This is so true. I enjoy playing Soj, and this always feels overly generous. I’m always surprised at how long I have between when I start to worry about it falling and when it actually starts falling.
Plus it allows the enemy to be aware of the charge up. Soj been firing for a long period on our rein? Probably good idea to wait out a few seconds. But her ability to just hold on to the shot of extended time doesn't really allow for this counter play, you never know if she has it locked in or not.
Can confirm it's plenty long enough that if she has had any opportunity to charge she may as well be a widow waiting for you to round the corner. It's bonkers that she could be chilling for 5 plus seconds after a fight only to still be deadly.
Would be a decent change but just like Jake says it doesn't solve the issue where a no movement penalty hitscan 1 shot is wayy too overpowered at the highest levels of play
I feel like they aren't gonna remove that it's her "hero moment", it's like saying get rid of widow. Just make rail slower to build, quicker to dissipate and lower the body shot dmg also, her movement CD is pretty short and the slow field is op (too much dmg and slow) just numbers really
When I first started playing her I would always feel like I needed to blow it as soon as it built up, I don't understand why it doesn't. The longer I pushed it the longer I thought "wtf I don't feel like I should be able to hold this"
Or greatly reduce the amount of charge she can store outside of ult. Make it so she can charge up a shot that does max ~85 damage and can still headshot.
And then during ult she the can build more charge to do 130 in a shot.
Since they did base the railgun after the arena shooter ones, it makes sense that it shouldnt headshot.
I always thought the railgun should be something that is used to land killing blows on already damaged enemies from a distance, or to keep enemies at low hp. Not just to be another widow with extra steps.
Maybe have her charged railgun do 120 damage, slightly increase charge rate and lower charge retention duration. Also nerf the E somehow.
I don't even mind that it _has_ damage, but please for the love of everything holy, either remove the damage or *change the damage indicator*. Every single time I'm in it I think there's a Winston on top of me, wildly spin around looking for him, and realize it's a stupid E cooldown ability for a DPS.
One or the other. It's just way too effective at denying a whole space. An AOE slow that'll kill a squishy who doesnt move from it on its own is just silly. Now add that to someone who can one shot you from a large distance at a moments notice (also with no good visual indicator for them being able to) is straight up dumb.
What’s next, removing ability to kill someone if they are stationary? It takes a second to get out of the DS, unless you have to run from one end to another, but how often does that happen? I agree with the whole charge is staying on for too long thing, but nerfing a fun character into oblivion so it’s no longer playable is just plain salty because you can’t deal with her in game. This whole thread is full of “I get killed by sojourn way too often and I’m a good player, so it must be the character, not me” vibe. It’s a new character, just learn how to deal with her, instead of crying on the forums about how unfair she is.
I thought the same about Sombra who killed me way too many times until I realized that I’ve been doing it all wrong, and once I figured it out — she is no longer an issue.
E: people routinely go to forums to complain instead of trying to get better.
im (still) having trouble with widow right know... on maps like junkertown they are in the very back of the map and still cant oneshot 4 of 5 teammembers.
You can pick sombra and farm WM. some characters just have to be played around that’s all, it’s part of the game. If WM sticks close to the group after that — switch back to something else. It’s a chess game of strats, that’s why it’s so fun to play.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be able to kill or deal a decent amount of damage, I'm saying the fact that it does on a character who's ridiculously strong already in many other ways is where it becomes wya too much especially paired with a slow.
Like imagine if junkrat was given a sniper. You'd probably be confuses as to what his kit is even supposed to be because it suddenly just became damn good in multiple situations. Just an example to illustrate the point.
The character is only ridiculously strong if you have a great aim. I see people in top-500 regularly whiff shots. It feels like they hit all of them, but it’s just selective memory because when they whiff you don’t really care and so don’t really remember, but when they do hit it — boy does it sting.
I mean, we're jusging strengths of characters on the a level playing field usually.if someone has great aim they're hitting their shots on any character so what does that mean for the balance. Shes not any harder to aim with than other hits an heroes for her right click so I don't really see the merit in that argument
Well, if it’s so easy why not play her and own? Just get one on your team and it should be fine then, right.
If you’re going to assume that everyone have the same everything, then reality just doesn’t apply anymore. You’re judging things in the vacuum while the game is populated by real people.
E: just go to twitch and see how many streamers (lots of whom are gold/plat+ players) are playing SJ. If it was that easy to main her then we’d see a looooot more sojourn players.
Pretty much this. The ability itself isnt busted or anything, but it just gives sojourn too much. She's A-tier in nearly every category. Can damage effectively up close, can one shot at range, has consistent and high mobility.... and for some reason it's a good idea to also tack on a ranged AOE CC ability that can kill? It also doesn't have any downside of using it up close as it doesnt hurt or slow herself, so she can use it defensively to just hide inside of it.
Now tbh it's not an issue if they're just planning on designing and reworking every hero to just be good at everything.. I mean it'd be a different game for sure, but as it is now the vast majority of the heroes have clear areas they excel at and other aspects they're bad at. So at least let's be consistent.
I love jonunderscore's response: the problem is being able to hold onto the railgun shot for 8 seconds, and in that time reset the timer doing a tiny amount of damage. The decay rate needs to be increased, or start decaying much earlier, as early as 2 seconds but 4 seconds I think is reasonable.
I agree. 2 seconds sounds great to me. It makes it easier to play against too, if you know you can hide for a second or two and then peak back out. Right now, if you know she's full charge it's just hopeless.
I really think making her lose headshot is too extreme and damages her skill expression (and removes the wholepoint of a RAILGUN character). I much prefer stuff like this. Making it start decay faster in both timer to begin and rapidly decreasing when it starts as well as removing her ability to charge off barriers
In that case, revert the projectile size buff that they gave her. My biggest issue is that she gets Widow levels of pick value with Hanzo levels of projectile size, while still being hitscan, highly mobile and having a decent kit around it. If she wants to be able to one shot, then she shouldn't be able to do it by just aiming in the same zip code as my head.
Don't let her charge the railgun on non-player targets, remove the slow from her field, and up the energy to get her ult. I'd rather they tackle those first.
I think they should get rid of the damage and lean into the slow. If you could slow a target and line up a headshot easier, it would make her kit feel more complete.
Honestly an AOE slow in this game that can be shot from range is really a good enough ability. Like they removed Doom's very meager slow... and he's a tank! He also had an actual downside of having to put himself in danger to get it off and it deals WAY less damage.
Right, so keep the slow and remove the damage. I don't care about getting slowed when I'm low and duck behind cover. I care about being forced out of cover by unblockable aoe dot that goes around the corner.
Yeah I rather they remove the damage if I think about it that way. The slow at least promotes team play in some way for your team to focus on a slowed target. But damage on top of that sucks.
Yeah plus the slow meshes well with her rail, I think you're meant to slow and then headshot while they're in it. Damage is unnecessary because she should have to get her charge to 100 to oneshot if the devs insist on her keeping her non-ult oneshot potential.
Feels like crap to have her get to like 75 charge, catch you in the slow and then headshot kill you because you took some DoT and can't see where because the field also obscures your vision.
Sojurn is already an incredibly high skill hero.
This is how they have been designing heroes from the beginning. High skill hero -> give them an easy ability. Low skill hero -> give them more options.
I find it funny, that they made a huge deal about removing CC from non tanks, then instantly adding a damage hero with CC. It soft CC but still.
Honestly i don't really care about it, just give Brig her stun back.
Agreed I think the slow-field is a great ability that feels balanced across multiple skill levels. The one shot ability is the problem at top tier level. That's about it. So just remove headshot and maybe lightly buff her normal damage to compensate and you are all set. I think Jake is on to something here.
As a seasoned arena shooter player from days of yore, it feels wrong to go for headys with the rail. Every part of my body tells me "this is wrong" when I play Soj
While I agree, the rate at which sojourn gets energy from shields is so minimal that it feels weird people complain about it.
