Zenyatta might not be the most picked support hero in Overwatch 2, but the omnic monk has consistently been the bane of many tanks’ existence. However, a new patch that dropped Tuesday, Oct. 31, will change that.
Blizzard gave everyone a bit of a surprise today with a pre-BlizzCon balance patch that included changes to 15 heroes, and nerfs to a large swathe of the utility and crowd control cooldowns in the game.
While Zenyatta traditionally hasn’t had any “cooldowns,” the new patch created an effective one for his Orb of Discord ability that makes life exceptionally difficult for tank players. Following feedback from a lot of tank players who find his debuff ability frustrating to play against, Blizzard made it so that the Orb of Discord can be reasonably countered—at least for a little while.
If the Orb of Discord is removed from a target, it can’t be reapplied to the same target for seven seconds. This means that if you have a Kiriko remove the debuff, or if a player runs out of line of sight of Zenyatta for a long enough time, they will be able to roam free for at least a little while.
“The goal of these changes is to add more counterplay against Discord Orb and encourage Zenyatta players to think more about who to place it on,” the dev notes said. “Now, if the effect ends for any reason, the target is temporarily unable to be targeted again by Discord Orb.”
In an attempt to try to make the nerf feel not quite as painful for Zenyatta players, Blizzard increased the range of the ability to 40 meters, up from 30. The devs also increased his total health to 225. They also increased the amount of time that a player can be out of LOS and maintain a Harmony Orb.
The slight boosts to Zenyatta’s survivability and healing potential will hopefully keep the embattled omnic monk playable .
