radius than Ana’s nade

I’m not missing any point, you just want to buff a good character that’s just bad in the meta

6

He suffers from powercreep in the support and damage role. No matter how good you make his perks there’s no fixing that.

Utility is important on a support and his utility isn’t keeping pace with other supports who can provide speed boosts, group buffing, enemy debuffing, cleanse, stuns, knockback or extra padding. All with much lower cooldowns and frequent use.

It’s why Moira, Mercy and Illari drop off harshly the higher you climb too. Outside of their one or two gimmicks it’s effectively an arms race they are going into lopsided.

Either that or you can chalk it up to character bias and favouritism the devs clearly have lol.

7

Strongly agree on the perks - they are so bad. I wonder if he is one of those heroes who is difficult to buff without becoming immediately problematic.

8

I played him one round and skimmed the perk desc. I thought I was supposed to get a turret during my ult but then a Cassidy did more dps than I did through my window and killed me. :neutral_face:

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I think his first tier perks are just meh but not really bad. Personally I hardly notice either one being equipped.

I really agree on the attack rate perk. Losing burst heal (and arguably your self heal if the timings arent right) for small boost every 15 seconds is not worth it. I would go as far to say it’s a throw pick. I can feel the game’s momentum drag when I’ve accidentally picked it.

Rocket boots are my favourite perk in the game though. They don’t always help, but when they do I’m unkillable.

10

Yea, the boots are the best. Most people figure they know your trajectory when you jump so it throws them off and keeps you alive.

11

I think bap is weaker now because of these reasons:

  • S9 global health increase, making his damage less lethal against squishies.
  • 5v5 making it harder for him to survive against flankers like tracer.
  • 5v5 favoring comps that have teammates playing spread apart, making his form of his healing less optimal.
  • Even when AoE healing is needed, moira/brig/lucio tends to be better because of their higher survivability, which is crucial now in 5v5.
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12

That’s probably the least thing to care about, considering the perks they gave sojourn/ana.

13

Yeah I’ve also made a bunch of high ground escapes by strafing behind a bit of low ceiling or dodging onto a high platform. It’s pretty much all I’ve wanted for him for so long.

14

wow! what a ramble, i dont think anyone cares to read all that pal

15

Thanks for your in-depth analysis, OP. I appreciate that you didn’t hold back to cater to people who can only handle single-sentence posts.

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