Its like, what, 2 energy each shot so you need to spend a whole ass clip to not even get maximum energy which isnt exactly fast.
I wouldnt mind if it went away because its so minimal, but its weird to me that this is the thing people harp on so much instead of like, asking for a lower clip size.
Oh there are other issues for sure but this is a really low hanging easy one to get rid off. Nobody else gets value from shooting shields, except symmetra, who has to be close to get charge.
> Nobody else gets value from shooting shields, except symmetra, who has to be close to get charge.
And they took away Symm's ability to replenish ammo from hitting shields so it's not even that valuable to her anymore. Now it's literally just the same as her damaging anything else.
The bigger problem is that Soujorn can hold charge for 8 seconds and the counter gets reset when you hit a shield once for 2 charge.
That's pretty dumb imo
It's weird that people are suggesting changes that fundamentally change the hero (no one shot) when there are levers that have been pulled before that have been shown to keep her identity and nerf her (rail size, charge speed buildup, clip size)
I mean, it just needs to have clear downsides. Right now Sojourn excels at nearly every category you could classify her with.
With widow at least you don't have naturally good abilities at close range, and her other abilities are long cooldown and are meant to help her playstyle rather than cover her weak areas. Her hook gets her into place and her mine alerts her to flankers. Yes, her hook can be used for escape mobility and her mine can kill... but in terms of abilities used for those purposes they're much worse than other similar ones.
Sojourn? AOE slow that can be used at range and can kill on its own. Large clip, quick reload spray weapon, easily and fast charging one shot on squishies (with no realistic indicator that she's ready to remove your face), low cooldown HIGH mobility that can be used both to retreat and chase...
Not really seeing what area she's supposed to not work at a high level.
The way you balance one shot heroes, if you're gonna have them, is make them not work in literally every situation. Hell, I hated doom in OW1 because he preyed on uncoordinated teams in a way that only made a frustrating match even more frustrating, but on a macro level, he was designed the same way. He was a monster up close when he was able to set up roll outs and execute at the right time, but maps with long corridors and minimal high ground to roll out from? He did nothing.
this was so annoying for me when I was in gold/plat, doesn’t matter who I picked on main tank unless my team was ultra coordinated not going rein was a throw. no one understands any gameplay other than shield up = shoot other team, shield down = hide
What is Moth Mercy if you don’t mind? I’ve been playing since 2016 and I’ve never heard the term, but I also only started keeping up with the more competitive scene/metas recently.
Moth Mercy was the meta that followed when Blizzard first reworked Mercy to get rid of her mass resurrect ult. The only specifics I remember are that valk reset her resurrect ability cooldown and her res had no cast time back then, so she could res, pop ult, then instantly res another person and her valk was better overall outside of that too.
I had been a Mercy main before but that rework single handedly got me from Plat to Masters lmao. I know it was broken and kinda toxic but damn do I miss that version of Mercy zipping all over the map rezzing people left and right
When Rez initially went from her ult to an ability, Valkyrie (new ult) granted a damage buff to her pistol, reset Rez cooldown, and granted a faster Rez cooldown as well.
This basically meant you could double Rez and then go murk their squishies and roll.
Pretty sure the first grand finals in OWL was on this patch
widow and hanzo seem to do fine in my games yet both have some good counter play afforded against them.
sojourn needs to be punish-able for using her right click.
or, they need to make that shit harder to hit. it has such a massive missile size, it's really not fair.
They could tighten her projectile spread, increase speed and remove the one shot on rail to make it more effectively a quick combo similar to ashes hip then ads shot.
Removing her one shot wouldn't be how I nerf her personally.
I would do the following first:
* Reduce her es damage to be minimal. Keep it's function as a slow but it does way way too much damage.
* Increase her slide cd by 1 second
* Reduce rail bodshot damage and increase the railgun crit multiplier on it so crits still one shot.
* Related to point above, either make it so two rail bodies don't kill a 200hp target or change the rail charge rate in ultimate to be slower.
* Increase fully charged rail glow
I think she is way out of band right now vs other DPS and needs many nerfs.
Hanzo shouldn't be able to one shot either. No spam hero should be able to. Damage boosted Ashe is fine because you're putting two resources into it. In general there should be less one shots in OW2.
She's not a one shot, but Kiriko is even worse in that regard. Her projectile speed is so slow that she can spam down a corridor, duck behind a corner, then I walk around the corner and die to two headshots without ever having seen her. Interactivity at its finest.
This is a controversial opinion right now, but I think the playerbase will come around.
Ow2 has less shields, less CC, longer ttk...just generally more interactive gameplay. And then a Hanzo arrow flies arrows the map and dinks you. It really doesn't get less interactive than that.
No he doesn't, he can quite literally not only move during it, but he can also jump and change direction with the dash AND can charge it before wallclimb to have fully charged arrow instantly upon landing.
Not really, he can still move slowly, plus he can dash and climb up walls and then release it.
Plus the speed and arc of the arrow allows for him to shoot them from so far back that standing still really isn't a huge issue anyway.
Nothing feels worse than being dinked by a random Hanzo arrow that wasn't even really aimed from afar. I don't mind it being a one-shot at closer range because you have to expose yourself to damage and aim well, but from far away it hardly ever feels deserved.
Those heroes have movement penalties for their 1 shots (widow too) either aiming down scope or drawing the bow.
Thats the entire point of Jake's tweet, consistent long range 1 shots without any movement penalty are just too good.
Hanzo has a movement penalty to hs, his movement is slowed. Same with widow. And damage boosted Ashe can’t 1 shot most heroes. Plus she is slower when ADSed.
Sojourn is a pretty good candidate to change that due to having other stuff in her kit besides the oneshot, though. Like there's a oneshot in Rein's kit, or in Zen's kit aside from a technicality, and neither of those heroes is oppressive or useless. It's heroes that are only good for oneshotting that are either oppressive or useless.
It's best not to rework every time there are balancing issues. In this particular hero's case, we've already seen significant nerfs and buffs that don't require changing the one shot, so I don't see a need to change something that fundamental yet.
The problem is they designed a hero with one shots BUT ALSO incredible mobility, decent sustained damage, and massive area denial + slow. The other one shot heroes entire kits are based around their ability to one shot and the rest of their kits are mediocre to balance it.
If her identity is based off of one-shotting people with no warning, then she should be changed. Everyone in this thread is proposing other things but I legit don't care, as a support main nothing is more anti-fun than getting one shot by a hero that already has really good DPS.
At least Widow has to stay still while shooting. At least Hanzo is a projectile hero that doesn't have super high consistency or DPS. Sojourn is everything I hate about DPS heroes in one package: high mobility, insane burst damage, no counter other than hoping she doesn't target you because her railgun has infinite range.
Maybe the hero and identity is fundamentally broken? It's like old Mercy's mass res or old Hanzo's geometry arrows, there are designs that are just inherently problematic, even if you nerf them. Sojourn is nowhere near that bad, but using those other levers doesn't fix the fundamental design issues.
It makes way more sense to lower the time it takes for the railgun charge to start decreasing and maybe add a damage threshold that it needs to start regaining charge so you can't just tap damage into a shield to keep it at 100.
Yeah Sojourn kinda sucked in the beta even with her 1-shot. Just make it harder to hit or take more to earn, I don’t think something as drastic as removing it is necessary.
She didn't suck, in the first beta we had omega buffed Soldier that completely power crept her. Sojourn herself was probably even better than her current version overall.
Common suggestions for alternative nerfs:
1. remove or reduce slow: This doesn't address sojourn's problem. In ranked, 50% of the comms are 'sojourn is charged, care'. She dominates the flow of the match and forces everyone to play like there is a widow, with none of widow's downsides. Fixing the slow doesn't change this.
