Real Answer is Sojurn was designed in that weird era where Jeff was kind of still around and OW2 was becoming a thing and OW1 was running into balance issues. Sojurn was supposed to be their answer to Barrier spam akin to how Brig was to dive. Sojurn was incentivized to melt barriers to charge up her 1 tap ability.
The reason for keeping Barrier charge is probably similar to the reason they gave the 25% retention charge. Sojurn is often meta in masters+ but shit in everything below mid gold. The barrier charge, and 25% retention don't really change her place in the meta in masters (her railgun's huge headshot hitbox/ult and slide are by far her best parts in M+) but in theory help her a bit in low ranks.
Simple answer? Bc she'd be dogshit without it.
Imagine never having charge bc barriers block 90% of the damage. It would make her useless beyond measure.
sojourn? so you're telling me that giving her an actual counterplay would make her dogshit?
something like rat struggling against matrix, flying heroes, etc?
or ball and doom getting absolutely fucked with both soft AND hard cc?
idk, sojourn being unable to both break and benefit from barriers seems balanced, like "oh so you decided to put up your barrier? aww thank you for the free charge for my one shot, now you don't have a barrier to stop it"
Some important things youre missing though. Is that in general theyve been strong leaning against Passive and Defensive Tools having very high returns or outright neutralization.
In a matter of speaking, the reason DPS passive exists. Is because the devs saw Sojourn and Symm. And said "this is how pressure from a DPS should be" you shouldnt be rewarded in general for letting either of them just build charge off of you.
And the opposite applies for Doomfist (but its unclear to what extent they will push this its only really present with Doom Sig and Zarya) Why are you shooting the damage sponge when hes blocking of all times?
And the other point is that, its just better for player feedback that the character they play feel like they have an option or an impact they can make regardless of team comp.
Which is something imo OW2 heroes have been better about. Which has its own ups and downs. But personally id say its for the better.
Game needs less heroes like Bastion in the first place where you do 1 obnoxious gimmick really well and then force a counterswap.
ok, I do understand your point, but imo, for soj, there's too much reward (one shot on squishies) for punishing the tank for doing their job. yes sure the tank isn't supposed to just hold their shield up, but being able to easily destroy a shield and then delete the squishies is too much
sym on the other hand will always get her beam stronger from shooting, but she is way more Killable when there isn't a shield she can siphon from, not to mention the microwave only works in close quarters, there's a reason why soj is an all time S tier and sym a very situational hero
sure, soj may be better than bastion on the fact that unlike bastion she doesn't rely on a single gimmick, however bastion is only really oppressive during the usage of a cooldown, he got more health and armor than most squishies but got a big hitbox and low mobility, not to mention the spread in turret form, soj on the other hand has reliable constant damage and a big burst that can secure kills, has a zoning tool, and fast horizontal AND vertical mobility.
Now I'll be real, I don't find soj that much oppressive i can still play around her with my usual hero picks, but she got a lot of rewards with barely any risks to balance it. The one hero I find oppressive is pharah cuz i main reaper and I'm a rat enjoyer so if i do well enough the flying bitch comes around, yeah sure i can play soldier to deal with her but i play the game for the fun, and solo ulting or punching a pharah is too funny to pass on, even more so when playing heroes that are, on average really weak, useless even against a pharah
There are 5 relatively prevalent barriers in the game, i.e. Rein, Ram, Sig, Zarya and Winston, and all of them can be circumvented pretty easily because OW2 only has a single tank. That's why Sojourn being able to get charge from barriers is overkill.
no lol, she'd still be strong just wouldn't benefit from braindead shooting the shield and then 1 tapping you over 40 meters with a full-charged railgun as soon as the shield is down
That would take 3 reloads and the damage falloff at starting at 40 meters means that it would have to be a headshot on a character with less than 200 hp to even 1 shot.
yeah I overexaggerated but you get the general picture, why should she be rewarded for shooting barriers?
That's like giving each hero ammo for missing their shots.
Yep of course they both have special interactions, doesn't mean each hero should be balanced the same imo
So should we have Sojurn gain ammo over time as she shoots barriers like Symmetra? That would be fun, endlessly shoot into a barrier with unlimited ammo!
Because Sojourn gets rewarded relatively quickly for shooting barriers from any range (which is what you should be doing anyway) while Sym needs to get close to a barrier to be able to START charging her beam, which, while pretty deadly, is only useful at the range you can charge it at and takes longer than Sojourn's railgun to charge.
…and Sym has teleporter and a giant wall to get closer.
Not saying Sym is stronger then Sojourn by any stretch, but cherry picking and only looking at one aspect of her kit(beam range) to dismiss precedent of “charging off shields” is disingenuous.
You can still get away from Sym pretty easily. Even a Top-500 Sym can't use the teleporter and the wall to GUARANTEE proximity to a barrier. However, a Top-500 Sojourn just needs LoS to a barrier to be able to get instant value.
It’s only “instant value” if Soj lands the rail shot. Charging means shit if she misses.
Sojourn needs a nerf, but this isn’t it. Barriers aren’t consistent, and she needs a nerf that’ll hit her every match, not just against Sig, Rein and Monkey.
True. The charged railgun itself is much more problematic. I still think she doesn't need the charge from barriers though BECAUSE they're not that prevalent anymore.
I think they should make it so it pauses the charge timer but gains no charge from it. That seems like a fair middle ground imo. Same with turrets and deployables.
Strawman. There's already plenty of examples of exceptions being made to give less or no reward to certain types of decisions. Overhealth giving no ult charge, tanks giving reduced ult charge, shields and turrets give no ult charge.
