Hulk did not need nerfed.

[Mayo]

Starting off, the Devs are obviously balancing more for competitive and not for casual players. Some small changes here and there, the biggest buffs to Captain America (Deserved) but you know who didn't need nerfed? The Hulk.

I don't know who is in the loop, but I'm going to say this: In high level competitive play, Hulk is primarily used for being able to dive ontop of enemies either WITH support, or trying to peel enemies into overextending. The ONLY reason he is played so much at high level is because of his TEAM UPS. NOT BECAUSE OF HIS KIT.

With Hela and Hawkeye supremacy in the game being banned 24/7, it left Hulk/Doctor Strange and Iron man to dominate lobbies. Iron man by himself is okay, but with the extra gamma boost? Insane damage. Doctor Strange having no negative side now and boosted damage on one of his abilities? Sign me up.

Hulk isn't the best tank, he isn't the worst. But I don't like that they're nerfing a character who is EXTREMELY weak to any form of CC and has excruciatingly long cooldowns. Go and play Hulk, and you won't realize how long you're actively waiting for your cooldowns to come back before you can dive in again- you are a sitting duck. Watching high level play, its the same thing. The only difference is that you have more opportunities because EVERYONES skill is better at those levels. But in more casual play? He is hot garbage without his team to go in with him or even heal him.

His nerf for season 1, while small, is still not deserved in the slightest. Not to mention seasonal bonuses only lasting for the SEASON, meaning HE'LL LOSE 150 HP AT THE END OF SEASON 1. SO WILL VENOM!

I already feel like I'm getting nuked down by everyone, even playing safe. I'm not the best at the game, I'm only diamond 3 before I just stopped playing competitive. Been mostly playing Hulk with 22 hours logged on him as my most played.

This kind of balancing... It'll end up burning them alive. Game is fun don't get me wrong, but man. I don't know what kind of statistics they're looking at to be nerfing HULK over the small nerfs for Hela and Hawkeye. This is ridiculous.

[Kitt 🌟 Stargazer]

Originally posted by Mayo:

Starting off, the Devs are obviously balancing more for competitive and not for casual players.

How precisely do you balance around casual, who is filled with people who all have different opinions on how each character should be "balanced" exactly? What casual players want is literally all over the place in that regard...

The thing is, more competitive players will generally direct characters in order to best understand them. Since fully understanding what they can give you a competitive edge when actually trying to win. It also helps them provide actual facts on what could be a problem that needs to be address, something casual players almost can never provide.

You just mostly need to be worried about personal bias after that. But most of Casual players suggestions will be Bias as well, on top of being ignorant...

[Mayo]

Originally posted by Kitt 🌟 Stargazer:

Originally posted by Mayo:

Starting off, the Devs are obviously balancing more for competitive and not for casual players.

How precisely do you balance around casual, who are filled with people who all have different opinions on how each character should be "balanced" exactly? What casual players want is literally all over the place in that regard...

The thing is, more competitive players will generally direct characters in order to best understand them. Since fully understanding what they can give you a competitive edge when actually trying to win. It also helps them provide actual facts on what could be a problem that needs to be address, something casual players almost can never provide.

You just mostly need to be worried about personal bias after that. But most of Casual players suggestions will be Bias as well, on top of being ignorant...

I think personally it needs to be a mix of taking in competitive biases and casual biases. Make the game feel well rounded instead of overly catered to one side or another.
A lot of the changes made aren't actually that bad, they're just very small and incremental.

I would however disagree that competitive players know best. No one knows best. People don't want a repeat of Overwatch where specific characters got nerfed heavily purely because of high level competitive play. Although even Overwatch isn't a good example, seeing as they had a hard meta for 2 years...I digress.

There will always be a meta, players will find it. It's up to the community and the devs to figure out the most balanced form of that meta. When you have characters being aggressively banned for the entire community KNOWING they're a problem, its not just biases anymore- the statistics would show it too.

No one is ever immune to bias, even the devs. The best you can do is filter it and set up proper statistics for it.

[VoiD]

Competitive tend to follow made up trends and artificially influence the bias for or against certain characters, it happens often, when one character is considered trash by everyone, including the top players, then one top player decides to use that character and does well in a tournament, and suddenly everyone starts calling it OP.

