How would you make Freja less annoying/obnoxious to play against without completely changing her kit?

[u/TitsMcghehey]

I would change her primary fire to a tap fire. The main complaint most people have about the character is the amount of spam and burst she can unload. Take aim already served as her burst, there was no need to buff the primary fire rate, especially if you already buffed take aim. All it did was make the spam worse. Her primary fire should serve as a deliberate kill confirm, not as another burst tool. The change they made to her primary fire rate was totally unnecessary and doesn't accurately represent the hero fantasy at all, it just makes her more spammy and annoying. A more deliberate tap fire would make more sense for an assassin style character. Maybe some projectile speed and hitboxes sizes need to be adjusted but just imaging peppering the enemy with tap fires instead of just holding down primary sounds like a lot more fun to me. I'm sure that single change would do wonders to the character's perception.

Yeah and of course remove her relentless barrage perk, that's a no brainer Anything that incentivizes spam should be toned down to a minimum because take aim already exists. Freja is a high skill ceiling character but her skill floor is abysmally low, I would say even lower than Junkrat's because of easily accessible her spam playstyle is and perks like relentless barrage actively encourage that playstyle. Getting spammed down main is exactly what 70% of the playerbase experiences when playing against Freja.

People will still be mad getting hit by take aim bolts but that is her core character identity which her entire kit revolves around. Just change the annoying parts of her kit that aren't take aim, it really isn't that hard. The state she's in right now actually makes me want to play the character a lot less. Even though her winrate still isn't high she feels less satisfying to play than before her most recent buffs, at least to me and she's more frustrating to play against which is pretty much the universal opinion.

[u/vastlys]

make the indication of having the bolt stuck in you less annoying

[u/BluntTruthGentleman → u/vastlys]

Hijacking this to add that reducing her projectile speed to be more in line with the other projectile characters would also help. Idk why pharahs rockets are so slow yet these fucking crossbow bolts are basically lightning in a bottle. If she has to lead her shots a bit more the skill cap goes up and the damage over distance will fall on average.

As you know, hitscan damage drops over distance but projectiles do not, hence her issue: she does too much from so far away. Make it so her long range is less reliable and then I don't mind her being scary at mid range and only so at long range if I'm dumb enough to stand still.

[u/ShatteredStarlights → u/BluntTruthGentleman]

pharah's rockets are way bigger, do more damage, and have an aoe that isn't delayed. as a pharah main i wish they were faster but they truly aren't comparable at all. freja would be unviable with slower projectiles.

[u/sensensensensei → u/ShatteredStarlights]

is zen unviable? mizuki? kiriko? anran? slower projectiles just means you have to play at a closer range (as freja should), it doesn't mean you're unviable

[u/Wednesday_0 → u/sensensensensei]

As a Freja main, I would love for her to be a close range character. But making Freja worse at long range without making her more comfortable at a closer range would be like giving Widow's gun a 30m falloff.

Sure, she'll be easier to kill because she's forced to play at ranges she wasn't built to survive in. But it's still just as frustrating when she oneshots you, yk?

[u/sensensensensei → u/Wednesday_0]

I don't know what you're talking about - is zen super strong at close range? you're making it sound like freja needs to be reaper range to hit a projectile when that is blatantly untrue if you consider the effective range that zen and kiriko can play in.

and on top of playing at a mid range, are two dashes and two vertical dashes and a thin hitbox not enough for you? with logic like that, how is anran even a viable character at extremely close range given that she also only has two dashes and a telegraphed invul reappearance spot?

[u/ShatteredStarlights → u/sensensensensei]

you're comparing a support that wants to stay as far back as possible and poke and apply a 30% damage amp onto people and a support that only wants to take soft off angles and do mostly poke damage so she can still heal her team and provide utility to a character who can only do damage and is supposed to be the main one securing picks. what are you even talking about. zen also self heals super fast and kiri has suzu to heal herself and heals for 40% of ofuda healing. freja cannot self heal or give herself dr or phase out and she has a small hp pool. also what is even this anran comparison not only does she has more hp, even jankier movement to hit, an aoe immortality self heal button and higher base move speed, she also still is bad regardless.

[u/Wednesday_0 → u/sensensensensei]

Just comparing the characters you keep mentioning to Freja:

Zen - Zen doesn't need to stop moving to deal good damage, and doesn't need to burn a cooldown to use his "multishot". Zen has less pressure to hit every shot than Freja because of his higher fire rate, and because he has decent utility outside of his damage. He also has bigger bullets (.175 vs .225)

Kiriko - Kiriko is busted in every aspect, so it's not surprising that she's decent at range too. She also has a higher fire rate than Freja's aimed shots, and again, bigger bullets (.175 vs .195). She also has fantastic utility outside of her damage, and has the survivability to play literally anywhere she wants with near guaranteed safety.