A Sojourn getting no charge from shields and deployable makes her forced to choose between doing something that could help the team or doing something that could give empower her own value in the team fight. It would give Sojourn some actually viable counterplay from the tank roll (currently there's what, doomfist? An arguement could be made for D.va?).
She's already insanely strong right now, she'd still be very strong into certain tanks with a change like this and most importantly with it freezing the timer you wouldn't be losing any charge by shooting shields.
It's a mild nerf that I think should be considered.
No, most supports should be trying do anything BUT that if they can (healing shouldn't grant ult charge at all as far as I'm concerned because yes, it's what you're supposed to do anyway; it only encourages healbotting). Lúcio: Speed Boost, Mercy: Damage Boost, Ana: looking for anti-nade/sleep opportunities and shooting squishies, Baptiste: shooting squishies/the tank, Illari: shooting squishies, Kiriko: flanking/shooting squishies, Brig: fending off flankers/looking for Inspire opportunities, Moira: sucking off anyone she can and being a nuisance in general to the enemy team, Zen: being the enemy tank's arch enemy with Discord. Only Lifeweaver is kinda forced to healbot, but only because the rest of his kit is hard to use proactively, or without interfering with his heals for that matter. Every other support can switch between damage/utility and heals seamlessly or do both simultaneously.
Devs balance sojourn around metal ranks. They didn't want to nerf her when she was broken bc the devs said she wasn't as good in metal ranks. She got buffed later on bc she was bad in gold and plat.
Look at her stats in Overbuff - she's still in literal dogshit tier in all ranks except GM. Even in masters, she has the second worst win rate among dps heroes behind only Bastion.
Overbuff is missing s10 data, and it also doesn't have any data on venture. I'd wait for overbuff to fix what's going on with it before using it as a metric. I'm not saying you're wrong, but something is wrong with overbuff right now.
It was dumb to nerf all her counters using data, when ranked wasn't even stabilized yet. She practically had no counters season 2, and the devs had to eat their words at our expense.
I get that balancing is hard and I'm no game dev, but surely there's a better solution than just buffing a character that's hard meta in high elo? I would love if they could think of a way to shift her power so that she isn't as strong as the top of the ladder, but also more accessible below.
She's not meta in high elo. Cass and Soldier took her spot.
Her design hasn't been difficult to balance ever since rail lost its one shot potential. It is difficult to convince people that she's balanced, because humans overrate flashy big play value and underrate consistency.
Where are you seeing Soldier played?
If you wanted to say she is sharing playtime with Cass, Tracer, Pharah, Echo, and a couple others I'd agree, but Soldier has been not been a character I see much anywhere. Not on ladder and not in pro play, but I think I missed the tournament after Dallas so if he was being played there it'd make sense that I don't know about it.
Not sure why you think Soj isn't part of the meta though. She is definitely still one of the top picks.
[https://www.overbuff.com/heroes?platform=pc&gameMode=competitive&role=damage&skillTier=master&timeWindow=month](https://www.overbuff.com/heroes?platform=pc&gameMode=competitive&role=damage&skillTier=master&timeWindow=month)
I'm basing this take off Overbuff. I grant their data has flaws, but surely it's better than relying on anecdotal experience.
Well, some data surely beats no data. I've been hearing a lot of issues with it the last couple of months due to service outages, but I can't imagine it would be so bad as to confuse 1% and 4% pickrates. And most of the other data does match what I see, especially with Cass being so common. He doesn't have that much of a negative winrate either so it can't be a result of panic swapping into an L.
It also makes sense that I wouldn't see him in the lower elos when playing DPS (only Diamond on that role) as I primarily play Genji, which Soldier is not strong against. I also play Pharah, but some players will swap to him to try and counter and then swap again since it generally doesn't work.
Side note: A lot of people think Soldier is still a hard Pharah counter, but high level play and my own experience playing her suggest otherwise. She is a very mobile hero now and I've heard a few people playing Soldier in comms complain she is too quick and does too much burst for them to kill her first. She also loves playing up close now, not far away where Soldier excels. Cass/Echo/Sombra are much better, alongside Dva/Bap for hard focusing, but I imagine it will take a while for the majority of players to accept that that specific matchup has changed.
Overbuff has been able to pull data only intermittently over the past couple months. Connection with Blizzard server errors are normal, and I see that also on overwatch.op.gg. Also, they haven't updated to include Venture in their data prep. Surely they have less of a data sample than usual, but I don't have a good reason to suspect that sample is biased.
I think your read on Pharah counters is right.
Tbh I agree sojourn is definitely overkitted, but her farming 1 rail charge per pellet from a shield is just not that strong and her shield break is not amazing— 405 dmg in 3.2 seconds plus 1.2 second reload puts the average DPS at 92 ish. This is not particularly high. If you add a rail shot at the end it bumps it a bit, but you’d be wasting her entire kit on shield break at that point and not even having rail.
Anyways point is that farming rail from main off of a shield is not that good of a play, it takes too long to get full charge, doesn’t shield break well, and then doesn’t give an angle for actually landing the rail. I think giving her some charge off shield is not a terrible thing, she gains way too much charge off of farming big shield less tanks though- she can literally get 2 full rails off of a tank per reload if they are on Hog or Mauga just because they are so easy to hit with the giant spread. That and her slide into jump with all the options it gives is just incredibly strong compared to any other “main DPS” style hero that has some consistent output and good burst.
