Overwatch heroes continue to be tweaked on the game’s test server. Blizzard is still toying with two of Overwatch’s supports, Ana and Brigitte.
The latest PTR update, which was deployed late on May 4, gave Ana an increased clip size, bringing her Biotic Rifle bullets from 10 to 14. Brigitte’s Shield Bash received a slight nerf, increasing the ability’s cooldown from five to six seconds.
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Both Ana and Brigitte have been subject to scrutiny from the game’s players and the Overwatch team. Players have long complained about Ana’s viability in the game’s current meta, which was recently overhauled by the addition of tank-like support Brigitte. Overwatch game developer Geoff Goodman wrote on the Overwatch forums that Ana’s buff “should help her maintain healing uptime and allow her to more carefully choose when to reload as opposed to just healing until the reload is forced.”
The team doesn’t want to take away Ana’s weaknesses, but instead make her more powerful in the ways she already succeeds. Her weaknesses—low mobility and low self-healing—have to be managed by the Ana player and her team, not removed from the game.
As for Brigitte, a slight cooldown increase for her Shield Bash ability won’t make a huge difference in the way she’s played—it’s just one second, after all. But it could make her feel less overpowered to enemies. Her ability to continuously stun her enemies during a fight makes it hard to counter Brigitte. An increased cooldown could give enemies a chance to flee.
The Ana and Brigitte changes on the Overwatch PTR will likely remain in testing for a couple weeks. There’s no official word on when these adjustments will go live for all Overwatch players.