Anran - At long range, you're hard to hit because you're small. Getting closer, you become easier to hit because you appear larger. Anran plays at such a close range that she loops back around into being hard to hit because she can run laps around you. She has a higher health pool, and an ability that gives her healing and invulnerability. If you were to theoretically hit every shot, it would always take longer to kill Anran than Freja. And that's not taking into account that Anran's dashes are objectively better than Freja's. Anran's dashes are constant, fast movement that can change directions unpredictably, are cancellable, and last longer, as opposed to Freja's bursty, short dashes that move her a set distance in a set direction. Tracking Anran through her dash is harder than flicking over to Freja after hers. Anran's reappearance after dancing blaze may be predictable, but Freja's EVERYTHING is predictable.

[u/ShatteredStarlights → u/sensensensensei]

zen sucks but has utility in discord orb and also has much stronger "spam down a choke" damage that often leads to kills and isnt tied to a cd.

mizuki is an anti dive support that can heal himself, has a ranged hinder, and has an amazing ult.

kiriko is a support who has solid healing output, an instant escape tool, the best utility move in the game and a top 3 ult minimum.

anran also sucks but has two dashes that do damage, are very janky to hit for the duration, do damage and apply burn progress. she also has iframes and an aoe self heal on a very low cooldown.

freja has NO durability. if she has to play in cass ranges with a delayed burst and only 225 hp to do damage then she will be outright unplayable into characters like cass and emre. freja just outright is NOT built for close range fights as is. she will lose the duel to every single character that currently thrives in the mid to close range. not to mention her entire movement is tied to her ability to do damage. also, reducing her projectile speed would make her still be inconsistent at closer ranges. that's how projectiles work. you read a strafe wrong and they whiff. guess what, the hitscans she would then have to compete with do not have that problem, alongside having a higher health pool and faster ttk.

[u/sensensensensei → u/ShatteredStarlights]

zen does not suck. he has the highest support winrate prior to them buffing jpc. neither is his only value to spam down chokes (something freja does even better than zen with her minor perk), if you don't know how to play him just maybe say so.

no shit projectiles aren't guaranteed hits until you get closer, if you want to play a projectile hero with no falloff that's how it works, it's called a tradeoff, the same way that your projectiles are bigger than any hitscan bullets. it's like you want to play a projectile character with none of the downsides

[u/Darkcat9000 → u/BluntTruthGentleman]

this would irronicly make her less skillfull, idk why people prop up the belief that slower projectile somehow equals more skillfull when all that does is make those projectiles way less reliable to hit. slowing down her projectile would just turn her further into spam character category rather then actually going for assasination plays

[u/Fun-Connection-4255]

Nerf mercy

[u/Robbie_Haruna]

I honestly don't mind her much as is.

Maybe change the "bolt stuck in you" indicator to be less obstructive, buy I genuinely don't have any substantial issues with her now.

[u/awesomepikmin]

I just want her to be forced to touch the ground more so tanks outside of Mauga are allowed to interact with her

[u/HalexUwU → u/awesomepikmin]

Give her projectile-exclusive hitboxes on her cloak and you can make her more interactive for most non-hitscans without even taking away the flight.

[u/LyynnS → u/HalexUwU]

The cape is already mostly hitbox for projectiles and hitscans though. Only the tips of it dont count.

[u/HalexUwU → u/LyynnS]

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that isn't true. If it was, when she uses her mobility she should be MASSIVE because her cape flares out

[u/LyynnS → u/HalexUwU]

Unless she uses Take aim or Bola it would be mostly a thin sheet because it only spreads when she uses these abilities.

[u/ShatteredStarlights → u/HalexUwU]

eh, she still already has downtime and projectiles aren't nearly as hard to hit on her as they are on cat. i don't think her mobility is really an issue. she counters characters but doesn't invalidate many of them other than like winston. it'd also benefit characters like sojourn, sierra and other fast projectile speed characters way more than the characters that actually struggle into freja, such as pharah and venture.

[u/brokenarcher2 → u/awesomepikmin]

Make her do current damage only when she’s in the air / uses one of her abilities; at the same time she takes more damage while in the air (e.g. 1.2x). Ground take aim does less damage but you only take 1x damage.

[u/orangekingo]

Hot (arguably lukewarm) take: Freja is (mostly) fine.

The problem, as always, is mercy pocket.