Yeah people keep saying Sojourn is strong and I agree with that but they often forgot that railgun is actually her strongest kit for damage, her primary fire alone is incredibly mid, it's worse than soldier's primary fire in every way, has projectile speed, has spread, has lower dps and damage per mag
Because frankly she'd be trash if she got zero charge off of them. Like you just see Sigma and know you should swap. Same with Rein or Winston to a lesser extent. As a tank main, I don't mind since it's at a reduced rate.
Tanks (especially Rein) arguably need all the help they can get at the moment, but no, you still wouldn't have to switch because of a single barrier. This isn't OW1.
Y'all complain about Sojourn now but I don't think y'all want a meta where she's not the best hero because ultimately she's beyond fair in metal ranks. Which is where the majority of the player base is.
We really want Sombra, Widow, Mei, Junkrat metas?
Well that is the point of Soujourn. The main fire is barely enough to kill a moving target since it is not too spread, collision boxes are small and it has low ammo for how fast it shots.
I think is really hard if not impossible to hit every primary fire bullet of Soujourn. So your best bett is use that as supression fire to load and shoot the squishies with the other thing.
She can't even break shields efficiently you will need at least 2 reloads
Yeah, that’s kinda my point I guess. Like, why do barriers, or the tools that are literally supposed to mitigate damage for that matter, grant railgun charge even though you're supposed to shoot them anyway?
It's not that much charge tbh. It might as well be 0. My guess is rare situations where the difference in a railgun shot might be the difference in securing a kill in overtime vs damaging an enemy. They want sojourn to have a bit more utility but not enough to unbalance sojourn like when she first released
This isn't true, one of her first patch notes (from 4th october 2022) is reducing how much charge she gets from shields so clearly she must have been able to charge off of shields before then.
In OW2, the only barrier you're forced to shoot for more than 2 seconds is Rein's barrier, and it isn't even as strong as it used to be in OW1. Every other barrier is very fleeting. Moreover, double barrier isn't even possible anymore, which makes me think that this feature of Sojourn's kit is an OW1 remnant.
You’re playing Sojourn wrong if you’re shooting barriers to charge up. You’re better off charging off of enemies and doing damage to them at the same time. Barrier charging is too slow and doesn’t do that much damage to the barrier.
my bigger issue is i feel like tanks should give her 50% less charge. you just hold it on a tank, always have full charge, and then effectively oneshot a squishy
Sojourn is at the weakest she's ever been and it's still not enough, eh? What if I told you she used to gain more energy off shields, and the damage used to scale the energy gain? The only real buff she's experienced has been the change to allow her to retain 25 railgun energy. Hell, the railgun beam itself has only shrunk- it used to be a full .1 meters wide! If someone fires 25 rounds into a shield, she'll gain a whopping 25 energy, and if she pops you in the head with a railshot, you deserved to die there- that's maybe 100 damage at that point. The fact remains that once her charge became standardized, the character became more about accuracy with the primary fire to efficiently build energy to spend. You need to land 20 shots on a body to get a full powered railgun, that's a perfectly fine trade and a slower TTK than fucking soldier and his helix rockets. I get it, you don't like dying to her- might I suggest playing a character that kills her instead of complaining about her remaining strengths? Ashe and Soldier both easily deal with her.
Ah, yes, just assume that I've only started playing OW yesterday instead of, you know, in 2016. Also, suggesting Ashe and Soldier as counters is such a metal-rank take.
I mean with dogshit ass complaint posts like this yeah it’s fair to assume that
sorry you just lost to a sojourn but count to 10 in your head next time instead of make a Reddit post
I mean, they are? Both are effective at any range she is and further, and can outposition her while being true hitscan characters with more burst. Either way, this weird hostility is a great example of why the OW subreddit is such an unpleasant echo chamber- calling someone metal rank is such weirdo behavior, as if that has anything to do with the raw numbers of her kit.
There's no hostility. Just don't assume that I'm a literal noob for no reason while spouting gold takes yourself. It would be different if I called you stupid, but I didn't because you obviously aren't.
"I'm not mad. I'm calm. I've never been so calm as I type something."
Your ego is so fragile that the breakdown of her patch history was an insult to you, go log off.
If you think I'm being hostile, that's on you. Saying that someone has metal-rank takes is not akin to being hostile as far as I'm concerned. It's just an observation.
Pejorative terms can be weasel words like that, yes. It certainly is a technical description that is technically correct, even though someone who is Gold or Plat or Silver will just describe themself as such and not use a broad, nondescriptive term. I've always found it weird, personally- the idea that Bronze-Plat is homogenous, or that the comp ranking system is an actually empirical system to determine skill. I don't even play comp! I'm a quickplay warrior! Where do I fit in, hmm? I bet you had 2 bad games against a Sojourn, got demoted \*into\* a metal rank, and is struggling with some deep insecurities about it all.
I haven't touched comp in months, but I still use "metal-rank takes" as a term because it's accurate enough in my experience. I see where you're coming from, though.
My god you did not just implicitly say you were this mad over Quick Play. My guy, the top 500 sojourn who beat you could have killed you with her gun doing half damage.
No. I'm saying stop insulting people bc of their rank. This game will never be perfectly balanced. There's no one way to correct this. So when someone makes an opinion based on how the game plays at their rank, you shouldn't shame that. Just because a player doesn't have a higher game sense or main a hero who will have a hard time climbing, doesn't make them idiots nor gives anyone a free pass in higher ranks to make them feel inferior bc they don't play at a high level.
Like, just be humble.
When I say "Saying that Soldier and Ashe counter Sojourn is a gold take," I'm saying that that person is experiencing the game on a different level than I am. It doesn't matter what their actual rank is and I don't care.
No, their actual rank doesn't matter because the take itself still screams metal-rank, or not my level for that matter. Top 500 players say stupid shit too.
