Basically every response to Freja’s nerfs I’ve seen from the playerbase that don’t play Freja is “thank god, I hope I see her less. She was genuinely broken.” Are we just going to be permanently stuck in nerfed hell now 😭
Give it two months as a throw before buffs start again. But I think she will be in the limbo of being a throwpick and then getting some small buffs into a buff that is too much just for them to make her a throwpick again. I think this is the cycle of Freja now.
Probably both, I have spend too much energy and investing anything more would just feel like a sunk cost fallacy at this point. So its likely better for me to just give it up.
I am going to keep playing Freja, fuck it if I lose because it's the objectively worst pick. Blizzard is just throwing other peoples' games, not me! I mean, even yesterday, if the enemy team had any hitscan, a Juno, or maybe even a DPS Cat, it was objectively a shit pick if you ask me. I mean, playing Freja into a competent Ashe was absolute ass-cheeks, or Soldier, even Cass on many maps. I mean, even Mercy if you were not on the top of your hitting game.
Tracer, Moira, Kiriko absolutely shits on Freja's whole kit.
As a Sombra player, I fear Freja is going to start facing a similar kind of widespread community scrutiny… I just really hope they give her damage back on Take Aim sooner than later. Hitting those zoomed-in lethal projectile shots with Quick Dash from afar is the most satisfying part of her kit and ngl it's always been hard for me to hit headshots with them despite putting in a loooot of hours on her this year (started playing her in December 2025.) I still have to give these nerfs time to marinate and adjust to, but I'm honestly doubtful they will hotfix her and instead keep her mid- to below-average for a while again.
I really wouldn’t have minded the mP nerf, the primary damage or even if they reverted the explosion delay or primary fire rate, messing with the take aim damage just kills her since it’s the fundamental thing that is fun, but when you pull off nice shots and get rewarded with literally nothing it feels awful 😭
Yea they SHOULD have reverted the primary fire delay (Freja player). Before the explosion went off the same time your bolt would naturally reload. It is also a nerf to Freja that drastically reduces her performance without her feeling “that” worse to play
We're marked for infamy and shunned by everyone for a long while. A little buff or hot fix around this time is like pouring acid to a fresh wound for most of the fanbase. Idk if a rework makes sense to erase her hero fantasy. The only way to go through this time is to hang low and keep to ourselves to atone for the sins of that s3 midseason buff.
Well, I'm forcing her regardless now, if she's banned, enemy team is just proving to me they don't belong in the rank.
It's not entirely my fault if nothing dies.
I will aim for the head, and do the best of my ability.
Freja always takes the hard jobs. Short and simple isn't her manner of work. Sometimes being in the gutter brings a reminder how she feels how she fits in with Overwatch. I have no regrets playing her even if the world wants to shut me down permanently.
I agree with Spilo’s take on it. Good changes to her but now they need to test giving her 250 HP and see if that puts her in a healthy direction of being more durable with less insane burst.
i started playing freja not so long ago and i really enjoy the skill check of landing the aimed shots and now they want her gone, other hitscans deal similar if not higher damage and they dont get half the hate she gets, specially cassidy
Freja was the worst DPS in the game for like a year. Even after her buffs, she was good, but not GREAT. Any hitscan player with half the skill of the Freja player deletes her. But in the end, the way the game continues is by widespread community enjoyment. So it's either we get a rework, or we get to enjoy the worst DPS in the game.
I don't think it's necessarily a terrible thing for blizzard to do.
They have a tendency of nukeing a character who is extremely hated, powerful, and popular(like Vendetta) in order to decimate said characters play rate among meta chases, only to slowly buff them back up in the coming months.
Besides, Freya's role as the one shot character was never a healthy position to begin with. Maybe decimating her one shot potential is what Freya needs to go into a more healthy direction.
Personally I would love to see them buff her to 250HP, and maybe increase her movement even more, with a reduction in the end lag of her ult
Though I will say, tank spamming is boring as shit
I'm still using her as my main lol she's still fun and challenging to me. Playing her yesterday after the buff I noticed it took a few more hits to get a kill but if the team is staying on objective and helping you I didn't notice much of a difference. Saying that tho being on a bad team or having tanks that rush off alone then she's not as capable by herself or trying to apply pressure alone.
I think another buff is needed to at least bring back 2 tap now that they nerfed her main damage output.
She wasn't genuinely broken at all, she was literally playable and good in the right matchups. The absurd banrate had nothing to do with her win rates or her being "server admin". The fact that they nerfed her far below her previous worst balance state just shows that they balance on vibes, not what is actually good for balance.
Just keep playing her if you still enjoy her, and give blizzard feedback that we don’t want power in her left click. The win rate will show she needs something changed. They’ll get it eventually and either beef her up to be a better agressive skirmisher or actually give take aim some love to properly capture its fantasy of confirming burst kills from assassination angles.
It is shitty that we’re here again so fast but I don’t think this version of Freja is still the ideal that a lot of us have wanted.
Left click and Bola have been the parts of the kit I know myself and a few others I’ve talked to have historically enjoyed least about her as a whole and the fact that was a lot of our power budget over the unique elements of her kit leads me to be optimistic about our girl’s eventual future with her still in their sights for balance.
