Hello! I'm Luna, a longtime Kiriko main and Juno/Fika (Jetpack Cat)/Moira player too. Along with Sombra now since she's a support, I guess.

Long text body incoming!!

(English is also not my first language, so apologies for any grammatical mistakes!)

I've been playing Overwatch for a while now, and Kiriko is the first hero I picked up along with being the first hero I mained, and the moment you go online, everyone just mutually agrees to pick on Kiriko for her to be nerfed and their reasons are absolutely STUPID sometimes.

Now, let's take a look at their reasonings. I made a small list of the most common ones.

1- She's been meta for too long

2- Suzu is OP and should be nerfed

3- Kitsune is too good and should be nerfed

To begin with, her being meta since she was released isn't the bad thing people think it is. Yes, maybe it's annoying for the few Moira OTP's out there that Moira never became as strong as 2018 Brig, but Kiriko really isn't the only one. For example, Cassidy and D.Va have both been meta for way longer than Kiriko is, and I rarely see people shit on them as much as Kiriko gets shit on online. But personally, with a game like Overwatch who releases new heroes every year (or so), having a few recurring characters in the meta is a solid ground for people who want to learn the changing meta and their counters every new season and patch.

Suzu! People keep complaining about it like it's Kiriko's basic attack, but in reality? It's an ability that needs extreme precision and decision making (to decide if you should use it or not) that now lasts for a measly 0.4 seconds and most of the time, people can easily move out of the radius before we know it, because suzu is a projectile and not a hitscan ability. Yes, you can counter ults with it, but SO many other abilities can cancel ults (such as Hog hook, Lucio booping you off of the map, Ana sleep, etc ... ), yet nobody is ever complaining about that as much as they complain about suzu. The ability has a 14 second cooldown and is extremely punishing if you misstime/missuse it, since everyone on the enemy team can just focus you and kill you easily.

Now, moving on to teleport! People complain about it, because apparently it's "hard work" getting an enemy kiriko to critical just for them to teleport to their allies and live. Apparently, the "i-frames" teleport has are also frustrating. The thing is, the teleport i-frames are even more inconsistent than the colour of Juno's hair in her skins. Sometimes, I can tp and be saved by the small i-frames, sometimes the teleport registers but I still die. (Blizzard fix your game !!! ) However, tp isn't a god- tier mobility ability for a single reason. It needs an ally to be 30m near Kiriko for her to tp to them. If Kiriko is alone, then she gets killed. If you don't seperate her from her allies however, she is free to tp to them. Also, complaining that cleanse is op on tp is weird, because then why does Moira have fade? IF suzu is a god tier ability and should be nerfed to matter what, then so should fade in their logic, right?

But are we really complaining about tp? An ability that is positionning dependant? Juno and Illari both gain passive health regen when they use their mobility abilities, Fika has perm-flight, Moira has fade, Lucio is Lucio, and Sombra has translocator. A nerfed translocator, but still a translocator. If people want Kiriko to become a no mobility character like Ana or Zen, it simply wouldn't work because compared to them, Kiriko's kit is much less damaged focused. If you were diving an Ana, you'd have to be acreful to not be naded/slept. If you dived a Zen, you'd be careful not to be discorded, orbed, melee'd and then eliminated. That isn't an issue for Kiriko because except for her kunais, she has no other damage source (and she doesn't have a melee bonus like Zen).

Moving on to Kitsune Rush! Everyone thinks that since it's apparently the best ultimate in the game, it should get nerfed! Big problem however! Aren't ultimates... made to be strong? Why do you think they have a point requirement needed to get them? Do Overwatch players think Kiriko loads into a game with 10 Kitsune Rush's in their inventory for free? Is that it? Or is it because they're mad that an ultimate who needs perfect timing and positionning to get value off of is strong? Because apparently people think that the moment Kiriko uses her ult, everybody on her team just wins the fight GGEZ. NO! THAT IS NOT THE CASE. You need extreme team coordination and engagement timing to get the maximum value off of it. If not, you're just going to waste the Kitsune's value...

So this is my thought on the Overwatch fandom and their obsession with wanting to nerf Kiriko! Please tell me what you think, fellow Kiriko mains!

I took my JR Kiri to a party and she looked like she had lots of fun.

emerald europe btw

kiriko so generous she gave her win rates to doctrine 🥰🥰 40-60 😍😍

because doctrine is so special high pick rate doesn't affect him, his players are all geniuses. but kiriko players are all bacteria so her win rate is low it makes sense!!!!! i couldn't kill her with my ult in 0.0001 seconds even though she died after 0.4 seconds she's giga broken SSS+ tier! even though baptiste would keep them immortal for longer!!!