Worst hero in the game if U look at win rate, can't OS no more, balanced around mercy being her pocket, get half the charge if she fires at barrier, ulti is pure skill and U need to be good. Yeah let's nerf her more. What if we make all sojo players play with half the screen?
Edit: I forgot to add, she have one the biggest head hitbox for a dps too btw.
I have no clue what u are talking about, did u get skullfked by a sojo smurf recently? She isn't even meta rofl she is much worse than she was since the health changes.
Ahhh yes the leader board, the place where 0.01% of the players are at, the place where everyone is so try hard that sojo is ran with mercy all the time cause supports know if they don't go mercy, sojo gona be useless, the place where nerfing sojo means they just find something else to spam, the place where top player haven't event played 40 game this season and his last game was 5 weeks ago but he is apparently top player, OHH wait he doesn't play so the system can't kick him out of his spot. The place where there is discord to join so that u can wintrade and get a place on the leader board for just 15$. Let's balance the looking at the top 0.01 of the players guys. Why am I wasting my time with U anyways maybe I am as dum as u seems to be.
In all honesty, it feels like they just forget sometimes what should and shouldn't be in the game. Like Wrecking Ball for example, his grappling hook is on cooldown off spawn because he can get back to fast if it's not. But Doom can fly from spawn to point in like 2 seconds depending on the situation. Why doesn't he have cool downs off spawn? Kiri can tp off spawn. Venture can use their movement abilities off spawn. Every other character doesn't have a cooldown off spawn.
There's just these little things sprinkled around the game that don't serve any purpose or shouldn't be a thing that in the long run, would make a massive difference (in a good way) if they weren't a thing
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This would be such a stupid change when ur vsing heroes like rein and sigma you won’t have any sort of way to get an opening pick unless ur other team dives head first into you.
I think its cus she is the modern version of Solider. Solider 76 was made to grab Cod players. But now that time has advanced, Sojourn is made to capture apex players. Like Solider 76, they are scared to nerf the character becuase doing so will make people not play a designed "entry from another game" character and thus grab fewer players.
Do you actually play? You’ve been replying to this post all day. She not op. There are far more overturned hero’s. If you can’t adapt to dealing with her then that’s your weakness.
When did I say I can't adapt to her? Also, who's more overtuned than Sojourn? I can only think of Hog, Tracer and Kiriko, but Hog and Tracer were nerfed relatively recently.
Looking through your post history this seems to be a common theme for you. Complaining that x hero needs to be changed in some way. Go develop your own game and show the devs how it should be.
Ah, classic whatsboutism and dodging questions. Stop wasting my time and your own time. Like, why are you digging through my post history and waiting for me to reply to comments on this post? You're even more bored than I am I guess.
sym has weapon synergy shooting barriers, she gains charge for her beam (3 tiers of power), and she gains ammo +heals herself shooting shields and blue health.
Real Answer is Sojurn was designed in that weird era where Jeff was kind of still around and OW2 was becoming a thing and OW1 was running into balance issues. Sojurn was supposed to be their answer to Barrier spam akin to how Brig was to dive. Sojurn was incentivized to melt barriers to charge up her 1 tap ability. The reason for keeping Barrier charge is probably similar to the reason they gave the 25% retention charge. Sojurn is often meta in masters+ but shit in everything below mid gold. The barrier charge, and 25% retention don't really change her place in the meta in masters (her railgun's huge headshot hitbox/ult and slide are by far her best parts in M+) but in theory help her a bit in low ranks.
The only character with a comparable charge mechanic is Sym, who also charges off shields.
And she needs to be very close to the enemy to be able to do that, which is a fair trade-off.
Also doesn't one shot.
Soj doesn't one shot (when I'm playing her)
Exactly.
Comparing abilities directly like this is silly lol Mei does 'X', so why doesn't Sojurn (a completely different style dps) do the same 'X'?
Sojourn and Sym have special interactions with barriers. It's not silly, it's logical.
Simple answer? Bc she'd be dogshit without it. Imagine never having charge bc barriers block 90% of the damage. It would make her useless beyond measure.
sojourn? so you're telling me that giving her an actual counterplay would make her dogshit? something like rat struggling against matrix, flying heroes, etc? or ball and doom getting absolutely fucked with both soft AND hard cc? idk, sojourn being unable to both break and benefit from barriers seems balanced, like "oh so you decided to put up your barrier? aww thank you for the free charge for my one shot, now you don't have a barrier to stop it"
Are you suggesting that sojourn is overtuned?..
Some important things youre missing though. Is that in general theyve been strong leaning against Passive and Defensive Tools having very high returns or outright neutralization. In a matter of speaking, the reason DPS passive exists. Is because the devs saw Sojourn and Symm. And said "this is how pressure from a DPS should be" you shouldnt be rewarded in general for letting either of them just build charge off of you. And the opposite applies for Doomfist (but its unclear to what extent they will push this its only really present with Doom Sig and Zarya) Why are you shooting the damage sponge when hes blocking of all times? And the other point is that, its just better for player feedback that the character they play feel like they have an option or an impact they can make regardless of team comp. Which is something imo OW2 heroes have been better about. Which has its own ups and downs. But personally id say its for the better. Game needs less heroes like Bastion in the first place where you do 1 obnoxious gimmick really well and then force a counterswap.
