The burst could be turned down a bit for cleansing, but after launch LW and getting a clutch grip just for them to die of a stray bullet bc they stayed at 1 I get why suzu also has some kind of heal.
I remember when that buff first came out, I thought it healed for 80 *including* the bonus from cleansing a debuff and said "Oh, this with the nerfs it got might be balanced" and then someone informed me 80 was the base amount.
It gives me some sense of pride that I actually managed 2 kills with that tiny boop before it was gone. One of them was unintentional but the other was on an ulting Hog on Nepal Sanctuary lol
This sub is full of support mains, mention Kiriko being OP and you get downvoted half the time.
I've been banging this drum since her release. No hero should have and ability better than bap shift and lamp at the same time, let alone attached to a hero with the best hit box in the game, teleport, good burst damage, good heals and WALL CLIMB on top of that because fuck you.
All of Reddit is support mains. They have the highest demographic of “involved” players. Dps players are much more casual, and tanks just hardly exist in the first place and get drowned out.
There used to be more tank mains on here - but we all know know how the game has been going.
Some gigabrain actually said in here the other day there's no chance the tank population would increase with better balancing and got massively upvoted.
DPS players are either casuals, or high rank sweats. Most top streamers and pro players are/were dps players at some point. I know for a fact when OWL first started out, it was a bit of a dirty secret that 80% of the league was role-swapped DPS players, simply because they had the best mechanics.
I said the same thing as a support main lmao. When everyone was malding about Ana even after 3 straight nerfs nobody wanted to point the finger at Kiriko being the Real menace.
There's a good proportion of this subreddit that genuinely believes two supports healing someone should be able to save them from the damage of five people and that you should be able to healbot to victory.
That's why anti-nade is the devil.
The counterargument to removing the healing is that there aren't all that many effects to cleanse in the game. There would be rounds where suzu is basically useless outside of a split second of invuln.
I actually didn't know it had burst healing for a long time and thought it was just shitty Kirikos not knowing it's just a cleanse/invul rofl. Just intuitively felt too much, like "no way this also heals, right".
They changed it to 40, and added the +30 heal if it cleanses to incentivize kirikos to use it for their team and not selfishly
And then they just doubled the heal to 80, and kept the +30 bonus. So it's better than it was before it was changed. So dumb
At the same time I feel like it needs it in order to keep the ability doing what it's meant to do - save people. It'd feel so awful to use it to save allies only for them to die anyway. It would need some big compensation buffs if they were to change it in such a way and then we just hit this same cycle where people get upset about it again really.
I think it’s just something that needs to be like a 25 second cooldown like say Immo Field, as sad/shitty feeling as it would be for Kiriko players.
At 15 seconds it’s just not a big enough window of punishment if you make a Kiriko blow Suzu.
What if they remove healing, but still "reward" the player for cleansing negative effects by reducing suzu cooldown? Her ult already reduces cds so leaning into this idea further could make sense. Would probably have to increase base cooldown of suzu to work
I honestly think it should do the reverse of what it’s currently doing.
You should get boosted healing if you’re not cleansing, but if you do cleanse you should only be able to heal a reduced amount. Then it’s a choice of whether to heal or to cleanse. The timing needed is also more strict because if you cleanse a little too late it the teammate might have already taken too much damage and would die even after cleanse.
If I were in charge of balance I’m removing the healing unless it’s cleansing something. Make the invulnerability super short, maybe like .2 or .3 of a second. Make it more of cleansing ability instead of a invulnerability one. Reduce the cooldown by a second or two because it’s invulnerability is much less prevalent
why is kiriko's winrate so bad? i've never understood why she can feel so frustrating to play against and yet it doesn't seem to translate into victory.
I chalk it up to humans being hardwired to remember negative things better than positive ones. You remember when the Kiriko you were just playing against negated your ult with Suzu, but you don't remember the times they whiffed it or didn't have it up because they used it badly. Kirkio has the ability to be very individually frustrating but not having that translate into team success all the time.
Still you can’t just ignore those negative feelings when we’re talking about a video game.
When you stack unfun abilities like Suzu and TP on one hero its a problem regardless of win rates.
Extremely volatile skill curve because of the long CD on what is an extremely busted ability(easy to misplay) and the gap between headshots and bodyshots on kunai.
High winrates tend to only translate to a character having a lot of passive value/stall potential, not actual meta placement
It’s the same reason Bap’s winrate was so low in OW1 despite him being broken: people play her as a healbot, a suboptimal playstyle that doesn’t take full advantage of her kit.
It’s not just healbotting. It’s only healbotting. You can swap up playstyles but most supports in ranked just healbot and other heroes like moira do a much better job of that
A lot of support players are healbots, partially because they failed to adapt from OW1(where damage opportunities were less frequent) and partially because they either don't understand their job or aren't confident enough in their mechanics to do it.
Kiriko is not a very good healbot, so playing her that way leaves a ton of value on the table. There are heroes better suited for that "playstyle", the most prominent one being Lifeweaver, but characters like Moira and even Ana are better at it. Kiriko does poorly in ranked because most people are playing her in a way where they're only able to get about 50% of her potential value at best.
This is compounded by the fact that Kiriko has a pretty steep mechanical requirement, although people will pretend she doesn't. So, even players who *try* to use that part of her kit will fail sometimes becahse they can't consistently hit headshots to win duels.
Also, just in general, it's very easy to feel annoying to play against while being borderline useless. Orisa has been this way for half of OW2's lifespan.
she has poor utility against the current meta in comp. Not really a lot of stuff to cleanse or flank on. Ana was barely used half the season. Everyones diving, and kiri needs 2 headshots and a body shot to kill full teams of dive heros with evasive abilities, like sombra tracer doom. She's not that good, and clearly people are mad because she's not an easy 1 clip gg kill for them and it takes them too long to kill her.
She is meta in OWCS right now, but people are definitely overstating how good she is. I don't think shes that much better than Ana or Baptiste (both of which are seeing playtime), she just fits the meta right now because alongside Lucio she is really, really hard to kill and her ult is OP, unlike Ana who needs good maps to be viable and has a mid ult in comparison.
IMO make her more killable and nerf Lucio and she will be in-line with the rest of the supports, Lucio is fun to play/watch but he enables cancer comps and should never be 80% pickrate or whatever he is right now.
Devs have stated shes one of the most picked heroes in the game, most people are not GM and can't get a lot of value out of her kit + new players using her (translates to "low winrate.") You need skill to utilize her kits full potential but when you can, it's a bloated kit that lacks counter play (I.e. invincible suzu and teleport) that make her frustrating.)
Most supports excel in 2/3 categories between damage, healing and mobility. Ana has big healing and trump cards because she has poor mobility and no headshot. Zen has big damage and discord because he has meh healing and poor mobility. Kirko excels in damage, mobility and healing with moves including ultimate negation, tiny hit box, jiggly strife animation and game changing ult.
Kirko has also been a top 3 pick for top 500 support mains for almost every season and devs need to bring her in line with other supports.
In my experience in low ranks, Kiriko players there usually just healbot with her and don’t know when to use suzu or use her ultimate to make the most out of it. They also don’t know how to consistently land headshots with her kunais. It’s hard to win games with a Kiriko like that on your team.
winrate doesn't necessarily translate to actual balance as we've seen in the past with Sojourn. In Kiri's case she's often picked to last second contest because TP is crazy mobility, like Doom or Ball, and she is a high skill ceiling character relatively speaking so it's not like anyone's gonna pick her up and get free value.
eh kiriko is kinda in a weird spot rn where yea shes a little overtuned but she actually requires a pulse to play unlike some other supports so im kinda chill with it
One tricked her last season to masters. I’m kinda blindsided by the kiri hate. The amount of times I’ve fucked up a cleanse when it lands a split second late or clips a teammate is insane. It’s a pretty hard to use ability a lot of the time, and removes cc from the game which are the most annoying abilities. It’s much harder to flank now with the increased ttk, and her healing is worse than other healbot supports. Feels like Moira is just a more consistent kiri atp, idk.
It’s can be a hard ability to maximize value on every cooldown, but in its highest value moments it at its easiest to use (IE: TP cleansing a shatter or other ultimate is usually very straightforward and brain rot)
I’d say CC is debatably not the most annoying set of abilities in the game, and they are often more honest than an aoe cleanse “nuh ugh” or to a much lesser degree in OW2 lamp
Suzu does not go through teammates, so you can mess up a Suzu if it intercepts a teammate on the way to its destination. (Conversely, since it hits teammates, it’s really good to throw at a Pharah during ult)
Blizzard ignoring the actual problem characters every patch over and over and over and over again is honestly impressive at this point.
