So there has been a high level of win rates and success with Harec lately, mostly due to his Rare weapon Ignis, coupled with his ability to stalk with no minimum cool down and a card called Firmness.
First we should talk about the weapon. This sniper can, like all snipers, head shot from near infinite distance relative to map sizes. Now this by itself isn't a big deal. Traditionally sniper rifles reward power to those who have patience, aim and timing. Vindicta Anima, Aura Mortis, Ferox Impetus and Easter Egg (in it's sniper fire) all have this balance. The trade off for one shot power is waiting for a charge and in most cases aiming for the head. The stronger the power the longer the charge, naturally, it's about balance. This is done I imagine sothat we don't have a spammable one shot weapon. You will notice as the charge gets shorter the power gets weaker, this is, again the balance. Ignis Fugit breaks this rule, and thus breaks the balance.
Ignis has a VERY short charge up and while being the weakest out of his sniper rifles, it makes up for it by chargeing fast. When they changed Ignis to have an alternate fire with automatic crit bullets this effectively made an Aura Mortis with a short charge up. This means you no longer have to head shot, you could shoot someone toe or graze their elbow and it would, at the very least, put them in wound state. This can EASILY be followed up by another FAST shot or if they are lucky enough to find cover Harec merely needs to stalk to a new position and finish them off before they can ever get up again. This weapon by itself breaks the balance of this game in a lot of ways.
Keep in mind the other characters and their weapons. Ignis has infinite range, the highest damage, fast firing, and can crit on demand. You would think that other weapons would be balanced in a similar manner. But they're no where as good, but this isn't the only reason Ignis is a problem, it's also in combination with Harec's ability, which is also the best special in the game right now. The solution would be to simply take away crit bullets because it currently outshines it's counterpart rifles and gives no incentive to use them if you can use Ignis and do all the same things and more. There has to be a payoff to using Aura Mortis, it takes longer to fire and does more damage, but Ignis marginalizes this and kind of breaks the balance of the weapons right now.
Stalk, this allows you to fly to most surfaces on the map on the x, y, z axis. when you stalk you are immune to damage and untargetable. Ony when you land on a surface are you targetable. The distance you can stalk is considerably far to. This sound ok so far, but here is where it becomes a problem. When you stalk there is no cool down if you don't stay long enough. You can spam stalk. Coupled with Ignis and it's fast fire you see where this gets abused and has very little counterplay. Two things would make this a more reasonable special that falls in line with the rest of the cast. A) Give it a minimum cool down, say 2 or 3 seconds. This would allow him to have to be more selective of his stalking and allow counterplay when he kills someone and has to come back. Or B) Have him have a minimum time he has to stick to a wall. This is is less favored by me, but if he did kill someone the victims allies could retaliate before he stalks away. Either way, either of these would allow counterplay and less stalk spam, which in my opinion, is very skill less and unfair to opponents. Currently in the game right now it's a headache as you have to work much harder and have quite a bit of luck in order to deal with Harec and Ignis more so than ANY other character in the game.
Finally we have the Firmness card which essentially ignores 60 damage. This means when he stalks and you are skilled enough to shoot him first, it doesn't matter, he ignores the damage and head shots you, or at the least, escapes. Again, this allows for no counterplay at all. As a player facing off against Harec you AREN'T rewarded for shooting him first in Stalk and so are head shot by him all the same.
I'm not sure if a combination nerf to all three of these aspects would be good or just a focused one on a single. But I feel something seriously needs to be done because the combination of these three, with a heavy emphasis on the weapon itself, is creating a new power meta right now where this is the new unstoppable character/weapon combination.
MSE, if you have access to the data please review Ignis Harec pick rate and, most of all, win rate. From the limited perspective of what I have seen, personally or through many videos from many different Harec players, it's clear to me that victory is weighted heavy in this weapons favor.
