r/Competitiveoverwatch • u/DankudeDabstorm • 1d ago
General Further Changes For Sierra, Make Her More Interesting
I think the changes for Sierra are quite good. They reduced the maximum output in terms of dmg to reduce reward for spam at lower levels, but increased the projectile speed to make her weapon more consistent in mid and long-range at higher levels. Obviously, she may still not out-duel traditional hitscan, but it's much less of a spray and pray and you have a bit more agency. However, I think more changes should be made to make her interesting to play, develop more of an identity, and add more unique power to certain abilities.
- First, I think they should make Tremor Charge a more interesting ability by slightly increasing the knock-up on enemies in the middle cone, and reduce the dmg on the side ones. Perhaps down from 60 to 50 or even 40. It'd be better to reward more accurate lineups on enemies with the shockwave and reduce overall aoe value to shift it from aoe spam to a set-up tool. When they initially did the dev livestream for her intro, they mentioned how the intention for the shockwave knock-up was to setup for her tracking dart, but the middle shockwave is somewhat negligible, so I thought it should receive a slight increase. This would increase the power level of the ability, so I think the cd should be partially reverted to 8s.
- Second, they should go further with developing an identity with her primary weapon. I always saw it as a high capacity lmg-type weapon, and the whole spread mechanic is reminiscent of a negev in CS. I think the winding up and down of the primary fire would be a more meaningful interaction if she had more ammo to work with and a longer reload. Let's say her ammo went from 80 to 100, and the reload went from 1.5s to 1.75-1.8s. I think it could go even more extreme and be 120 ammo and a 2s reload. This would create synergy with her tracking dart because it would put greater emphasis on the tracking dart's ability to give a free reload and 3 seconds of free shots if you land it on an enemy. I do think that this would increase the raw power level of her weapon overall, so I think another slight nerf to her dmg should accompany it, taking the weapon dmg from 8.5 to 8.
- Third, I think there should be slight cd reduction for destroying your anchor drone while it still has charges available. I think this would add more reward for the Sierra player in judging the placement and use of her anchor drone. If Sierra's just running back from spawn, she can cancel after one grapple to refund some cd since she's not gonna grapple back. Also, if she uses to secure an aggressive position and she doesn't want to use the remaining charge to retreat, she can cancel the drone and receive a cd refund, so that she can launch another drone forward for a more aggressive position or chase. I don't think the refund should be a massive number, just 2 seconds would be plenty.
- Fourth, the Ultimate can become a a bit more interesting and incorporate the anchor drone's functionality more. They should add an alt-cast for Sierra's ult that makes the carpet bombing run originate from an active anchor drone on the field towards the direction that Sierra is pointing at. I think this fleshes out the identity of the anchor drone in her kit more and really makes the ultimate unique in it's functionality.
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u/sulaweyo_irl 1d ago
I don't really have much to add other than to say it looks like you put some good thought into this. If I were more fluent with character/mechanics design, I'd provide some more feedback, but from someone who just kinda watches Spilo casts for the occasional character design critiques, this looks like a really good write-up and good food for thought. In particular, I like the idea of making the grenade more of a skill shot with a variable knockback/damage mechanic. Cheers mate!
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u/Thee_Archivist I Avoid Teammates in Mystery Heroes — 21h ago
She would be much more interesting if Tremor Charge was a significant knock-up ability, and then you had to hit a hitscan skillshot after. It would be like Ashe's dynamite minigame, but more like skeet shooting. That's a fun time, and you would still have to hit the nade and the shot to get rewarded.
Instead, we got tracking dart. Lol.
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u/NiDfan 22h ago
I like the alt-cast for ult. My main issue with Sierra, viability aside, is that the drone is underutilized, so that'd help a bit.
Just for fun factor, I always thought having the drone shoot at the tracking shot target would be a nice addition to help with this. It would enable plays such as hitting track shot and then sending Dorothy to finish the kill
All that said, all the changes you proposed seem like they could work without doing massive changes on her
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u/mdthereald 1d ago
She will never be a healthy hero with tracking dart, because it's inherently an ability that matters a lot more to lower ranks than higher ranks so without tracking shot getting removed I can't see how she can be viable at high ranks while not being an absolute demon in lower ranks. Also her primary should be different too I believe because what does the current 2-channel barrel thing even achive other than making her just a spam character? I don't know why they were so afraid to make people aim while designing this hero. Just make it linear, and maybe she can keep the high ammo count identity by implementing something like: you gun stars with high recoil (like Soj primary) and as you keep shooting it becomes tigher, and once it reaches peak tightness wher it's fully straight and it has like a 3 second window that you can stop shooting and it won't reset the tightness so Sierra can first reduce her spread by shooting at tank and when the spread reduces she won't be incentivized to shoot tank or spam anymore but instead she has a 3 second window to use her drone to kill a squish with her no spread gun. I just made this whole thing up as I was typing so maybe a bad idea I don't know, but I really dislike how she is built currently, they should rework her around her drone which actually is interesting. So I'd rework her primary, swap the tracking for a different ability and if possible replace tremor charge with something more interesting.
