Is Overwatch’s newest hero, Brigitte, OP?

Brigitte is Overwatch’s newest hero, releasing just a few weeks ago. But in that time, she’s made quite a mark on the quick play environment. (She’s not available to be played in competitive play quite yet.) According to Overbuff, Brigitte currently has a 100 percent win rate in quick play. Yeah, you read that correctly.

Now, before you panic, all this really means is that someone is playing Brigitte in every quick play game at least once on both sides. As long as she gets played at least once on the winning side, it positively effects her win rate. However, she still has a pick percentage of almost 10 percent, which is a lot, and an “on fire” percentage of 22 percent. For reference, the next closest hero is Reaper with 11 percent, and he only has a 2 percent pick rate.

That’s a lot of numbers to take in, but the take away is pretty simple: Brigitte is really, really overpowered at the moment. If we take a look at her kit, it makes quite a bit of sense. Brigitte is built to counter a dive team, a meta that Overwatch fans have hated since Doomfist got released last year. The problem is, she’s way too good at it right now.

In a Medium post, Overwatch League pro player for the Dallas Fuel, Mickie, commented on Brigitte’s currently OP state. When someone asked exactly what makes her strong, Mickie had a pretty simple answer:

She’s almost unkillable, and can almost 1v1 every character in the game and stop them from diving. And she can one-shot Tracer. And with a discord orb and some help, she can one-shot any 200 HP character. Imagine if Genji dashed — with one stun and a discord, he can be one-shot. It’s kind of like a McCree flashbang. If a Winston jumps and there’s three people all staying together, she can just stun him and then he can be one-shot. So, she’s like a support with a one-shot ability. She’s going to be like another DPS or something.

Blizzard Entertainment

Brigitte is a stacked support. She has almost no disadvantages and is full of powerful and nearly unstoppable CC. Her power is part of what makes playing her feel so good. It’s exciting to be powerful in Overwatch, even if it’s a bit unfair. I think it’s fair game to say that we’re squarely in that camp at the moment. She’s exciting, she’s fun as hell, and she’s the most broken character in the game at the moment.

So how is Blizzard fixing her? What are they doing to solve this Brigitte problem they’ve created? Well, almost nothing, basically. Currently on the PTR, Brigitte is seeing a small nerf to her Shield Bash ability.

But they aren’t tweaking her damage or anything like that. Instead, they’re increasing the skill required to execute the ability. The Shield Bash cone, meaning the area that the attack lands in, is being reduced by 30 units. That isn’t a massive nerf and it won’t fix the Brigitte problem. It’s like trying to tackle a bear by throwing a literal wet blanket on it. It might make the bear sad, but it won’t stop the rampage.

This change is, of course, hitting the PTR first and is very likely to change. Who knows how much more Brigitte will be nerfed before the Season 10 patch hits and she joins competitive play. But for now, things are looking bleak for anyone who isn’t Brigitte.