Casual players are completely clueless and can't offer any valuable feedback whatsoever, if you try you'll just get lost, they literally want to nerf every single class and call everything, from tanks to healers to most DPS, OP.

They should guide themselves purely from win rate stats @ higher ranks, not forum opinions.

[Mayo]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Competitive tend to follow made up trends and artificially influence the bias for or against certain characters, it happens often, when one character is considered trash by everyone, including the top players, then one top player decides to use that character and does well in a tournament, and suddenly everyone starts calling it OP.

Casual players are completely clueless and can't offer any valuable feedback whatsoever, if you try you'll just get lost, they literally want to nerf every single class and call everything, from tanks to healers to most DPS, OP.

They should guide themselves purely from win rate stats @ higher ranks, not forum opinions.

I think what isn't helping is that every single character has clickbaity videos saying "#1 (Insert Character) is op!" and most of them are just clip videos not showing the overall gameplay of those characters. There are very few characters I would say ARE outright overpowered and need some tuning down.

What doesn't help is that experiences can be extremely different. You play against a Hulk that just destroys your team- Hulk is OP. You try playing Hulk, suddenly he's garbage. Let's ignore that the player may have had already 100 hours on Hulk, while you only have 3.

Time will tell for certain about all the characters- BUT! That doesn't mean there aren't trends that are already dangerous. And some of the time (not all the time!) trends by competitive players aren't wrong. Hela and Hawkeye is actually a great example of this.

Take those two and give them to non experienced players versus more experienced players. As you would follow a trend line EVEN IN STATISTICS, you would see that there is a curve of rapid improvement in damage/kill ratios. To make it worst, this actually applies even MORE in casual than competitive! In competitive, call that a controlled setting: It means you may have players of equal skill potentially going against one another, meaning the amount of kills or the amount of damage players deal may be around the same.

In casual, that control group is no longer there- meaning characters can be set free to dominate their matches. Sometimes you get outlier matches, where the skill is very far apart and leads to an easy domination- now the question becomes what character overperformed over everyone else? You're looking for the outlier out of all the outliers, if that makes sense. Once you find that outlier and confirm that they are a consistent outlier amongst other characters for the desired statistic (Say its kills, damage blocked, damage, healing, etc.) you know (as a developer) have to decide what you want that statistic to be.

THAT is why balancing for Casual AND Competitive is important. Because both give valuable statistics in learning what characters are the outliers. Currently, the devs are focusing a little too much on Competitive, meaning the true outliers may not be properly dealt with (Or so we'll see once the patch properly goes through.

[some kind of bird]

Originally posted by Kitt 🌟 Stargazer:

Originally posted by Mayo:

Starting off, the Devs are obviously balancing more for competitive and not for casual players.

How precisely do you balance around casual, who is filled with people who all have different opinions on how each character should be "balanced" exactly? What casual players want is literally all over the place in that regard...

The thing is, more competitive players will generally direct characters in order to best understand them. Since fully understanding what they can give you a competitive edge when actually trying to win. It also helps them provide actual facts on what could be a problem that needs to be address, something casual players almost can never provide.

You just mostly need to be worried about personal bias after that. But most of Casual players suggestions will be Bias as well, on top of being ignorant...

I personally feel like the eSports scene and the constant balancing patches that surrounded it is one of the things that categorically ruined Overwatch for me and made me stop playing it. If you develop a game around a small subset of people who optimize the fun out of everything, and dont actually represent the average player even slightly, I don't think you should be surprised if everyone thinks it sucks ass at the end of its life.

[Kitt 🌟 Stargazer]

In Team Fortress 2. I feel that around casual, they should make changes that don't change how effective a character, attack, support ability, ect. do, but how easy or difficult to pull it off.

I always dubbed the term skill index. It's not always what it can do that's the problem, just how easy or difficult it is to pull it off. This can also effectively make it less of a problem or burden for casual player base, while still leaving it useful for people in a more competitive space.

Either that, or make nerfs or buffs, then have different nerfs or buffs to make the character better or worse in another way so that the character can remain useful.

[Mayo]

Originally posted by Kitt 🌟 Stargazer:

In Team Fortress 2. I feel that around casual, they should make changes that don't change how effective a character, attack, support ability, ect. do, but how easy or difficult to pull it off.