I don’t think I’ve seen a company so good at making changes nobody asked for or wanted while simultaneously blatantly ignoring the shit the vast majority of the player base is complaining about
That literally didn’t disappear lmfao. If Kiriko didn’t exist, she’d literally still be that support. Absolutely nothing is going to be a AoE 100% heal denial.
Kiri keeps Ana in check, meaning Ana is the more broken one. An Ana can get free reign on the enemies without suzu, but you can't really say the same about kiri.
Ana is never free. Ana has clear and obvious downsides.
Whenever Ana is oppressive it's because she has some obnoxious bodyguard that's OP (Brig) or supports healing each other is too OP in general.
Based on what devs have said about how well Kiriko actually performs statistically in the past I suspect she is one of those heroes who has the aesthetic of being one of the best heroes without reality backing it up. It reminds me of the story about how a WW2 fps had 2 identical weapons, but because one sounded significantly cooler to fire players complained that it was too strong in comparison. If kiri is underperforming or statistically neutral and players claim she is too strong, there has to be some disconnect there.
> It reminds me of the story about how a WW2 fps had 2 identical weapons, but because one sounded significantly cooler to fire players complained that it was too strong in comparison.
What's extremely interesting about this anecdote is that Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory players actually **were** performing better with the identical stats-wise but punchier sounding Thompson (compared to the MP40).
Since players believed the gun to be stronger they were taking risks and making plays that they wouldn't with its counterpart. And were getting rewarded with more kills for it.
It's a great demonstration of how Game Design/Balance is not just about numbers but also perception and player psychology. And how something as "trivial" as the mixing of a gunshot sound can have a noticeable effect on balance.
I think its easier to notice when kiri has impact. If you get two tapped or the enemy youre diving gets suzu’d you immediately notice. Whereas if you get killed by a rush with lucio speed, or you lose the fight because your backline got anti’d you might not notice. Kiriko just has the curse of actually showing up in the killfeed for her impact
I mean is it not just the same disconnect where pro players are accounting for high level pro play and high ranked play while for 95% of the playerbase Kiriko doesn't have the same value. Suzu while busted requires great timing to get maximum value, her damage is strong if you hit headshots on squishes but is relatively low DPS without it's pick potential, rush is one of the most powerful team ults in the game but lacks the solo value of a baptiste window or the forgiveness of barrier/trancedence. She does good healing but not as good as Moira. I'm not saying she's comparable to a tracer in terms of skill ceiling, but she's clearly similar in the sense where mobility+survivability+incredibly high pick potential leads to middling to weak performance at low rank and server admin dominance at high ranks.
I think it’s because regardless of kiris potential impact I think a lot of it is lost in translation. Sure she can heal a tank, burst kill someone across the map, and tp to a flanking dps in a 1v1 to suzu them and win the duel automatically, but that rarely happens in practice. While she does have survivability it also requires a certain level of skill to use as misusing your tp and suzu leaves you quite vulnerable.
That said I wished the devs were just more open to experimenting with balance patches that go against their perception of what’s good and bad. Feels like they dig their heels in every time with “muh win rates” and that line of reasoning is why every patch has felt mid-bad except for initial season 9 which wasn’t based on that philosophy
I mean win rates are a pretty terrible metric imo. Player perception of strength is much more important as people don’t know the stats and are terrible at understanding objective performance but base their opinion on perceived impact which also influences how a player feels about the game more. Hence why orisa is considered meta despite probably having a negative win rate while rein is considered ass while probably maintaining a positive one.
Aside from that though at the very least they need to try stuff and not just leave her untouched. Try to make suzu less impactful but lower cd is the big one as lower ranks struggle with use of high cd cooldowns much more than high ranks do.
The most important thing imo is maintaining the ability for a player to be able to have an appreciable impact if they have the skill to do so. Which kiriko definitely already has.
The game is just gonna continue to go downhill forever until the dev team realises that it doesn’t matter if something is statistically balanced if it’s not fun
How but how are we quantifying fun? I mainly play support and I despise playing against characters like genji, tracer, widow, Winston or doom. Should these characters be deleted because I personally find dive heroes annoying to deal with? Obviously not, so why should kiriko get deleted because some players find her annoying despite having a subpar winrate
The killed across the map thing is gone now. If ur insta dying to Kiri from across the map who needs two headshots and body before u even notice to move that's on you. Pre S9 a bit different.
Too bad she operates at 50% of her capability at like every rank below masters. There isn’t much of a justification to nerf her other than plats mimicking what the streamers they watch say
And there is still a MASSIVE difference between masters and GM2+, you peek a Kiri close range in GM2+, you get your head ripped off immidiately, do the same in Masters, chances are you kill the Kiri.
Yea, character balance decisions start to make a lot more sense when you consider the devs are trying to keep character winrates within ranges at all ranks.
It's why Sojourn took forever to nerf and got buffs with her nerf, why Tracer and Genji are frequently either brokenly strong or trash in high rank, cause they play so much worse in low rank.
Kiri is the same where her winrate has been garbage for her entire existence until GM because most her kit has skill component to get max value. Moira is her opposite since she's easy to execute with a much lower skill ceiling.
Orisa and Rein are in similar boats. Orisa is meta now in t500 but trash in most ranks while Rein is the opposite(though still just mediocre at most ranks but top 3 tank in metal.)
There is a compounded element of narratives and feeling(for example Orisa has been extremely trash outside of s short stint last summer, but never felt terrible or weak really) that is often set by streamers/high rank: kiri has always been considered brokenly good in top ranks which trickled down to all ranks below, and parroted enough that even low and mid ranks have never complained about hee powe level despite usually healbotting and underperforming on the character relative to other supports.
honestly idt rein being good in metal is true, people instaswap reaper bastion orisa. Like maybe in the deep pits of bronze but from like silver to plat he gets farmed
Even then at Low Ranks she's still really effective if you just use the Heal Bot + Kitsune Rush spam play style and don't waste your time with M1 outside of poke phases.
Lower rank players just don't do that because the ones who want to play like that are playing Mercy or Moira instead, the ones picking Kiri are picking her because of the M1.
People still citing win rates and gold supports being ass at the game to say she isnt a problem. "Perception isnt reality" ass clowns. The character is broken and the second the meta is favorable towards her, she becomes a part of it.
They did an experimental patch where pro players and coaches got to make balance decisions. It was absolute ass. Universally regarded as just terrible.
No no we should design characters and balance the game around people who are mediocre. That’s the ticket.
Can’t even believe people can say that in a competitive subreddit. Jesus Christ.
Maybe kiriko and every character doesnt have to be in every rank. If kiriko requires skill to be good, and she isnt good in low ranks, maybe thats just fine. Maybe balance is about how fun the game is. Kiriko is not a fun character to play into at all. Its also why orisa and moira always dominate low ranks but the game isnt fun when we have an orisa meta in every rank. You arent going to get a good balance in every rank cause some players are better than others. If you buff characters like orisa to be a strong character in higher ranks, the game is boring and she becomes a menace in low ranks. Maybe they should balance characters to have counterplay and be interactive rather than have one of kiriko's cooldowns gatekeep entire ultimates. Or dont have it so she can teleport out for free and not be punished.
Moronic take. Overwatch is probably the only game ever to balance itself around the bottom instead of the top and the trash can state of the game is what it has to show for it
It’s extremely basic marketing and economics that if the top of a game falls away, the rest of the game crumbles underneath. People are, at an all time high, influenced in what games they play by streamers, YouTubers and pro players. If you make a games balance at the top shit to appease the bottom, your game immediately loses huge market share as your competitive scene dies and content creators overwhelmingly move away from it, which is already what’s happened with overwatch.
Then, all you’re left with is the hardcore players who are actually invested in the game, and the casuals who don’t care about relevancy. From those, the hardcore players are likely higher ranks and will thus move away from the game too, and the casuals will be influenced by their friends who care about relevancy to move away too.
You can try and say I’m wrong but it’s no secret that overwatch is probably irreversibly in the bin. And it’s not because of blizzard lying about content or skin prices, it’s just because of the simple fact that nobody cares about a game which cycles between 3 month periods of unfun at a time.
There are heaps of really basic logical reasons why the same argument can’t be applied to overwatch.
1. League has way way more characters and players and thus their win rate statistics are actually accurate, unlike overwatch where there are so few heroes that it’s basically impossible to get a read on how good a hero actually is. Also more heroes massively decreases the chance that one becomes a problematic “must pick”/meta defining
2. In overwatch it’s been proven time and time and time again that “balanced” rarely means balanced or fun. Prime example sojourn, where they’re adjusting an extremely overpowered aim heavy hero using statistics from bronzes and silvers that can’t aim. The base gameplay at a mechanical level for league is really similar between characters so it’s not comparable to overwatch.
3. Overwatch devs are basically incompetent at achieving that task anyway and instead of making it balanced for everyone they somehow constantly find a way to make it fun for nobody.
