Orisa’s reign is nearing its end in Overwatch 2 after the Blizzard developers admitted the tank has become too difficult to counter and desperately needs nerfs.
To rectify this issue, the go-to Overwatch 2 tank has had several aspects of her Fortify ability nerfed in the hero shooter’s latest September patch.
There was only one ability hit, but the developers have made sure to hit it from every angle; Orisa’s Overhealth health boost has been reduced from 125 to 100, alongside several changes to the Fortify ability’s cooldown length.
Before these Sep. 7 changes, Orisa players were “incentivized to cancel the ability early to begin the cooldown immediately,” the devs explained after shipping the balance tweaks. After these changes, the balance team now hopes Fortify will be used a little less and won’t be activated as many times each game.
While Orisa may be knocked from her pedestal, changes to tanks like Junker Queen and Zarya firm them as easy replacements. The two tanks saw buffs to one ability each, but these tweaks are bound to make an impact quite quickly.
In particular, the devs wanted to buff Junker Queen without “directly affecting (her) self-healing.” This resulted in Jagged Blade’s damage increasing from 50 to 65. Zarya’s buffs, on the other hand, were tailored to team play.
These changes come alongside tweaks to Ashe, Bastion, Mei, Kiriko, and Baptiste. The update also introduced a slew of bug fixes spanning across a large portion of the OW2 cast, and multiple maps.
We’ll have to wait and see how much these changes will impact the OW2 ecosystem. If Blizzard follows their usual update schedule, odds are we’ll get more updates throughout September as their full effect becomes more noticeable.