I always dubbed the term skill index. It's not always what it can do that's the problem, just how easy or difficult it is to pull it off. This can also effectively make it less of a problem or burden for casual player base, while still leaving it useful for people in a more competitive space.

Either that, or make nerfs or buffs, then have different nerfs or buffs to make the character better or worse in another way so that the character can remain useful.

Team Fortress 2 is also a game that is PRIMARILY casual. There was no competitive scene officially, and we all know how that went when they tried to make it official...

But for sure on the skill index! That is also the problem with Hela/Hawkeye. They primarily need aim, but once you have it, its very easy to dominate with those characters.

You want each character to remain unique in what they do, that much is certain. When certain characters rise above others and start to be "jack of all trades," you can have issues. In Team Fortress 2, characters all have their unique jobs they are good at. In TF2's case, its okay to have jack of all trades and then some specialists. When you start going past that and start adding in a lot more characters who are more rigid in game design, Jack of all trade esc characters are horrible for the game, because it means they can do too much that it overtakes other characters. Why would I play Winter Soldier when I can play Hela for hitscan? Maybe for the grab. Why play Punisher when Hela does more burst damage, and faster? (With the exception of his shotgun, of course.)

When characters don't really have a niche to fit into, they fall into that kind of category where it isn't the skill, its the character itself.

This actually happens with Mantis as well, THE best support in the game. where she has a little bit too much in her kit. She can deal really good damage on par with quite a few duelists, apply good healing, and even damage buff at the same time! Not to mention her ultimate which makes everyone invincible apart from instant kills. The problem may not even be her kit, but in particular how she goes about recharging her healing/damage boost abilities. She can apply them as long as she has charges, and is rewarded more with charges if she gets a critical hit.

So you have a SUPPORT who can deal good damage, wants to prioritize headshots so she can do even more healing/damage buffs, on top of her ultimate, and even on top of her movement speed buff while at full health... The only thing really stopping her is how good someones mechanical skills are.

For someone in the opposite case, I look at Rocket Racoon. He as mediocre damage, a gun that shoots slower projectiles. His healing is inconsistent from shooting healing orbs that quite literally have RANDOM bouncing patterns. (And the heals arent great unless you spam them) He one upside is his armor generator. The armor itself isn't anything to notice, as its mostly helpful toward the low health units on your team- giving them that little bit of extra survivability. (If it helps) The real part is that if someone dies within its range, it can revive 1 person. Thats great, even if it has a long cooldown.

Then his ultimate, which is something Mantis can do 24/7, grants a damage boost for a set amount of time. Sure, Rocket is a slightly smaller but thicker target, he has a movement ability that CAN help, but overall his kit is underwhelming because of how it plays. Even players at the peak of competitive don't play Rocket because he just isn't that good compared to the others. Not to mention you can't shoot and heal at the same time like a lot of other Supports can.

There are discrepancies with skill, I'll give that. There are also just flaws in characters that should be dealt with accordingly to ensure that all characters are at least playable before being overshadowed compared to others in their same category.

[Valvatorez(Cox Cable = awful ISP]

Hulk should be like the opposite of Peni. While she is a Vanguard who plays like a ranged Duelist. Banner should be a melee Vanguard who plays like a short ranged Duelist.

[John Destiny]

Clearly the answer is to buff hawkeye and hela

[Mayo]

Originally posted by Valvatorez:

Hulk should be like the opposite of Peni. While she is a Vanguard who plays like a ranged Duelist. Banner should be a melee Vanguard who plays like a short ranged Duelist.

I agree! I personally really like Hulk as a character, but his kit plays in a really strange way. Peni is incredibly defensive, Hulk you would think plays more offensively...but even then he does a worse job than Venom in his ability to stay in the fight. It's a tough balance between wanting him to either:
1. Be incredibly tanky but have not a lot of damage
2. Have a ton of damage but slightly less health
3. A mix of the two that allows him to be aggressive while not waiting for long cooldowns.