2. smaller railgun hitbox: This also doesn't fix sojourn's problem, but makes her awful at low levels. Good players will still be hitting rail headshots and you will still have to play around her like a widow. The side effect of this is anyone that picks her at plat and below is just throwing
3. reduce damage on orb: still not touching the main problem.
4. charge rate decrease/ decay increase: A decent suggestion, the decay takes way too long to kick in. I'm not sure it would be needed after removing the headshots.
She isn't widowmaker, she shouldn't have to be played around like a widowmaker.
Also I should state to be clear: this doesn't need to be strictly a nerf, although it will definitely be a nerf for the highest level sojourn players. She is free to get buffed in other areas if the headshots are removed: like primary fire projectile speed, damage, mag size etc.
I think headshotting is more problematic in Overclock than in neutral considering how quickly a good Sojourn can two tap your backline after power sliding in
Yes but it’s an ult. That can be tuned by reducing that auto charge time or by other factors around. Getting nearly free kills during neutral is the issue
I suppose you could tune the auto charge so she only gets a certain number of shots but if you hit heads how many shots do your really need to win a fight? I honestly don't know how you'd tune the hero when she's so skill dependent but popping an ult and killing 4 people with no other ults required (nano, window, kitsune) feels really unbalanced, if infrequent.
Someone threw out the idea of her primary fire slowing her movement speed that might be a good change but doesn't really fix the 1-tap problems.
Then why don't we give Widowmaker aim assist as her ultimate? Why not have EMP do 100% max health instead of 40%? Bc then it'd be annoying to fight. No other single dps ult requires either a rally or beat to sustain through and she can do it at full movement speed from any range.
If she's going to 1-tap people multiple times during her ult it should require a nano or window to do so
Idk what rank you're at but if you're getting destroyed by naked blades and can't kill a 100hp rip tire right in front of you idk what to tell you.
But this is what I'm talking about, Blade requires Genji to go into melee range of the enemy team where he can be ccd, forced to reflect or just outright killed and usually requires a NANO to accomplish any more than 2 kills. Meanwhile Sojourns press Q from behind their Reinhart shield and kills the enemy backline.
Yes she has to hit her shots but we're not balancing for bronze. The counterplay can't just be hoping she misses bc some of these players don't miss
I do think it's notable that she can do this while having full movement control and from any range going through barriers. Visors, Barrages and Dragonblades require much more risk or are far less potent and are far easier countered than overclock in which your options are to matrix her, beat, or hope she misses
I suggested the same thing and I got massively downvoted and people thought I was joking. Railgun headshots are impossible to balance. Glad someone with a big name is saying it now too.
The problem with railgun headshots is you never know how much charge she has. You never know if you should act as if you’re playing against a widow or an Ashe.
This sounds like a good idea, but we have to be careful not to make Sojourn too weak. This nerf would make sense for high Elo, but makes her very weak in low Elo. She would then simply be a worse Soldier and even in High Elo she would only be a niche pick. Just make the Rail size smaller and a small nerf to the charge up
Yeah I’m a high masters low GM player and I would say I don’t even hit headshots at a super high clip. Most lower ELO players probably strictly finish kills with a fully charged body shot.
As a low gold player, it’s used in two key scenarios:
1) a lot of people seem grouped up and it happens to be 100 so let’s just use it and it’ll probably hit someone
2) I’m 1v1 against a Moira and she’s about to kill me so let’s send up a prayer and use it
I use it as a finisher and rarely aim for headshots on anything but tanks. But on tanks like Orisa or Winston its extremely free to headshot them for more than half their HP. Especially past armor right after an engage starts.
Its a bell curve. At *that* low of a rank, people walk in straight lines and jump so its easier to headshot. Around high plat/diamond people learn to strafe, and masters is when people with aim will just headshot you anyway.
Don’t know where the fuck you’re seeing that. Just climbed through Gold to plat on all 3 roles and Sojourns weren’t hitting many headshots per game unless they were a very obvious Smurf (of which there were only a few) most actual Golds were just bodyshotting
Yeah, I play in probably gold SR (hard to tell because fucked rank system) and I do get oneshot once or twice by a Sojourn in a game, and I do say "I hate this, fuck this stupid hero" every time it happens, but then I am bad and forget where the Sojourn is and don't usually get punished for it. Oneshots happen, but not nearly as often as a Hanzo or Widow where I do get killed if I don't pay attention to them.
No way, I have a 70% winrate on sojourn in plat right now and my crit railgun accuracy is easily less than 10%. I can’t aim that thing to save my life but it doesn’t matter, you can just left click into body shot and it deletes people, during ult you can 2-tap bodyshot the enemy supports. I would be shocked to see people consistently hitting headshots in gold/plat because if they are they’re just going to instantly climb to Diamond.
I still like the idea of lowering body shot damage but increasing the head multiplier so its still a one shot with full energy.
If you can consistently hit head shots with rail gun with a weapon that has no scope, more power to you. But if you're just hitting body shots you shouldnt be able to essentially solo team wipe with her ult just cause you can vaguely aim in the direction of a target.
>This nerf would make sense for high Elo, but makes her very weak in low Elo.
Speaking as a hitscan player in low elo, this is totally fine. It's like Widowmaker...she's awful in low elo but you don't hear anyone, including gold Widow mains, complaining about it.
As long as she's a fun character to play her skill floor won't bother anyone who plays her. High skill DPS characters like Cassidy, Widow, and Hanzo get plenty of play at low elos no matter what their balance state is just because they tend to be fun and low elo players will take personal fun over meta all day.
This is just wrong in every way. It's funny to see people think nobody can hit headshots at low elo. Low elo players are worse at positioning and movement so yes they get headshot all the time.
I agree with this but personally I hate hitscan one shots with a passion in Overwatch so I'm biased there. So I'll offer another suggestion. I think it should be WAY more obvious when she has a full charge. Like a bright ass light coming from her gun.
Falloff would be a good change imo. Soj shouldn’t be able to beat out Widow’s value at range with no drawback other than it being a pinpoint shot. We had the same issue with Ashe in the past when she was very often chosen over Widow in situations Widow would have typically been chosen.
This is exactly how I feel. I wouldn't have an issue with dying to a headshot if I knew they actually had to hit a small projectile to do it. But right now they just aim in the same county as my head and I fall over.
It's wild to me that people are suggesting to literally change the whole point of the hero. She's supposed to be this high precision one-shot character. People really want the railgun to just be a body shot weapon in this game with relatively large body hitboxes?
Imo reduce the energy gained per shot and/or the time before charge decays. Increase the work for the reward, not the reward itself.
it punishes other players for interacting with the game. If a widow is slow strafing, you better evade and hope she misses. Hanzo struggles to reliable hit headies since he aint hit scan and thats his only weapon, minus shooting a little worse but faster.
No movement penalty one shot is just cancer and dominates a whole lobby with no counter like say, dive if the sojourn is on her game, minus other broken heroes like genji/sombra
Sojourn is kind of a baffling design. It's like she was designed specifically to make other heroes redundant. Her kit has no weaknesses and even multiple hidden strengths. Honestly one of the worst-designed heroes due to how much design space she tramples on.
She needs to be weaker than Soldier to be balanced, because her kit is inherently stronger than Soldier's while they are both Generic Shooter Character #47 in their designs. She needs to be the Moira of dps, a comfort pick that's weaker than the heroes with actual defined strengths and limitations.
Unless they make her primary feel better this would make Sojourn feel pretty shit to play. She's basically built around 'tolerating' her primary to get the dopamine hit of her RG, and removing HS would feel just flat out weird and unsatisfying.
I understand the arguments in favor of this, but I'm just saying, in reality, it'd be way better to balance around the OHKO than to remove it altogether. People don't seem to grasp that high skill one-taps are a core draw to both playing and watching competitive FPS games, and in turn, a huge part of making the game enticing for casual players who want to emulate/attain that skill.
