Blizzard told Overwatch fans there were changes on the horizon during a recent blog post, but the expectation was they’d come with the mid-cycle season seven patch after BlizzCon. Instead, those changes came just days before the yearly convention.
A patch for Overwatch 2 dropped today and it’s sure to shake up the game’s meta with balance changes for 15 of the game’s heroes. The game’s developers noted the changes coming to the game today, Oct. 31, are “largely focused on widening the window of time players have during combat between some impactful cooldowns.”
Blizzard’s lead hero designer Alec Dawson previously said in the game’s most recent developer blog that the team was looking to adjust a lot of the utility support heroes have. This decision came following feedback from players who believed many support heroes were too powerful.
Despite the game’s healing role being the smallest faction of the game’s roster, six of the 15 heroes changed in today’s patch were support heroes, making it clear Blizzard had a point to make.
Many of the changes were minor nerfs to various ability cooldowns. Lifeweaver’s Life Grip, Kiriko’s Protection Suzu, Ana’s Biotic Grenade, Illari’s Healing Pylon, and Baptiste’s Immortality Field all ended up with slightly longer cooldowns.
Meanwhile, Zenyatta received the most significant nerf, even though he is by no means the most heavily used support hero. To satisfy some of the complaints from tank players who find themselves constantly debuffed with an Orb of Discord, Blizzard made it so the ability can’t be reapplied to the same target for seven seconds once it’s removed from that target.
Though supports were the main heroes affected by today’s series of nerfs, other characters also had the effectiveness of their crowd control and utility abilities nerfed, including Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade, the slow from Mei’s Endothermic Blaster, and Doomfist’s Rocket Punch.
Expect the game’s devs to explain the philosophies behind these changes this weekend during BlizzCon, which begins Friday, Nov. 3 and runs until Saturday, Nov. 4.
