I took some time to discuss the recent Mid-Season patch with some of the top NA Pro League players (Canadian, Avian, Slashug, and Mint) regarding how Operator changes might affect pick rates.
Here's what I gathered:
- Glaz is very OP. This is mostly because he can just stand in smoke and decimate everyone. This is helped by the fact that he can bring his own smokes. This will also be an insane combo with the current OP Montagne who can also bring smokes and stand in the smoke to cover Glaz from blind fire. With the amount of smoke grenades possible on all the operators, there aren't enough Jager ADS devices and Smoke's toxic gas grenades to really counter this threat.
- Capitao's gun is much better now and he may be picked slightly more. His crossbow is situationally useful, but without his previous frag grenades he's still far from a high pick.
- Buck probably won't be picked more but the extra skeleton key mag will be useful and the supposed nerf to rapid firing his DMR was negligible at best.
- Thermite's pick rate won't change, but he will be a bit stronger in firefights once his job is done thanks to his highly improved recoil control.
- Doc's overheal still drains too fast to be useful in anything but clutch situations or rushing outside. Pick rate likely won't change.
- Caviera is still a ranked operator at best.
- Blitz's ADS improvement is nice, but doesn't address the major issues that make him unusable.
- Echo's buff is nice, but won't affect his pick rate.
- Jackal's nerf may lower his pick rate slightly as his ability wasn't useful a lot of the time, but he was taken anyways for his gun.
So overall, most picks won't change, but expect to see a lot of overpowered Glaz and Montagne plays this season!
As a bonus here's KingGeorge's thoughts in video form!
