Why're people still complaining about Brig?

General Discussion
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You would think they would realize that, but they absolutely do not. I’ve done my fair share of playing with friends in low ranks with how bad the game is at the highest level, and you would not believe how many players think Brig is still a pseudo Reinhardt replacement or simply just don’t understand what her role/purpose actually is.

It’s mostly just that the hero requires gamesense that low ranked players don’t have. I’m all for fixing it, but simply just buffing the hero is a terrible way to go. She needs a FULL FULL rework with basically EVERY ability and aspect of her kit being changed. Give her a clear purpose so she’s not confusing for players, make her abilities either less impactful and require less skill or more impactful and require more skill. The middle ground of “lots of value with no skill” besides gamesense doesn’t work. Otherwise higher level players would not be complaining. Low ranks want the hero playable then make it playable for them, and make it bad at high ranks. Easy heroes should not do more at the highest levels of play than hard heroes- It’s simple as that.

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I play for fun, but I do care about balance, especially if it effects my enjoyment. You still have not explained why should these hard heroes should be immensely rewarded, just because they are hard.

You should choose the best option, not the hardest option. It like Scrooge Mcduck. Work smarter not harder.

I do agree that I want Brig changed, but a rework where she is more fun to play in other ranks besides GM.

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Because it gives players a reason to want to improve, and adds to a healthy competitive environment? I’ve said that I think… twice… now? If an easy character that takes 200 minutes to learn does the same (or more or entirely shuts down) a character or playstyle that takes 200 hours to learn then why would anyone care to learn the harder hero? The game just becomes an endless cycle of picking the easiest hero to win. (This is also basically what low ranks are. They pick the easiest synergy of tanks in Rein Zarya, easiest straightforward supports in Ana/Mercy or Ana/Lucio with hints of moira coming in every now and then, and random dps cuz dps are like “I play what I want lul”.)

Put your own thoughts/feelings aside on the matter, and ask yourself why anyone (not you) would ever care to improve if the game only gets worse for them?

(and please don’t just repeat “not everyone wants to improve” I get that. It’s not an argument for the majority of players that do. The casuals can have their casual game at their level, and the good players can have theirs at their level. Both sides can win if done properly rather than neither side like it is currently, and has been for years.)

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As long as she disgraces high ranked players, she will be complained about by low rank players.

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I am not sure how both sides can win. I mean look at Sombra who is terrible on ladder for most of OW because how she was used in OWL.

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Because a lot of Brig’s weaknesses are “carried” by highest level players being in comms/have actual communication/followup on her bashes, where mid or lower tier you’re lucky if people even use the communication wheel, Brig’s so much more on her own in mid-low ranks

And a pro could dominate on any hero if they were put in low ranks, not just Brig. That’s just hardcore smurfing

They do

They balance for end of ladder, while considering if it will make gameplay awful feeling for lower end. It’s just too bad they didn’t remember that second part for Brig when nerfing her 22x

We all know Tracer and Ana are in the “untouchable” category, they are favorites of Blizz and will never really get nerfed even when reigning supreme for years on end

I think Pharah is a good example. I think she’s balanced around mid ranks. But as you improve into highest skill tiers, she becomes virtually unplayable due to godly hitscan/snipers unless you are a savant with a slave Mercy

It’s literally why I stopped playing competitive. I started the game as a Pharah main 5 years ago. Could play her in gold matches and it was a decent match up. But as I improved, I went up to mid diamond and she got very hard to play. I peaked at masters and she was unplayable, entire matches are no-fly zones and all of team is yelling at you to swap the nanosecond she gets sextuple countered because team swaps to dva-winston-ashe-widow-ana-zen

If she was balanced around endgame ranks, she would perform decently and be a regular viable pick alone, in GM, but then she’d hyper-dominate the lower ranks. If she was balanced around bronze players having a decent matchup against her, then she’d be unplayable as early as getting into plat

This is the logic I’m talking about with Brig. She’s balanced for GM and OWL GOATS so she doensn’t dominate. They nerfed her 22 times so far to make sure of it. But everyone below those ranks now have an underpar healer. Her pick and winrate reflect this, for as long of timescale as you’re allowed to look back on overbuff. I made topics a year ago with the same data, looking 6 months before that point, and it was still the same case back then too

We agree on this, but I think she’s underpowered currently with how they chose to design her current iteration, especially the 5 seconds between shield breaking and starting HP regen again (that’s ridiculous and shouldn’t match Rein) Also she shouldn’t have -30% speed reduction when shielding just like Rein.

And then the final nail was her going to 200HP. Every other melee or close range hero in game has more than 200 (Doom, Mei, Reaper, Sym). Even other big hitbox hitscan now get more than 200 (McCree). But not Brig, the slow bulky shieldmaiden.

“But she has shield” Doom has shielding-gain for doing damage and ultra mobility, reaper has lifesteal and wraith, Mei has iceblock and walls, Sym’s hp pool partially regenerates and she has tele

I do agree though if they majorly buff her, she’ll take over high ladder play in an unhealthy way, so they’re stuck currently and backed themselves into a design hole with her kit.

She’s a fractured shadow of her former self and I just hope her OW2 kit will feel better, for everyone at all ranks

I’m just pushing back against claims that “she’s still OP and needs nerfs/she is too stronk/she does too much stuff!!”

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They really can’t. Characters that require massive amounts of teamwork do better at high tiers because everyone has the same goal and there are substantially less people. This is a teamwork oriented game so she does worse in a chaotic environment.

Most likely why she is getting buffs to her solo play in OW2

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100% this.