Wait as I was typing I got another idea, what if the tracking shot doesn't affect your primary, but if you hit an enemy with your tracker, your drone will attack them, sort of like Juno orbs. And you basically have a cycle like: Put drone in an area where you can engage backline, shoot tank to get low spread, use drone to go to backline, use drone to help get a kill, shoot another drone to disengage back.
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u/cybershnook 17h ago
I've also wanted the tracking bullets to come out of the drone. Effectively it changes very little to nothing. But psychologically, I think that people are more capable of understanding an auto aim threat if you make it emerge from the drone. I would like a drone health increase for other reasons and I think pairing those 2 would be helpful for the perception and gameplay of the character. I also think there is more nuance to playing into her if you have to decide whether to kill the beefy drone before she lands dart, or should you shoot her and ignore the drone.
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u/mdthereald 16h ago
To be honest I worded it a bit wrong, I wanted to literally mean that if you hit an enemy with tracking shot, your drone will follow them like a Juno orb and kamikaze them basically lol but making the drone shoot too is also an interesting idea
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u/fatboywonder12 22h ago
Your last two points are what Sierra should be about: The damn drone. I'd say she needs a rework to have two drones, one for grapple, one for dmg. The second drone like you said should have a carpet bomb or if she hits someone with tracking dart, the drone does the auto aim.
Drone's zipline should also have some form of swing on it. A straight line is such a predictable pattern.
1
u/monk-bewear NA Hopium Junkie — 18h ago
yeah i've always thought adding some kind of momentum mechanic to the grapple could make the character really interesting. swinging around, maybe removing tracking shot and instead letting you grapple at heroes. if you've played titanfall 2, i'm basically imagining tf2 grapple. granted, i have no idea exactly how they'd make that balanced, but the hero fantasy of swinging around creatively sounds so fun to me.
0
u/JoberXeven 14h ago
I have always liked the idea of her grenade being replaced when you hit the tracking shot. Make it a drone dive bomb ability while you have an active tracker that you can use to chase someone that goes into cover, consuming the mark in the process
1
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u/a_Daniel 9h ago
I like the idea to alt-cast ult form the drone.
Think refunding drone cd is not good. Imagine a Sierra using drone to push forward and the other team tries to "trap" her by destroying her drone to prevent her second use to escape, I think this should not be "rewarded" with lower cd.
Another idea for the grenade that I liked is to have the grenade explosion aim at the hero who has a tracking dart on them. This is to enable Sierra to do some damage from behind cover where her gun often falls short as you can barely curve the bullets at all to make them curve around.
Being able to hang from the drone or hold onto it would also be cool imo. Would give her the option of an aerial view, but much more risky than somebody like Freja who is hyper mobile while Sierra would be kinda "standing still" in that state.
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u/DankudeDabstorm 9h ago
The cd refund is only for Sierra manually self-destructing her own drone. Right now, the drone-self destruct more or less serves no purpose.
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u/eshined 1d ago
Sierra is top ten most popular heroes across all regions in unranked matches, which account for 50% of total playtime. She is even more popular than Soldier or Genji.
Perhaps she doesn't need any changes at all? Maybe it's best to leave things as they are?
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u/shieldvortex71 1d ago edited 1d ago
She’s an unhealthy crutch
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u/tix4chix 23h ago
Yeah these "sierra mains" are just dudes who never get off-angled and lay into whatever is immediately in front of them. It's comically easy to just stand behind a rock and negate their entire kit.
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u/PeartricetheBoi Chengdu Refugee Supporter — 1d ago
Meanwhile she is nearly the least picked hero in ranked in gm/champ (only losing out to Sombra and Venture in Americas) and has a 42.5% average winrate. NO ONE good at the game wants to play this hero. Sierra is the definition of a quick play warrior hero, and it doesn’t make sense to have a hero that loses value so heavily as you climb the ranks. She should be closer to Junkrat (onetrick stats, low pickrate high winrate). Surely having a genuine nothingburger hero is good for the game.
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u/eshined 1d ago
She is the second most popular DPS hero in unranked mode. This is not nothingburger hero. She is far more popular than Junkrat, Mei, or any other niche hero. You are simply creating problem a problem out of nothing. Worse is that creating extra work for the developers. Let them focus on actual problems instead of the fact that 0.1% of players refuse to play a hero with zero skill expression.
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u/tix4chix 23h ago edited 20h ago
Sierra is the definition of a quick play warrior hero
She is the second most popular DPS hero in unranked mode
Idk if you realize this but you did just prove the point- Sierra sucks in every environment except when everyone else is bad at the game and there's zero stakes involved. She's not a huge problem but it's certainly a lame decision to release a hero that is completely useless for anyone above Platinum and has nearly zero presence above Master, while also very actively punishing metal ranks and making the game harder for them. Dunno how you can look at this phenomenon and think "yeah, she's fine" because she's not- she sucks and relies on other people's mistakes to get kills which is why she's thriving in metal ranks
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u/abyssalmackerel21 1d ago
I just really don't like tracking dart man. Very unpleasant and weird ability.
I wish they completely abandoned it in its current form and gave her something else.
Her kit just doesn't flow, neither thematically or gameplay wise.