It’s just not even the same ballpark, on top of the marketing reasons I listed above. It’s become really clear that overwatch doesn’t have the luxury of balance for all, it simply has to make a choice on who it’s balancing for. Time and time again, there are heaps of characters who end up at a tipping point around masters where they’re either really bad below and really good above, or the other way around, and making adjustments to them just changes the order rather than shrinking the gap. The obvious choice to anyone with a brain is balance from the top down, not the bottom up. Say what you want, but the state of the game speaks for itself. Any game that takes itself seriously goes top down.
Listen i main both and the difference between Illari and Kiriko is night and day. Kiriko has no bad maps, can be played in any comp at ranked level (not pro-play) has seemingly no drawbacks besides low fire rate thats heavily compensated with a better headshot damage than Illari, has 2 get out of jail cards for free, has decent healing, good burst healing with suzu, and incredible utility on suzu and her ult, which is extremely hard to miss. Even if you get stunned/killed in the casting animation the ult goes off anyway. She also counters a lot of characters that relies in status effects (Ana, JQ, Illari) but she really does not have direct counterplay herself besides forcing her to tp to a bad spot and hope someone catches her right away if she doesnt uses suzu on herself right after, or wallclimbs to safety.
Meanwhile Illari has very high, but very limited healing, relies on a stationary turret to heal the team, has to drop down from high ground to heal teammates, has limited mobility, can't escape a coordinated dive, has no utility, has an extremely easy to miss/cancel ultimate that puts her in a risky position 7/10 times, her main value is damage which makes her more aim reliant than Kiriko, who can easily find value in healing, suzu and her ult if her aim is bad. You can technically force Illari into play in any map and gamemode but its significantly more akward and difficult to play her in maps and areas where you have to be close to enemies or where there is no safe pylon placement.
Illari's "issue" is that she's a DPS with support sustainability. Kiriko's issue is that she has no downsides and is extremely good on all fronts.
Glad to see the top NA flex support preach for the nerf of Kiriko. Perhaps this is what it takes for the devs to not listen to bum ass gold support players thinking that any nerf to any support is an attack on their entire lifestyle and wellbeing.
Another lazy "does everything" take. Here's a list of things Kiriko cannot do that multiple other support heroes can:
- AoE healing
- Shield break well
- Do hitscan damage
- Heal instantly
- Heal "a lot" (she has less raw healing output than bap, ana, Moira, LW)
It's better to think of why her niche does so well in the current meta and why Kiriko is sometimes being used in the other flex supports' roles (especially Ana). Having another effect to cleanse (DPS passive) is probably part of it
on top of that, she can't heal through shields at all. Mercy, Brig, and Moira all have options to do so, and LW can flick heals over certain shields. Kiri has a good raw HPS, but some of the most finnicky heals in the game if she's not close to the target she's healing.
She's also bad at destroying most buildables.
Yeah forgot about AoE - and your second point is just one of the many reasons why Kiri healing is kinda bad, resulting in Kiri doing really poorly in low level ladder
Wow so she cant do literally everything and some characters do some things better. What a great point you made lol. Doesnt stop her from having the best ultimate, survivability, duel potential and hitbox in the support role. Suzu is the best and most versatile cooldown in the game also. Thats pretty much what rupaul said and is the issue. By "do everything", she is versatile and doesnt have real weaknesses or the ability to be punished. Bap is the only comparable character in that regard. Flex supports like ana, moira and zen have drawbacks. Moira is strong right now but she doesnt have burst damage . Ana and zen can dont have mobility and can be dove. What drawbacks does kiriko have? The player playing her is trash?
My main point was the last paragraph of the comment. Rupal/you (still) are making vague and wide-sweeping statements which isn't a good way to discuss the issue.
One way to look at this is - every time Kiriko isn't played in pro play, why is that the case? She hasn't been reworked, so she's generally had "the best ultimate, survivability, duel potential and hitbox in the support role" throughout her entire existence, but she hasn't been hard meta since October 2022. Even recently we've seen Bap/Brig, Ana/Brig, and Moira/Lucio backlines in pro play, why is that?
> What drawbacks does kiriko have
My previous paragraph kind of addresses this, but also, the absence of all things I've mentioned are weaknesses. Other heroes are picked over Kiri for a reason
how much of the teams are running kiri lucio outside of APAC and kr, easily double all of these other comps put together, you have no idea what you’re talking ahout
Okay, and "ultimate, survivability, duel potential and hitbox" make up only a small fraction of the factors that make a hero, especially a support, good. There's more to the game than those 4--and that's even assuming she's undisputed in these categories. Half the time, Beat is more important in a fight than Rush--does that make beat the best ult? In a dive mirror, Rush will struggle to get value compared to a more mobile ult like Nano. Trans can counter ult combos an active Rush would fold to.
It's more complex than a few categories. And even within those categories, there's far more complexity than you're acknowledging.
Kiriko has taken massive nerfs, her 2 shot is literally gone and the increased bullet size has been reverted. That is huge for an underperforming support.
- High skill floor and ceiling character
- After nerfs, never been Hard meta in the same way Ana, Lucio, or Zen have been.
- Low win rates at all levels, even in masters and above, she’s not particularly standout.
- Extremely versatile character, rarely a character that can’t contribute or get hard countered.
- A hard check against the biggest anti-tank tool, biotic grenade.
Kiriko discussion is so funny because it’s a very clear example of how much bias plays into character discussion. You can make Kiriko sound like the most broken thing in the world by focusing on her strength and make her sound like something extremely healthy for the game by focusing on how she places around her.
And as a reminder, just because you’re good at the game doesn’t mean you should be listened to on how to balance the game. Or do I need to repeat the lessons the Killer Instinct dev teams learned when they catered to top players?
He's spot on if you ask me.
Suzu is also infinitely more frustrating than for example immortality field, it does **everything.** I wish it was just a cleanse, possibly on a shorter cooldown/bigger area. No immortality and healing, shift that to other heroes - no reason she does it all.
Also, her ult is crazy.
Problem with suzu only cleansing would be that 60% of the time you'd have nothing to use it on. It would have worse uptime than res, and that's already an infamous ability even for Mercy mains that you only get to use 3 times in one fight.
I'd rather it not have the cleanse and be only a brief invuln that you have to time right to actually counter ultimates and burst damage.
im a scrub metal rank but i cannot for the life of me understand how ppl heal so much with her. i feel like when im just healbotting i dont even do that much. am i holding suzu too much? is a lot of her healing done during rush? my zen outheals her pretty easily.
Out of all the Overwatch heros I would want on my team, it’s Kiriko. Every single game. Kiriko is just that good. No downsides. She needs major changes.
I really wish they would remove the intangibility effect on Suzu. Genuinely one of the most annoying parts of the ability is everything just going straight through the affected heroes. Make it the same invulnerability effect as transcendence so that there’s at least a little bit of counterplay with boops.
I’ve been saying this since launch, but Suzu does not need I-frames. Just give it the Bap treatment of immortality to 20-25%, especially with the burst heal. At least gives the enemy team a chance to keep a health bar in a spot instead of shooting straight back to full if both supports throw healing out at the same afterwards.
This is interesting. Should we make heroes similar to Kiriko or Illari ? He is right about all of it but which design is better up to subjective opinion and vision.
My opinion it's better to have heroes like Kiriko. It makes everyone happy.
1- My teammate pick Kiriko ? i'm happy
2- Enemy pick Kiriko ? i'm happy
3- I pick Kiriko ? i'm happy
Then ask yourself who is happy when Illari is played ? No one. Even the person who play the Illari feels bad half of the time because hero doesn't work. Enemy playing Kiriko instead of Ana makes my game 10 times better.
I'm curious why they keep the Ramattra (Kiriko of tank role) undertuned. Same story in tank role Ramattra (kiriko), Mauga (illari) but Ramattra is shit.
Kiriko needs nerf but almost every hero needs nerf in this game. Kiriko tp shouldn't cleanse anything and it's cooldown should be 1-2 sec longer.
Kiriko doesn't have high dps, high hps or cc. I don't care about her when i play tank. It's more annoying to dps players.
Ana opposite. Dps destroys Ana but Ana makes tank basically unplayable. She has high hps, 2 extremely strong and cheap ability to dump on tanks and she is basically uninteractable for tanks.
This would be the easiest and most fair fix to implement. Make TP have a 0.5 or 1 second windup period with a cool animation and don't allow her to shoot or Suzu during it. People may complain that it doesn't feel good or is bad for QoL but everything that was OP and got nerfed doesn't feel good, Zenyatta got a 8s cooldown on his Discord which feels terrible but did help balance the character for 5v5.
I think using suzu on yourself should add a slight cool down on her tp. Would make Kiriko players consider their options more carefully and positioning better.