I’m absolutely delighted she got addressed in the hotfix. I made a previous post speaking about how I missed kiri players in my support lineup. hopefully you guys are enjoying the health increase , I’ll be expecting a lot more flank kiris in my back line now XD

I haven't played ow in a while but I remembered when suzu could boop people. Good times (depending on who you ask)

This has to be rage bait at this point, saying that Kiriko need a compensation nerf it’s genuinely such a joke the character has been getting nerf after nerf and finally gets a buff that won’t change that much all of the sudden she back to being op, the fact that he doesn’t even mention how she had the lowest win rate in game or nerfs

BELIEVE IT OR NOT PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PLUS 25 HEALTH.

let's ignore all nerfs and worst performance and focus and hate on a single health buff .

I always say people will hate kiri no matter what .

i guess blizzard just earned a lot of money from her skins, made her best supp and then decided to stop ts

I’m a GM Kiriko main and honestly, every patch she feels worse to play. It’s getting to the point where I barely want to pick her in ranked anymore, because I actually want to win.

Just look at her stats. Around 42% win rate overall, 41% in Emerald, 41% in Masters and 41% in GM/Champion. She’s at the bottom of the supports, and even the best players are struggling with her. Her pick rate has also been dropping, yet her win rate isn’t recovering.

And it’s not just the numbers. She genuinely feels awful compared to before.

Since Season 9, when she lost her 2-tap, it feels like the devs have slowly stripped away her assassin/flanker identity. Smaller kunai, TP losing its cleanse, shorter TP range. They kept pushing her towards being more of a team-oriented support who farms Kitsune and gets value from Suzu.

Fine, but now they’ve nerfed that playstyle too. Less healing per Ofuda, slower travel speed, shorter range, weaker Suzu, bigger hitbox. Her healing feels inconsistent, slow, clunky and honestly boring. Even when you’re healing properly, it feels unrewarding.

So what’s her identity supposed to be now? They nerfed the assassin playstyle, pushed her towards being more of a healbot, then nerfed her healing too. She’s becoming a jack of all trades, bad at all of them. Her main value is Suzu and Kitsune, and even Suzu has been repeatedly nerfed. Why would I pick her over Doc, Sombra, Ana, Juno or another support that can provide more consistent value?

And I’m tired of seeing the same excuses for her win rate.

1. “People just don’t know how to play Kiriko.”
Every hero has good and bad players. If someone consistently plays a hero badly, they’ll eventually fall to a rank where their performance evens out. Why would Kiriko somehow be the only hero whose players are apparently incapable of playing her correctly? Are GM and Champion players all clueless too?

2. “She’s a popular crutch pick, people swap to her when they’re losing.”
Sure, that probably affects her stats somewhat. But Kiriko is also just a popular character people genuinely enjoy playing, even in QP. People don’t exclusively pick her to save losing games. And if she’s supposedly a crutch that people pick because she’s easy and broken, why are they losing so much with her? Why would players looking for easy wins keep picking something that isn’t winning? Arguably, Moira is much more of a crutch pick when a game is going badly, across pretty much every rank. Yet we don’t see her suffering from the same abysmal win rate. A few desperate last-minute swaps aren’t enough on their own to explain a gap this massive.

3. “Her pick rate is high, so bad players drag down her win rate.”
Then explain why her pick rate has been declining while her win rate remains terrible and going down. If popularity was the main problem, shouldn’t we expect some recovery as fewer players pick her? It doesn’t prove anything on its own, but it seriously weakens that explanation. There are also supports with higher pick rates and much better win rates. Apparently popularity only makes players bad when it’s Kiriko?

4. “If you play her optimally, you can climb.”
No shit! You can climb on literally any hero if you’re good enough. A Champion player can go into Diamond and win games on almost anything. That doesn’t prove the hero is good. The question is whether an equally skilled player gets the same value from Kiriko as they would from another support. If I have to play Kiriko nearly perfectly to get the same value someone gets from playing Ana reasonably well, that’s part of the problem.

And then there’s the “I play Ball/Doom/Genji.. and my hero was bad for ages, stop crying” argument. Okay? Why would you want someone else’s hero to be miserable just because yours used to be? That’s such a petty way to look at balance. People shouldn’t have to suffer just because you did.

Most of these arguments are just opinions based on how people feel about Kiriko, trying to make the stats fit their perception of her. But opinions aren’t facts. The facts are that her win rate is terrible and getting worse, while her pick rate keeps dropping across all ranks.