I think at this point the devs just won’t touch her and are just hoping the OW2 changes to her kit and the global healing nerfs will be enough - however they’re implementing that, whether it’s the in combat reduction or they’ve gone and tweaked each individual hero…whichever

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She’s not bad in the low ranks if you play her right, which is probably not how you play her in the higher ranks. She can actually low key support tank in the lower ranks (by this i mostly mean creating space and dispositioning the enemy)

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It’s the Overwatch Forums, if you aren’t complaining about something than what’s the point of being here, y’know?

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Becuase her core design isn’t a support, it’s a tank, and that doesn’t gel well with the average player. They might not say it as such, and just think she’s OP, but, if she had been a tank from day one (in her original state), she would have been far less hated, as she’d be doing her job.

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She’s stronger than most people realize because they don’t know how to play her. The disconnect on the forums is because of that.

People on forums who say brig is weak are playing her like a brawler and getting melted for it.

People on forums who say brig is strong are people playing into good brig players who do nothing but sit on the other support and protect them while heal packing dps.

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It’s true that she’s more “on her own” but trust me high level play does not have comms in like 50% of games. Nobody cares enough any more lol

Them saying they do and reality being that case are two separate things. They also say we’ll receive content and updates regularly? Have we? nope.

Agreed mostly, but I don’t think Ana is as much of an issue as people think.

You’re right about this entirely, but I think Pharah is a success story then? She stomps low ranks because she’s fairly easy to play compared to her counters, and falls off when players get skilled enough at her counters. I’m not saying it’s ideal, but it’s one of the best case scenarios. And on top of that VERY good players like YZNSA can still make the hero work to that level of play. People should be rewarded for being good at a hero, and they are with pharah, albeit that hitscan is STILL overtuned more so than pharah is for example.

Okay then lets stop asking “why is brig bad for low ranks” when she isn’t bad it’s just a skill gap. Lets instead say “how do we fix brig so this isn’t the case”. Her current kit will either be ridiculously overtuned for good players and “balanced” for lower ranks and casuals or garbage for casuals but still broken for high ranks. Let’s change the hero entirely and fix that.

Again, if we give straight buffs without addressing why she’s strong for better players and fixing it it just ruins the game at high level play more so than it is currently. We can’t simply buff the hero- she needs a FULL rework. The way she’s designed she will always be problematic for one or the other or BOTH.

She’s broken when played in an environment where the players know what they’re doing, and is played around. She does do too much, and its fairly easy to do those things once you understand that you are supposed to be doing them. The only skill expression the hero has is positioning, awareness, and landing SOME skillful whip shots occasionally. Despite what people think a lot of players aren’t trying to ruin the game for low levels by insisting that the easy heroes get nerfed- it’s just that those same easy heroes tend to also DESTROY high levels of play with how much they can do compared to the other characters.

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Because she’s the most broken character in this game causing an effect that ruins balance.

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She breaks the game, end of. Her design is too easy and has too many flaws to count. I will be complaining until her entire role is changed to be a tank honestly because she truly doesn’t fit the support role. She does way too much all at once, anyone denying this is just well in denial. There are no amount of changes you can do to this hero to make her work. But for whatever reason people want the game to remain boring.

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That is not the end of discussion by a long shot. How are you meant to build a counter to hyper mobility is then the discussion.

You are seeing the direct results of Tracer being in the game here. There is a conversation about how you build a support counter to her which is effective and is not “game breaking” for at least what you call game breaking.

I don’t think it can be done.

You change her until you don’t have her in the support role, then you will be forced to recreate her because the same problems which lead to her creation still exist.

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58

The counter to hypermobility isn’t in the support role and shouldn’t be. Maybe you can put that in the tank role. I also am aware that Tracer exists and most people hate that, but nerfing her changes the entire game as evidenced by an entire hero being created to not only hard counter but subsequently benching the entire dps role until they had no choice but to make role queue.

Sure they could have nerfed Tracer back then and never made Brig at all but I think we still would have seen similar amounts of people being mad and leaving the game because it would go from fast-paced to snail-paced in an instant. Most people enjoy high mobility heroes and they enjoy watching that stuff too. Take it out and the game becomes unfun in almost every way.

I’m also aware the problem is not as extreme as it was way back then. The main issue now is that Brig can be abused by higher elo/ranks to get free SR without even trying because as I said she does too much all at once. She needs to lose something at all in order to be balanced but no one wants to accept that for some reason. Easy characters should remain in lower SRs, they shouldn’t be viable the higher you go, that’s the main issue right now. As one ranks up they should desire or want to play more difficult characters or roles to reflect the growth in skill, not rely on something as easy as Brig or anything similar. Unfortunately, the entire support role essentially suffers from this problem.

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Ok, so you now swap your problem from “how do we do this in the support role” to “how the hell do we expect people to keep playing the support role”

OW2 relies on people signing up to play support in near numbers as DPS, if they have to play into their counters every single game, why would they sign up for that?

Because you NEED them to sign up for that. “Come join this game where people will be able to pick heroes which always gives them an unfair matchup with no ability for you to swap to a counter” is not a thrilling piece of advertising.

Most people enjoy high mobility heroes and they enjoy watching that stuff too. Take it out and the game becomes unfun in almost every way.

Cool, how do you make the supports fun if they are to be facing Tracer every match? Because as we lose support players, the Queue times will make the DPS players leave anyway.

You can’t use “they should suck it up” as the answer, because if you expand it out to what it actually ends up as, it looks like this.

“We want them to suck it up, because if they don’t and stop playing for more interesting roles, or games / modes which don’t force this on them, then the game dies, and we don’t want it to do that.”

It isn’t a viable solution. You can’t put a gun to their heads and force them to play. They can just leave.

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Only the bad players that can’t be bothered to learn how to work around a hero. Oh and the Genji mains.

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