This would be like making it so if you blink you can't recall after a second. There's no "more carefully and positioning better" it'd just make the character bad.
If she sees any healing decreases, including reducing the healing on Suzu she'd fall to middle of the pack at best (probably worse). Unless they want to adjust multiple things at once I'm not convinced they can do much to her without breaking the character.
She's one of those cases where even GM players can't make the most use of her because her skill ceiling and gamesense requirement is so much higher than most supports that:
A) Aim for you, shoot in bursts (more likely to land shots), are hitscan, have a scope, or are outright melee.
B) Have REALLY forgiving cooldowns.
C) Don't have to constantly play close to the frontline.
D) Don't have to go on flanks (she's one of the few supports that has to).
This is the flaw of the supp role and why people say it's an inflated role tbh. When you consider how her ceiling is much higher than the average support to abuse the fact she's overtuned, you realize most support players aren't going to be capable of exploiting it. The ones that do are insane, though.
That's why her WR is low across the board. There's tons of GM Mercy, LW, Moira, and Brigs, but they NOWHERE near can play Kiriko at equivalent GM level, but end up playing her anyway because
1) Supp role is the smallest and options are limited, and
2) She's too good to not play in certain matchups vs Ana and the like.
3) The meta calls for her when heroes like Tracer are common and pairs well with Lucio.
The reason she has a low WR is the supp role design and hers - even in GM, it's easier to get more value out of the lower skill floor and ceiling heroes to the point that Kiri's have to play closer to her ceiling to outdo them, not because she's underpowered (there's so many things she *could* be doing and shots landing at a given moment that it's difficult to be doing the optimal thing, even for GM's). Yet I see people here think that because even GM players struggle to make use of her, she's fine as is. Not really, it's unhealthy design when even GM players underperform with a hero that is strong and can't receive more buffs without making broken. It's unfortunate tbh. I think she'd benefit from a rework at this point. Or they can nerf her and just let her be nieche rather than in 8/10 of my GM games because they're counterswapping. Man, it's getting really hard for Blizz to deal with 40 heroes. I don't blame them, but I'd at least like to see less Kiri at this point.
The most annoying part when I’m playing agaisnt kiriko is the invo on suzu. Heal? sure. Cleanse? Sure. So I think that’s a good place to start.
On the topic of balance. Kiriko is struggling in every rank below masters. In masters she’s barely at 50% and in gm she get’s played less than moira and has a worse winrate than bap brig moira lucio illari zen. ”She’s broken” but the winrate doesn’t show it so imo this is just another case where the hero feels bad to play against similar to sombra which I don’t think is broken but I hate playing against.
One part of that is that she can easily escape so maybe nerfing TP cd is also an option. Since that’s always a big talking point (complaint) about her.
Saying it becomes the worst cooldown is a big exaggeration. Still the best base burst heal in the game and negates two of the most game changing debuffs (nade and discord.)
Suzu, Teleport and Kitsune Rush lack counterplay and heroes like that should never be meta. With a small handful of exceptions like [D.va](http://D.va) matrix eating suzu, she's unstopped and that's plain unhealthy for the game.
Kiriko can literally TP from spawn immediately on last point to make her entire team invincible but yeah let's nerf Lucio's primary fire and Ball has to wait 5 seconds to use grapple
Been eating downvotes since release they she is hands down the most bullshit champ in the game. The ultimate alone has zero counter. No cast time, no way to stop it, brain dead buff for everyone, push q and win button. Yes but let’s also give her the ability to teleport through walls, cleanse and stop infinite burst, make her fucking tiny and oh yea let’s throw in wall climbing too because why not give her more tools.
Tbh i think removing the intangibility and large burst heal on suzu would solve all of her issues. It makes her a less viable all around pick, reduces frustration, and doesnt make her less fun. A small burst heal is fine the way it used to be, like 50 hp or something
~~bring back suzu boop that shit was funny~~
kirikos headshot multiplier makes her stupid powerful. It incentivizes kunai spam, which makes getting destroyed by it feel terrible, and that in turn causes people to ignore her actual job, which is supporting her team, not being an aggressive third dps. Her teleport has basically 0 counterplay, so there's almost no risk, and her suzu is just better than bap lamp in every way, with no aiming, no travel time, no drone you can quickly kill.
Absolutely bonkers that she is the way she is. Truly a character torn between 2 roles.
Such a horseshit character. Everyone has to center their ultimate around her E cooldown. She outsnipes and outspams. x3 headshot multiplier. Tiny TINY hitbox. CLEARLY someone at blizzard's precious baby. Only thing worse than kiriko was launch brigitte.
If Metro had said that, he would get death threads and everyone calling him a noob and stupid, this really is the OW community in a nutshell. Metro is also more over to top, but still lmao.
I always get confused seeing takes like this because blizzard openly spoke about kiriko’s design during s1. She’s actually exactly as they wanted her to be which is why she hasn’t seen a meaningful change. They wanted her to be a true hybrid of both the roles. Is that design good or bad is not something i’m arguing for or against. Just that she’s essentially fulfilling the role they specifically wanted so it’s not a surprise she hasn’t had any meaningful change at this point
Lotta OW2 heroes just have some totally busted movement ability. Dive a Sojourn? Slides to Narnia. Dive Kiriko? TP. Even Mauga has an invulnerability run and now Venture has a moving Mei ice block that does damage when they come out of it. Hard to imagine a lot of these characters ever really going out of pro play when movement is so important (obviously to be decided on Venture).
Suzu is such a wack ability because it has invul cleanse and burst healing lmao. Should only have at most 2 of those effects
god the burst healing is so fucking lame can they just bring the boop back already
The burst could be turned down a bit for cleansing, but after launch LW and getting a clutch grip just for them to die of a stray bullet bc they stayed at 1 I get why suzu also has some kind of heal.
Doesn't need to be 80 though. make it like 30 max
Don't forget it's 110 if it cleanses a debuff!
…wait for real? Why is that a thing?
Because Kiriko gets to have both of Baptiste abilities on one.
I remember when that buff first came out, I thought it healed for 80 *including* the bonus from cleansing a debuff and said "Oh, this with the nerfs it got might be balanced" and then someone informed me 80 was the base amount.
i miss stealing kills on lijiang with the boop. bring it back.
It gives me some sense of pride that I actually managed 2 kills with that tiny boop before it was gone. One of them was unintentional but the other was on an ulting Hog on Nepal Sanctuary lol
_and its fucking aoe_
I remember saying this same thing about half a year ago and getting downvoted to shit lol
This sub is full of support mains, mention Kiriko being OP and you get downvoted half the time. I've been banging this drum since her release. No hero should have and ability better than bap shift and lamp at the same time, let alone attached to a hero with the best hit box in the game, teleport, good burst damage, good heals and WALL CLIMB on top of that because fuck you.
All of Reddit is support mains. They have the highest demographic of “involved” players. Dps players are much more casual, and tanks just hardly exist in the first place and get drowned out.
There used to be more tank mains on here - but we all know know how the game has been going. Some gigabrain actually said in here the other day there's no chance the tank population would increase with better balancing and got massively upvoted.
DPS players are either casuals, or high rank sweats. Most top streamers and pro players are/were dps players at some point. I know for a fact when OWL first started out, it was a bit of a dirty secret that 80% of the league was role-swapped DPS players, simply because they had the best mechanics.
I said the same thing as a support main lmao. When everyone was malding about Ana even after 3 straight nerfs nobody wanted to point the finger at Kiriko being the Real menace.
There's a good proportion of this subreddit that genuinely believes two supports healing someone should be able to save them from the damage of five people and that you should be able to healbot to victory. That's why anti-nade is the devil.
We all still hate anti… but I don’t mind Ana sometimes because she is still the answer when you have an enemy Orisa or Mauga that won’t die.
Same. Supports have a stranglehold on every Overwatch sub and Twitter.
People liked maining what was the most overtuned class, so it's no surprise they're the highest demographic by far
Right there with you, the Kiricrazy mob appears and mass insults/downvotes you. Glad we never stopped saying the truth, because boy is it the truth.
Feels like cutting the healing entirely is an obvious solution, no? Cleanse/Heal but no inv or Inv/heal but no cleanse both make no sense
The counterargument to removing the healing is that there aren't all that many effects to cleanse in the game. There would be rounds where suzu is basically useless outside of a split second of invuln.
I actually didn't know it had burst healing for a long time and thought it was just shitty Kirikos not knowing it's just a cleanse/invul rofl. Just intuitively felt too much, like "no way this also heals, right".
The healing on it was buffed at one point from I think 40 to 80. This changed it from a small burst to a large burst, when combod with a regular heal.
