@EA_Atic I mean that's cool that you like Rao and all, I'm not saying he's "bad" or anything as he's very good at what he's designed to do (to a point).
It's just that what he's designed to do is largely fairly niche compare d to many other specialists. It's that his kit lacks anything remotely dynamic for interesting plays compared to other specialists. Think about how Sundance works with a variety of different gadgets or guns (finding hard to reach sniper posts to spot from, aggressive back dooring with spawn beacons, going after enemy armor with C5 etc.), or how Falck can be an effective medic with her kit paired with a wide range of gadgets or weapons (babysitting snipers, frontline aggression, etc.). Even Irish affords a more dynamic and interesting kit that has a wide variety of potential uses and pairs with a range of different weapons/gadgets nicely, and the devs on the 1.2 video were similarly talking about his low play-rate.
Rao's kit is simply...well...boring. It's not about being a complex puzzle, it's about his kit standing out amongst the rest of the kids as an extremely static, simple binary that doesn't really have any major "play/counterplay" to it. Maybe I'm just lacking imagination here and you can help me out, but a huge reason why (IMO) his play rate is so low is BECAUSE of his kit being so binary and niche compared to everyone else. If there are no vehicles around, his active is functionally useless and he's just spotting enemies that shoot him. Even another more anti-vehicle focused specialist like Liz brings more in non-vehicle situations since her rocket can still be somewhat effectively used against infantry (especially pesky snipers that aren't moving around a lot).
They talked about Rao's low pickrate on the 1.2 video and seemed a bit confused as to why, and honestly I'm confused why the devs are confused. It's not that he's super complex or folks don't understand how to use him, he's an incredibly straightforward specialist without any meaningful depth to his kit (and he's a handsome devil). It's that playing him is, largely, BORING as a result of how binary/boring his kit is, and how playing him in any situation where there aren't active vehicles feels like you're wasting your time and should just redeploy as a specialist with far more marginal utility.
I'd argue the biggest reason he's played at all is largely due to aircraft being consistently too strong and unbalanced, and him being one of the only remotely effective counters against them.
Now I hear someone somewhere saying "SEE! PROBLEM AND SOLUTION! IT'S ALL WORKING!" except that's a bad problem and worse solution. He's a bad fix to the problems with aircraft design/balance, and is not even really a great fix as he can often serve as a deterrent but can't effectively set-up kills on aircraft given how many maps afford them extensive LoS cover should they find themselves hacked and even with flares down as well.
