He’s really the only main support other than Ana who hasn’t been mutilated by a rework or rebalance recently. Also he constantly has things he can be doing (whereas Ana has more punctuated, impactful moments of plays), so he feels really good.
Also he has pretty respectable skill scaling for multiple skills, which people obviously like. He’s really the epitome of a well-designed hero in terms of skill progression–adequate at low ranks, and strong in high ranks, but not completely overshadowed by or (until Double Barrier and Moira’s nerf, which are exogenous factors) overshadowing anybody
Remember when people wanted Ana to have some kind of ability to get to high ground to better position herself? Jeff came out and said that was one of her clear weaknesses balance wise, and she would never get it. Baptiste apparently doesn’t follow that mold.
Oh, also why can’t Ana’s skill ceiling be increased by being able to headshot? Naw, that’s another one of her weaknesses. Baptiste – LOL, nope. Just looking at what Ana couldn’t have and Baptiste has is the definition of overloaded and power creep in this game IMO.
Not accurate. It stops infinite damage when a hero reaches 20% health. That can equate to a TON of damage just strait up stopped over the course of a match.
Not really, it’s a common phenomenon in Blizzard games that the longer their games last, the more overloaded their new additions are. And actually Dva and Genji (well, he a bit less) are actually already early examples of this phenomenon as they were heroes that were developed rather late in Overwatch’s development. It’s basically the main reason that Dva is such a headache to balance, because she’s a jack of all trades.
Genji has a bit less of an overloaded kit given that he has clear weaknesses: he has no self-sustainability (only a few seconds of leeway with deflect, which doesn’t even protect against beam weapons) and very low raw damage output for a DPS (outside of his ult).
Now look at the heroes added after launch. They all can do more than the other heroes of their role save for a few examples.
Actually, Mei was one of the last additions in early development. While she’s fallen in and out of meta, we can pretty easily surmise how people feel about her.
He’s popular because not only does he deal good shield damage, in a meta that’s all about breaking shields as fast as possible, (hence zen, too) but he provides reasonable AOE heals that with good positioning can be used effectively despite the shields that are present.
Meanwhile, Mercy heals are meh while the game is centered around the tanks; hitscans aren’t in so damage boost is meh, too.
Ana struggles with barriers - there’s a lot of them and her shield break is minimal, so she’s not as good.
Moira is moira…she’s never going to be a hero that’s genuinely good outside of ‘everything else is unuseable’ unless she actually gets some utility and her AOE healing was heftily nerfed just recently, so obviously she lost that spot to another hero that does more (when skilled)
I think I mentioned all main heals, if not then oops.
Also to boot, he only saw an increase in use when Doomfist’s pick rate dropped; pretty much all flankers make easy picking of him except for reaper, if played that way. And right now the meta DPS have the ability to one shot, or at least deal ridiculous damage very quickly (hanzo, reaper) plus bap has the unique ability to help a walled off teammate survive with his otherwise underwhelming movement ability.
Bap is popular because he’s impactful and not as difficult as Ana for the average player. Healers like to play impactful heroes too and not have to be as skilled ML7 in order to be impactful.
His gun feels really good so you can do meaningful amount of damage during downtime and defend yourself even if you’re not hitscan extraordinaire, his immortality field is clutch if you know how to use it right, he has good aoe heals that are not very difficult to hit and not as range limited as moira/mercy and he’s a necessity to fill the void moira used to fill when we got hanzo, his dragons, mei, sigma ulti and tanks would otherwise melt if not for his heals and immortality.
Bap has plenty weaknesses that can be exploited, but long as we’re playing doublebarrier, we’re not going to be able to exploit those weaknesses.
Cool down starts from the time it’s thrown, not when the drone dies. So IM Field to IM Field is in play every 12 seconds unless there is direct action that kills it
but so many locations have lines of sight areas that will totally block it’s view from attackers. Resulting in a constant cycle of drone, 8 seconds where nothing will die… then 12 seconds to “play the game”, then it’s another drone.
as I said, I get what the devs were going for with the ability but there simply needs to be a larger window of opportunity time wise for an attacking team to push without the risk of an IM Field. Making mis-plays with the IM Field more punishing.
like 18 seconds from the time it dies. 12 seconds to new IM is just too short
If anything, I’d tone down his (and all healers) healing on targets that have taken damage in the past few seconds and add some deviation to his burst rifle if being fired at it’s max rate of fire but in return let him charge his boots in the air.
One of the major problems with modern OW is how non-impactful playing a support can feel, and you basically want to remove not only all of baptiste’s ability to actually be impactful himself. You want all healers to be un-impactful?
Healers need to feel as though they are having some kind of effect on the game. Otherwise they’re not actually playing the game. They’re just observing.
Your suggestion removes agency directly. It’s terrible because of that agency reduction.
Or because he has a ridiculously stacked kit, and Support mains have shown before they absolutely cling on to broken heroes with an absolute passion and do everything they can to try and justify how broken the kits are?
Like people actually try to argue Lamp is weak, sure if you are playing in Gold/Plat maybe Bap’s chuck it out in the open. But any decent level of play and it’s behind multiple shields and behind walls or objects and is virtually untouchable. The cool-down starts as soon as it is deployed so once it is down/destroyed there are about 10 seconds until another one is up. It is ridiculous.