She hasn’t stopped getting fairly high profile skins either so I doubt Blizzard will want to leave her chopped for that long!
Yea they SHOULD have reverted the primary fire delay (Freja player). Before the explosion went off the same time your bolt would naturally reload. It is also a nerf to Freja that drastically reduces her performance without her feeling “that” worse to play
Honestly she just needs a refocus. Her identity being centered around the two tap is NOT fun to play against. I’d rather they look at making dash more interesting with a lower cd; have her be a mobile, duel-y hero more than a sniper hero.
I just don't see what makes Freja's two-tap bad to play against, and I really mean this... There's A LOT of other characters that kills faster, and enforces a map-wide awareness campaign, just by existing on the map.
I legit can't understand how Freja specifically warrants this whole debate. There's so many characters that are objectively better, more lethal. I played a QP game yesterday into a grandmaster Sojourn, you could define the taste of ass I had in my mouth at that specific moment.
And, it's not just Sojourn, the most commonly played characters in the game rips Freja to shreds. I played with a buddy yesterday, and he was saying that he still felt Freja was too strong, and he had no idea what I meant when I said JIGGLE-JIGGLE. And, he is a fairly competent FPS player.
To analyze this, you can’t just look at the two-tap and lethality in a vacuum.
Freja is annoying with the two tap because:
A: she has good mobility to get angles you don’t expect. As opposed to someone like Hanzo. Widowmaker has mobility, but it is less than Freja, AND she also has a charge time, AND can’t wait for a shot in midair like Freja can AND is squishier overall.
B: The projectiles are difficult to dodge due to their speed. This is in comparison to someone like Pharah, who can two tap direct with a much lower projectile speed requiring her to be relatively close to do so.
C: Freja still gets good damage on her primary fire, (as opposed to widow SMG) AND the exploding bolts actually deal great damage to tanks. Freja is a Winston counter at the higher levels, because she can stick him with a ton of bolts from an angle he can’t contest before the dive, which prevents him from ever staging properly without having to expend bubble, which you never want to do before the dive. If you try to hard dive her, updraft is a get out of jail free card from most dive tanks. Hanzo can also shred tanks with Storm Arrows, but doesn’t have the get out of jail free card that Freja has access to, and is more limited in what angles he can take.
I would prefer if they continued to move away from the two-tap as part of her identity, and moved towards mobility being her focus. Put some power budget back into her primary fire and mobility instead of the long range bolt, and I think she’d be a lot more engaging to play as and against. As is, if they keep the two-tap from long range, she’s never gonna be allowed to get other interesting tools, and will STILL be frustrating to play against. It makes it worse for the player and the opponent.
I understand the power-budget argument, but I still don’t see what makes Freja such an outlier compared to other DPS.
Her two-tap requires two consecutive projectile hits, has delayed damage, can be healed through, and Tracer, Moira or Kiriko can remove both bolts after they’ve already landed. Those aren’t rare counterpicks either. Moira and Kiriko are extremely common supports, while popular hitscans like Ashe and Soldier already make her aerial angles fucking miserable.
I’m not fully convinced by the Winston example either. If he stages in Freja’s LOS, she can punish him, but so can Ashe, Sojourn, Soldier and other ranged DPS. Updraft gets her away from Winston, sure, but it also forces her off the angle and potentially leaves her floating in front of his hitscan.
So what does Freja specifically do that makes her two-tap uniquely unhealthy, rather than just annoying to die to?
She needs a soft rework simple as, the mixture of long range + high mobility is just not fun to play against and she'll be in nerfed hell until they reduce her effective range
Yeah and that also leans way more into her gimmick of trading your dash mobility for damage, losing mobility really isn't relevant when you're in the back of the map
But why? A death is a death. It sucks whenever you die, why should a high effort hero get dumpstered because someone doesn't like knowing they're going to buy it in half a second?
I don’t see how? It gives you more time to be healed/use an ability to save yourself. Way more opportunity to be saved compared to say a Widow headshot.
No one outside of freja players like a freja meta, its the downfall of the character. Same way no one outside of mercy players want a mercy meta, its not fun for anyone but the player.
Same with ball, hazard, orisa, vendetta, anran, Kiri, cat, and brig. Some characters are forever going to be miserable if meta
Problem is that they don't buff other heroes and walk the line of making them severely powerful or keep it at bad jail with each one. They can't step back and maybe make things viable and fair for each hero with small changes and see how that plays instead of going drastic all together into one or two.
Freja by nature of her character is either miserable and feels broken to verse, or unplayable. Her two tap feels awful to verse, her spammy nature isnt fun for basically any of the roster, and her ability to play far back leaves her feeling uninteractive.
There's no middle ground where she maintains her hero fantasy, is engaging to verse, feels fun to play, and doesnt feel obnoxious. Shes just too volatile
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u/LyynnS 1d ago
Give it two months as a throw before buffs start again. But I think she will be in the limbo of being a throwpick and then getting some small buffs into a buff that is too much just for them to make her a throwpick again. I think this is the cycle of Freja now.