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There are always fun stories that come out of hero development in games like Overwatch. Well, during the Brigitte Q&A with Overwatch game director Geoff Goodman, we got some great insight into her development. Thanks to two very insightful comments, we learned of some fun development bugs and possible red flags for Brigitte’s future balance.
User Paper asked Goodman about where the team is watching Brigitte. What are the internally perceived strengths and weaknesses? They gave the initial example of Moira possibly needing more of less survivability upon release. Goodman responded with a small list of possible problems.
Is there too much max health gain potential now? Is Torb/Brigitte/Sym going to be some crazy thing where you stack Tracer up with so much health she becomes nearly unkillable for example?
Is her ultimate too strong? The fact that half of it can linger indefinitely and how powerful armor can be in the game, it might just be too strong overall.
Her stun burst combo. Even though she has fairly low DPS across the game as a whole, she can put out quite a bit of damage if you shield bash -> melee -> whip shop and it is fairly safe since they can’t really act until they are flying away from you.
If any of these issues have been plaguing you, take comfort that Blizzard is at least thinking about changing it.
The second question was related to fun bugs or interactions during testing. User Ashenrune got a far more interesting answer than they bargained for. Apparently, Brigitte’s ultimate used to do a lot more than it does now.
Gave her a ton of upfront armor for herself (I think it was like 150?)
Armor regen for everyone
Speed boost
Made her shield solid metal which made it indestructible.
Made it so if she shield bashed you while using this shield, you were knocked down like a Reinhardt ult, instead of just staggered.
That is, uh, a lot of of stuff. The last two points about the indestructible shield and knock down sound particularly interesting. It’s almost sad to see those things not in there now but just imagine how OP Brigitte would be.
There are all sorts of fun answers in the Q&A, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Enjoy the stories of Brigitte past!