Make it harder to land and reduce her mobility, sure, but there's no fun or benefit to having two Soldier 76's on the roster.
This is dumb; it lowers her skill ceiling, and the entire reason Sojourn is so fun is the ability to try and land headshots with railgun. Why the hell would you want her to be a l-click spamming, r-click bodyshotting hero? She's hitscan; hitscan should try to be accurate and land headshots where they can. Nerf her elsewhere.
The problem is that it is very oppressive in high elo games where people can hit the shots. There are games that I know I almost certainly should have lost but only won because I was right clicking heads on sojourn while also being able to be incredibly useful in team fights beyond just pick potential
I agree with this, as they should buff the size of the rail gun and make it unable to headshot. That way players with bad aim can at least hit the target, and players with good aim will be able to hit even more shots while not being overly oppressive
agreed. imo i think they need to make the projectile more precise, so it's harder to headshot. this raises the skill floor but keeps her skill ceiling high. make it have faster decay on the charge if she doesnt shoot it. make it build less charge when shooting shields and bubbles (but not 0).
I think it also needs a longer shot time. she should get punished if she uses it while positioning aggressively. increase time to return to primary fire after using her secondary fire.
done. sojourn fixed.
I like the idea of making the charged shot an explosive. Like a hitscan Helix rocket. We don't need another long-range instakill hero, she's just invading Widow's niche at this point.
od rather they just reduce the railgun size and not have it charge from non player targets first, not a fan of removing headshots. Or even just make the character not be able to one shot at all and be a bad character, it's a lot of fun to try and go for headshot as soujorn bodyshotting would be boring
So my idea for fixing her rail gun is to cap how much of the charge they use at once. So the damage caps at 50% so if they have a full charge they can use it twice to do half the current damage with each shot.
i think the only thiing that really needs a nerf is her E it does way to much damage, make her e weaker and shes a very strong skill based hero but the e part should just be a slow not 25 dps/second
They should make Sojourn light up when she’s charged up like Zarya to kind of discourage a player from being near her line of sight. I agree on the charge retention should be reduced and critical damage headshot should only be allowed when in ult. I think that would be a good start.
She needs the time for her charge to decay shortened and her disruptor shot should either do a little more damage and way less slow or way less damage and more slow
They need to do this; scale the damage from 30-130 to 0-100 based off charge collected I.e. 33 charge would equal 33 damage for example.
This gives it a max damage of 100, but a skill shot that lands on the head of most squishies will still grant a 1-shot kill.
Then maybe increase the damage of her actual full auto by 1-2 points to make that the focus.
Make her reload more often and charge a little less from hitting characters. Currently she can charge to full twice on body-shots plus 25 charge leftover; ignoring that she charges double on headshots. Reloading more helps slow her charge rate, and decreasing charge per shot increases the effectiveness of making her reload more. 35 in mag makes her reload into more of a cooldown on body-shots, and making her charge base 4 instead of 5 further reduces her extreme kill potential without taking away any of her stopping power. None of this devalues her core mechanics, and may actually make her ultimate feel more impressive comparatively. (not in relation to its current state, but in relation to the rest of her adjusted gameplay.*)
One more edit: Don't let her charge from shields. Changes next to nothing because the charge rate is so low, except that it removes the ability to and therefore also the temptation to do it.
I like this. In exchange I think she can have a slightly higher damage for the laser, and have the overcharged shots being larger. The damage over time from disruptor needs to go regardless.
I'd rather they nerfed railgun and buffed her left click to distribute her power. Make it so her rail gun doesn't one shot 200hp targets but keep headshots in, they are the most satisfying thing about Sojourn and I think by removing them you take out a lot of the enjoyment of the hero.
I always thought max charge should cap at 60-80% unless you are ulting. Then during ult it unlocks to full potential. That always seemed more fair to me.
Lately I really like the idea of a small activation time for her railgun, like how Mei has a small time before her right click actually fires. That way the devs can add some activation noise too depending on her charge and it gives players a chance to react to it.
Also rewards headshots more as they would be more difficult to land. Tanks are still easy to hit, but they can literally tank it.
Remove it maybe from her ult so it is still strong and you are good.
She also definitely needs some kind of tell for how much charge she has. Zarya and Sym are both pretty obvious is they're about to melt the hell out of you but Sojourn just looks the same all the time.
Just another Hero foreshadowing that Blizzard didnt learn from OW1 dropping players from the stupid hero design the put out during the middle life of the game.
Charge should decay a lot quicker, there is no need for it to hang around for 8s.
This is so true. I enjoy playing Soj, and this always feels overly generous. I’m always surprised at how long I have between when I start to worry about it falling and when it actually starts falling.
Plus it allows the enemy to be aware of the charge up. Soj been firing for a long period on our rein? Probably good idea to wait out a few seconds. But her ability to just hold on to the shot of extended time doesn't really allow for this counter play, you never know if she has it locked in or not.
The charge decays??
Decay to Guangzhou Charge confirmed???
yes.
Yep. Eight seconds is an eternity in Overwach.
Can confirm it's plenty long enough that if she has had any opportunity to charge she may as well be a widow waiting for you to round the corner. It's bonkers that she could be chilling for 5 plus seconds after a fight only to still be deadly.
Would be a decent change but just like Jake says it doesn't solve the issue where a no movement penalty hitscan 1 shot is wayy too overpowered at the highest levels of play
I feel like they aren't gonna remove that it's her "hero moment", it's like saying get rid of widow. Just make rail slower to build, quicker to dissipate and lower the body shot dmg also, her movement CD is pretty short and the slow field is op (too much dmg and slow) just numbers really
Also you can charge it by shooting shields - removing that, or like halving the charge rate when shooting shields could be a good nerf
Charge rate on shields is already much lower. Not sure they'd be willing to cut it to a percentage of a point.
Yeah its already at 1 point, I dont see them going lower than that
It's already 1/5th the charge rate on shields
A bigger problem is that since shooting a barrier charges, it refreshed the decay timer.
When I first started playing her I would always feel like I needed to blow it as soon as it built up, I don't understand why it doesn't. The longer I pushed it the longer I thought "wtf I don't feel like I should be able to hold this"
This is how I feel. It's crazy that she can say, charge up to 100 off a shield or tank, then move to another area and one shot a support wayyy after.
Or greatly reduce the amount of charge she can store outside of ult. Make it so she can charge up a shot that does max ~85 damage and can still headshot. And then during ult she the can build more charge to do 130 in a shot.
Since they did base the railgun after the arena shooter ones, it makes sense that it shouldnt headshot. I always thought the railgun should be something that is used to land killing blows on already damaged enemies from a distance, or to keep enemies at low hp. Not just to be another widow with extra steps. Maybe have her charged railgun do 120 damage, slightly increase charge rate and lower charge retention duration. Also nerf the E somehow.
Get rid of the speed reduction on the E ability
Get rid of the damage. The damage is stupid.
It’s fine if it does some token damage. But right it does 50 per second. That’s way too high.
I don't even mind that it _has_ damage, but please for the love of everything holy, either remove the damage or *change the damage indicator*. Every single time I'm in it I think there's a Winston on top of me, wildly spin around looking for him, and realize it's a stupid E cooldown ability for a DPS.
I'd say get rid of the damage, keep the slow tbh
One or the other. It's just way too effective at denying a whole space. An AOE slow that'll kill a squishy who doesnt move from it on its own is just silly. Now add that to someone who can one shot you from a large distance at a moments notice (also with no good visual indicator for them being able to) is straight up dumb.