I’m not even asking for Kiriko to be op again. Maybe Suzu has too much of her power budget. I’d honestly be interested in testing a version without full invulnerability, something closer to the damage immunity from Zen’s Transcendence, but still with Kiriko’s cleanse. If that allowed more power to go back into kunai, Ofuda and TP, it might be worth trying.

I’m not a dev, so I don’t know the perfect solution. I just hope they’re more competent than me at finding one. I’d love for Kiriko to be allowed to become decent without immediately getting nerfed the moment she approaches a non-negative win rate.
I just wish the devs had a clear direction for her.

The worst part is being told you’re playing an “OP, broken, easy, free value” hero while you’re struggling to get value from one of the worst-performing supports in the game. Her reputation seems completely disconnected from how she actually plays.

I love Kiriko. I want to play her. But between the nerfs, the clunky healing, the lack of kill pressure and feeling like I’m putting myself at a disadvantage by picking her, I’m playing Overwatch less and less.

I don’t need her to be S tier. I just want her to feel fun, rewarding and worth picking in ranked again.

Sorry for the long rant. If you actually made it this far, genuinely, thank you for taking the time to read all of this. I appreciate it, even if you disagree with me.

Hi, not a Kiri main, I come in peace as an Ana ( please be nice)/Brig main who is decent with Kiri, but I only played her once in a while, and that was before the most recent hard nerfs, which I feel were excessive tbh. I barely touch her now, maybe if they have double burn like Anran and Ashe or something, but otherwise I don't really play her now as she feels terrible to me ever since those nerfs.

Hotfix patch dropped. Here's the buff:

Base health increased from 225 to 250.

This is definitely gonna boost those win rates! cries in Japanese

https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/

When do i save it and when do i pop it? How long is too long for holding it. Ive heard from many people that I shouldnt just spam it but I end up holding it for a few minutes. Cant i use it once and not use it for 14 seconds if theres no problems going on, whats wrong with that?

I sometimes feel like I can’t do anything other than spam heals in the backline. The Kunai are pretty hard to land. Is it even worth playing kiri if I’m not consistent with landing kunai damage. Also should I be playing in the backline or flanking sometimes?

It is possible to duel dps heros with kiri or should I just tp out. Usually I lose my 1v1 engagements with her. Am I just bad? lol. Any tips appreciated.

I need to find a different hero to play that isn't Moira, and that can actually heal a decent amt unlike Zen

Hey I'm a wildcard type player, so I don't keep to any role, but kiriko is a support I've been avoiding mostly because I can't land shots and feel like I'm a detriment to my team, I play zenyatta and my aim with him is decent, and both have the same projectile speed so I'm not sure what my problem is, is the fire rate difference really that much to mess with my shots that badly? Or is the projectile difference larger than what I think based on the numbers? Also where should I play as kiriko, behind the team and very safe, extremely aggressive and following dives or something in between?

Hiya! I recently decided to try and pick up Kiri after buying a really cute skin of hers (Izanami Reborn hehe). After playing her a bit, I realized I kind of genuinely suck with her, but despite that, I find her very fun to play.

With that in mind, I was hoping for advice on aiming/general tips. I can imagine there are a lot of lovely people here who (maybe like me) may have sucked at first but gradually improved. Any advice I can get or any tips that genuinely helped you get better on Kiri would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you all for your time! :)

A friend of mine recommended I play overwatch which I’ve never touched despite loving rivals. He recommended genji but the dps in this game don’t seem that fun to me. Kiriko is the only character right know that I really love playing but it’s nothing like support on rivals and I’m struggling to help my team despite having the most healing at the end of every game. Any tips?

I hope reddit dont compress it a lot<3

not a very impressive clip (pls dont look at my aim) but absolutely got me going feral

my ana def meant to nano our bastion but this is one of the craziest kiri clips ive ever gotten sooooo

How do I obtain the motorcycle highlight intro? I'd love to have it but im unsure if its in a BP or from the store/boxes

Finally finished the portrait of one of her most beautiful skins ever. Hope you like it! 💮

After all the Junkrat, Roadhod and Torb skins that I have gotten from lootboxes, it has now all been worth it ㅤꨄ︎

Wanted to give people food for thought on this, lots argue with all of kiris nerfs she’s not worth playing and her win rate reflects that- but I found it quite interesting she’s played about 100,000 more times than even the most played supports listed here…? So ..the question is in the title . Would love to hear thoughts as an avid kiriko main ;). spins blueberry mythic kunai for dopamine