There Season 4 ofOverwatch 2 is going to end in a few days and the developers are preparing the ground for the next chapter of their FPS competitive multiplayer, which will be entitled to content PvE truncated in the coming months. But today, Blizzard focuses on its Herowhich will be entitled to some changes.
In a lengthy blog post, Blizzard explain that he will nerf there Queen of the Junkersafter a buff in the middle of Season 4so that its command cry and its ultimate ability are less powerful. Fatal And Hanzothe two snipers in the game, will also be nerfed to do less damage over long distances, and thus no longer kill in one hit the targets with little PV. Vital goes on his side to be buffedthe developers can’t really make the new character of Support interesting to play, it will still be entitled to modifications, but the studio remains discreet on this case. Finally, May And McCree they too will be nerfed to reduce their control effects. Here is what Blizzard announcement :
Season 4 is coming to an end, and I would like to talk about the game balance. This season, many characters have been played consistently, and overall the games have felt pretty balanced. In terms of winrate, Seasons 3 and 4 were the most balanced in recent Overwatch history! With that in mind, let’s take a look back at various aspects of Season 4 and take a look at what’s going to change for Season 5 and beyond. Specifically, I’d like to talk about certain characters like Junkers Queen and Vital, one-hit kills, and 5v5 control effects.
A few balancing quirks stand out for Season 4. In the mid-season update, the Queen of Junkers received a series of buffs and came to completely dominate the battlefield. Her win rate increased by around 5% and she became one of the most used tanks despite being one of the least popular. For most levels of play, the Junkers Queen and Reinhardt were the two most played tanks during the second half of the season. Starting at Mastery rank, however, the queen becomes by far the most popular tank. Among the notable changes made to the character, we notably increased the healing provided by his passive. This addition pleases us, but makes the queen of the Junkers too difficult to eliminate; The HP granted by Command Shout will therefore be reduced from 200 to 150. We will also slightly increase the cost of her ultimate, which she tends to get faster since the mid-season update.
Vital is a very dynamic hero, and we could see some stunning actions from him during Season 4. However, his lack of power limits his popularity among players. In a previous article, we wanted to give you good reasons to play the new Overwatch characters. This is always our goal: we want new heroes and heroines to bring something new to the game. For now, however, we are looking for the best way to bring Vital back to an acceptable level. When he is played more, we will have a clearer view of the character. Either the players will start using the different elements of his arsenal, or we will think about possible additions. At the launch of Season 5, Vital will receive some changes (mostly improvements). All will be detailed in the patch notes, but expect increased healing and damage, healing effect for Salvaging Grasp, slightly reduced collision mask, and some comfort buffs for Petal Platform.
We will continue to monitor the Junkers Queen and Vital and make further changes to them as needed.
The community has also expressed concerns over Widowmaker and Hanzo’s propensity for one-hit kills. We would like to reduce their frequency and fix some of the more extreme lines of sight on some maps. Widowmaker damage will be reduced from a range of 40-60 meters instead of 70-100 meters. Long range damage reduction will also be increased beyond 30%-50%. Widowmaker can still eliminate characters with 200 HP from a distance of 50 meters or less with a single bullet, but beyond that, the blow will no longer be lethal. Hanzo will have his damage reduced slightly to prevent him from one-hit killing characters with 250 HP. In addition, his Sonic Arrow will be more easily identifiable by the opposing team, so as to limit eliminations that seem to come from nowhere. The team is constantly digging into the nature of one-hit kills in Overwatch 2, looking to see if these are healthy for the game as a whole.
Finally, I’d like to talk a bit about control effects. At the launch of Overwatch 2, we made some notable changes to how combat works, the most significant being the change from 6v6 to 5v5. To go along with this new feature, we’ve removed most damage and support character control effects. We think this change was an improvement over the original game, which sometimes felt like a giant pinball machine. That being said, Overwatch 2 has a lot of highly mobile characters, and the team can’t always rely on their tank to handle them. We are therefore going to relax our approach. We don’t want to go back to the starting situation, but we think the game can accommodate more control effects, especially if they are moderate. For Season 5, we will therefore make changes in this direction to Mei and Cassidy. Mei’s Endothermic Cannon will be modified. The primary shot will still slow targets, but by accumulating shots, it will be possible to trigger an effect applying a significantly greater slow for 1.5 seconds. If you’ve played the original game, this will probably remind you of Mei’s old weapon. Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade will also change: it will deal less damage, but will apply a slowing effect that will also block movement abilities.
Finally, several other characters will receive some adjustments for Season 5. We can’t wait to tell you more in the patch notes and we can’t wait to see you discover all the other surprises the game has in store for you this season. As always, thank you for reading this article! See you soon in game.
There Season 5 ofOverwatch 2 will be launched on June 13 on PC, playstation, Xbox and Switch. You can find prepaid cards Battle.net at the house of Micromania.
| Clint008 Writer – Tester |