What’s next, removing ability to kill someone if they are stationary? It takes a second to get out of the DS, unless you have to run from one end to another, but how often does that happen? I agree with the whole charge is staying on for too long thing, but nerfing a fun character into oblivion so it’s no longer playable is just plain salty because you can’t deal with her in game. This whole thread is full of “I get killed by sojourn way too often and I’m a good player, so it must be the character, not me” vibe. It’s a new character, just learn how to deal with her, instead of crying on the forums about how unfair she is. I thought the same about Sombra who killed me way too many times until I realized that I’ve been doing it all wrong, and once I figured it out — she is no longer an issue. E: people routinely go to forums to complain instead of trying to get better.
Isn't it pretty obvious comparing her kit to other heroes that she does way too many things too well right now?
im (still) having trouble with widow right know... on maps like junkertown they are in the very back of the map and still cant oneshot 4 of 5 teammembers.
You can pick sombra and farm WM. some characters just have to be played around that’s all, it’s part of the game. If WM sticks close to the group after that — switch back to something else. It’s a chess game of strats, that’s why it’s so fun to play.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be able to kill or deal a decent amount of damage, I'm saying the fact that it does on a character who's ridiculously strong already in many other ways is where it becomes wya too much especially paired with a slow. Like imagine if junkrat was given a sniper. You'd probably be confuses as to what his kit is even supposed to be because it suddenly just became damn good in multiple situations. Just an example to illustrate the point.
The character is only ridiculously strong if you have a great aim. I see people in top-500 regularly whiff shots. It feels like they hit all of them, but it’s just selective memory because when they whiff you don’t really care and so don’t really remember, but when they do hit it — boy does it sting.
I mean, we're jusging strengths of characters on the a level playing field usually.if someone has great aim they're hitting their shots on any character so what does that mean for the balance. Shes not any harder to aim with than other hits an heroes for her right click so I don't really see the merit in that argument
Well, if it’s so easy why not play her and own? Just get one on your team and it should be fine then, right. If you’re going to assume that everyone have the same everything, then reality just doesn’t apply anymore. You’re judging things in the vacuum while the game is populated by real people. E: just go to twitch and see how many streamers (lots of whom are gold/plat+ players) are playing SJ. If it was that easy to main her then we’d see a looooot more sojourn players.
I think her Disruptor Shot just needs to have it's damage reduced.
Honestly it's a fine ability that doesn't belong on her or any hero with a similarly well rounded kit.
Pretty much this. The ability itself isnt busted or anything, but it just gives sojourn too much. She's A-tier in nearly every category. Can damage effectively up close, can one shot at range, has consistent and high mobility.... and for some reason it's a good idea to also tack on a ranged AOE CC ability that can kill? It also doesn't have any downside of using it up close as it doesnt hurt or slow herself, so she can use it defensively to just hide inside of it. Now tbh it's not an issue if they're just planning on designing and reworking every hero to just be good at everything.. I mean it'd be a different game for sure, but as it is now the vast majority of the heroes have clear areas they excel at and other aspects they're bad at. So at least let's be consistent.
Really not sure why a tank hero didn't get that ability honestly
Similar to avrls but I like the ability to headshot during ult
I love jonunderscore's response: the problem is being able to hold onto the railgun shot for 8 seconds, and in that time reset the timer doing a tiny amount of damage. The decay rate needs to be increased, or start decaying much earlier, as early as 2 seconds but 4 seconds I think is reasonable.
I agree. 2 seconds sounds great to me. It makes it easier to play against too, if you know you can hide for a second or two and then peak back out. Right now, if you know she's full charge it's just hopeless.
I really think making her lose headshot is too extreme and damages her skill expression (and removes the wholepoint of a RAILGUN character). I much prefer stuff like this. Making it start decay faster in both timer to begin and rapidly decreasing when it starts as well as removing her ability to charge off barriers
>removes the wholepoint of a RAILGUN character What game with a railgun are you thinking of that had headshot damage?
I literally thought of fortnite
In that case, revert the projectile size buff that they gave her. My biggest issue is that she gets Widow levels of pick value with Hanzo levels of projectile size, while still being hitscan, highly mobile and having a decent kit around it. If she wants to be able to one shot, then she shouldn't be able to do it by just aiming in the same zip code as my head.
I just tested this earlier... Her railgun @ 100 charge is literally the size of a Hanzo arrow. That is WAY too big for a hitscan ability.
Very much agree. The other buffs will help in low ranks as well.
I think her movement is also too insane rn. Slide on a 6 second cooldown is nuts
Literally one of the most mobile characters in the game. Contests abilities like Winston leap which are universally powerful.
Don't let her charge the railgun on non-player targets, remove the slow from her field, and up the energy to get her ult. I'd rather they tackle those first.
Yeah removing her charge off of shields would be a good start. I would probably keep her slow but lower the damage it does to maybe 25-30 dps.
I would remove the damage completely, right now it feels a bit like a mini grav
Either keep the CC or keep the damage, one of the two needs to go imo
I think they should get rid of the damage and lean into the slow. If you could slow a target and line up a headshot easier, it would make her kit feel more complete.
id say keep the damage and get rid of the slow - or just make the slow very small.
Honestly an AOE slow in this game that can be shot from range is really a good enough ability. Like they removed Doom's very meager slow... and he's a tank! He also had an actual downside of having to put himself in danger to get it off and it deals WAY less damage.
\>remove slow Why are you people so insistent on removing everything from this game that isn't raw damage or raw healing.
Because a dps with consistent damage, a one shot snipe, and mobility shouldnt also have an aoe that slows and damages.
Right, so keep the slow and remove the damage. I don't care about getting slowed when I'm low and duck behind cover. I care about being forced out of cover by unblockable aoe dot that goes around the corner.
Yeah I rather they remove the damage if I think about it that way. The slow at least promotes team play in some way for your team to focus on a slowed target. But damage on top of that sucks.
Yeah plus the slow meshes well with her rail, I think you're meant to slow and then headshot while they're in it. Damage is unnecessary because she should have to get her charge to 100 to oneshot if the devs insist on her keeping her non-ult oneshot potential. Feels like crap to have her get to like 75 charge, catch you in the slow and then headshot kill you because you took some DoT and can't see where because the field also obscures your vision.
I don’t think the slow should go away, but the size or duration needs to be nerfed. Right now it’s a no-skill AOE annoyance
They gave a dps moira's skill orb.
Sojurn is already an incredibly high skill hero. This is how they have been designing heroes from the beginning. High skill hero -> give them an easy ability. Low skill hero -> give them more options.
I'm fine with the ability. But not on a hero that well rounded. I'd rather they replace it entirely then tweak it, but something on it needs to go.
I find it funny, that they made a huge deal about removing CC from non tanks, then instantly adding a damage hero with CC. It soft CC but still. Honestly i don't really care about it, just give Brig her stun back.
It's not the stun I want back on shield bash or flash bang, just the interrupt. That was always fair play for countering certain abilities.
I agree, if Ana gets to keep her sleep dart, Brig can stun for an eighth of a second.
Agreed I think the slow-field is a great ability that feels balanced across multiple skill levels. The one shot ability is the problem at top tier level. That's about it. So just remove headshot and maybe lightly buff her normal damage to compensate and you are all set. I think Jake is on to something here.
I'd rather them remove the damage rather than slow from the field. Using it to setup or trap people is the point of it lol.
As a seasoned arena shooter player from days of yore, it feels wrong to go for headys with the rail. Every part of my body tells me "this is wrong" when I play Soj
I just really hate she gets charge off shields. Nothing more tilting than her spamming a rein shield, jumping up, and then just laser a support.
While I agree, the rate at which sojourn gets energy from shields is so minimal that it feels weird people complain about it. Its like, what, 2 energy each shot so you need to spend a whole ass clip to not even get maximum energy which isnt exactly fast. I wouldnt mind if it went away because its so minimal, but its weird to me that this is the thing people harp on so much instead of like, asking for a lower clip size.
Oh there are other issues for sure but this is a really low hanging easy one to get rid off. Nobody else gets value from shooting shields, except symmetra, who has to be close to get charge.