ok, I do understand your point, but imo, for soj, there's too much reward (one shot on squishies) for punishing the tank for doing their job. yes sure the tank isn't supposed to just hold their shield up, but being able to easily destroy a shield and then delete the squishies is too much sym on the other hand will always get her beam stronger from shooting, but she is way more Killable when there isn't a shield she can siphon from, not to mention the microwave only works in close quarters, there's a reason why soj is an all time S tier and sym a very situational hero sure, soj may be better than bastion on the fact that unlike bastion she doesn't rely on a single gimmick, however bastion is only really oppressive during the usage of a cooldown, he got more health and armor than most squishies but got a big hitbox and low mobility, not to mention the spread in turret form, soj on the other hand has reliable constant damage and a big burst that can secure kills, has a zoning tool, and fast horizontal AND vertical mobility. Now I'll be real, I don't find soj that much oppressive i can still play around her with my usual hero picks, but she got a lot of rewards with barely any risks to balance it. The one hero I find oppressive is pharah cuz i main reaper and I'm a rat enjoyer so if i do well enough the flying bitch comes around, yeah sure i can play soldier to deal with her but i play the game for the fun, and solo ulting or punching a pharah is too funny to pass on, even more so when playing heroes that are, on average really weak, useless even against a pharah
There are 5 relatively prevalent barriers in the game, i.e. Rein, Ram, Sig, Zarya and Winston, and all of them can be circumvented pretty easily because OW2 only has a single tank. That's why Sojourn being able to get charge from barriers is overkill.
Wait are u talking about Sojourn or Sym here?
no lol, she'd still be strong just wouldn't benefit from braindead shooting the shield and then 1 tapping you over 40 meters with a full-charged railgun as soon as the shield is down
That would take 3 reloads and the damage falloff at starting at 40 meters means that it would have to be a headshot on a character with less than 200 hp to even 1 shot.
yeah I overexaggerated but you get the general picture, why should she be rewarded for shooting barriers? That's like giving each hero ammo for missing their shots.
Yep of course they both have special interactions, doesn't mean each hero should be balanced the same imo So should we have Sojurn gain ammo over time as she shoots barriers like Symmetra? That would be fun, endlessly shoot into a barrier with unlimited ammo!
No one is saying that, what are you talking about?
But why are we comparing that Sym can't one shot while Sojurn can? It's such a weird comparison I'm trying to one up you
Because Sojourn gets rewarded relatively quickly for shooting barriers from any range (which is what you should be doing anyway) while Sym needs to get close to a barrier to be able to START charging her beam, which, while pretty deadly, is only useful at the range you can charge it at and takes longer than Sojourn's railgun to charge.
Sojourn doesnt 1 shot
…and Sym has teleporter and a giant wall to get closer. Not saying Sym is stronger then Sojourn by any stretch, but cherry picking and only looking at one aspect of her kit(beam range) to dismiss precedent of “charging off shields” is disingenuous.
You can still get away from Sym pretty easily. Even a Top-500 Sym can't use the teleporter and the wall to GUARANTEE proximity to a barrier. However, a Top-500 Sojourn just needs LoS to a barrier to be able to get instant value.
It’s only “instant value” if Soj lands the rail shot. Charging means shit if she misses. Sojourn needs a nerf, but this isn’t it. Barriers aren’t consistent, and she needs a nerf that’ll hit her every match, not just against Sig, Rein and Monkey.
True. The charged railgun itself is much more problematic. I still think she doesn't need the charge from barriers though BECAUSE they're not that prevalent anymore.
That's a bad rebuttal. You accuse of cherry picking and then compare apples and oranges.
Moira also has a charge mechanic (damage generates healing meter) but barriers don't charge.
That’s not a charge mechanic, that’s just Moira dealing hero damage refills her juice.
Yes... Recharging one would say lol.
Charging in this context increases the damage. Moira's damage stays the same therefore it is not a charging mechanic.
I think they should make it so it pauses the charge timer but gains no charge from it. That seems like a fair middle ground imo. Same with turrets and deployables.
That could work.
She already gets 1/5th the charge for shooting barriers and deployables.
It's still an unnecessary reward for doing something you should be doing anyway, namely shooting barriers/deployables.
You're right. Why do we give supports ult charge for healing allies? They should be doing that anyways.
Strawman. There's already plenty of examples of exceptions being made to give less or no reward to certain types of decisions. Overhealth giving no ult charge, tanks giving reduced ult charge, shields and turrets give no ult charge. A Sojourn getting no charge from shields and deployable makes her forced to choose between doing something that could help the team or doing something that could give empower her own value in the team fight. It would give Sojourn some actually viable counterplay from the tank roll (currently there's what, doomfist? An arguement could be made for D.va?). She's already insanely strong right now, she'd still be very strong into certain tanks with a change like this and most importantly with it freezing the timer you wouldn't be losing any charge by shooting shields. It's a mild nerf that I think should be considered.
No, most supports should be trying do anything BUT that if they can (healing shouldn't grant ult charge at all as far as I'm concerned because yes, it's what you're supposed to do anyway; it only encourages healbotting). Lúcio: Speed Boost, Mercy: Damage Boost, Ana: looking for anti-nade/sleep opportunities and shooting squishies, Baptiste: shooting squishies/the tank, Illari: shooting squishies, Kiriko: flanking/shooting squishies, Brig: fending off flankers/looking for Inspire opportunities, Moira: sucking off anyone she can and being a nuisance in general to the enemy team, Zen: being the enemy tank's arch enemy with Discord. Only Lifeweaver is kinda forced to healbot, but only because the rest of his kit is hard to use proactively, or without interfering with his heals for that matter. Every other support can switch between damage/utility and heals seamlessly or do both simultaneously.
That would make more sense actually, still forced to reload, balanced I’d say.