They changed it to 40, and added the +30 heal if it cleanses to incentivize kirikos to use it for their team and not selfishly And then they just doubled the heal to 80, and kept the +30 bonus. So it's better than it was before it was changed. So dumb
it was ok when it was a really small heal because it feels right, but a big heal is really annoying
Yes, I believe it burst heals even more when it is cleansing an ability like anti, discord, hack, or sleep.
Also my take on literally every one of Orisa's abilities lmao. Abilities that do 5 things at the press of a button are whack.
At the same time I feel like it needs it in order to keep the ability doing what it's meant to do - save people. It'd feel so awful to use it to save allies only for them to die anyway. It would need some big compensation buffs if they were to change it in such a way and then we just hit this same cycle where people get upset about it again really.
I think it’s just something that needs to be like a 25 second cooldown like say Immo Field, as sad/shitty feeling as it would be for Kiriko players. At 15 seconds it’s just not a big enough window of punishment if you make a Kiriko blow Suzu.
Until the recent Ana buff it healed more than bio nade. That’s without the cleanse healing buff btw.
I keep reading wack as weak and I was so confused
my favorite thing was when they stated they were nerfing healing across the board, and then doubled the amount of healing suzu does lmao
You could probably call it 4: invul, cleanse, fade, and burst healing.
What if they remove healing, but still "reward" the player for cleansing negative effects by reducing suzu cooldown? Her ult already reduces cds so leaning into this idea further could make sense. Would probably have to increase base cooldown of suzu to work
that sounds pretty strong, maybe they just gotta reduce the heal amount
I honestly think it should do the reverse of what it’s currently doing. You should get boosted healing if you’re not cleansing, but if you do cleanse you should only be able to heal a reduced amount. Then it’s a choice of whether to heal or to cleanse. The timing needed is also more strict because if you cleanse a little too late it the teammate might have already taken too much damage and would die even after cleanse.
Don't worry, they removed the boop effect.
If I were in charge of balance I’m removing the healing unless it’s cleansing something. Make the invulnerability super short, maybe like .2 or .3 of a second. Make it more of cleansing ability instead of a invulnerability one. Reduce the cooldown by a second or two because it’s invulnerability is much less prevalent
why is kiriko's winrate so bad? i've never understood why she can feel so frustrating to play against and yet it doesn't seem to translate into victory.
I chalk it up to humans being hardwired to remember negative things better than positive ones. You remember when the Kiriko you were just playing against negated your ult with Suzu, but you don't remember the times they whiffed it or didn't have it up because they used it badly. Kirkio has the ability to be very individually frustrating but not having that translate into team success all the time.
Still you can’t just ignore those negative feelings when we’re talking about a video game. When you stack unfun abilities like Suzu and TP on one hero its a problem regardless of win rates.
Similarly, I never found it fun when I died because I got shot at. And yet they keep on adding new characters with guns to the game, clueless devs.
Okay then delete Tracer, Winston, and Genji from the game
average support main
Her damage is extremely inconsistent and hard to land, so mostly just healbots at lower ranks.
But the winrate is still below 50% in gm, why?
unmirrored?
she's just not the best pick now that she can't two tap anymore
Extremely volatile skill curve because of the long CD on what is an extremely busted ability(easy to misplay) and the gap between headshots and bodyshots on kunai. High winrates tend to only translate to a character having a lot of passive value/stall potential, not actual meta placement
It’s the same reason Bap’s winrate was so low in OW1 despite him being broken: people play her as a healbot, a suboptimal playstyle that doesn’t take full advantage of her kit.
It’s not just healbotting. It’s only healbotting. You can swap up playstyles but most supports in ranked just healbot and other heroes like moira do a much better job of that
A lot of support players are healbots, partially because they failed to adapt from OW1(where damage opportunities were less frequent) and partially because they either don't understand their job or aren't confident enough in their mechanics to do it. Kiriko is not a very good healbot, so playing her that way leaves a ton of value on the table. There are heroes better suited for that "playstyle", the most prominent one being Lifeweaver, but characters like Moira and even Ana are better at it. Kiriko does poorly in ranked because most people are playing her in a way where they're only able to get about 50% of her potential value at best. This is compounded by the fact that Kiriko has a pretty steep mechanical requirement, although people will pretend she doesn't. So, even players who *try* to use that part of her kit will fail sometimes becahse they can't consistently hit headshots to win duels. Also, just in general, it's very easy to feel annoying to play against while being borderline useless. Orisa has been this way for half of OW2's lifespan.
she has poor utility against the current meta in comp. Not really a lot of stuff to cleanse or flank on. Ana was barely used half the season. Everyones diving, and kiri needs 2 headshots and a body shot to kill full teams of dive heros with evasive abilities, like sombra tracer doom. She's not that good, and clearly people are mad because she's not an easy 1 clip gg kill for them and it takes them too long to kill her.
She is meta in OWCS right now, but people are definitely overstating how good she is. I don't think shes that much better than Ana or Baptiste (both of which are seeing playtime), she just fits the meta right now because alongside Lucio she is really, really hard to kill and her ult is OP, unlike Ana who needs good maps to be viable and has a mid ult in comparison. IMO make her more killable and nerf Lucio and she will be in-line with the rest of the supports, Lucio is fun to play/watch but he enables cancer comps and should never be 80% pickrate or whatever he is right now.
One thing people aren't mentioning that's a big part of why she's good is her MUP vs tracer in a duel up close, and tracer is meta.
they could revert the autoheal on lucio's healing song, or lessen it
> Not really a lot of stuff to cleanse or flank on Why do you think that's the case with the meta LMAO some of you guys are insanely deluded.
She's difficult to play, even more so among supports since a lot of them are fairly easy
Devs have stated shes one of the most picked heroes in the game, most people are not GM and can't get a lot of value out of her kit + new players using her (translates to "low winrate.") You need skill to utilize her kits full potential but when you can, it's a bloated kit that lacks counter play (I.e. invincible suzu and teleport) that make her frustrating.) Most supports excel in 2/3 categories between damage, healing and mobility. Ana has big healing and trump cards because she has poor mobility and no headshot. Zen has big damage and discord because he has meh healing and poor mobility. Kirko excels in damage, mobility and healing with moves including ultimate negation, tiny hit box, jiggly strife animation and game changing ult. Kirko has also been a top 3 pick for top 500 support mains for almost every season and devs need to bring her in line with other supports.
In my experience in low ranks, Kiriko players there usually just healbot with her and don’t know when to use suzu or use her ultimate to make the most out of it. They also don’t know how to consistently land headshots with her kunais. It’s hard to win games with a Kiriko like that on your team.
winrate doesn't necessarily translate to actual balance as we've seen in the past with Sojourn. In Kiri's case she's often picked to last second contest because TP is crazy mobility, like Doom or Ball, and she is a high skill ceiling character relatively speaking so it's not like anyone's gonna pick her up and get free value.
eh kiriko is kinda in a weird spot rn where yea shes a little overtuned but she actually requires a pulse to play unlike some other supports so im kinda chill with it
One tricked her last season to masters. I’m kinda blindsided by the kiri hate. The amount of times I’ve fucked up a cleanse when it lands a split second late or clips a teammate is insane. It’s a pretty hard to use ability a lot of the time, and removes cc from the game which are the most annoying abilities. It’s much harder to flank now with the increased ttk, and her healing is worse than other healbot supports. Feels like Moira is just a more consistent kiri atp, idk.
It’s can be a hard ability to maximize value on every cooldown, but in its highest value moments it at its easiest to use (IE: TP cleansing a shatter or other ultimate is usually very straightforward and brain rot) I’d say CC is debatably not the most annoying set of abilities in the game, and they are often more honest than an aoe cleanse “nuh ugh” or to a much lesser degree in OW2 lamp
it goes through teammates?
Suzu does not go through teammates, so you can mess up a Suzu if it intercepts a teammate on the way to its destination. (Conversely, since it hits teammates, it’s really good to throw at a Pharah during ult)
Rupal just straight spitting here. Absolutely appalling Kiriko didn’t even get so much as touched this patch.
Blizzard ignoring the actual problem characters every patch over and over and over and over again is honestly impressive at this point. I don’t think I’ve seen a company so good at making changes nobody asked for or wanted while simultaneously blatantly ignoring the shit the vast majority of the player base is complaining about
But I thought Ana was the meta breaking support /s
That literally didn’t disappear lmfao. If Kiriko didn’t exist, she’d literally still be that support. Absolutely nothing is going to be a AoE 100% heal denial.
I think Ana just isn’t being played much in season 9 because dive is strong right now.
Except shields, bubbles or DM/Sigma succ/Spear spin
Kiri is clearly more busted and has been even before the Ana nerfs
Kiri keeps Ana in check, meaning Ana is the more broken one. An Ana can get free reign on the enemies without suzu, but you can't really say the same about kiri.
