Zarya has never felt so bad in higher ranks

General Discussion
1

I acknowledge that she is still decent in lower ranks, but in GM she feels absolutely awful.

I think her energy generation straight up needs a rework for OW2, in OW1 it made sense, you bubble the other tank who was a threat, got 40 charge if you timed the bubble right, then you were enough of a threat at 40 charge so they were forced to shoot your bubble, and it snowballed from there, eventually leading to her getting 100 energy most of the time.

In OW2 there’s no reason to shoot zaryas self bubble unless she’s at high charge, which mean someone was bad enough to give low charge zarya 40 charge for no reason.

Solution?
My idea is that zarya gets more energy at the START of the bubble, and by the end of the duration of the zarya bubble, you give basically 0 charge to zarya. Her max energy per bubble will still be 40, but for example (idk balance this is just random numbers), a widowmaker shot might give 35 charge instead of 24 charge for a fully charged bodyshot as soon as bubble is put on her, but after 1.5s of bubble duration shooting zarya bubble with fully charged widow bodyshot gives no charge to zarya.

This basically stops the impatient people accidentally giving zarya 40 charge for literally no reason at the end of the duration.

I’m not a balancer so I have no idea about numbers, but I feel like zaryas skill should come from READING when the enemy is going to focus you. That IS the case right now, but you only get 20 energy from it at higher ranks where people don’t shoot your bubble, it feels like if the enemy is decent you PEAK at 45 energy, which is a horrible feeling.

You have the hope they have like a torb or a really bad/impatient team. If they have like a hitscan they will just simply… stop shooting, like if it’s a cass for example you’ll absorb the first bullet and then… nothing happens, 13 energy. Even though you read the enemy cass about to shoot you and not reload, you get like hardly any reward. I’m not saying a single hitscan bullet should give instant 40 charge, I just think it should give more at the START of the bubble. A bad zarya would bubble too early for example and it’s easy to read and just ignore her and focus on other team mates until about 1s.

But yeah, I just don’t like the “hoping” part. Like JQ sure you hope they don’t have a kiriko, but you can play around it. Playing zarya into like winston + hitscans means you literally cannot carry, it is impossible, it’s lame and boring.

7 Likes
2

I do think Zarya needs some love. Maybe it’s time to revert how long her bubbles last, that 2.5s pretty much guaranteed she would get charged since it would provide protection on herself/an ally for so long if you didn’t break it

But, on second thought, I like your suggestion better.

3 Likes
3

The problem is that just makes zarya stronger for impatient teams. You know those teams that will wait out 2s, then will be like “nah screw it!” and shoot the bubbles so she gets 40 charge and makes space for 2.5s.

Even though the best strategy is either to focus the bubbles or ignore them.

It also makes zarya just more annoying to fight because waiting out 2.5s duration bubble is frustrating, I never used to find zarya annoying until that change really I wouldn’t want to see it return personally it also just made bad zaryas look good honestly.

I would rather they buff her elsewhere, I’d not be totally against 10s bubbles again but what do you think of my solution suggested in the OP?

4

Sounds pretty good. Rewards well timed bubbles & like you said prevents impatient (or just bad) players from charging her for shooting her at the tail end of her bubble when they shouldn’t.

I’m all for it. I typically get hit for the first half of bubble duration then people stop shooting. This would fix that, and its skill based.

1 Like
5

I don’t really like the concept of scaling energy with the duration of her bubble, personally.

I think it makes energy gained less consistent which wouldn’t be a good for game flow overall, and would also punish you for soaking up spam damage (like when you bubble for a Junkrat knowing he can’t un-fire the 2-3 grenades coming your way). You’d get good charge off the first, but not much off the second and third.

It would also be punishing due to server side delays. We’ve all been in a spot where we know we bubbled before a D.Va bomb for instance, only to still die due to server side delay.

