Why'd Junkrat get nerfed?

I mean that legitimately; the patch notes don’t even explain why.

Here’s his patch notes for those of you who don’t want to click links:

Steel Trap

  • Arming time increased from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds
  • Trapped duration reduced from 3 to 2.5 seconds

You see why they’re nerfing Zarya with this paragraph:

Early player sentiment predicted Zarya as one of the weakest solo tanks in 5v5, although her high damage potential and barrier uptime have proven to be extremely effective. For opponents, feedback has indicated this can feel as though Zarya has very limited windows of vulnerability, which feels difficult to deal with when combined with her ramping damage potential.

These changes will reduce the barrier uptime, making it slightly more difficult for her to gain energy and will provide enemies with more time to deal damage to her.

So while I (perhaps controversially) never thought Zarya needed a nerf, I at least know the rational behind it.

With Junkrat, we just see the changes and that’s it. I’m not even complaining; I think his nerfs are undeserved, but I want to know why he randomly got them before anything.

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It’s simple really. The devs have absolutely no idea what they’re doing but because of “muh stats” they’re convinced that they’re the only people who know the truth.

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He was too OP in OWL, also trap is a major headache for many players.

To combat trap, you simply have to keep an eye for the spikey thing on the floor and shoot it, but it’s a lot to ask for to be fair.

I don’t even play junk, I have like 1-2 hours on him in OW2 and I still think this is a dumb decision.

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I really hate to generalize them like this but based on the past few months I don’t think this statement is wrong anymore.

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It’s weird because his trap seems to clip through the floor, making it in some places almost unnoticeable in some cases.

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So checked with a few Junkrat players. Apparently these nerfs have been in the game for some time, but were never addressed in patch notes. Just like trap doing 100 damage has never been addressed.

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Yeah. They stealth nerfed him for no reason but only just made it official. Still stupid and unjustified.

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I think this is just a nerf to CC - not really a nerf targeted at Junkrat so much. If Junkrat was better overall (ie great in all ranks), he’d probably lose his trap altogether - or it’d go back to the slow it was in the beta.

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Is this a joke? What happened to OWL, anyway? Junkrat and Reaper are being played, and now Junkrat has to be nerfed because of it? I really don’t like that, if its true.

This is an issue with balancing out of comp. Its mildly pleasent to hear that they don’t want to nerf Sojourn because she isn’t as great in one rank as she is in another. Still, I think the game should be balanced for general players first, and whatever competitive scene develops just comes naturally.

This is how games did it before. One of the most famous competitive shooters (One of the quakes, I think? IDK) started out completely casual and developed a competitive scene naturally. No one was being nerfed or buffed due to comp specifically.

Why not just SAY that?! You can type that in a sentence.

“We stealth nerfed Junkrat, but now we’re going to publicly address them” or something would be sufficient.

I think this nerf to stuns is a bad idea. Its already proven to be more trouble than its worth.

This apparently was already in the game but until now mentioned it

i didnt even know that he was featured in the owl… well i hardly watch that crap anyways lol

simply put, trap lasts way too long and it’s helpless feeling on any tank, let alone a squishy. he can dish out 400+ damage throughout its duration which ain’t balanced. that being said 2 second duration would have helped much more, but it’s still a big buff compared to the beta where anyone could escape it at reduced speed.
for now the ultimate needs more counters or reduced speed or reduced damage. or killing the rat makes tire disappear. supports shouldn’t be free food / farm for the rat, hide and seek for 10+ seconds or at the mercy of their tanks every single time he decides to use it

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Are you expecting Blizzard to admit to an error? I’m surprised they added it to the patch notes in the first place.

Honestly, it’s fine. Junkrat traps are everywhere now when he’s in the game because it flies so far and has no cooldown restrictions on placement or destruction. It’s really easy to jump into the air and chuck a trap and no one sees where it goes as it falls into the objective. Can be very strong for little effort.

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On a hero with poor mobility and a poor weapon. This IS balanced, since tanks need something to fear and keep them in line, and several squishes NEED to be countered by something like this. Tracer, ball, ect zipping around the point? Put a trap down.

That’s why I think its balance. But you say:

How? Why? Why isn’t it balanced?

Also, you sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Its countered by shooting it. Any hero can kill it fast enough with a little aim. REINHARDT can firestrike it and kill it, or outright block it, and several heroes can just evade it. Do you really think Junkrat is that strong? He gets blown out by basically every other hero and HAS to rely on kill confirm combos to do anything.

I really hate to read you guys talking about effort on here, like effort automatically makes something a better skill. With high mobility characters running wild, and tanks with hundreds of health going ham, why do you care about effort when you should care about counters?

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I care about effort because it’s really annoying and stupid when really easy things get disproportionate value

Like Sojourn is the prime example of this

My view on the matter is that Junkrat flying into the air while a teamfight is happening and getting a tank kill out of it is lame. If it happens less, good. It’s not like the nerfs effect the ability to use trap in combination with mine, y’know, the intended purpose.

honestly what they should do is just remove trap and give him a different ability

Sojourn is a prime example of effort. Objectively speaking, Aim is more effort than throwing a junk trap, so you should like Sojourn since she’s relatively high effort for high value.

Why? Tanks need counters, too.

The intended purpose of junk trap is to junk trap enemies. How did you get it in your brain that “junks trap isn’t meant for trapping enemies! Its meant to combo into mines!?”. That alone makes me skeptical about how you see junk.

Its the same type talk as “Rein shield isn’t for blocking damage for your team! Why would a tank need to tank damage for his team anyway! Really, its a personal shield, and that’s why its wide and Rein yells ‘Get behind me!’”.

Right. And that worked for McCree.

Wait, I mean Symmetra.

Wait, I mean Hanzo

Actually, removing skills and adding skills or giving has never worked for the community. Mostly because this community rarely wants balance changes for the good of the game. They want heroes changed so they can counter them easier, so if Junk lost his trap and got a skill that was just as effective, people would likely still hate it.

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2 concussion mines disagree with that

120 direct damage + heavy aoe and spam potential is not really a poor weapon. in fact there are actually many situations where hitscan heroes can only dream to have this kind of weapon, especially with the new OW2 maps.

tanks were kept in line throughout OW1. 1 tank shouldn’t be kept in line just because a dps decided to go rat when he can already quite easily 1 shot a majority of squishies. he still can destroy a Tracer or Ball quite easily even with these changes but less the other heroes that are unfortunate to be targeted by him so… let’s just agree to disagree

because there needs to be some form of counterplay? lol?
it’s like old echo flying around dealing 200 dps to any hero under 50% of their health… why isn’t that balanced?!?
just because you think dealing that amount of absurd damage is fine doesn’t make it really fine, especially that a rat can just jump around and place the trap before you can even see and react to it. it just makes the enemy want to uninstall

not like the rat isn’t already in 90% of my games and I’m sick to death of him, but go off

this isn’t about any hero… it’s about support role who have poor rate of fire (and one of them is basically a melee hero) and are targeted and first priority of a rat tire, which is simply not fun. try playing support more so you see for yourself - as I said they have to hide and seek or are at the mercy of their tanks. also Reinhardt no longer can 1 shot firestrike a tire, iirc they reduced his damage to 90 and trap is still at 100.