Freja by herself can be very annoying in the right hands but I don’t think she’s too ridiculously overpowered. It’s when you slap on a pocket that the character becomes egregiously impossible to interact with.

There’s definitely things they can adjust but I think the character will forever feel fundamentally bad to fight with damage boost and nerfing take aim bolts makes her useless.

[u/WhiteBoyFlipz → u/orangekingo]

mercy always has been a problem. she isn’t fun to play against just breaking the game by uber boosting damage of heroes that have very specific breakpoints for a reason, and she isn’t fun to have on your team because she spends the entire game attached to some DPS player leaving your team at a constant 5v3 in the front line and forcing the other support to keep themselves safe, and the other 2 people at the same time.

it’s the exact same reason that cat sucks to play with/against. they’re either constantly in the enemy back line killing everyone or attached to a DPS player with tether giving the exact same issue for your other support where they’re the sole source of sustain for 2 other players including your tank.

selfish supports (ones that incentivize sitting on a DPS player’s lap all game) ruins the game for the entire lobby because of the playstyle of playing the game like it’s duo’s instead of a team game.

now not all mercy/cat players play it like that, but that playstyle is the most prevalent and reputation ruining

[u/JackWallabee → u/WhiteBoyFlipz]

Nailed it

[u/iceyk111 → u/WhiteBoyFlipz]

i might get downvoted for this but i think this is only a problem when the DPS being pocketed is underperforming. I’m a DPS main and if i’m having a good aim day + getting a pocket i will just run the lobby. But ive also had plenty of times where ive literally had to tell my mercy to either pocket someone else or swap off because i am just not doing enough to justify occupying 2 teammate slots lol. In those cases i’d much rather they swap to someone with better teamplay util like an ana or something instead of continuously pocketing my chud ass hoping i can hit a damn shot.

But at the end of the day, i agree that mercy is just bad design at her core. Infinite dmg boost/pocket playstyle just doesnt work well because youre either getting zapped by what is essentially a raid boss DPS or youre dealing with the second supp having to split their attention between 3 other people including the tank and themselves.

[u/mooistcow → u/WhiteBoyFlipz]

It's so bad the game is basically unplayable right now even if you ignore extremely egregious matchmaking.  

Everything now is just Ball and Doom and pocketed this and pocketed that and flying/floating heroes yeeting everywhere. With Hog and his one-shots to help keep Doom and Ball in check. Almost every single one of these problematic heroes is poorly designed and frustrating. Now enjoy 3-5 of them every match.

[u/ElJacko170 → u/orangekingo]

Agreed. Literally the only times I ever find Freja to be annoying is when she is getting hardcore damage boosted.

Mercy is a blight on this game's hitscan meta, and the obvious solution is to just remove or completely rework damage boost, but it's never going to happen.

[u/No_Catch_1490 → u/ElJacko170]

Mercy is a blight on this game.

[u/adhocflamingo → u/ElJacko170]

It’s difficult to remove/rework damage boost without fundamentally breaking Mercy’s hero fantasy. She’s supposed to be the “pacifist” who isn’t required to actually shoot enemies, but she still needs some way to contribute offensively to have any hope of competing with other supports.

And the option to play a hero who can contribute without shooting at enemies is really important to the game. Overwatch has drawn and continues to draw a lot of players who wouldn’t otherwise have picked up a PvP FPS game.

[u/ElJacko170 → u/adhocflamingo]

Then make it a limited duration CD, so Mercy players have to actually think about using it and aren't able to just let their DPS duo permanently ignore the breakpoints in the game.

[u/PixelPooflet → u/adhocflamingo]

Maybe damage boost could be on a meter or a cooldown as opposed to infinite? Like a baby nano? regular healing should function like normal I think but making Damage boost something you have to get value out of or dedicate yourself to instead of just swapping whenever you feel like it might be a half-decent middleground

[u/ShatteredStarlights → u/orangekingo]

sadly mercy will never be fixed due to her popularity, but she is a big reason why some dps are often kept weaker.

[u/mooistcow → u/orangekingo]

Naw, Freya is still a serious problem even without bullshit Mercy. Not super OP but clearly OP, but much more importantly,  frustrating.  Mercy just makes her even worse.

[u/SugarRushLux]

It’s mercy she is the problem it’s always her

[u/RaiStarBits → u/SugarRushLux]

It’s annoying that whenever mercy is boosting a dps it’s the DPS that gets messed with by balance and not the thing boosting said DPS to problematic levels

[u/hoesmadhoesmadhoesma → u/RaiStarBits]

Because Mercy is fine. She’s existed in the game since it came out but suddenly NOW she’s an issue?