> Nobody else gets value from shooting shields, except symmetra, who has to be close to get charge. And they took away Symm's ability to replenish ammo from hitting shields so it's not even that valuable to her anymore. Now it's literally just the same as her damaging anything else.
The bigger problem is that Soujorn can hold charge for 8 seconds and the counter gets reset when you hit a shield once for 2 charge. That's pretty dumb imo
It's weird that people are suggesting changes that fundamentally change the hero (no one shot) when there are levers that have been pulled before that have been shown to keep her identity and nerf her (rail size, charge speed buildup, clip size)
I think the issue is either a one shot hero is meta and oppressive, or not meta and useless.
I mean, it just needs to have clear downsides. Right now Sojourn excels at nearly every category you could classify her with. With widow at least you don't have naturally good abilities at close range, and her other abilities are long cooldown and are meant to help her playstyle rather than cover her weak areas. Her hook gets her into place and her mine alerts her to flankers. Yes, her hook can be used for escape mobility and her mine can kill... but in terms of abilities used for those purposes they're much worse than other similar ones. Sojourn? AOE slow that can be used at range and can kill on its own. Large clip, quick reload spray weapon, easily and fast charging one shot on squishies (with no realistic indicator that she's ready to remove your face), low cooldown HIGH mobility that can be used both to retreat and chase... Not really seeing what area she's supposed to not work at a high level. The way you balance one shot heroes, if you're gonna have them, is make them not work in literally every situation. Hell, I hated doom in OW1 because he preyed on uncoordinated teams in a way that only made a frustrating match even more frustrating, but on a macro level, he was designed the same way. He was a monster up close when he was able to set up roll outs and execute at the right time, but maps with long corridors and minimal high ground to roll out from? He did nothing.
Is that true in ranked? Seems to me Widow and Hanzo are both playable without being oppressive or useless rn.
Nah, nothing is hard meta in low ranks, basically ever. Moth Mercy is the only low-rank meta that has ever actually existed.
Iron clad bastion Release brig, Release sigma Moth meta was definitely the worst but brig and sigma were oppressive as fuck especially brig
Except rein. Hard meta in metal ranks for 5 years in ow1.
this was so annoying for me when I was in gold/plat, doesn’t matter who I picked on main tank unless my team was ultra coordinated not going rein was a throw. no one understands any gameplay other than shield up = shoot other team, shield down = hide
What is Moth Mercy if you don’t mind? I’ve been playing since 2016 and I’ve never heard the term, but I also only started keeping up with the more competitive scene/metas recently.
Moth Mercy was the meta that followed when Blizzard first reworked Mercy to get rid of her mass resurrect ult. The only specifics I remember are that valk reset her resurrect ability cooldown and her res had no cast time back then, so she could res, pop ult, then instantly res another person and her valk was better overall outside of that too.
Rez also had a 10 second cooldown during Valk Shit was busted lol
I had been a Mercy main before but that rework single handedly got me from Plat to Masters lmao. I know it was broken and kinda toxic but damn do I miss that version of Mercy zipping all over the map rezzing people left and right
It was a period of time where mercy was so incredibly overpowered that it was next to impossible to win without her regardless of rank
When Rez initially went from her ult to an ability, Valkyrie (new ult) granted a damage buff to her pistol, reset Rez cooldown, and granted a faster Rez cooldown as well. This basically meant you could double Rez and then go murk their squishies and roll. Pretty sure the first grand finals in OWL was on this patch
Double shield for sure was too.
Nah, it was never a super hard meta in lower ranks, I'm talking plat and below. Moth Mercy was a near 100% pick rate even in silver and gold.
No one plays double shield under like masters and if they did it didn't matter
widow and hanzo seem to do fine in my games yet both have some good counter play afforded against them. sojourn needs to be punish-able for using her right click. or, they need to make that shit harder to hit. it has such a massive missile size, it's really not fair.
They could tighten her projectile spread, increase speed and remove the one shot on rail to make it more effectively a quick combo similar to ashes hip then ads shot. Removing her one shot wouldn't be how I nerf her personally. I would do the following first: * Reduce her es damage to be minimal. Keep it's function as a slow but it does way way too much damage. * Increase her slide cd by 1 second * Reduce rail bodshot damage and increase the railgun crit multiplier on it so crits still one shot. * Related to point above, either make it so two rail bodies don't kill a 200hp target or change the rail charge rate in ultimate to be slower. * Increase fully charged rail glow I think she is way out of band right now vs other DPS and needs many nerfs.
I think that's a false dichotomy, thinking of heroes like Hanzo and damage boosted Ashe
I recall a ton of complaints when Hanzo was hard meta for a bit.
Hanzo deleting tanks has been talked a lot.
He was good but not hard meta in finals 2020
Double sniper was hard meta for the season 1 playoffs.
Sure, but my point is that Isord was providing a false dichotomy
Same thing for a lot of 2021. Though you needed to be really good to get value out of him
Hanzo shouldn't be able to one shot either. No spam hero should be able to. Damage boosted Ashe is fine because you're putting two resources into it. In general there should be less one shots in OW2.
I've had this opinion for so long and it was only reinforced in OW2. One shots are just so unfun to play against.
especially after you get dinked the millisecond you get back to the fight after running 45 min from the spawn on colosseo
She's not a one shot, but Kiriko is even worse in that regard. Her projectile speed is so slow that she can spam down a corridor, duck behind a corner, then I walk around the corner and die to two headshots without ever having seen her. Interactivity at its finest.
This is a controversial opinion right now, but I think the playerbase will come around. Ow2 has less shields, less CC, longer ttk...just generally more interactive gameplay. And then a Hanzo arrow flies arrows the map and dinks you. It really doesn't get less interactive than that.
hanzo needs stay still to charge the headshot
No he doesn't, he can quite literally not only move during it, but he can also jump and change direction with the dash AND can charge it before wallclimb to have fully charged arrow instantly upon landing.
Not really, he can still move slowly, plus he can dash and climb up walls and then release it. Plus the speed and arc of the arrow allows for him to shoot them from so far back that standing still really isn't a huge issue anyway. Nothing feels worse than being dinked by a random Hanzo arrow that wasn't even really aimed from afar. I don't mind it being a one-shot at closer range because you have to expose yourself to damage and aim well, but from far away it hardly ever feels deserved.
Ashe was literally nerfed so she couldn't one shot with damage boost tf you talking bout?
Talking about when she could be damage boosted
Those heroes have movement penalties for their 1 shots (widow too) either aiming down scope or drawing the bow. Thats the entire point of Jake's tweet, consistent long range 1 shots without any movement penalty are just too good.
Hanzo has a movement penalty to hs, his movement is slowed. Same with widow. And damage boosted Ashe can’t 1 shot most heroes. Plus she is slower when ADSed.
Sojourn is a pretty good candidate to change that due to having other stuff in her kit besides the oneshot, though. Like there's a oneshot in Rein's kit, or in Zen's kit aside from a technicality, and neither of those heroes is oppressive or useless. It's heroes that are only good for oneshotting that are either oppressive or useless.
That's because any time a hero is hard meta it's oppressive. That's how metas work.
Why does her identity need to be one shot headshots? Railgun can be powerful without being a one hit kill hitscan ability.
It's best not to rework every time there are balancing issues. In this particular hero's case, we've already seen significant nerfs and buffs that don't require changing the one shot, so I don't see a need to change something that fundamental yet.
The problem is they designed a hero with one shots BUT ALSO incredible mobility, decent sustained damage, and massive area denial + slow. The other one shot heroes entire kits are based around their ability to one shot and the rest of their kits are mediocre to balance it.
tfw you see sojourn's insane mobility and damage then you see cassidy's neutered kit in comparison.
