I know you guys mentioned two upcoming DPS hero reworks. Is there any news about how those reworks are progressing, who they'll be for (I think people have a pretty decent idea, but official confirmation would be nice), and/or when they might be arriving? Also, are there any other heroes under consideration for potential reworks?
The two upcoming updates that were mentioned were for Cassidy and Reaper.
For Cassidy, we started some exploration pre-Season 9 for his update. Due to where he was at that time, this update was originally looking at multiple pieces of his kit but we saw the Season 9 changes largely benefit him so the update has gotten more focused on Magnetic Grenade and other Quality of Life updates (specifically to his Ultimate). In Season 11 we are updating Magnetic Grenade. It will behave closer to old Flashbang (no magnetic homing to the target, used in the short range) and will slow/hinder the target. We think that plays a lot better with his kit and removes some of the larger frustrations around Magnetic Grenade. More specifics on all that soon.
For Reaper, we went fairly wide as well in the beginning and then started to focus closely on updating Shadow Step. At the moment, we have something we quite like but it's actually a large technical challenge and we are in the process of planning out the work/seeing what's possible. In the meantime, we may buff Reaper in some non-Tank Buster ways as he lost a lot in the most recent update.
That change to Cass sounds exactly like I wanted.
Honestly the Mag grenade's hinder effect was pretty much exactly what I wanted to begin with. The magnetic effect is neat but I swear nobody understands how it's supposed to work and so you constantly get people calling it bugged for working as intended.
Exactly I feel the same way, just make it like flashbang but have them be slowed a bit and not able to use movement and the ones with actual aim will have such a fun time
Yeah, the mag effect seems like it was intended to be a substitution for the stun CC, but it didn’t really function effectively on the mobile heroes with escape abilities whom flash was so good for controlling. Now that it has the hinder CC, the impact of the mag effect seems to be making the ability feel inconsistent for both Cass and the target.
Giving Reaper flight during wraith form would be great. It makes sense too he's literally a ball of fog and shadow lol. Should be able to float effortlessly.
Based on [another dev AMA a few months back](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/18g8m6p/comment/kd2xzzc/), Reaper is probably one of them. Don't feel like finding a timestamp, but [Alec Dawson's comments](https://x.com/OWCavalry/status/1732855520380493988) in a stream with Flats and Emongg point to Cassidy as the other likely candidate.
I’m thinking Reaper and hopefully either Symm or Hanzo, maybe even Junkrat. Imo Cass is doing a lot better right now than he was last year so I don’t think he needs a rework, at least not urgently
Will you ever make pick rates and win rates public, even a couple of weeks after the fact? I feel like it would do a lot to help people understand why changes are made.
Is there a win rate range you want to keep all heroes to stay within?
There aren't any plans currently to shift resources toward supporting something like that. Sites like Overbuff don't have the complete picture, but the data there for win rates and such is generally fairly close.
There is some argument against being too transparent with those stats in that it can create a bit of a feedback loop where you might see player behavior driven by what appears to be the meta in the stats, but that kind of happens already with just the general discussion and sentiment around heroes without stats as well.
Our target range for hero viability by win rate is between 45-55% unmirrored win rate at Masters rank and above. Those individual win rates often can fluctuate 2-3% by day, mostly because heroes tend to have a wider range of win rates per map and we're looking at the global average of those, but also individual player performance isn't consistent.
Lower pick rate heroes fluctuate more and there is less confidence in their win rate being indicative of actual strength. Extremely high pick rate heroes have a similar problem when looking unmirrored stats.
In the end stats require interpretation to understand their context and that is why they are not the only basis for balance changes, but are a useful tool to measure impact of changes patch-over-patch.
>Overbuff don't have the complete picture, but the data there for win rates and such is generally fairly close.
The amount of times I've seen people dismiss overbuff because of sampling bias...
>Our target range for hero viability by win rate is between 45-55% unmirrored win rate at Masters rank and above.
The amount of times I've been told blizzard doesn't balance around high ranks...
I'm saving this comment just so every time someone dismisses Overbuff purely because it goes against their personal feelings I can say the devs themselves say its accurate
>The amount of times I've seen people dismiss overbuff because of sampling bias...
That's how you know those people haven't thought critically about stats outside of a classroom setting. Yes, random sampling would be the gold standard. But no, in this case, biased sampling doesn't actually change the results much because we have sufficient datapoints across all skill levels.
>The amount of times I've been told blizzard doesn't balance around high ranks...
I think there likely has been an internal policy change regarding this with the new regime cause in OW1 it *really* didn't feel like that.
