2023-08-04 18:05:00
In a new article published just now on the official website, Aaaron Keller talks about the balance of the different heroes and heroines ofOverwatch 2 as we approach Season 6.
Loads of new things are coming to Overwatch 2: Invasion. We talked about new story missions, event mission, hotspot mode, new character progression system, heroic mastery missions… and soon we will also talk about our new support heroine. In addition to these novelties, many changes await our heroes and heroines in the next season. Almost half of our characters will receive balance changes. I won’t go into detail about every change in this new season (everything will be in the patch notes), but I will cover the most important ones.
But first, two quick points.
We learned from the launch of Vital: our new hero was interesting, but severely underpowered upon release, and we don’t want to repeat that mistake. For Overwatch 2: Invasion, our goal is to release a new character that is compelling and impactful from day one. We don’t intend to release an overpowered heroine, but we’d rather people play her because she brings something and not just because she’s new. We’ll be monitoring it closely, studying your feedback, and making changes quickly if necessary.
We’re changing the way we calculate armor damage. Armor damage reduction now stacks with other sources of damage reduction, and respects the current limit of 50%. In the past, it stacked multiplicatively with damage reduction from abilities, which created situations where some characters were harder to damage than intended, as they bypassed the damage reduction cap. This change should remain quite modest and will mainly affect Ramattra and Orisa.
Good. Let’s move on to balancing.
This season, the balance changes are mostly a result of our recent tweaks. We’ve made several changes to Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade this season, and we’ll continue to tweak this ability to address some extreme situations. Its maximum range will decrease noticeably, with a maximum travel time of 1.5 seconds. Cassidy will also benefit from an increase in his hit points and some adjustments concerning the reduction of his ranged damage. Our team is happy with the power of Torbjörn’s turrets following their change this season, but we’d like to increase the damage potential of his primary fire, which will benefit from a higher rate of fire. We’re also going to speed up his weapon swap to be more effective with his turret. Soldier: 76 got a nice boost in Season 5. We don’t find it too threatening, but its damage could be reduced. We’re reducing the damage of his LX Rockets and slightly increasing the cost of his ult. Finally, we continue to adjust Orisa. His Armor ability will now grant an additional 125 HP, and the distance from which his damage drops will increase slightly. We wanted to see how much the mid-season changes were going to boost her before rolling out the armor/damage reduction changes, and we think she’s going to need a little more help to compensate. .
Invasion will see the arrival of a new support heroine, but we will also be making some changes to our other support characters. We continue to focus on Vital. This one seems to have found a much more satisfying place than when it was released, but we would like to focus on two aspects: increasing the impact of its ultimate and making the character more robust. Part of the healing provided by Tree of Life will now be converted into excess hit points, up to a maximum of 100 HP per character. To help Vital stay alive, we’re additionally converting a portion of his HP into Shield Points and increasing the healing done by Regenerating Momentum.
Kiriko’s Protective Suzu will also change. Its healing will decrease, but when dispelling a negative effect, the ability will provide an additional burst of healing. Additionally, the slight knockback effect of Protection Suzu is removed. We would like this ability to be more targeted; we don’t want players holding back on using it, and we’d like to reward them more when they use it in the right circumstances.
We’re planning adjustments for several of our support characters, but the final change I’ll discuss here is the reduction in Angel’s damage boost. This reduction remains slight: the bonus goes from 30% to 25%. With this value, the ability still seems effective to us, but it allows us to avoid certain damage peaks. Our team is aware that this is a hotly debated topic, and we are doing our best to take into account the opinions of the community.
Some other information is worth mentioning. Sombra will get a few small changes next season, but she’ll get a bigger revamp for Season 7. She’ll even get a new ability! Doomfist and Ramattra’s blocking effects will reduce root damage, and we’ll be making changes to Bastion to make the character more fluid and increase the potential of his A-36 Tactical Grenade.
All of these new features, along with the rest of Overwatch 2: Invasion, will arrive on August 10. I can’t wait and hope to meet you in game. See you next time!
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