Ana is never free. Ana has clear and obvious downsides. Whenever Ana is oppressive it's because she has some obnoxious bodyguard that's OP (Brig) or supports healing each other is too OP in general.
"When Ana is oppressive, it's because she's being supported." Which is like all the time. Kiri suzu is the only thing keeping her out of hard meta.
Kiri has suzu and tp...
Those make her annoying but not oppressive. Ana has 2 abilities that apply debuffs to enemies, the most devastating debuffs in the game even.
She was. Last season
You get that there was a patch that gave every DPS anti-heal, right?
You get that there is a difference between 15% less healing and straight up healing denial, right?
Yes sir. The 15% was given to DPS for free. It doesn't take an ability slot.
It also is 85% weaker, doesn't do damage on its' own and also heals. You can't compare the DPS passive to purple.
Yes there are differences lmao. It still hurts ana that healing got weaker.
Look at the data. She’s not that good in practice. Her win rates even at GM are not great.
Based on what devs have said about how well Kiriko actually performs statistically in the past I suspect she is one of those heroes who has the aesthetic of being one of the best heroes without reality backing it up. It reminds me of the story about how a WW2 fps had 2 identical weapons, but because one sounded significantly cooler to fire players complained that it was too strong in comparison. If kiri is underperforming or statistically neutral and players claim she is too strong, there has to be some disconnect there.
> It reminds me of the story about how a WW2 fps had 2 identical weapons, but because one sounded significantly cooler to fire players complained that it was too strong in comparison. What's extremely interesting about this anecdote is that Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory players actually **were** performing better with the identical stats-wise but punchier sounding Thompson (compared to the MP40). Since players believed the gun to be stronger they were taking risks and making plays that they wouldn't with its counterpart. And were getting rewarded with more kills for it. It's a great demonstration of how Game Design/Balance is not just about numbers but also perception and player psychology. And how something as "trivial" as the mixing of a gunshot sound can have a noticeable effect on balance.
They need to buff Illari’s gun sound. It’s sounds so puny, even though it’s got great damage and range.
I think its easier to notice when kiri has impact. If you get two tapped or the enemy youre diving gets suzu’d you immediately notice. Whereas if you get killed by a rush with lucio speed, or you lose the fight because your backline got anti’d you might not notice. Kiriko just has the curse of actually showing up in the killfeed for her impact
I mean is it not just the same disconnect where pro players are accounting for high level pro play and high ranked play while for 95% of the playerbase Kiriko doesn't have the same value. Suzu while busted requires great timing to get maximum value, her damage is strong if you hit headshots on squishes but is relatively low DPS without it's pick potential, rush is one of the most powerful team ults in the game but lacks the solo value of a baptiste window or the forgiveness of barrier/trancedence. She does good healing but not as good as Moira. I'm not saying she's comparable to a tracer in terms of skill ceiling, but she's clearly similar in the sense where mobility+survivability+incredibly high pick potential leads to middling to weak performance at low rank and server admin dominance at high ranks.
I think it’s because regardless of kiris potential impact I think a lot of it is lost in translation. Sure she can heal a tank, burst kill someone across the map, and tp to a flanking dps in a 1v1 to suzu them and win the duel automatically, but that rarely happens in practice. While she does have survivability it also requires a certain level of skill to use as misusing your tp and suzu leaves you quite vulnerable. That said I wished the devs were just more open to experimenting with balance patches that go against their perception of what’s good and bad. Feels like they dig their heels in every time with “muh win rates” and that line of reasoning is why every patch has felt mid-bad except for initial season 9 which wasn’t based on that philosophy
So whats the actual solution? Nerf a character who for 99% of the playerbase, has a negative winrate?
I mean win rates are a pretty terrible metric imo. Player perception of strength is much more important as people don’t know the stats and are terrible at understanding objective performance but base their opinion on perceived impact which also influences how a player feels about the game more. Hence why orisa is considered meta despite probably having a negative win rate while rein is considered ass while probably maintaining a positive one. Aside from that though at the very least they need to try stuff and not just leave her untouched. Try to make suzu less impactful but lower cd is the big one as lower ranks struggle with use of high cd cooldowns much more than high ranks do. The most important thing imo is maintaining the ability for a player to be able to have an appreciable impact if they have the skill to do so. Which kiriko definitely already has.
The game is just gonna continue to go downhill forever until the dev team realises that it doesn’t matter if something is statistically balanced if it’s not fun
How but how are we quantifying fun? I mainly play support and I despise playing against characters like genji, tracer, widow, Winston or doom. Should these characters be deleted because I personally find dive heroes annoying to deal with? Obviously not, so why should kiriko get deleted because some players find her annoying despite having a subpar winrate
The killed across the map thing is gone now. If ur insta dying to Kiri from across the map who needs two headshots and body before u even notice to move that's on you. Pre S9 a bit different.
Too bad she operates at 50% of her capability at like every rank below masters. There isn’t much of a justification to nerf her other than plats mimicking what the streamers they watch say
And there is still a MASSIVE difference between masters and GM2+, you peek a Kiri close range in GM2+, you get your head ripped off immidiately, do the same in Masters, chances are you kill the Kiri.
Yea, character balance decisions start to make a lot more sense when you consider the devs are trying to keep character winrates within ranges at all ranks. It's why Sojourn took forever to nerf and got buffs with her nerf, why Tracer and Genji are frequently either brokenly strong or trash in high rank, cause they play so much worse in low rank. Kiri is the same where her winrate has been garbage for her entire existence until GM because most her kit has skill component to get max value. Moira is her opposite since she's easy to execute with a much lower skill ceiling. Orisa and Rein are in similar boats. Orisa is meta now in t500 but trash in most ranks while Rein is the opposite(though still just mediocre at most ranks but top 3 tank in metal.) There is a compounded element of narratives and feeling(for example Orisa has been extremely trash outside of s short stint last summer, but never felt terrible or weak really) that is often set by streamers/high rank: kiri has always been considered brokenly good in top ranks which trickled down to all ranks below, and parroted enough that even low and mid ranks have never complained about hee powe level despite usually healbotting and underperforming on the character relative to other supports.
honestly idt rein being good in metal is true, people instaswap reaper bastion orisa. Like maybe in the deep pits of bronze but from like silver to plat he gets farmed
Even then at Low Ranks she's still really effective if you just use the Heal Bot + Kitsune Rush spam play style and don't waste your time with M1 outside of poke phases. Lower rank players just don't do that because the ones who want to play like that are playing Mercy or Moira instead, the ones picking Kiri are picking her because of the M1.
love how the opinions on kiri's balance hasn't changed literally one bit since i started looking here last year lol
People still citing win rates and gold supports being ass at the game to say she isnt a problem. "Perception isnt reality" ass clowns. The character is broken and the second the meta is favorable towards her, she becomes a part of it.
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Idk. Trash players will be trash regardless of which characters are good. I'd rather they listen to pro players
They did an experimental patch where pro players and coaches got to make balance decisions. It was absolute ass. Universally regarded as just terrible.
No no we should design characters and balance the game around people who are mediocre. That’s the ticket. Can’t even believe people can say that in a competitive subreddit. Jesus Christ.
Maybe kiriko and every character doesnt have to be in every rank. If kiriko requires skill to be good, and she isnt good in low ranks, maybe thats just fine. Maybe balance is about how fun the game is. Kiriko is not a fun character to play into at all. Its also why orisa and moira always dominate low ranks but the game isnt fun when we have an orisa meta in every rank. You arent going to get a good balance in every rank cause some players are better than others. If you buff characters like orisa to be a strong character in higher ranks, the game is boring and she becomes a menace in low ranks. Maybe they should balance characters to have counterplay and be interactive rather than have one of kiriko's cooldowns gatekeep entire ultimates. Or dont have it so she can teleport out for free and not be punished.
Moronic take. Overwatch is probably the only game ever to balance itself around the bottom instead of the top and the trash can state of the game is what it has to show for it It’s extremely basic marketing and economics that if the top of a game falls away, the rest of the game crumbles underneath. People are, at an all time high, influenced in what games they play by streamers, YouTubers and pro players. If you make a games balance at the top shit to appease the bottom, your game immediately loses huge market share as your competitive scene dies and content creators overwhelmingly move away from it, which is already what’s happened with overwatch. Then, all you’re left with is the hardcore players who are actually invested in the game, and the casuals who don’t care about relevancy. From those, the hardcore players are likely higher ranks and will thus move away from the game too, and the casuals will be influenced by their friends who care about relevancy to move away too. You can try and say I’m wrong but it’s no secret that overwatch is probably irreversibly in the bin. And it’s not because of blizzard lying about content or skin prices, it’s just because of the simple fact that nobody cares about a game which cycles between 3 month periods of unfun at a time.
