If you are a casual Overwatch player than you will probably agree that Brigitte is one of the most annoying heroes to ever be introduced to the game, maybe second only after Doomfist. A lot of this annoyance comes from the sheer amount of cc that she’s able to output rendering you unable to play the game that you dearly love. According to Geoff, Blizzard has finally started experimenting with Brig nerfs and have now settled on a nerf to her Shield Bash.
The change that they are planning to make to Shield Bash is that it will be unable to hit through barriers. This change will probably nerf Brigitte quite a bit when the opposing team has a Reinhardt. Now she will be unable to use her Shield Bash as a form of engage as long as the Reinhardt does his job of protecting his team.
While this change is certainly a step in the right direction it won’t really hurt Brigitte too much once a chaotic fight actually breaks out. Most Reinhardts won’t have their shield up throughout an entire fight and thus Brigitte will be able to Shield Bash away. She now most likely use it to go onto squishy and supports instead of focusing her cc on the tank.
If you love playing as Brigitte than you probably have the UK’s Overwatch team to thank for spoiling the fun of her Shield Bash. With their nearly perfect Brigitte + Reinhardt combos they managed to defeat teams that were, on paper, a lot stronger than the UK team. This most likely highlighted how strong the Brigitte + Reinhardt combo is when Brigitte can stun Reinhardt through his shield and is most likely why the change has been made.
At the highest level of play, this change might even impact Zarya more than Brigitte as Zarya was one of the few counters against the Reinhardt + Brigitte combo, as long as she managed to use her bubble at the right moment. Now that this combo will most likely be removed from the game, Zarya is not mandatory to protect her team against this combo anymore.
Overall the change is mostly a nerf to the Shield Bash and Earth Shatter combo that we saw the UK national team utilize so skillfully. If this change does go through to live, and it most likely will according to Geoff, it will probably not have a huge impact on Brigitte and won’t really be the change that many casual Overwatch players are looking for.