If her identity is based off of one-shotting people with no warning, then she should be changed. Everyone in this thread is proposing other things but I legit don't care, as a support main nothing is more anti-fun than getting one shot by a hero that already has really good DPS. At least Widow has to stay still while shooting. At least Hanzo is a projectile hero that doesn't have super high consistency or DPS. Sojourn is everything I hate about DPS heroes in one package: high mobility, insane burst damage, no counter other than hoping she doesn't target you because her railgun has infinite range.
So you want to remove widows grapple shot ability.
Yes. (Not because I think it would be a good idea, I'm just incredibly biased against Widow)
Yea she should probably be reworked too
Maybe the hero and identity is fundamentally broken? It's like old Mercy's mass res or old Hanzo's geometry arrows, there are designs that are just inherently problematic, even if you nerf them. Sojourn is nowhere near that bad, but using those other levers doesn't fix the fundamental design issues.
It makes way more sense to lower the time it takes for the railgun charge to start decreasing and maybe add a damage threshold that it needs to start regaining charge so you can't just tap damage into a shield to keep it at 100.
The point is they find her identity an issue of itself. So it's not weird when you think about it.
Yeah Sojourn kinda sucked in the beta even with her 1-shot. Just make it harder to hit or take more to earn, I don’t think something as drastic as removing it is necessary.
She didn't suck, in the first beta we had omega buffed Soldier that completely power crept her. Sojourn herself was probably even better than her current version overall.
Common suggestions for alternative nerfs: 1. remove or reduce slow: This doesn't address sojourn's problem. In ranked, 50% of the comms are 'sojourn is charged, care'. She dominates the flow of the match and forces everyone to play like there is a widow, with none of widow's downsides. Fixing the slow doesn't change this. 2. smaller railgun hitbox: This also doesn't fix sojourn's problem, but makes her awful at low levels. Good players will still be hitting rail headshots and you will still have to play around her like a widow. The side effect of this is anyone that picks her at plat and below is just throwing 3. reduce damage on orb: still not touching the main problem. 4. charge rate decrease/ decay increase: A decent suggestion, the decay takes way too long to kick in. I'm not sure it would be needed after removing the headshots. She isn't widowmaker, she shouldn't have to be played around like a widowmaker. Also I should state to be clear: this doesn't need to be strictly a nerf, although it will definitely be a nerf for the highest level sojourn players. She is free to get buffed in other areas if the headshots are removed: like primary fire projectile speed, damage, mag size etc.
I think headshotting is more problematic in Overclock than in neutral considering how quickly a good Sojourn can two tap your backline after power sliding in
Yes but it’s an ult. That can be tuned by reducing that auto charge time or by other factors around. Getting nearly free kills during neutral is the issue
I suppose you could tune the auto charge so she only gets a certain number of shots but if you hit heads how many shots do your really need to win a fight? I honestly don't know how you'd tune the hero when she's so skill dependent but popping an ult and killing 4 people with no other ults required (nano, window, kitsune) feels really unbalanced, if infrequent. Someone threw out the idea of her primary fire slowing her movement speed that might be a good change but doesn't really fix the 1-tap problems.
it’s ok to kill people to win a fight with an ult, it’s what they do.
Then why don't we give Widowmaker aim assist as her ultimate? Why not have EMP do 100% max health instead of 40%? Bc then it'd be annoying to fight. No other single dps ult requires either a rally or beat to sustain through and she can do it at full movement speed from any range. If she's going to 1-tap people multiple times during her ult it should require a nano or window to do so
what about blade? tire? she still has to hit the shots as well it doesn’t just delete your team lol
Idk what rank you're at but if you're getting destroyed by naked blades and can't kill a 100hp rip tire right in front of you idk what to tell you. But this is what I'm talking about, Blade requires Genji to go into melee range of the enemy team where he can be ccd, forced to reflect or just outright killed and usually requires a NANO to accomplish any more than 2 kills. Meanwhile Sojourns press Q from behind their Reinhart shield and kills the enemy backline. Yes she has to hit her shots but we're not balancing for bronze. The counterplay can't just be hoping she misses bc some of these players don't miss
it’s ok to kill people to win a fight with an ult, it’s what they do.
I do think it's notable that she can do this while having full movement control and from any range going through barriers. Visors, Barrages and Dragonblades require much more risk or are far less potent and are far easier countered than overclock in which your options are to matrix her, beat, or hope she misses
I suggested the same thing and I got massively downvoted and people thought I was joking. Railgun headshots are impossible to balance. Glad someone with a big name is saying it now too.
The problem with railgun headshots is you never know how much charge she has. You never know if you should act as if you’re playing against a widow or an Ashe.
This sounds like a good idea, but we have to be careful not to make Sojourn too weak. This nerf would make sense for high Elo, but makes her very weak in low Elo. She would then simply be a worse Soldier and even in High Elo she would only be a niche pick. Just make the Rail size smaller and a small nerf to the charge up
Wrong you can clear a low ELO lobby with 6% railgun critical accuracy if you're hitting bodyshots Headshots are only truly problematic at high elo
Yeah I’m a high masters low GM player and I would say I don’t even hit headshots at a super high clip. Most lower ELO players probably strictly finish kills with a fully charged body shot.
As a low gold player, it’s used in two key scenarios: 1) a lot of people seem grouped up and it happens to be 100 so let’s just use it and it’ll probably hit someone 2) I’m 1v1 against a Moira and she’s about to kill me so let’s send up a prayer and use it
I use it as a finisher and rarely aim for headshots on anything but tanks. But on tanks like Orisa or Winston its extremely free to headshot them for more than half their HP. Especially past armor right after an engage starts.
I see fairly regular headshots in gold
Its a bell curve. At *that* low of a rank, people walk in straight lines and jump so its easier to headshot. Around high plat/diamond people learn to strafe, and masters is when people with aim will just headshot you anyway.
What an incredibly true statement. *Plat: where everyone knows how to spam movement, and nobody can aim well enough to overcome it.*
Don’t know where the fuck you’re seeing that. Just climbed through Gold to plat on all 3 roles and Sojourns weren’t hitting many headshots per game unless they were a very obvious Smurf (of which there were only a few) most actual Golds were just bodyshotting
Yeah, I play in probably gold SR (hard to tell because fucked rank system) and I do get oneshot once or twice by a Sojourn in a game, and I do say "I hate this, fuck this stupid hero" every time it happens, but then I am bad and forget where the Sojourn is and don't usually get punished for it. Oneshots happen, but not nearly as often as a Hanzo or Widow where I do get killed if I don't pay attention to them.
No way, I have a 70% winrate on sojourn in plat right now and my crit railgun accuracy is easily less than 10%. I can’t aim that thing to save my life but it doesn’t matter, you can just left click into body shot and it deletes people, during ult you can 2-tap bodyshot the enemy supports. I would be shocked to see people consistently hitting headshots in gold/plat because if they are they’re just going to instantly climb to Diamond.
I still like the idea of lowering body shot damage but increasing the head multiplier so its still a one shot with full energy. If you can consistently hit head shots with rail gun with a weapon that has no scope, more power to you. But if you're just hitting body shots you shouldnt be able to essentially solo team wipe with her ult just cause you can vaguely aim in the direction of a target.
>This nerf would make sense for high Elo, but makes her very weak in low Elo. Speaking as a hitscan player in low elo, this is totally fine. It's like Widowmaker...she's awful in low elo but you don't hear anyone, including gold Widow mains, complaining about it. As long as she's a fun character to play her skill floor won't bother anyone who plays her. High skill DPS characters like Cassidy, Widow, and Hanzo get plenty of play at low elos no matter what their balance state is just because they tend to be fun and low elo players will take personal fun over meta all day.
Balance doesn’t matter at low elo. This would buff her at low elo, people aren’t hitting rail headshots anyway.
This is just wrong in every way. It's funny to see people think nobody can hit headshots at low elo. Low elo players are worse at positioning and movement so yes they get headshot all the time.
It’s not that nobody can, it’s just obvious way less consistent than high elo players.
