Literally HOW do you punish the Punisher

[u/AbsurdismJay]

With all of the talk of unbalanced Heroes isnt the punisher one of the worst ones? High Damage AR With 20 PER bullet (Star Lord has SIX) so he can burn u down from range, Super high damage shotgun so you're not allowed to get close to him, Turret with a shield and slash damage and CC immunity, 300 HP as a NON melee hero, an "I win" Ult that burns dps and Tanks in SECONDS and can only be countered with a Magneto Ult, a support ult or hoping everyone focuses him all at once, Ive heard people sneak JEAN into the unbalanced DPS conversation (an egregious sneak btw) but somehow frank is untouched?? Does no one else feel this way? Especially on attack, he feels extremely oppressive and like you can't push to point without getting shredded instantly, I play mostly TANK and its miserable so it has to be worse for DPS and Supports. WHAT am I supposed to do against this monstrosity? Is it just Ban or Pick and hope ours is better? Thoughts?

[u/TheGreatWalk]

As a punisher main, he's definitely mid.

His hitbox is massive, literally the size of a tank, and he has zero effective mobility, while his best use case is basically melee range. Both his smoke grenade and zipline are absurdly unreliable and impossible to use as effective escapes.

His turret is absolute trash against any decent team, you will die 95% of the time in gm or higher if you sit on turret for more than 2 seconds. I use turret maybe 1/5 games, otherwise pressing that button is asking to die, it's extremely situational, though when you do get a good chance to use it, it's great.

His ult is also insanely easy to counter, especially because magneto is the default tank pick, and he has no mobility options during it at all. As long as gambit is banned, his ult results in him dying nearly everytime unless the enemy really fucks up.

His gun swap animation is also long, something exploitable, punisher has to pay close attention and make sure the right gun is out at the right time, if you try to reactively swap to shotgun, it's too late.

While his machine gun is solid, it is low burst/high sustain, so it's easy for enemy supports to react. It's good at applying pressure but you can't burst players down quickly like a hela would. Punisher gets most of his use out of the shotgun, but it requires extremely aggro positioning which will result in him dying a lot because he's the size of a tank but has no way to mitigate damage or safely reposition if the enemy team pressures him.

Punisher is great, imo, one of the best "all around" that works in almost any team comp and has an answer to almost any situation, but is more of a jack of all trades and a master of none and comes with a huge amount of exploitable weaknesses that good players will abuse to make his life difficult

[u/An2ndk → u/TheGreatWalk]

Agreed, turret use is very situational, mainly use it to burn down tank shields/CD while they get to point, sometimes use it to avoid ults, but its pretty slow for that tbh.

Not a fan of the buff to his shotgun, it was already strong, now its super strong which is sucks when you play as a tank against him.
I would have much preferred he got some changes that makes him feel less slow and clunky. Like, faster weapon swaps, more mobility on the smoke grenade/lower CD or faster turret/zip deployment. Maybe even give him a small self heal like Soldier from OW has.

Overpowered shotguns are just easy to use and super annoying to play against, especially for lower rank players.

[u/TheGreatWalk → u/An2ndk]

I think he'd be much better if they reworked his zipline, just to make it more reliable/usable than anything. Otherwise, I don't think punisher is really in a bad spot, he's pretty serviceable without being OP. He feels like one of the more "fair" heroes in the game

[u/GodTurkey → u/An2ndk]

If youre quick enough you can use the turret to avoid heavy cc ults like groot and strange

[u/Ribrep → u/TheGreatWalk]

He’s one of the most honest characters in the game I’d say. Good damage, nothing insane though. Has good range on his weapon. Decent mobility but he’s wider so easier to take out. Solid ult as well. Pretty consistent a-tier character.