im danish, so my day is filled with danish flags and danish things. And it seems that not even in ow can i escape the danish

Kind of a strange question but i started playing again start of season 2 and she was pretty widely considered a bad pick. I heard that when she first came out she was busted. When did she become terrible? (I know after latest patch she isnt bad anymore)

TLDR; Both of Freja's most popular perks are awful, they don't fit her playstyle at all and actually cause the player to develop bad habits that hurt their progress in the long run.

It's clear by now the most favourite perks by the community are Freja's Relentless Barrage (Minor) and Aerial Recovery (Major). The stats on the OWstats website show 60% choose Relentless Barrage over momentum boost and 70% choose Aerial Recovery over Rising Winds. This checks out with opinions on Reddit and some Freja guides on the web.

But in my games I've been picking Momentum Boost and Rising Winds and feel I can make a case for them being better.

The case for Momentum boost over Relentless barrage is extremely clear. Freja's playstyle is that of an aggressive hyper-mobile DPS that gets her advantage from off angling and quickly repositioning herself in angles that enemies don't expect. Not only does Momentum boost helps you reposition faster, but it also provides in-combat utility by increasing the distance you travel (presumably while in air). More distance traveled = More distance enemies have to move their crosshair in order to hit you. Since it's the less common perk, enemies' muscle memory will be messed up with the extra distance you cover. This is especially true for enemies that flick in order to aim. One counter to this is that it slightly makes her backwards double dash tech harder which you can use to kill enemies quickly but it isn't a deal breaker and you shouldn't be relying on this to rank up anyway. Its simply a gimmick and doesn't substitute for real aim and skill, especially the higher you climb. So it doesn't really matter.

The problem with relentless barrage is it buffs the weakest aspect of Freja's kit: Her sustained fire. The amount of sustain/burst healing in the game and the travel time of crossbow fire projectiles is the reason why you don't play Freja like Soldier 76. If what I said is true, not having to frequently reload won't help, since its a raw damage issue not a reload or sustained fire issue. Freja became problematic, and is only strong, because of the burst ability in her kit. If you aren't bursting enemies down on Freja, you might as well play another DPS. Any perk which buffs the least important aspect of her kit and is taken instead of a mobility enhancement perk (which better enables her to get that burst off) is extremely weak. Relentless barrage is useless because 80% of the heroes in a given game take two "take aim" arrows + one or two hits with crossbow fire to kill them. In the event of a missed take aim you can still kill a squishy target quickly with one take aim + sustained fire, no reload is even needed (perk or not) unless you are extremely bad at aiming. Freja is not a character that gets value from just shooting at tanks, because tanks have the HP and attention of overtuned supports that can tank that burst. Any moment spent shooting at a tank is a moment you aren't taking to use your mobility and burst to kill the supports enabling them or taking angles on DPS that don't expect it.

A counter to this argument could be to say Freja can come under the attack of multiple enemies at once (which shouldn't even happen anyway because that means you have severely messed up your positioning) thus relentless barrage ensures she has enough ammo to last the fight. The problem with this is that a situation where Freja needs to urgently defend herself is almost always a situation where mobility is better than a free reload, since she has no sustain and is a very squishy DPS. This is the reason why Tracer has a recall ability, not a passive that reloads her gun when she gets a kill and draws attention to herself. That would be terrible for obvious reasons. The usefulness of DPS heroes like Tracer, Echo, Freja, is that their abilities run on a cycle. Trying to sustain yourself outside that cycle is foolish, and thus if you recognize that Frejas strength is her abilities you should buff those abilities, not the downtime in between them. The solution to a glass cannon character isn't to buff the very mechanic (her primary) that requires them to expose their HP for even longer in order just to get value, its to pick perks that help her get in and out (like a bounty! Sound familiar?). An additional problem is that it ignores the very real opportunities within fight to efficiently reload your weapon, so it reduces an opportunity for skill expression and makes the player very lazy when it comes to reloading, which is bad if you want to rank up, regardless of character. It assumes reload = always bad, therefore reload less. This isn't true, especially when this prevents you from picking a better perk.

To prove how bad this perk is, play with the perk and identify opportunities where you wouldn't have gotten a kill if you didn't have it. There aren't many. If there are even any, it's due to severe errors by the enemy team (still making this a bad perk) or its due to your bad "relentless" playstyle which results in some limited kills due to the perk, but if you played differently, you would actually be getting more kills/ more value if you played differently but you just dont realise it. In essence its a lower skill ceiling ability that lowers your value and survivability in turn for tank-centric lower value gameplay. Negatives all around.

As for Aerial recovery VS Rising winds, the issue with Aerial recovery is that updraft is actually an engagement ability. The ability to take vertical angles (good updrafts are always behind vertical cover) is what makes her a strong hero. Healing during an engagement has to be the most trash concept ever invented. Either you aren't healed and therefore your shouldn't be peaking at all, or you are full hp and the healing is useless. Cover is inadvertently a form of healing, so healing in air is overkill and actually encourages the player to stay in air longer, making them a static target, and also encourages them to use less cover, which is also a terrible habit that goes against her kit. Her strength isn't being in air, its the ability to switch between ground and the air quickly to take different angles that allow you to secure kills. This is exactly why rising winds is the better perk, because it doubles her offensive potential without incentivising the player to develop bad habits that prevent progression. If enemies are nearly killing you when you use updraft the solution is not to sacrifice offensive potential for self heals its to simply get better at updrafts or to swap off of Freja when being countered. Its the same concept as tracer, if she's taking too much damage during her blinks the solution isn't a "healing blink perk" its a "get better at blink positioning and timing" pep talk, or even a hero swap. The perk will never stop you from being countered.

One counter to this could be that updraft healing gives Freja higher effective HP in a fight. But as i mentioned earlier, updraft is Freja's offensive potential. Any defensive use that doesn't allow her to take angles is useless and any offensive use while needing to be healed simply exposes her to a quick demise for every second she is exposed and isn't at full HP. If you are updrafting right in front of an enemy during a duel you have visibly given away your peakers advantage and also incentivized yourself to not use updraft in order to engage... All in order to heal yourself in moments where there isn't a good reason to updraft anyway. It's a perk with literally no valid use.

Curious to see what you guys think about this. I know I'm already significantly unpopular on the basis of preferring momentum boost over barrage, especially with the Primary fire buffs, but after observing the perk in my games even post buff it simply does nothing other than make the player form bad habits and (potentially) get value in situations that you would have better value simply not being in to begin with.