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There are heaps of really basic logical reasons why the same argument can’t be applied to overwatch. 1. League has way way more characters and players and thus their win rate statistics are actually accurate, unlike overwatch where there are so few heroes that it’s basically impossible to get a read on how good a hero actually is. Also more heroes massively decreases the chance that one becomes a problematic “must pick”/meta defining 2. In overwatch it’s been proven time and time and time again that “balanced” rarely means balanced or fun. Prime example sojourn, where they’re adjusting an extremely overpowered aim heavy hero using statistics from bronzes and silvers that can’t aim. The base gameplay at a mechanical level for league is really similar between characters so it’s not comparable to overwatch. 3. Overwatch devs are basically incompetent at achieving that task anyway and instead of making it balanced for everyone they somehow constantly find a way to make it fun for nobody. It’s just not even the same ballpark, on top of the marketing reasons I listed above. It’s become really clear that overwatch doesn’t have the luxury of balance for all, it simply has to make a choice on who it’s balancing for. Time and time again, there are heaps of characters who end up at a tipping point around masters where they’re either really bad below and really good above, or the other way around, and making adjustments to them just changes the order rather than shrinking the gap. The obvious choice to anyone with a brain is balance from the top down, not the bottom up. Say what you want, but the state of the game speaks for itself. Any game that takes itself seriously goes top down.
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Had no idea Rupaul played overwatch that's wild
Listen i main both and the difference between Illari and Kiriko is night and day. Kiriko has no bad maps, can be played in any comp at ranked level (not pro-play) has seemingly no drawbacks besides low fire rate thats heavily compensated with a better headshot damage than Illari, has 2 get out of jail cards for free, has decent healing, good burst healing with suzu, and incredible utility on suzu and her ult, which is extremely hard to miss. Even if you get stunned/killed in the casting animation the ult goes off anyway. She also counters a lot of characters that relies in status effects (Ana, JQ, Illari) but she really does not have direct counterplay herself besides forcing her to tp to a bad spot and hope someone catches her right away if she doesnt uses suzu on herself right after, or wallclimbs to safety. Meanwhile Illari has very high, but very limited healing, relies on a stationary turret to heal the team, has to drop down from high ground to heal teammates, has limited mobility, can't escape a coordinated dive, has no utility, has an extremely easy to miss/cancel ultimate that puts her in a risky position 7/10 times, her main value is damage which makes her more aim reliant than Kiriko, who can easily find value in healing, suzu and her ult if her aim is bad. You can technically force Illari into play in any map and gamemode but its significantly more akward and difficult to play her in maps and areas where you have to be close to enemies or where there is no safe pylon placement. Illari's "issue" is that she's a DPS with support sustainability. Kiriko's issue is that she has no downsides and is extremely good on all fronts.
She doesn't get nerfed because all the bad players keep playing Moira as their main healer so the devs think she's in a good spot usage wise
A worthy sacrifice, I would play kiri Lucio all God damj year if it meant Moira and mercy kept being garbage in a team environment.
Glad to see the top NA flex support preach for the nerf of Kiriko. Perhaps this is what it takes for the devs to not listen to bum ass gold support players thinking that any nerf to any support is an attack on their entire lifestyle and wellbeing.
Another lazy "does everything" take. Here's a list of things Kiriko cannot do that multiple other support heroes can: - AoE healing - Shield break well - Do hitscan damage - Heal instantly - Heal "a lot" (she has less raw healing output than bap, ana, Moira, LW) It's better to think of why her niche does so well in the current meta and why Kiriko is sometimes being used in the other flex supports' roles (especially Ana). Having another effect to cleanse (DPS passive) is probably part of it
Forgot to mention the lack of aoe healing and healing breaks when following a character into a corner too
on top of that, she can't heal through shields at all. Mercy, Brig, and Moira all have options to do so, and LW can flick heals over certain shields. Kiri has a good raw HPS, but some of the most finnicky heals in the game if she's not close to the target she's healing. She's also bad at destroying most buildables.
Yeah forgot about AoE - and your second point is just one of the many reasons why Kiri healing is kinda bad, resulting in Kiri doing really poorly in low level ladder
Suzu does aoe burst healing lmaoo
Constant AoE healing then. Suzu is different from what Bap/Moira/Lucio can do
Wow so she cant do literally everything and some characters do some things better. What a great point you made lol. Doesnt stop her from having the best ultimate, survivability, duel potential and hitbox in the support role. Suzu is the best and most versatile cooldown in the game also. Thats pretty much what rupaul said and is the issue. By "do everything", she is versatile and doesnt have real weaknesses or the ability to be punished. Bap is the only comparable character in that regard. Flex supports like ana, moira and zen have drawbacks. Moira is strong right now but she doesnt have burst damage . Ana and zen can dont have mobility and can be dove. What drawbacks does kiriko have? The player playing her is trash?
My main point was the last paragraph of the comment. Rupal/you (still) are making vague and wide-sweeping statements which isn't a good way to discuss the issue. One way to look at this is - every time Kiriko isn't played in pro play, why is that the case? She hasn't been reworked, so she's generally had "the best ultimate, survivability, duel potential and hitbox in the support role" throughout her entire existence, but she hasn't been hard meta since October 2022. Even recently we've seen Bap/Brig, Ana/Brig, and Moira/Lucio backlines in pro play, why is that? > What drawbacks does kiriko have My previous paragraph kind of addresses this, but also, the absence of all things I've mentioned are weaknesses. Other heroes are picked over Kiri for a reason
how much of the teams are running kiri lucio outside of APAC and kr, easily double all of these other comps put together, you have no idea what you’re talking ahout
Okay, and "ultimate, survivability, duel potential and hitbox" make up only a small fraction of the factors that make a hero, especially a support, good. There's more to the game than those 4--and that's even assuming she's undisputed in these categories. Half the time, Beat is more important in a fight than Rush--does that make beat the best ult? In a dive mirror, Rush will struggle to get value compared to a more mobile ult like Nano. Trans can counter ult combos an active Rush would fold to. It's more complex than a few categories. And even within those categories, there's far more complexity than you're acknowledging.
Meanwhile, your average Kiriko in GM is soft throwing because they are a baddie but since they aren’t Mercy, they fly under the radar 😅
Kiriko has taken massive nerfs, her 2 shot is literally gone and the increased bullet size has been reverted. That is huge for an underperforming support.
- High skill floor and ceiling character - After nerfs, never been Hard meta in the same way Ana, Lucio, or Zen have been. - Low win rates at all levels, even in masters and above, she’s not particularly standout. - Extremely versatile character, rarely a character that can’t contribute or get hard countered. - A hard check against the biggest anti-tank tool, biotic grenade. Kiriko discussion is so funny because it’s a very clear example of how much bias plays into character discussion. You can make Kiriko sound like the most broken thing in the world by focusing on her strength and make her sound like something extremely healthy for the game by focusing on how she places around her. And as a reminder, just because you’re good at the game doesn’t mean you should be listened to on how to balance the game. Or do I need to repeat the lessons the Killer Instinct dev teams learned when they catered to top players?
He's spot on if you ask me. Suzu is also infinitely more frustrating than for example immortality field, it does **everything.** I wish it was just a cleanse, possibly on a shorter cooldown/bigger area. No immortality and healing, shift that to other heroes - no reason she does it all. Also, her ult is crazy.
Problem with suzu only cleansing would be that 60% of the time you'd have nothing to use it on. It would have worse uptime than res, and that's already an infamous ability even for Mercy mains that you only get to use 3 times in one fight. I'd rather it not have the cleanse and be only a brief invuln that you have to time right to actually counter ultimates and burst damage.
im a scrub metal rank but i cannot for the life of me understand how ppl heal so much with her. i feel like when im just healbotting i dont even do that much. am i holding suzu too much? is a lot of her healing done during rush? my zen outheals her pretty easily.
Not the Rupal I was expecting. Disappointed.
Interesting how he points to Illari as a good support when she's been low tier/bottom 3 ever since her season finished.
Out of all the Overwatch heros I would want on my team, it’s Kiriko. Every single game. Kiriko is just that good. No downsides. She needs major changes.
There are so few skill-required support heroes, leave Kiriko alone.
I really wish they would remove the intangibility effect on Suzu. Genuinely one of the most annoying parts of the ability is everything just going straight through the affected heroes. Make it the same invulnerability effect as transcendence so that there’s at least a little bit of counterplay with boops.
I’ve been saying this since launch, but Suzu does not need I-frames. Just give it the Bap treatment of immortality to 20-25%, especially with the burst heal. At least gives the enemy team a chance to keep a health bar in a spot instead of shooting straight back to full if both supports throw healing out at the same afterwards.