[Mayo]

Originally posted by John Helldiver:

Clearly the answer is to buff hawkeye and hela

going to beat you like a drum behind a dennys

[Shuyin178]

Hulk was nerfed because of his team-up ability being too strong, so they had to weaken him to open up other team-ups a little more. On top of that, while it looks like a small nerf it does a lot. Not only is the gamma shield weaker, it also means the shields on allies are weaker, and it also means you generate less energy for your ultimate to charge so it takes a little longer to get it.
Dr. Strange was nerfed because he was strong even without Hulk.
Iron Man was not nerfed because Iron Man on his own is weak, but with the team-up he's ridiculously good at melting targets.

Captain America did need the buffs because he always looked like a bot running around randomly.

Hela and Hawkeye got decent nerfs. Hela got a survivability nerf losing some HP and Hawkeye got damage consistency nerf to his passive so he isn't killing across the map. Both getting -5% damage from their season buff so they will both hit weaker no matter what.

Also you're wrong about the season bonus stuff too. The same characters from Season 0 have retained their season buffs, Hawkeye and Hela's got nerfed but they were the only ones. Nobody else's season buff was touched, so Hulk and Venom keep their extra HP.

You need to investigate all of the information before you blindly speak about things you are wrong about.

[Dragontoast]

I think I see where they are coming from with the nerf.
As a healer if I have an aggressive hulk just us 2 can basically lock down enemy spawn rooms on capture maps as he can use his shield to almost guarantee he never dies.

That being said, Hulk is absolute beans without support.
If they made Banner an actual character and gave dying as Banner transforms you to Hulk(if you have charge) I would love it. There is so much cool stuff to do with Bruce(Bannertech is insane) and what they chose was and is a joke.

[astator]

OP is right. IronMan team up with Hulk is the problem.

[Mayo]

Originally posted by Shuyin178:

Hulk was nerfed because of his team-up ability being too strong, so they had to weaken him to open up other team-ups a little more. On top of that, while it looks like a small nerf it does a lot. Not only is the gamma shield weaker, it also means the shields on allies are weaker, and it also means you generate less energy for your ultimate to charge so it takes a little longer to get it.
Dr. Strange was nerfed because he was strong even without Hulk.
Iron Man was not nerfed because Iron Man on his own is weak, but with the team-up he's ridiculously good at melting targets.

Captain America did need the buffs because he always looked like a bot running around randomly.

Hela and Hawkeye got decent nerfs. Hela got a survivability nerf losing some HP and Hawkeye got damage consistency nerf to his passive so he isn't killing across the map. Both getting -5% damage from their season buff so they will both hit weaker no matter what.

Also you're wrong about the season bonus stuff too. The same characters from Season 0 have retained their season buffs, Hawkeye and Hela's got nerfed but they were the only ones. Nobody else's season buff was touched, so Hulk and Venom keep their extra HP.

You need to investigate all of the information before you blindly speak about things you are wrong about.

Then nerf the team up, not Hulk by himself. Also seasonal bonuses from Season 0 are staying into Season 1. Because Season 0 was not a typical season, it was basically their test period. I said eventually they'd lose their bonus HP after SEASON 1 was over.

Hela got a -25 health reduction, and a 5% seasonal damage nerf. (From 20%) Her problem wasn't her survivability, its her damage. I will say that Hawkeye was more changed than nerfed, in that they want to reduce the range his passive ability procs, ontop of a 10 damage nerf when that passive is at its MAXIMUM.

Hela's may be substantial, we'll see. 5% can be a lot. Hawkeye? It means he has to be slightly closer to be viable, but will still do roughly the same damage. I don't count Hela's little -25 HP nerf to be proper, because again- survivability wasn't her problem, her damage was. Also note in my post I said Cap got buffed, which I then put {Deserved} because I dont think anyone here complained about him getting buffed... a majority of the community knew he needed buffed.

Point being: I know what I'm talking about, I can clarify what doesn't seem clear, and know they shouldnt have nerfed Hulk when he gets NO VALUE from his team ups. They only buff other characters, so nerfing him is just idiotic from the dev team and I will die on that hill.

I also noted in some of my responses that quite a few changes are actually decent in the patch notes. Some are smaller, some change how an ability works, and overall is okay. Hulk got dragged into the nerfing corner because of his team ups alone. Doctor Strange nerfs? Kinda deserved, was incredibly strong. Thor's ultimate got buffed- majorly deserved. I made points about all of this in my responses to other people, which I don't blame you for not reading since it wasn't in the original text, I get it.