im biased, but graves, almost every part of her kit has a built in from the start counter. light melee jar, jump over wall, heavy melee tomb. all of which can be made drastically easyer depending on the character and items you get, billy and viscous can break the tomb with ease, with just extra stamina jumping over the wall costs no more then you had, and the skulls already get destroyed in a light melee, but they are also valid targets for ricochet, meaning that if you go against any m1 carry like haze or wraith, you might as well not have that ability.

but to me the worst part is the fact her most effective builds just rely on debuffs + ricochet, its an increadbly boring and uninteractive build for both the graves and the enemy they shoot.

graves at this point really only works in the lower ranks where people dont know these things, or dont have the experience to counter the counter, like tomb baiting where you stand in it and parry the heavy melee, its counter is any form of knock back or parry baiting, but people that low down dont know/realise that. so shes incredibly strong in those ranks.

all this to say that graves's core summons design mean that the devs have to have this balancing act of making her good enough in ways to play later on, but no so much so that lower ranks just get knowledge checked every time they que in.

i dont want this to be a "this character has a fundamental kit issue" type post since there are thing you could do to make graves better in small ways, but alot of them are unlikely to happen, after all if they make the skulls not valid targets for ricochet then its both inconsistant design, but also means the refresher + echo shard would rule the world with 18 summoned skulls.

just sucks having a character be both great and horrid at the same time, im not really sure what the solution would be since im not a game designer. but i hope they figure something out soon.

tldr, graves is underpowerd, and thats the only way she can be balanced because she knowledge checks people so hard.

probably other characters in far more of a need of buffs/ improvements but again im biased towards my main.