Yingzilla: How Ubisoft buffed and then nerfed a monster

Ubisoft has been under fire as of late for a series of questionable decisions, regarding their balancing choices and management of Pro League alike. The previous patch saw a massive buff to the attacker Ying, an operator much maligned for her previous status as an overpowered one-woman army years ago. 

Her primary light machine gun received a damage buff, she received an additional Candela flash grenade (bringing her total to four) and gained her smoke grenades back.

Ying’s previous overpowered state saw her with three Candelas and smoke grenades during a “smoke plant” meta, allowing her to flashbang and smoke off an entire objective by herself, and plant the defuser.

Ying was so powerful players coined her "Yingzilla" (Credit: Ubisoft)

She became a menace in the ranked and Pro League scenes, so it is easy to see why the community had reservations about her being buffed to a state easily more powerful than what she was at her launch in Operation Blood Orchid. 

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It has been nearly two weeks since the patch buffing “Yingzilla”, as the community coined it, and the ranked scene was terrorized by the OP operator. Nearly every lobby in every rank was filled with the sound of howling Candelas, and the Siege community was even more united against the changes forced upon them. 

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On the 30th of April, Ubisoft released a PC only patch to fix things addressed in their Developer Blog, one of which was the state of Ying as an operator. They removed one of her Candelas, bringing her total number of gadgets from four down to three.

Ubisoft seems to hope this will be enough to put an end to the menace of “Yingzilla”, however, only time will show if it was enough.