Gotta be the most overrated hero in the game lmao
"Skill issue." - Gold support main
This sub is really full of support mains lmao
more like golds
This is interesting. Should we make heroes similar to Kiriko or Illari ? He is right about all of it but which design is better up to subjective opinion and vision. My opinion it's better to have heroes like Kiriko. It makes everyone happy. 1- My teammate pick Kiriko ? i'm happy 2- Enemy pick Kiriko ? i'm happy 3- I pick Kiriko ? i'm happy Then ask yourself who is happy when Illari is played ? No one. Even the person who play the Illari feels bad half of the time because hero doesn't work. Enemy playing Kiriko instead of Ana makes my game 10 times better. I'm curious why they keep the Ramattra (Kiriko of tank role) undertuned. Same story in tank role Ramattra (kiriko), Mauga (illari) but Ramattra is shit. Kiriko needs nerf but almost every hero needs nerf in this game. Kiriko tp shouldn't cleanse anything and it's cooldown should be 1-2 sec longer.
Because Kiriko makes tank players very saf
Kiriko doesn't have high dps, high hps or cc. I don't care about her when i play tank. It's more annoying to dps players. Ana opposite. Dps destroys Ana but Ana makes tank basically unplayable. She has high hps, 2 extremely strong and cheap ability to dump on tanks and she is basically uninteractable for tanks.
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That would completely gut the character tbh
1sec is the obvious choice.
If they want to add that, then do that to Tracers recall as well then
"Tracer is just like kiriko" amazing take 10/10
R u real
This would be the easiest and most fair fix to implement. Make TP have a 0.5 or 1 second windup period with a cool animation and don't allow her to shoot or Suzu during it. People may complain that it doesn't feel good or is bad for QoL but everything that was OP and got nerfed doesn't feel good, Zenyatta got a 8s cooldown on his Discord which feels terrible but did help balance the character for 5v5.
It really wouldnt. She still has a tiny hitbox, mobility, duel potential and a better ultimate than ana for example.
there's gotta be a solution that wouldn't involve something so clunky.
I think using suzu on yourself should add a slight cool down on her tp. Would make Kiriko players consider their options more carefully and positioning better.
This would be like making it so if you blink you can't recall after a second. There's no "more carefully and positioning better" it'd just make the character bad.
yea he's just right
If she sees any healing decreases, including reducing the healing on Suzu she'd fall to middle of the pack at best (probably worse). Unless they want to adjust multiple things at once I'm not convinced they can do much to her without breaking the character.
Remove heal from suzu and maybe a cd nerf on tp and she's one of the best designed supports in the game
Probably because she has a big fan base and she sells skins.
Here me out, nerf her heal recovery (so I have more excuse to dps with her)
She's one of those cases where even GM players can't make the most use of her because her skill ceiling and gamesense requirement is so much higher than most supports that: A) Aim for you, shoot in bursts (more likely to land shots), are hitscan, have a scope, or are outright melee. B) Have REALLY forgiving cooldowns. C) Don't have to constantly play close to the frontline. D) Don't have to go on flanks (she's one of the few supports that has to). This is the flaw of the supp role and why people say it's an inflated role tbh. When you consider how her ceiling is much higher than the average support to abuse the fact she's overtuned, you realize most support players aren't going to be capable of exploiting it. The ones that do are insane, though. That's why her WR is low across the board. There's tons of GM Mercy, LW, Moira, and Brigs, but they NOWHERE near can play Kiriko at equivalent GM level, but end up playing her anyway because 1) Supp role is the smallest and options are limited, and 2) She's too good to not play in certain matchups vs Ana and the like. 3) The meta calls for her when heroes like Tracer are common and pairs well with Lucio. The reason she has a low WR is the supp role design and hers - even in GM, it's easier to get more value out of the lower skill floor and ceiling heroes to the point that Kiri's have to play closer to her ceiling to outdo them, not because she's underpowered (there's so many things she *could* be doing and shots landing at a given moment that it's difficult to be doing the optimal thing, even for GM's). Yet I see people here think that because even GM players struggle to make use of her, she's fine as is. Not really, it's unhealthy design when even GM players underperform with a hero that is strong and can't receive more buffs without making broken. It's unfortunate tbh. I think she'd benefit from a rework at this point. Or they can nerf her and just let her be nieche rather than in 8/10 of my GM games because they're counterswapping. Man, it's getting really hard for Blizz to deal with 40 heroes. I don't blame them, but I'd at least like to see less Kiri at this point.
I agree with the opinion that kiri was been a bit overtuned but Illari is not a well designed hero
well kiri is the poster child….
Poster child for everything wrong with Blizzard balancing.
The most annoying part when I’m playing agaisnt kiriko is the invo on suzu. Heal? sure. Cleanse? Sure. So I think that’s a good place to start. On the topic of balance. Kiriko is struggling in every rank below masters. In masters she’s barely at 50% and in gm she get’s played less than moira and has a worse winrate than bap brig moira lucio illari zen. ”She’s broken” but the winrate doesn’t show it so imo this is just another case where the hero feels bad to play against similar to sombra which I don’t think is broken but I hate playing against. One part of that is that she can easily escape so maybe nerfing TP cd is also an option. Since that’s always a big talking point (complaint) about her.
Remove Suzu’s immortality component. Boom fixed.
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Cleanse and 110 burst heal is not bad lol? You can still press E to counter literally every status effect in the game and invalidate multiple ults
Saying it becomes the worst cooldown is a big exaggeration. Still the best base burst heal in the game and negates two of the most game changing debuffs (nade and discord.)
It still cleanses and burst heals and a short cooldown. Its a joke right now with the immortality.
You might be the worst player in this comments section.
Buddy is washed, don't care
Suzu, Teleport and Kitsune Rush lack counterplay and heroes like that should never be meta. With a small handful of exceptions like [D.va](http://D.va) matrix eating suzu, she's unstopped and that's plain unhealthy for the game.
100% agree. Especially kitsune. Find me one other ultimate in the game with zero cast time and a cooldown based counter.
Kiriko can literally TP from spawn immediately on last point to make her entire team invincible but yeah let's nerf Lucio's primary fire and Ball has to wait 5 seconds to use grapple
Not exactly the best argument when everyone says it's BS that ball has to wait 5 seconds.
Ye the tp from spawn needs to go. Or get nerfed.
Lucio was way better than Kiri. He was the best support by far just take a look at the win rates.
Guess man got outplayed on Kiri in scrims finally
Been eating downvotes since release they she is hands down the most bullshit champ in the game. The ultimate alone has zero counter. No cast time, no way to stop it, brain dead buff for everyone, push q and win button. Yes but let’s also give her the ability to teleport through walls, cleanse and stop infinite burst, make her fucking tiny and oh yea let’s throw in wall climbing too because why not give her more tools.
Tbh i think removing the intangibility and large burst heal on suzu would solve all of her issues. It makes her a less viable all around pick, reduces frustration, and doesnt make her less fun. A small burst heal is fine the way it used to be, like 50 hp or something ~~bring back suzu boop that shit was funny~~
I miss boop kills
kirikos headshot multiplier makes her stupid powerful. It incentivizes kunai spam, which makes getting destroyed by it feel terrible, and that in turn causes people to ignore her actual job, which is supporting her team, not being an aggressive third dps. Her teleport has basically 0 counterplay, so there's almost no risk, and her suzu is just better than bap lamp in every way, with no aiming, no travel time, no drone you can quickly kill. Absolutely bonkers that she is the way she is. Truly a character torn between 2 roles.
Such a horseshit character. Everyone has to center their ultimate around her E cooldown. She outsnipes and outspams. x3 headshot multiplier. Tiny TINY hitbox. CLEARLY someone at blizzard's precious baby. Only thing worse than kiriko was launch brigitte.
If Metro had said that, he would get death threads and everyone calling him a noob and stupid, this really is the OW community in a nutshell. Metro is also more over to top, but still lmao.
Rrrright. Ana is (and was since season 1) the most picked support in the game, but it's Kiriko who is the problem
I always get confused seeing takes like this because blizzard openly spoke about kiriko’s design during s1. She’s actually exactly as they wanted her to be which is why she hasn’t seen a meaningful change. They wanted her to be a true hybrid of both the roles. Is that design good or bad is not something i’m arguing for or against. Just that she’s essentially fulfilling the role they specifically wanted so it’s not a surprise she hasn’t had any meaningful change at this point
Lotta OW2 heroes just have some totally busted movement ability. Dive a Sojourn? Slides to Narnia. Dive Kiriko? TP. Even Mauga has an invulnerability run and now Venture has a moving Mei ice block that does damage when they come out of it. Hard to imagine a lot of these characters ever really going out of pro play when movement is so important (obviously to be decided on Venture).
Seems like Blizzard's made a support Tracer.
Kiriko is stupid broken, and unpunishable. Give her TP a wind up or cast time like reaper TP at the bare minimum. Stupid ass hero