Blizzard added a small patch to Overwatch 2 on Thursday alongside new support hero Illari’s arrival in the game’s competitive mode. Along with a few minor bug fixes, the team gave a nerf to Illari just two weeks after her release.
Game director Aaron Keller told players ahead of Illari’s release that the new hero might be a smidge overtuned because the team didn’t want to make the same mistake that they did with Lifeweaver. The previous new hero addition had an underwhelming start and needed many buffs before becoming viable.
You’re clearly here to know what happened to Illari, so we’ll just cut to the chase; here are the Overwatch 2 season six patch notes for Aug. 24:
Illari hero balance changes in Overwatch 2 season six
- Healing Pylon – Heal decreased to 30, down from 40. Shields decreased to 50, down from 75.
- Captive Sun – Projectile Impact and explosion can now be blocked by barriers. Projectile size decreased to 0.75 meters, down from 1.5. Sunstruck duration decreased to six, down from seven.
“Illari has had a strong showing since her launch,” the dev comments said. “The following changes are meant to promote a better balance between healing and damage while adding more counterplay against her abilities. We are making the Healing Pylon weaker, as it’s often placed out of line-of-sight or at odd angles and isn’t being destroyed as often as we expect. Captive Sun ignoring barriers is not immediately intuitive, but we are also reducing the projectile size, so blocking or destroying will require more precision. Finally, the Sunstruck effect lasts too long to reasonably avoid the detonation damage threshold.”
Related: Illari is ‘not overpowered’ but is still getting nerfed, Overwatch dev says
Keller and lead hero designer Alec Dawson both mentioned changes would be coming to Healing Pylon and Captive Sun prior to the patch dropping, so this update isn’t the most surprising. However, the significant drop-off in Healing Pylon’s throughput might be a cause for concern as far as her flexibility is concerned.
Illari has a powerful heal with her Solar Rifle secondary fire, so her healing throughput shouldn’t take too much of a hit. But with Healing Pylon doing less, Illari herself will need to be more focused on healing and likely won’t be able to provide as much in the way of supplemental DPS.
Captive Sun didn’t initially come across as too overly powerful, but it being able to project through barriers certainly felt unfair to face. I don’t expect the Captive Sun changes to impede her viability all that much.
Illari was due for a nerf, and if you didn’t see it coming, you’ve probably been too busy playing Baldur’s Gate 3 instead of season six. Ilari should still be useful, and I anticipate seeing a lot of her in competitive games.
The bottom line is, she’s still good, so don’t you worry.