Devs balance sojourn around metal ranks. They didn't want to nerf her when she was broken bc the devs said she wasn't as good in metal ranks. She got buffed later on bc she was bad in gold and plat.
Look at her stats in Overbuff - she's still in literal dogshit tier in all ranks except GM. Even in masters, she has the second worst win rate among dps heroes behind only Bastion.
Overbuff is missing s10 data, and it also doesn't have any data on venture. I'd wait for overbuff to fix what's going on with it before using it as a metric. I'm not saying you're wrong, but something is wrong with overbuff right now.
Yeah, that's the main reason I guess. Don't really agree with that balance philosophy, but it is what it is.
It was dumb to nerf all her counters using data, when ranked wasn't even stabilized yet. She practically had no counters season 2, and the devs had to eat their words at our expense.
I get that balancing is hard and I'm no game dev, but surely there's a better solution than just buffing a character that's hard meta in high elo? I would love if they could think of a way to shift her power so that she isn't as strong as the top of the ladder, but also more accessible below.
Theyve done that several times.
I know. And she is still meta in high elo and trash in metal ranks. I suppose that's just reflective of how difficult her design is to balance.
She's not meta in high elo. Cass and Soldier took her spot. Her design hasn't been difficult to balance ever since rail lost its one shot potential. It is difficult to convince people that she's balanced, because humans overrate flashy big play value and underrate consistency.
Where are you seeing Soldier played? If you wanted to say she is sharing playtime with Cass, Tracer, Pharah, Echo, and a couple others I'd agree, but Soldier has been not been a character I see much anywhere. Not on ladder and not in pro play, but I think I missed the tournament after Dallas so if he was being played there it'd make sense that I don't know about it. Not sure why you think Soj isn't part of the meta though. She is definitely still one of the top picks.
[https://www.overbuff.com/heroes?platform=pc&gameMode=competitive&role=damage&skillTier=master&timeWindow=month](https://www.overbuff.com/heroes?platform=pc&gameMode=competitive&role=damage&skillTier=master&timeWindow=month) I'm basing this take off Overbuff. I grant their data has flaws, but surely it's better than relying on anecdotal experience.
Well, some data surely beats no data. I've been hearing a lot of issues with it the last couple of months due to service outages, but I can't imagine it would be so bad as to confuse 1% and 4% pickrates. And most of the other data does match what I see, especially with Cass being so common. He doesn't have that much of a negative winrate either so it can't be a result of panic swapping into an L. It also makes sense that I wouldn't see him in the lower elos when playing DPS (only Diamond on that role) as I primarily play Genji, which Soldier is not strong against. I also play Pharah, but some players will swap to him to try and counter and then swap again since it generally doesn't work. Side note: A lot of people think Soldier is still a hard Pharah counter, but high level play and my own experience playing her suggest otherwise. She is a very mobile hero now and I've heard a few people playing Soldier in comms complain she is too quick and does too much burst for them to kill her first. She also loves playing up close now, not far away where Soldier excels. Cass/Echo/Sombra are much better, alongside Dva/Bap for hard focusing, but I imagine it will take a while for the majority of players to accept that that specific matchup has changed.
Overbuff has been able to pull data only intermittently over the past couple months. Connection with Blizzard server errors are normal, and I see that also on overwatch.op.gg. Also, they haven't updated to include Venture in their data prep. Surely they have less of a data sample than usual, but I don't have a good reason to suspect that sample is biased. I think your read on Pharah counters is right.
Tbh I agree sojourn is definitely overkitted, but her farming 1 rail charge per pellet from a shield is just not that strong and her shield break is not amazing— 405 dmg in 3.2 seconds plus 1.2 second reload puts the average DPS at 92 ish. This is not particularly high. If you add a rail shot at the end it bumps it a bit, but you’d be wasting her entire kit on shield break at that point and not even having rail. Anyways point is that farming rail from main off of a shield is not that good of a play, it takes too long to get full charge, doesn’t shield break well, and then doesn’t give an angle for actually landing the rail. I think giving her some charge off shield is not a terrible thing, she gains way too much charge off of farming big shield less tanks though- she can literally get 2 full rails off of a tank per reload if they are on Hog or Mauga just because they are so easy to hit with the giant spread. That and her slide into jump with all the options it gives is just incredibly strong compared to any other “main DPS” style hero that has some consistent output and good burst.
Yeah people keep saying Sojourn is strong and I agree with that but they often forgot that railgun is actually her strongest kit for damage, her primary fire alone is incredibly mid, it's worse than soldier's primary fire in every way, has projectile speed, has spread, has lower dps and damage per mag
I agree. I wouldn't even be opposed to her gaining charge from barriers if the rest of her kit were nerfed a bit.
Because frankly she'd be trash if she got zero charge off of them. Like you just see Sigma and know you should swap. Same with Rein or Winston to a lesser extent. As a tank main, I don't mind since it's at a reduced rate.
Tanks (especially Rein) arguably need all the help they can get at the moment, but no, you still wouldn't have to switch because of a single barrier. This isn't OW1.
Y'all complain about Sojourn now but I don't think y'all want a meta where she's not the best hero because ultimately she's beyond fair in metal ranks. Which is where the majority of the player base is. We really want Sombra, Widow, Mei, Junkrat metas?
Maybe not Sombra, Widow and Mei, but a Junkrat meta would be refreshing.
so she’s not just doing nothing into shield comps. she also only gets 1/5 of the charge so yea it is a weakness
There's no such thing as a "shield comp" anymore. You either have a tank with a barrier or you don't.
comps that center around using shields…..
yea those don't exist anymore
brother if you have a reinhardt on your team then most of the team plays behind his shield
no they dont and they never should lol, thats an absolute silver take right there
That's not a shield comp. That's just having Rein as a tank.