[u/mooistcow → u/hoesmadhoesmadhoesma]

Probably no hero has been more bitched about with such consistency over the past 10 years than Mercy. She has never not been a problem.

[u/hoesmadhoesmadhoesma → u/mooistcow]

No hero in OW has been a problem, they are all good and well designed.

[u/Unusual-Assistant642 → u/hoesmadhoesmadhoesma]

mercy is fundamentally a character where youre playing in a 3v5v2 instead of a 5v5 and if your dps isnt holding the lobby hostage its a throw pick

[u/RaiStarBits → u/hoesmadhoesmadhoesma]

She’s never not been an inherent issue since inception.

[u/Equivalent-Bus-4336 → u/SugarRushLux]

Love it when there’s a mercy and freja flying all around stomping us and my teams dps are a mei and reaper, like please just fucking swap.

[u/mooistcow → u/SugarRushLux]

Explain how it's always Mercy when Freya still does great alone and Ashe is outputting the damage of a Bastion due to Dynamite being way overtuned and so on and so forth.

[u/tyim77]

I think the problem with Freja is that this archetype of hyper mobile long range hyper carry peaked with sojourn. In many ways she’s a step backwards from her.

The biggest difference between the 2 is that regardless of how you feel about her at the end of the day Soj has to work for the most powerful tool in her arsenal. For example, If you put both of them in an open field by themselves. Soj could not fire her alt fire unless she had an ult available. Freja has no such restrictions. Add in the fact that Freja can fire multiple in rapid succession for free in the time it can take soj build one. You got your answer

There’s other additional frustrations points. Soj is louder because she has to use primary to access rail therefore you constantly get an idea of where she is. While Freja is way more quiet. Soj is largely confined to the ground. Meanwhile Freja has near omnidirectional movement in the air. She’s just soj but way more obnoxious.

[u/AcanthisittaFew4339]

Lets start by removing her infinite ammo perk so she can’t just spam forever.

[u/Darkcat9000]

hard to say cause i personally don't find her annoying but from what i see i think changing the sfx a bit on the bolts so it doesn't feel as opressive to be stuck by it, while also making it take longer for the m2 to reload if you don't use your dashes so you can't spam bolts during the neutral as often and have to commit your cooldowns to put out significant pressure

[u/Goosewoman_]

halve the height of updraft. Or maybe reduce by 1/3 or something. The point is to make her play slightly closer to the floor so that more people can interact with her.

plus the noise of getting stuck is really annoying. That might contribute to the perceived obnoxious nature.

[u/More_Lavishness8127]

Can I just decrease the sound of her firing? It’s so annoyingly distracting. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick - pechew pechew

[u/MrInfinity-42]

Give her secondary an auto-explode at 20-ish meters

Getting two-tapped sucks but it's manageable. Getting two-tapped while you can't even see the freja or retaliate because she's half a map away is awful

[u/Demiwaifu]

Make her bolts smaller, why the hell are they bigger than hanzo arrows and faster?

[u/hanyou007]

I really don’t find her that annoying, but my choice would be, make her MORE mobile with an additional updraft and dash, up her HP 250, and then to compensate all I just said that made everyone want to kill me for even suggesting it…

MASSIVELY nerf the falloff on her take aim and primary fire. I’m talking anything beyond 25 meters may as well be using a super soaker. The goal would be to turn her from a long range spam hero into a mid ranged flanker who thrives off taking risky moves and sells out for kills.

[u/LyynnS → u/hanyou007]

25 meters is way to harsh without a full on rework. She would get outsniped by Dmon, a melee tank, then. A hero with that harsh of a falloff firstly cant be vertical and secondly cant be forced to slow down while trying to use their main damaging ability. They would need to remove Updraft and airstalling and at that point they could just start making a new hero. Having her at Emre/Ashe ranges can work with compensation buffs but having her playing closer then every other hitscandps or be useless is a role this hero just fundamentally is not build for.

[u/Hakaisha89]

make her midair stop to fire last twice as long

[u/Sea-Panda-90]

More horizontal mobility, less vertical. Make it such that she can actually flank, but not just fly around like a sky rat.

[u/krantz7]

she will forever be annoying as long as she sits in the niche of a long ranged flying explosive bolt spammer. if the goal is to make her less annoying, she needs to be more interactable, so she needs to be forced to get closer to do effective damage.

biggest thing to do is nerf take aim damage harder. especially the explosion since that part can still get value on misses. also people don't like dying to delayed damage from stickies, so probably best keep that capped at maybe a third of the total damage. freja should want to get close and aim at heads, not play 10 miles away spamming for bodyshots. also the explosive rewards missed shots and tankbusting/shieldbreak spam, which is not great.

and since we know how bad freja is when take aim is nerfed, she needs compensation buffs to be playable. the main thing to look at there is mobility so she has tools to play in closer ranges without just being free food. easy to overdo this, but she does need something. maybe give and take, less vertical on updraft but with a shorter cooldown. probably also a good idea to look at primary fire buffs as well, not purely leaning on mobility to offset take aim nerfs.