I think slightly more uptime would be the way to go, or splitting the cooldowns between self and ally bubbles to encourage more dynamic bubbling rather than constant double bubbling (with reduced cooldowns obviously to compensate). Would give it a good flow of “bubble tank - bubble ally - bubble tank - bubble ally…”

6

I feel like she would still get enough energy from spam damage pretty well, though. Since the damage to energy conversion initially is larger, you would probably get enough charge even from just one high damage shot if you time the bubble right, depending on the numbers of course, but I trust that the numbers would be done right with testing. IF anything it would be easier to get charge because you only really need to absorb one high damage shot. It’d only be worse if you bubble early, when you see a junkrat grenade on the floor or something (so a bad zarya play).

Regardless though, this is really just to make her more consistent and not RELY on the enemy having a spammy comp and spamming through a choke (without too much spam otherwise her bubbles pop too fast and she can’t make space, like why bastion counters zarya). Right now, It’s this weird middle ground that you NEED and it’s just really lame to have to rely on what the enemy is playing.

My overall idea is that a GOOD zarya should be able to get charge every game, regardless of what the enemy is playing. She could still be countered by being bursted down by high damage heroes, walled off, out ranged dramatically, or straight up focused due to her being less survivable than other tanks, but she’d at least feel better and feel like she always has a shot at doing something. If her damage at high charge needs a nerf that’s fine. I just want to be able to get charge against a good team without junkrat and have a shot at carrying. And if I’m bad I get no charge.

It’s been really really noticeable every since junk/torb were nerfed.

7

They should give her back 10 sec cooldown. The 2.5 duration was the only thing that needed to be nerfed, it significantly changed her on it’s own.

8

I’d prefer the old 10 second CD so she could actually bubble people other than herself rn it’s too much of liability to bubble others

9

Skill Issue.

A10 is out here melting kids at every SR every day, never swapping.

It’s not her kit gatekeeping her, it’s Ball being OP and SJ and Widow still being the best DPS in the upper ranks.

Hypermobility and/or Range has always been Zarya’s weakness.

10

They just need to revert her cooldown back by one second again. The bubbles lasting 2 full seconds is what broke zarya, her bubble cooldowns wasn’t really a problem.

11

Honestly her kit is pretty weak rn even current dva which is relatively balanced outshines zarya

Her hp is too low coupled with her 11 second bubbles and all healers getting buffs which make her consistent dmg weaker along with her 2 previous ult nerfs

She’s probably give or take jq s power level I’d prefer jq if they don’t have kiriko but if they do I’d take zarya

I’d say she’s still slightly worse than hog rn probably the worst tank by a whole tier

12

If you’re using bubbles to gain charge you’re doing it wrong.
You use bubbles to save your life and you get high charge on one bubble alone.

1 Like
13

I’m pushing 850hrs on Zarya and I approve this message.

14

Me simply no like zarya

15

stop asking for a hero to be changed for 1% of the player base. that’s really selfish, annoying, and basically dumb.

16

Tbh I think they should decrease her personal damage and buff her tanking capabilities to better protect allies.

I believe self bubbles and allies bubbles should not share the 11s CD and that self bubbles should be the full 11s CD and the allied ones at around 7-8s.

I know that the bubbles still share charges, so I though it would work in a way that the currently recharging bubble would recharge based on what type of bubble was used last.

This could potentially encourage to use bubbles on their allies instead of self bubbling 90% of the time.

They could also increase allied bubble charge gain from 40 to 45-50 since her maximum charge damage would have been nerfed accordingly.

1 Like
17

I think, let’s see what Tank meta looks like after Ball, Sojourn and Widow nerfs.

18

Tbh, I really think they should have something like hero bans, but only for Tanks.

For example:

  • Both Tank players get a Vote
  • Their only choices are between:
    • Dive
    • Deathball
      • There is no “Abstain/Cancel” Choice
  • If they agree on Dive, then all tanks besides these get banned:
    • D.va
    • Ball
    • Winston
    • Doom
  • If they agree on Deathball, then all tanks besides these get banned:
    • Rein
    • Orisa
    • Sigma
    • Roadhog
    • Zarya
  • If they don’t agree, then no Tanks get banned.
19

Bro, play who you want and counter as needed. I dont understand this mindset you all have hate for a specific hero. Since season 7 of OW1 my tactic has been to counter the carry and force them off whoever they are dominating with. It works.

20

I don’t think you really understood the idea I was suggesting