Overwatch Pros and Analysts Weigh In On The Brigitte Meta
The new season of Overwatch ranked play introduces new hero Brigitte into competition for the first time.
Though Brigitte was added to the game on March 20th, she was not included in competitive play for the entirety of season nine, to give players a chance to get used to her in quick play before encountering her in ranked matches.
With Brigitte’s introduction into competitive play, however, the topic of how she is balanced has become of greater concern, with the consequences of imbalance being higher when more is at stake.
The progression of Brigitte into the online ladders means that her appearance in more significant competition, such as contenders and the Overwatch League, may not be far away, and so those involved at the higher levels of play have begun to weigh in.
San Francisco Shock’s André ‘iddqd’ Dahlström had several thoughts on Brigitte and her place in the meta:
One of the few things dive did was to instantly kill one or two targets upon execution which at times as a support youd feel slightly helpless. With Brigitte I feel like the fights last longer and that opens up for longer executed plans, which is quite interesting to me atleast.
— André Dahlström (@iddqd) May 2, 2018
That doesnt go without saying that yes, I do think Brigitte is fairly strong right now. But my proposed change to her would be to increase her cooldowns on abilities and leave the rest if there were to be a nerf of some sort. These are just my two cents.
— André Dahlström (@iddqd) May 2, 2018
European Contenders player Robert ‘Shadder2k’ Mocanu highlighted his thoughts while streaming:
Philadelphia Fusion streamer Kabaji showed off what Brigitte is capable of in ladder matches:
Overwatch commentator Andrew ‘ZP’ Rush connected Brigitte to another long-standing debate:
Note that a 2/2/2 hard role lock would also essentially balance Brigitte far more by making her more of a tradeoff. It would also open the door for competitive queue introducing a role based queueing which would alleviate strain from people queueing for ladder.
— Andrew Rush (@TempoZP) May 1, 2018
XL2 Academy’s Liam ‘Mangachu’ Campbell gave his thoughts on what needs to change:
Change max armor to 100 from her ult
Increase shield bash CD to 7 sec
Change hp priority to hp>shield>armor so you don't have to do a bunch of initial damage to poke away at the armor.
2 out of these 3 is good enough, if people want depleting armor the ult needs to give >150
— Mangachu (@Mangachu_) May 1, 2018
So far, Blizzard has not commented on whether or not they feel Brigitte is in need of any balance changes.