The Juno nerf is so dumb

I'm not a Juno main, but it's such a stupid nerf I have to rant about this for a minute.

According to the patch notes, the reasons for the nerf are that Juno was "dominating the skies", performance data, and player feedback.

Let's address the first point. Of course Juno was "dominating the skies", she's a support, in Stadium. By the same token, Kiri is dominating the ground, and Lucio is dominating the walls. The fact is, support perks are way stronger than DPS or even tank perks. You can give Lucios a perk that says "+30% movement speed, +15% atk speed" and most don't even think it's worth using. Ana has +200 HP in a single perk, and she's still the weakest support. Imagine either of those perks given to a DPS character.

Next, I don't have performance data, but if Juno was that good, then I wouldn't have reached Legend as mostly DPS Lucio with a 70% winrate. She was very popular at the time, and she's the hardest counter I could possibly have, I literally can't hit her unless she's inside a small room. And even if it was the case that she's outperforming every other hero, this nerf was not how it should have been fixed (more on that later).

Next, player feedback. I just don't believe that there are so many players b*tching about Juno. When you play stadium, you sign up for whatever BS is coming your way. You get slowed, you get anti'd, you get aimbotted, you get slept by a dart the size of a tree. And somehow Juno's where you draw the line? Give me a break.

Okay so let's say, hypothetically, that Juno was indeed the best character by far and needed a nerf. This nerf would still be incorrect, because:

A: It kills the entire playstyle. Playing Juno with blink boost was very different compared to without, and way more fun in my opinion. But now the perk was completely demolished, and I can't imagine I'm ever going to see anyone use that playstyle again until it gets buffed back. The cooldown of glide boost with blink boost went from 2.1 seconds to 4.2 seconds, they literally doubled the cooldown of that ability. When has it ever been correct from a balancing standpoint to double an ability's cooldown right off the bat like that? Why not try 1.5 times first?

B: Blink boost isn't even the problem. The problem is the items that trigger on activating an ability. Like, what are the developers going to do when it comes time to import Tracer to Stadium? Her dash is a 3-second-cooldown ability with 3 charges. She's going to be able to abuse Lumerico, commander's clip, kitsune, tommygun and ironclad like no other character. Even without perks I'm pretty sure she'd be the best DPS by far.

Okay so what's the actual solution then? Well there are 2 different solutions that I can see:

-Hero specific item balance. The best solution IMO. Make kitsune, tommygun, lumerico & ironclad less effective for Juno. It would also allow you to make more viable playstyles by buffing items like gloom gauntlet, that are useless for most characters because they have to be balanced around a specific character that abuses them (Rein, in this case).

-Make it so items that trigger on using an ability scale with the cooldown of said ability. Like, maybe triggering Lumerico it on a 4 second cooldown is fine as is, in that case make it so if you trigger it on a 2 second cooldown, it gets half duration for instance, and if you trigger it with a longer cooldown, it lasts for longer.

Posted Jul 17, 2025, 8:50 AM UTC

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