It's not been long at all, since the new, barrier-killing patch hit the live servers, but in the past few days, I've begun seeing a few meta-based patterns in my Competitive matches, and I thought it'd be fun to share some of those with all of you this Sunday. For those of you who are new to The Plat Player's Perspective, my name is Proilios, and welcome to the game balance section of my blog, AKA The OverThinker.





To give you all an overview, I play in the mid-plat to high diamond Elo, and what I'm about to share is solely based on what I've seen in my own games on the new patch. This is not a tutorial by any means; just a short summary of my observations.













1. I've barely seen any Bastion play.

Since barriers were nerfed, it's no surprise that Bastion is seeing less playtime. Even though he's better at getting damage across to his enemies now, he himself has less protection, which is why he's going to have niche uses in the short run according to me. He was frankly a beast while Double Barrier was as dominant as it was, but right now, you'd be better off running a different DPS unless your team is ultra-coordinated.





2. There's a massive rise in Brigitte players.

The armour buff has led to an unnatural rise in popularity for our anti-dive Swedish brawl queen. A lot of people, however, seem to be under the misconception that she is a replacement for Lúcio, preferring to pick her even if the enemy has ultimate combos that can be countered much more easily if Sound Barrier is available on hand. It's a little unfortunate when you're stuck with a Brig against a really good Junkrat player who's getting RIP-tire and shredding your team every other fight, or a Genji-Ana duo that keeps pumping out effective Nanoblades, which could actually be stalled or denied entirely with a good Beat. That's the thing with Overwatch though, isn't it? There's not a lot of places you can learn things like where to pick Lúcio over Brig and vice-versa, or how to counter certain ultimates/combos. You just have to try your best, put your team before yourself, and play the best you can with the knowledge you've got. Everything works if you can make it, but in a place like ranked, where coordination and teamwork isn't available in sufficient quantities, it's almost always ideal to go for surefire solutions to problems rather than experiment and try to force certain strategies/comps to work.



3. Most players still think D.Va is a trash pick.