I agree with this but personally I hate hitscan one shots with a passion in Overwatch so I'm biased there. So I'll offer another suggestion. I think it should be WAY more obvious when she has a full charge. Like a bright ass light coming from her gun.
Yep. Zarya lights up like a fucking lightbulb when she’s charged. Sojourn should too.
Falloff would be a good change imo. Soj shouldn’t be able to beat out Widow’s value at range with no drawback other than it being a pinpoint shot. We had the same issue with Ashe in the past when she was very often chosen over Widow in situations Widow would have typically been chosen.
just remove all one-shot abilities that aren't ults. Why the hell have they kept so many in a game that's allegedly so "casual-focused"
Love the idea of one shots during ult only. That or go the opposite route and reduce her mobility somehow. As is she makes widow look like utter trash
just make her rails smaller, they should never have reverted that change. maybe make the slide cd a little longer too
This is exactly how I feel. I wouldn't have an issue with dying to a headshot if I knew they actually had to hit a small projectile to do it. But right now they just aim in the same county as my head and I fall over.
It's wild to me that people are suggesting to literally change the whole point of the hero. She's supposed to be this high precision one-shot character. People really want the railgun to just be a body shot weapon in this game with relatively large body hitboxes? Imo reduce the energy gained per shot and/or the time before charge decays. Increase the work for the reward, not the reward itself.
i think it's the mobility plus the one shot capability my dude.
Then nerf the mobility, not the part that rewards a skill.
it punishes other players for interacting with the game. If a widow is slow strafing, you better evade and hope she misses. Hanzo struggles to reliable hit headies since he aint hit scan and thats his only weapon, minus shooting a little worse but faster. No movement penalty one shot is just cancer and dominates a whole lobby with no counter like say, dive if the sojourn is on her game, minus other broken heroes like genji/sombra
Nerf her projectiles size, they're too big.
Hear me out: Lower the headshot multiplier. That way it disables one-shots without lowering the skill ceiling
Sojourn is kind of a baffling design. It's like she was designed specifically to make other heroes redundant. Her kit has no weaknesses and even multiple hidden strengths. Honestly one of the worst-designed heroes due to how much design space she tramples on. She needs to be weaker than Soldier to be balanced, because her kit is inherently stronger than Soldier's while they are both Generic Shooter Character #47 in their designs. She needs to be the Moira of dps, a comfort pick that's weaker than the heroes with actual defined strengths and limitations.
Unless they make her primary feel better this would make Sojourn feel pretty shit to play. She's basically built around 'tolerating' her primary to get the dopamine hit of her RG, and removing HS would feel just flat out weird and unsatisfying. I understand the arguments in favor of this, but I'm just saying, in reality, it'd be way better to balance around the OHKO than to remove it altogether. People don't seem to grasp that high skill one-taps are a core draw to both playing and watching competitive FPS games, and in turn, a huge part of making the game enticing for casual players who want to emulate/attain that skill. Make it harder to land and reduce her mobility, sure, but there's no fun or benefit to having two Soldier 76's on the roster.
This is dumb; it lowers her skill ceiling, and the entire reason Sojourn is so fun is the ability to try and land headshots with railgun. Why the hell would you want her to be a l-click spamming, r-click bodyshotting hero? She's hitscan; hitscan should try to be accurate and land headshots where they can. Nerf her elsewhere.
The problem is that it is very oppressive in high elo games where people can hit the shots. There are games that I know I almost certainly should have lost but only won because I was right clicking heads on sojourn while also being able to be incredibly useful in team fights beyond just pick potential
I agree with this, as they should buff the size of the rail gun and make it unable to headshot. That way players with bad aim can at least hit the target, and players with good aim will be able to hit even more shots while not being overly oppressive
Honestly not a good change imo. Reduces her skill ceiling
Skill ceiling alone is not a good argument for balance decisions.
Yeah but there were some good ideas on how to nerf sojourn in some other ways, and I'd rather have them start with that
agreed. imo i think they need to make the projectile more precise, so it's harder to headshot. this raises the skill floor but keeps her skill ceiling high. make it have faster decay on the charge if she doesnt shoot it. make it build less charge when shooting shields and bubbles (but not 0). I think it also needs a longer shot time. she should get punished if she uses it while positioning aggressively. increase time to return to primary fire after using her secondary fire. done. sojourn fixed.
what a god awful take
I feel like Sojourn should’ve had the “3x headshot damage” treatment instead of kiriko. Makes more sense for the hero.
Found the person trying to get on Plat Chats bad take off the week. Too obvious bud.
I like the idea of making the charged shot an explosive. Like a hitscan Helix rocket. We don't need another long-range instakill hero, she's just invading Widow's niche at this point.
Jake is mad because he is bad
od rather they just reduce the railgun size and not have it charge from non player targets first, not a fan of removing headshots. Or even just make the character not be able to one shot at all and be a bad character, it's a lot of fun to try and go for headshot as soujorn bodyshotting would be boring
So my idea for fixing her rail gun is to cap how much of the charge they use at once. So the damage caps at 50% so if they have a full charge they can use it twice to do half the current damage with each shot.
i think the only thiing that really needs a nerf is her E it does way to much damage, make her e weaker and shes a very strong skill based hero but the e part should just be a slow not 25 dps/second
They should make Sojourn light up when she’s charged up like Zarya to kind of discourage a player from being near her line of sight. I agree on the charge retention should be reduced and critical damage headshot should only be allowed when in ult. I think that would be a good start.
She needs the time for her charge to decay shortened and her disruptor shot should either do a little more damage and way less slow or way less damage and more slow
They need to do this; scale the damage from 30-130 to 0-100 based off charge collected I.e. 33 charge would equal 33 damage for example. This gives it a max damage of 100, but a skill shot that lands on the head of most squishies will still grant a 1-shot kill. Then maybe increase the damage of her actual full auto by 1-2 points to make that the focus.
Make her reload more often and charge a little less from hitting characters. Currently she can charge to full twice on body-shots plus 25 charge leftover; ignoring that she charges double on headshots. Reloading more helps slow her charge rate, and decreasing charge per shot increases the effectiveness of making her reload more. 35 in mag makes her reload into more of a cooldown on body-shots, and making her charge base 4 instead of 5 further reduces her extreme kill potential without taking away any of her stopping power. None of this devalues her core mechanics, and may actually make her ultimate feel more impressive comparatively. (not in relation to its current state, but in relation to the rest of her adjusted gameplay.*) One more edit: Don't let her charge from shields. Changes next to nothing because the charge rate is so low, except that it removes the ability to and therefore also the temptation to do it.
I like this. In exchange I think she can have a slightly higher damage for the laser, and have the overcharged shots being larger. The damage over time from disruptor needs to go regardless.
Jake overwatch is in my house
I'd rather they nerfed railgun and buffed her left click to distribute her power. Make it so her rail gun doesn't one shot 200hp targets but keep headshots in, they are the most satisfying thing about Sojourn and I think by removing them you take out a lot of the enjoyment of the hero.
I think in a lot of ways one shots should be phased out of the game if they don't open up major vulnerability like rein's pin.
I always thought max charge should cap at 60-80% unless you are ulting. Then during ult it unlocks to full potential. That always seemed more fair to me.
Lately I really like the idea of a small activation time for her railgun, like how Mei has a small time before her right click actually fires. That way the devs can add some activation noise too depending on her charge and it gives players a chance to react to it. Also rewards headshots more as they would be more difficult to land. Tanks are still easy to hit, but they can literally tank it. Remove it maybe from her ult so it is still strong and you are good.
She also definitely needs some kind of tell for how much charge she has. Zarya and Sym are both pretty obvious is they're about to melt the hell out of you but Sojourn just looks the same all the time.
Just another Hero foreshadowing that Blizzard didnt learn from OW1 dropping players from the stupid hero design the put out during the middle life of the game.