An idea to make Gibby more casual appealing.

Gibby is one of those characters that is undenyably niche. If you have good aim, you can make good use of him. If you have average aim, he is a handicap to use. Hence his previously nearly 100% pick rate in high rank play, but next to non-existence in causal play.

So what makes Gibby such a borderline must pick to completely useless? Its just about everything about his kit since day one:

• The OG days of Gibby were just pain and suffering, and despite his high professional pick rate, that pain never truly went away (just the causal playerbase that played him did.)
• His hitbox is the largest out there, proving that 50hp means nothing when you can't miss.
• His tactical is a beacon that screams "please rush me with a Peace Keeper now", meaning you had better be both kitted for close range and good at it if you ever play him

So that leaves us with his key issues:

• He is easy to melt, and must be equally as good at melting his smaller opponents or he will just lose.
• His tactical practically forces close range combat, where blind fire reigns supreme, but his gun shield requires him to aim.
• His tactical is just as much a benefit to enemies as it is to your team.

And that is why we end up with Gibby being a razor sharp knife's edge of niche hood. Infinite barrier health (previously) that forces players into close range where pros tend to gravitate anyway, but casuals tend to avoid. His tactical is basically of no use to your average player as his hitbox dramatically outweighs the small regenrateable hp that will not last long enough to be useful for people with average aim.

Gibby's closest competitor right now I would argue is actually Rampart. The difference being that Rampart has to key spam for a gun shield, but Gibby just has it on at all times. Also Rampart's "gun shield" gets 175hp along with her smaller hit box, multiple "gunshields" and arguably one of the best close range weapons in the game on ult cooldown. It says a lot though that all it took was a niche buff on a niche character to counter ONE of Gibby's abilities for him to come crashing down.

So that I have a recommendation on how to make Gibby more appealing to casual: More gunshield.

Now I am not saying just buff the gunshield, I am saying flat out update Gibby to revolve around the gunshield, the one item that is most appealing to the causal player for him. Here is what that would look like:

• Passive update: Gunshield has a base health of 50, two shield cells can be used to buff the gunshield's hp like you can charge the Sentinel with shield cells. It takes time and has an animation, but will add a temporary 50Hp to the shield that will not regenerate.

• Tactical rework: Remove the dome, and instead replace it with a gunshield buff ability. The active ability has the same cooldown and duration as dome, but it instead adds 400hp to the gun shield and expands its size to a wide wing shape barrier following Gibby's view that can be shot through from behind. Effect causes gunshield to always be active for the duration of the tactical, allowing you to reload, blind fire, and use items while it is active.
• Gibby's movement speed is reduced while tactical is active. Tactical deactivates if the gunshield is destroyed or manually turned off.
• Special update: With the tactical active, when you revive a teammate Gibby will hold his gunshield up to the sky, causing the barrier to wrap down around you and the person you are reviving like the current dome (but much smaller, still only covers a limited distance to the ground) that has the HP of the gunshield. Enemies can not walk through the revive barrier, but they can destroy it. (Uses the onehanded revive animation but with normal speed because his gunshield is held up.)
• Maggie Buff: Wrecking ball still instantly destroys the powered up gun shield, drills explode on impact doing 50 damage to the barrier.

The idea here is to make Gibby more of a tank that is not so detramental to people with average aim. Newcatle gets a full speed two segment of shield each with 500 hp each, Rampart gets damage amp, 175hp per gunshield part of the barrier, and multiple barrier than can be protected by downed barrier segments. Gibby could use something more than just 50hp and a "please rush me" beacon to appeal to the average player.

Last thing we need is more S14 style updates that cause a niche character to be wrecked only for another niche character to take their place (Newcastle). Kind of sad to see Newcastle's average is now plat 4, says he is not being used as intended, just like Gibby was.