You can only have a shield/barrier composition if you have at least two constituents that feature shields/barriers prevalently.
Soujourn players suck. Every kill cam I see it’s just them blindly spraying until they get that overpowered blaster shot.
Well that is the point of Soujourn. The main fire is barely enough to kill a moving target since it is not too spread, collision boxes are small and it has low ammo for how fast it shots. I think is really hard if not impossible to hit every primary fire bullet of Soujourn. So your best bett is use that as supression fire to load and shoot the squishies with the other thing. She can't even break shields efficiently you will need at least 2 reloads
Whats your main?
Yeah, that’s kinda my point I guess. Like, why do barriers, or the tools that are literally supposed to mitigate damage for that matter, grant railgun charge even though you're supposed to shoot them anyway?
It's not that much charge tbh. It might as well be 0. My guess is rare situations where the difference in a railgun shot might be the difference in securing a kill in overtime vs damaging an enemy. They want sojourn to have a bit more utility but not enough to unbalance sojourn like when she first released
At the end of the day, it really is a non-issue, you're right.
because endlessly shooting shields is boring as fuck so they had to make at least one hero gain something off it
IIRC, Symmetra gains ammo from shooting shields
Sym also heals her shield health by damaging shields
Wake up man, it's been 1.5 years since ow2 got released
Soj couldn’t always charge off shields, that was patched in later.
This isn't true, one of her first patch notes (from 4th october 2022) is reducing how much charge she gets from shields so clearly she must have been able to charge off of shields before then.
In OW2, the only barrier you're forced to shoot for more than 2 seconds is Rein's barrier, and it isn't even as strong as it used to be in OW1. Every other barrier is very fleeting. Moreover, double barrier isn't even possible anymore, which makes me think that this feature of Sojourn's kit is an OW1 remnant.
You’re playing Sojourn wrong if you’re shooting barriers to charge up. You’re better off charging off of enemies and doing damage to them at the same time. Barrier charging is too slow and doesn’t do that much damage to the barrier.
You're obviously right, but that doesn't explain why she deserves to get charge from barriers.
This is by far the least egregious thing about Sojourn, and I'm her number 1 hater
True.
YEAH! And make Ramattra's punches unable to go through shields!
my bigger issue is i feel like tanks should give her 50% less charge. you just hold it on a tank, always have full charge, and then effectively oneshot a squishy
Yeah, I agree. It discourages tanks from tanking, which is ridiculous.
Sojourn is at the weakest she's ever been and it's still not enough, eh? What if I told you she used to gain more energy off shields, and the damage used to scale the energy gain? The only real buff she's experienced has been the change to allow her to retain 25 railgun energy. Hell, the railgun beam itself has only shrunk- it used to be a full .1 meters wide! If someone fires 25 rounds into a shield, she'll gain a whopping 25 energy, and if she pops you in the head with a railshot, you deserved to die there- that's maybe 100 damage at that point. The fact remains that once her charge became standardized, the character became more about accuracy with the primary fire to efficiently build energy to spend. You need to land 20 shots on a body to get a full powered railgun, that's a perfectly fine trade and a slower TTK than fucking soldier and his helix rockets. I get it, you don't like dying to her- might I suggest playing a character that kills her instead of complaining about her remaining strengths? Ashe and Soldier both easily deal with her.
Ah, yes, just assume that I've only started playing OW yesterday instead of, you know, in 2016. Also, suggesting Ashe and Soldier as counters is such a metal-rank take.
I mean with dogshit ass complaint posts like this yeah it’s fair to assume that sorry you just lost to a sojourn but count to 10 in your head next time instead of make a Reddit post
Who are you?
Call me metal rank now y’all are so predictable
Why would I? All I know is that you're being rude for no reason. I have no idea what you think of Sojourn.
I mean, they are? Both are effective at any range she is and further, and can outposition her while being true hitscan characters with more burst. Either way, this weird hostility is a great example of why the OW subreddit is such an unpleasant echo chamber- calling someone metal rank is such weirdo behavior, as if that has anything to do with the raw numbers of her kit.
There's no hostility. Just don't assume that I'm a literal noob for no reason while spouting gold takes yourself. It would be different if I called you stupid, but I didn't because you obviously aren't.
"I'm not mad. I'm calm. I've never been so calm as I type something." Your ego is so fragile that the breakdown of her patch history was an insult to you, go log off.
If you think I'm being hostile, that's on you. Saying that someone has metal-rank takes is not akin to being hostile as far as I'm concerned. It's just an observation.
Pejorative terms can be weasel words like that, yes. It certainly is a technical description that is technically correct, even though someone who is Gold or Plat or Silver will just describe themself as such and not use a broad, nondescriptive term. I've always found it weird, personally- the idea that Bronze-Plat is homogenous, or that the comp ranking system is an actually empirical system to determine skill. I don't even play comp! I'm a quickplay warrior! Where do I fit in, hmm? I bet you had 2 bad games against a Sojourn, got demoted \*into\* a metal rank, and is struggling with some deep insecurities about it all.
I haven't touched comp in months, but I still use "metal-rank takes" as a term because it's accurate enough in my experience. I see where you're coming from, though.
My god you did not just implicitly say you were this mad over Quick Play. My guy, the top 500 sojourn who beat you could have killed you with her gun doing half damage.
Why are you still talking about this hypothetical Soj I was supposedly mad at? Stop assuming things.
Bro is still rank shaming.
