*another old post. Respawn has been making some changes, notably her ultimate, which now blocks only incoming projectiles instead of everyone's projectile. This invalidates my third point completely. But hey, that’s what happens when you post late. I still think crypto adds way more utility to fights that Wattson cannot*
I used to think the most useless legend should go to someone that not only isn’t very good compared to the other Legends but also provides no real value in an actual fight. That title used to belong to Giblatr, who’s dome shield isn’t useful for blocking damage and ult is a complete fight disruptor, is what his name suggests: he’s a rock. However, the addition of the fortified passive to him has made him very, very strong and the recent season 3 buff to his dome as well as his ultimate means that he should basically always be a member of your team. Crazy what some tweaks can make.
Now do that for Wattson.
I’m going to name every possible reason why Wattson is garbage and should be altered drastically to avoid her from becoming unpickable outside of the most dedicated mains.
Her walls make her unsuitable for a lot of playstyles and teams.
Wattson relies on perimeter defense as a warning sign as well as a way to herd potential bad guys to a specific spot. On paper, this seems fantastic; You can be giving your teammates a nice base of operations to commence their attack, and if you're playing with someone such as Bangalore or caustic, you can make your base a disorienting death trap!
The problem with this is that when put into practice, you are actually spending time during a fight where you should be shooting...building walls. not very useful when you consider that these walls can be countered with a simple EMP blast from crypto, or by simply shooting the base of the wall pylon. hats worse is the limit on the number of pylons you can deploy at a time as well as the fact that you cannot get to your full wall building potential until around round 5 where you know more or less where the circle is going to be and you can start to base up.
Also, Wattson and Octane literally cannot work, he's too fast for Watson's slow playstyle.
Her Ults shield regen is not good
its reallllly slow. It literally provides no tangible benefit to her team while they are nearby. why even have it there if it's so slow? Did I mention it's very slow to regen shield?
Her Ultimate makes her incompatible with a lot of great Legends
Namely Gibby, Caustic, and Bangalore. I learned this the hard way when I ruined a perfect ult nade toss by my caustic. When that happened it made me think “ wow that’s stupid, why would they make something that can be a detriment to your team as well as the opposing squad?
Then Crypto came out.
Crypto’s ult is another example of an ability effecting both allied and enemy squads alike, but I believe that it is a disruptor, meant to disorient, slow and weaken the enemy squad to get in position to be located by cryptos drone. I can accept that. But Watson's ult is literally unusable because you’re literally doing more to hurt your team then benefit it. Maybe if the shield regen was respectable it would be a trade-off you have to strategize in your mind, which is a lot of what makes Wattson fun in the first place. Watson is a Legend that operates independently of her teammates but is supposed to be a Lifeline (heh) in case things get dicey.
These are just 3 reasons I can think of at the moment, but its really hard to justify picking Wattson. I think that for her to be the support Legend she is destined to be, I think these changes should happen:
Larger Sheild regen for ultimate
Consecutive ultimates give faster region (up to say, 50% faster regen with 3 ultimates)
Faster ultimate charge from standing near ult range
I think #3 would give Wattson a reason to hoard ult accelerants. having to set up a base quickly would pay off if you could get shields back faster. Also, I think that Wattson's ultimate passive is pointless since you can only lay down a finite number of pylons and even then…that's not that useful in most situations. Wattson has a lot of potentials to be an anti-meta Legend in the same way Zero is the Anti-Operator in Black Ops 4 (and crypto for that matter, since unlike Wattson, he can have a big impact on a fight without being directly involved). But to do that, she may have to become a bit broken. The developers need to explore all options to make her a valuable asset to her team, or else she will only be a mainstay on competitive teams (which, by the way, I HATE that every competitive BR scene turns into people camping hard) which is cool for top tier gameplay I suppose, but some people just want to enjoy the game. On the topic of competitive BR scene, I am very curious to see how the Respawn devs balance the game as I would think their overlords (ie: EA) are keen to make Apex a competitive mainstay but also keep the player base happy so they spend money.