Blizzard almost certainly has data showing which heroes tend to kill which heroes, and they balance by data, not user opinion.
If they looked through this data, they’d see that Brigitte is one of Reinhardt’s biggest killers.
Now, a not-very-insightful person would stop there and say “Alright, Reinhardt needs to be stronger against Brigitte”.
But first, think about why Brigitte would be able to kill Rein so often.
Brigitte does 58 DPS with her primary fire, it’d take her ages to kill Reinhardt, she’d get killed herself far sooner if Reinhardt had any kind of backup.
So, these kills must be when Reinhardt has no backup and is pretty much doomed.
What can you expect to see in a situation matching this description?
- Reinhardt’s entire team is dead, he’s holding up his shield to stall for as long as possible.
- Reinhardt is on low health and surrounded so he decides to suicide-charge into the enemy to maybe get a kill before he dies, he’ll hold his shield up to waste the time of enemies though.
- Reinhardt did a bad charge and is now under fire from everyone, so he holds his shield up because there’s not really anything else he can do
These situations are all very common, and they all have two things in common.
- Reinhardt will die
- He has his shield up
Who will get the kill on Reinhardt?
- Someone behind Reinhardt’s shield
- Someone who can ignore Reinhardt’s shield (i.e. a melee hero)
If Reinhardt is being attacked by two people, one of which is a melee hero, the melee hero will get the kill as Reinhardt will face the ranged hero to block all their damage.
If Reinhardt is being attacked by two ranged heroes, and Brigitte, although Rein can only shield from one ranged hero, Brigitte will probably get the kill as she has a 120 damage finishing move (it’s only good as a finishing move since it has a lot of knockback).
If Reinhardt is being attacked by two melee heroes, that finishing blow means Brigitte will probably still get the kill.
So, the reason for Brigitte’s nerf against Reinhardt has nothing to do with Brigitte fighting Reinhardt. The nerf is because of Brigitte executing doomed Reinhardts before anyone else can.
It is absolutely a mistake, because this nerf is due to data creating an illusion of Brigitte going into battle and effortlessly killing Reinhardt in the middle of a teamfight.