u/MasterPepe8076

Torch's history has been extremely rough from the very beginning. He was pretty mediocre at release, and was slowly getting buffs until the fateful season 2. This where we gained the reputation of being the sole reason why flyer meta will likely never happen again in addition to receiving over 20 consecutive nerfs as a result. Torch was undoubtedly very strong to the point of being overpowered back then, but it wasn't his kit that made him so strong. The existence of melee tech during and after it its patch left a sour taste in the community.

However, Torch has never really been a highly picked character aside from release (as most new heroes do); maintaining a usage rate below 10% and never exceeding a 51% winrate. With that in mind, melee tech was almost exclusively seen in pro-play and high elo lobbies where only skilled Torch players would abuse this tech. During that time, the entire community had been in an uproar, screaming for nerfs despite him being rarely picked in competitive. The average MR player rarely ever saw a competent Torch using melee tech. Yes, it was 100% miserable to play against, but the vast majority of the community never even experienced it. I wholeheartedly believe that people were just piggy-backing off their favorite streamers ranting about Torch.

Post melee tech, Torch has been consistently a top 3 lowest picked hero for several seasons. After lurking the main sub, people are still whining for Torch nerfs and say he should never be viable again. I saw plenty of comments stating how they believe the jubilee team up is broken because it allows for Torch to not immediately explode the nanosecond somebody looks at him. He's decent right now, but the community's rampant whining had caused the devs to not only neuter him but never give him any meaningful buffs for the foreseeable future. This applies to all other flyers as well.

As of now, Torch himself is an okay character despite the wider community gassing him up as some sort of raid boss when he's not. Torch was never a server admin across all ranks, it's just that people are too fucking stupid to look up.

As you all know, season 9-9.5 torch has been far more enjoyable than previous seasons with the addition of the jubilee team up and cooldown reductions. The dashes are certainly controversial within this community because it leaves him vulnerable when he has no cool downs and it fundamentally changes how he is played. Whether or not you like or dislike the changes, torch is now far more consistent at diving and brawling now more than ever (excluding season 2-2.5). However, there are a lot of downsides to playing Torch, namely the unforgiving nature of his kit and play style(s). Now, here's my two cents on buffing torch back to relevancy without being perma-banned:

1.) Survivability

Since the removal of melee tech, Torch struggles with survivability and seemingly gets vaporized by any competent team who knows how to look and aim. He's currently a comically large flyer who's incredibly easy to shoot down. To better compete against heavy poke or brawl, every dash should provide around 50-75 bonus health decaying after the 4 second speed boost (100 is far too op). This would help alleviate his squishiness in the air while allowing Torch to have a little more breathing space to move about without having to worry about being shot down in less than a second.

2.) His primary

Damage wise, torch's primary is probably one of if not the most frustrating primaries to use in the game. This is primarily due to his pellets being shot from his hands during the animation which makes shots feel random and inconsistent. Torch's primary has always had a reputation of being difficult to hit even during his prime but the old spread allowed more room for error. However since season 5.5, his primary was tightened while reducing damage fall off to 20m instead of 30m. On paper, this would have allowed for more pellets to be hitting your opponents but the way his primary works are it is far too difficult to hit.

In regards to buffs, a change to how his pellets are shot out should be reworked into being fired from only one point instead of being followed by his hand animations. This would allow for better consistency and get rid of those clips where you shoot no regs at point blank. In addition, I would add a very slight increase to the spread (a mix between current and old primary) to allow for a better representation of his 'shotgun' primary while reverting the fall off nerf. Finally, a projectile speed buff from 150m/s to 170m/s would assist in landing shots quicker and more efficiently. I'd love a damage buff but these changes are already more than enough to address his primary issues.

3.) Pyro-prison

Since the patch in season 3, torch's prison does 40dmg/s (42.5 pre removal of the 5% damage bonus) now. This has left Torch's prison feeling not as impactful as it should be as it's basically free ult charge for enemy supports. In addition, his pyro-prisons tend to break far too easily at the slightest shift in height.

To start, a simple buff from 40 dmg/s to 45 dmg/s will make the tick damage feel more impactful. It shouldn't be back to 50 dmg/s as that would render support abilities like jubilee bubbles or rocket orbs useless. But that can be left out IF his prison is fixed. Here's how it should ideally work: areas with differing heights (that aren't straight up stairs) should be able to be set off. In addition, objects like groot walls and pillars in that one specific point in the hydra map no longer break the prison, allowing for a less crappy experience in setting them up

Final Notes

These are just my opinions at the end of the day, I understand that a flyer meta is objectively unhealthy for the game due to the large impact it has on the casual community. However, hitscans have been reigning supreme for several seasons, leaving much of the flyer roster drowning in irrelevancy. We now have more options than ever to counter flyers which should be more than enough reason to make flyers a more viable archetype in matches. In conclusion, 1000 more buffs to Luna and 50 million more legendaries + chromas for her.

How is that this feature went through 2 months of public play testing and still came out the way it did? It's lazy and anything but creative, but most importantly BORING. None of the mobs are unique in terms of design or features, the effects are basically the same as daily ops and mutated public events, and they had the audacity to make a dev talk talking about some b.s like 'we want Appalachia to sizzle' when they literally just brought back Walmart hordes.

Recently, we got an update addressing the fact that infestations were too easy and repetitive. What did the devs do to alleviate this? Make the bosses bullet sponges. Now instead of spending 30 seconds mag-dumping a boss, you'll be spending minutes doing that. (Oh and they nerfed the health of bosses a little, hurrayyy).

In the PTS for the fall update, infestation updates in addition to QoL changes were introduced. It shouldn't take 2 seasons to flesh out a feature that literally only consists of reused assets anyway. It's even more insulting to see that they're only adding 1 new faction. It's even worse when we literally just came out of the sorry excuse that was the backwoods update.

I have poured hundreds of hours into 76 because I love it dearly, even purchasing a 1 year fo1st membership on top of hundreds of dollars worth of atoms. I used to be excited for new updates because they brought something new even if they were sometimes lackluster. But when infestations rolled around, I felt like I wasted my money for nothing. This isn't a content update that was thought out in any capacity; moreso a rushed attempt to meet the quarterly update schedule. Nothing about infestations seems like it was made with passion.

-Update is coming soon with announcements on it in the coming weeks after the infestation update

-Update involves better optimisation specific to consoles and PC

-PTS will arrive at consoles in the future (presumably for the next gen update to allow console players to properly test features)