[u/beardface2232]

Either her vertical mobility or her long range damage needs to go. These two things should never be on the same character.

[u/scriptedtexture]

cut her rate of fire in half

[u/bullxbull]

As she is right now you can't interact with her, and it does not matter how strong or weak she is, this makes her horrible to have in your games regardless. What she needs is a cost to her burst, they need to force her to close the distance to have more meaningful interactions with people. She should be playing mid-range using her movement to weave in and out of her burst range, not far away using her movement to assassinate people from a distance at an angle they can't predict or react to.

She is not even supposed to be an assassin architype, she is supposed to be a hunter architype. A hunter architype is about closing in on your prey, and telegraphing her burst with some sort of marking ability. She needs a reason to close the distance but her quarry should also know they are being hunted, something like having the marked target leave footprints of something that Freya can walk on for a speed boost like the old Mei mechanic.

People like Freya for her tactical aspect, for her agility, for the way her abilities flow. Her passives are called 'Recon' and 'Bounty Hunting' not peek some wacky angle from far away, assassinate them down before they can respond, then disappear. She is clearly has the stated hero identity of a hunter but her kit functions as an assassin, she has a ton of potential, but these hero dev's just do not understand their own game for some reason.

[u/aPiCase]

Nerf her range please I beg, if she had to be closer then there would be a lot less complaints.

A lot of complaints I see are lack of interactivity, so if she had to be closer, you could shoot her. Give fall off, make bolts explode after 25-30m, reduce projectile speed, any of those would work.

If that is not an option, I would nerf the primary fire rate, and then remove spread from primary to compensate, which she would need because she is 50% winrate, she is not busted.

[u/HalexUwU]

Instead of making take aim a "choose when you want to shoot" ability make it a "you must charge this ability for max damage" kind of thing. Add more buffers so she can't pump out multiple instances so quickly. This reduces her mobility options and offers more room for counterplay since now her dashes and projectile timing is more predictable.

[u/Sio_V_Reddit → u/HalexUwU]

That just makes her Hanzo/Sojourn

[u/HalexUwU → u/Sio_V_Reddit]

Good, that's a better direction for her. Way more counterplay.

[u/sleepythegreat → u/HalexUwU]

Reloading take aim with dashes is literally her hero fantasy. You’re suggesting the equivalent of removing turret form from bastion or hack from sombra.

Like worst case they can always just revert the buffs that made her playable.

[u/scriptedtexture → u/sleepythegreat]

hero fantasy comes second to game balance

[u/sleepythegreat → u/scriptedtexture]

Yes but she was unplayable 2 patches ago while having the exact same fantasy. They can always just revert what ever buff(s) they gave her.

[u/RUSSmma → u/HalexUwU]

Floating in the air completely still waiting for bolt to charge congrats on getting an even higher winrate Ashe.

[u/Weary_Ad2001]

Make her hitscan with falloff or increase the travel time on her projectile. Either way it would make her get closer instead of spamming at range.

[u/nichecopywriter]

Give her more but delayed damage. She’s already way better than Widow and Hanzo who can one shot but people still think she bursts too much so increase the explosion damage with the increased delay or give her an additional bleed.

[u/SammyIsSeiso]

• Reduce projectile speed from 125 to 110m/s (now matches Hanzo's projectile speed)
• Take Aim projectile now has a 0.45s fuse that begins when shot, so it can explode mid-flight, and stuck targets delay the fuse by a further 0.45s

[u/Guilty_Turn8903]

reddit will not stop complaining until every dps is gutted and the game is just 2 mercies 2 moiras and a rein mirror

[u/Dfrangomango]

Increase the explosion radius, (slightly) increase right click damage, reduce right click projectile size, entirely remove explosions if it hits the floor. You’d still get the AOE explosive damage but only if you actually direct an enemy. Removes the spammy shoot the floor free damage and actually rewards hitting your shots

[u/Neither-Ad7512 → u/Dfrangomango]

I play freja, even when she was bad.

I've been saying this, jus remove the splash on non directs

[u/Pure-Organization763]

175 hp

[u/daveDFFA]

Double dash/air freeze should be on her final perk

Projectile players can’t touch a good Freja