Blizzard had done an absolutely abysmal job trying to communicate why they make decisions over the years but this change might have been communicated the worst. However, that does not mean the change came without cause.
So why? Why was Brig nerfed? Surely she didn’t deserve it given she was already not in a great state for most of the player-base.
Well, I’d like to cast you back to the Contenders Grand finals only a few weeks ago where 200hp Brig was finding plenty of game time in Dive mirrors. Despite what you may think, Brig was actually viable in high ranks and for the first time in YEARS, she didn’t impede on the niche’s of other supports like Mercy and completely dominate higher levels of play.
It’s an unfortunate reality, but Brig doesn’t need major buffs, realistically it’s the player-base that does. Because brig scales so heavily with game knowledge, lower-ranked players find her almost impossible whilst higher-ranked players think she’s far too easy for her value. The game knowledge that you need to attain a high rank, the basic macro and micro understanding of what you should be doing at any point in time is all you need to play Brig and have a huge impact relative to other supports and considering all high ranked players generally inherently have that knowledge you can see why she seems easy to them. But when you make all these positional and game-sense mistakes, you feel like you need these buffs to make her viable, when in reality a basic understanding of game-sense makes her good.
This is why you can’t just give stats to something and hope it works for the intended player-base. That small 25hp change hardly affected her viability at low ranks yet exponentially increased her value for high ranks, being enough combined with the bap changes to make Double Shield a viable comp when Orisa is probably one of the worst heroes in the game right now and Sigma far from his best state. It really is an impossible balancing task but unfortunately, until Brig gets some part of her kit that scales with something other than game-sense, or that scaling gets toned down so she can be good at low ranks and even bad at high ranks, she simply cannot get buffed.
The pure oppressive strength she had at her release state meant that players didn’t need almost any skillset to be able to play her effectively which has adversely affected how players interpret her intended skillset now and how much value they should be getting for how they are playing the character. If Brig was released in a worse state than this and buffed up to this state, you would see significantly fewer complaints simply because the player-base would have grown more knowledgeable on how to play around a less oppressive and jack of all trades kit.
Finally, I want to touch on Blizzard’s tendency to quickly balance based on the performance of characters in ranked. Because ranked players are trying to play either what they like regardless of balance altogether which is a much bigger influencer that most like to admit. But then after that, they try to pick what is the easiest to get value on; what will give them the best possible chance to win the map they are currently on. Not what could be the most powerful if you stacked with someone and put time into learning certain hero combinations that have a high potential for value. Because as a community of solo queue players, you are not going to be able to improve on these comps for the next map, it’s simply what is going to net me this map win right here right now. If there was some sort of format where you played as a team for multiple maps you could easily play comps like Double Shield with Brig Bap in low ranks, but it would take a little bit of planning and effort. And because of the effort this comp now takes, despite the fact that it is probably a better comp for its respective maps, no one will play it in a solo queue environment and the stats all plummet. And when it is attempted it is done poorly so it’s not going to perform well.
This rapid balance style means that we get sort sighted changes like this Brig change that are literally aimed at people playing the game wrong. The idea is to give these ‘underperforming characters’ extra stats in order for the person behind the screen that is making the wrong play to get away with it. “Go chase that tracer that is harassing you instead of playing with your team and looking for value and win because of these buffs we gave you. Go make the bad play and win anyway.” I’m sorry, that’s just not a way to balance the game.
This dichotomy of how each rank is playing the game needs to be fixed by blizzard and it can’t be done by harsh game balance. It needs to be done through map design, map formats, hero restrictions for higher levels of play. Things that enable the ‘win at all costs’ types of players that just want sr to have the ability to shape their own gameplay rather than just play Brig forever, but also at the same time making the game feel approachable for lower-ranked players. But you do need to give them time to learn how to play properly, you can’t just say these players don’t know what to do let’s just buff it so they succeed.