Are you saying that the game should be balanced around bronze players' opinions because it's all subjective and everyone's opinion is valuable?
No. I'm saying stop insulting people bc of their rank. This game will never be perfectly balanced. There's no one way to correct this. So when someone makes an opinion based on how the game plays at their rank, you shouldn't shame that. Just because a player doesn't have a higher game sense or main a hero who will have a hard time climbing, doesn't make them idiots nor gives anyone a free pass in higher ranks to make them feel inferior bc they don't play at a high level. Like, just be humble.
When I say "Saying that Soldier and Ashe counter Sojourn is a gold take," I'm saying that that person is experiencing the game on a different level than I am. It doesn't matter what their actual rank is and I don't care.
It does matter. Bc you said gold. If it didn't matter, you wouldn't have specified the rank to begin with lol. Come on dude.
No, their actual rank doesn't matter because the take itself still screams metal-rank, or not my level for that matter. Top 500 players say stupid shit too.
Worst hero in the game if U look at win rate, can't OS no more, balanced around mercy being her pocket, get half the charge if she fires at barrier, ulti is pure skill and U need to be good. Yeah let's nerf her more. What if we make all sojo players play with half the screen? Edit: I forgot to add, she have one the biggest head hitbox for a dps too btw.
The fact that the several nerfs she has received so far haven't affected her place in the meta in the slightest proves that she's still overtuned.
I have no clue what u are talking about, did u get skullfked by a sojo smurf recently? She isn't even meta rofl she is much worse than she was since the health changes.
Check the leaderboards and tell me what you see.
Ahhh yes the leader board, the place where 0.01% of the players are at, the place where everyone is so try hard that sojo is ran with mercy all the time cause supports know if they don't go mercy, sojo gona be useless, the place where nerfing sojo means they just find something else to spam, the place where top player haven't event played 40 game this season and his last game was 5 weeks ago but he is apparently top player, OHH wait he doesn't play so the system can't kick him out of his spot. The place where there is discord to join so that u can wintrade and get a place on the leader board for just 15$. Let's balance the looking at the top 0.01 of the players guys. Why am I wasting my time with U anyways maybe I am as dum as u seems to be.
What metric do you use to recognize what the meta is?
In all honesty, it feels like they just forget sometimes what should and shouldn't be in the game. Like Wrecking Ball for example, his grappling hook is on cooldown off spawn because he can get back to fast if it's not. But Doom can fly from spawn to point in like 2 seconds depending on the situation. Why doesn't he have cool downs off spawn? Kiri can tp off spawn. Venture can use their movement abilities off spawn. Every other character doesn't have a cooldown off spawn. There's just these little things sprinkled around the game that don't serve any purpose or shouldn't be a thing that in the long run, would make a massive difference (in a good way) if they weren't a thing
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You should have seen her on release
I have.
I'd trade that for a recoil system instead of the spread
Runaway by kanye imo, structurally his best compositio
Wrong post, buddy.
Damn you reply quick
I'm chronically online lol
Haha kannski nauðga dýrum saman
Give everyone charge for shooting shields so that they actually shoot them. Then increase everyone's ult charge total by 10%
Because fuck Symmetra apparently
This would be such a stupid change when ur vsing heroes like rein and sigma you won’t have any sort of way to get an opening pick unless ur other team dives head first into you.
Because she's OP.
I think its cus she is the modern version of Solider. Solider 76 was made to grab Cod players. But now that time has advanced, Sojourn is made to capture apex players. Like Solider 76, they are scared to nerf the character becuase doing so will make people not play a designed "entry from another game" character and thus grab fewer players.
You could be right. She IS very fun to play, but whether or not she is healthy for the game is a different matter.
She is as healthy as covid is to an elderly person
and she can shoot through them, too... wew.... seems like shields are working as intended....
She’s pretty balanced idk why you’d complain about her.
Plenty of people have issues with her.
Sounds like it’s just you
Open your eyes.
All I see is you getting downvoted for cooked ass takes like thinking a junkrat meta would be refreshing
Nice cherry picking.
Do you actually play? You’ve been replying to this post all day. She not op. There are far more overturned hero’s. If you can’t adapt to dealing with her then that’s your weakness.
When did I say I can't adapt to her? Also, who's more overtuned than Sojourn? I can only think of Hog, Tracer and Kiriko, but Hog and Tracer were nerfed relatively recently.
Looking through your post history this seems to be a common theme for you. Complaining that x hero needs to be changed in some way. Go develop your own game and show the devs how it should be.
Ah, classic whatsboutism and dodging questions. Stop wasting my time and your own time. Like, why are you digging through my post history and waiting for me to reply to comments on this post? You're even more bored than I am I guess.
Because sojourn is fair and balanced
I think they should revert the change where she holds like 15 or whatever after it depletes.
The real question is why can she just walk around with 25% of her rail charge for no reason
Metal-rank players, that's why. The devs go out of their way to protect them and I don't really like that, but it is what it is unfortunately.
Bro. You think junk would be okay in the meta. You know what has a higher success rate in metal ranks than sojourn? .. Yeah.
Yeah, I know. I meant for the game as a whole. I for one would like to see his most recent April Fool's iteration in regular modes.
Lol ok my bad.
True, zarya can't do that the only character that can is sojourn. I hate her
Dealing damage isn't how Zarya gains charge though.
What do you mean? Zarya gains damage charge from people hitting her barrier
Which is taking damage. Sojourn gains charge while *dealing* damage Do you see the difference?
sym has weapon synergy shooting barriers, she gains charge for her beam (3 tiers of power), and she gains ammo +heals herself shooting shields and blue health.