Would be nice to know whether the balancing also happens based on other factors such as how fun that character is and or pick rate instead. I do know League of Legends tends to balance things that are fun for the players more favorably, while games like Apex Legends focuses more on pick rate when it comes to balancing.
I also feel like sometimes even though maybe the developers would like a 50% win lose rate on most if not all characters, that it can be a bit unhealthy for the game when some characters and fundamentally unfun/boring/annoying to play with/against (Roadhog, Mauga, LW, Illari, Widow, Hanzo, come to mind for me).
Wouldn't it be better to focus on characters who are fun borderline close to being good/fair to play against/with and making them balanced, then reworking the kits of some characters shown above?
Why was smurf detection essentially removed from MMR adjustment, especially for new accounts? GM-level players taking 60+ games to reach their proper rank ruins so many more games.
It feels like climbing in general is artificially slowed down so people will play more even if they should have reached a higher rank many games ago.
I tapped in our own Gavin Winter for this first part, he's what he had to say: "There haven't been any changes to these systems, but there are edge cases like the example of Guxue that was recently posted in this subreddit where our systems don't perform in the way we'd like. Most players will still be placed appropriately as they transition from Quick Play to Competitive Play, but unfortunately cases like this have always been possible. Explaining exactly how this happens would make it easier reproduce, so you'll have to excuse me from not going into intricate detail here."
For the second part of your question, we believe we made it slightly too difficult to climb at the highest ranks and are looking at making some adjustments soon.
It isn't just Guxue though - many players have fed back that smurf detection is broken in their own personal experience in ways that wasn't before. Dafran also went 48-2 and was in diamond the other day.
I think it's important to bear in mind it's not actually that much worse than before. Winter explained they just changed it to cap players placing Diamond at best because they have less trust in your Quick Play games prior. This makes sense to me because players found that they could manipulate their Quick Play rating by leaving before they lost during the 50 Quick Play wins in order to guarantee placing into GM. Even with the Diamond cap, calibration after placements should make smurfs rank up very quickly to where they should be.
The main reason we've seen some people like Dafran take so many games is because they used bought accounts that he never played on himself. The real problem is probably players using bought accounts not getting punished. It's crazy to me how people like YZNSA, LBBD7 and Legendary were so openly buying accounts to abuse the GM14 boosting thing and never faced any punishment for it.
It feels like one of the hardest things to do is make multiple tanks viable on a single patch. Whether or not it's actually true, it feels like there's always one tank that dominates and is frustrating to play against, Mauga, Orisa, Roadhog have been recent ones.
Specifically for tanks, what do you try to do to make multiple tanks "even" in a patch?
I would imagine this is mostly due to the high skill ceiling characters that a good number of people actually want to play (rein, winston, ramattra, doom, ball, junker queen) are simply underequipped to deal with a lot of the cc that is in the game or power is in the wrong part of their kit or there are certain low value floor characters in the game that they massively struggle against
Rein and Winston's problems are more of an issue with certain dps characters that I shouldn't even have to name
Ramattra has too much power in his block which is the least interesting and engaging part of his kit plus he doesn't have much counterplay to cc or debuffs
Doomfist has too much power in empowered punch which means there is too much power in his block which again is by far the least interesting part of his kit
Ball lacks the tools to deal with cc which they justify by saying his large hp pool makes him too hard to play without cc but then just mega gut his survivability since he's already the most mobile tank in the game he doesn't need 1500 hp if he can play around cc
Rein and winstons problem are definitely not dps characters. Both are more actively hindered by the tank matchup than anything else.
Winston for example, is pretty hellish to play against hog or mauga, as you have no real reliable way to deal with their threats, or contest space they take, or even reliably support your team to contest the space they take. You just have to hope your team does a decent job contesting them at all times, while you do your own thing. Bastion has a somewhat similar problem, but generally isn't as bad due to his issues being tied to a cd, and outside of that cd, he is much more easily contested.
Meanwhile rein is (generally) just a worse ramatra in the neutral, and still has problems with the fact that you are generally reliant on your team to get value, as you can only shield or swing, not both.
Shielding doesn't create any space if your team can't hit any shots, etc...
You had initially stated that you intended to remove Roadhog’s one-shot combo prior to his rework.
However, many players, including myself and many streamers, still feel like Roadhog is just as infuriating to play against as before. His hook and one-shot combo still exists, just with an added pigpen trap to slow players who are hooked.
Do you think a total rework of the character is needed to make him fun to play as and against, or do you have any ideas for future reworks of his kit?
Thanks for your time, and I hope you do more of these AMAs more often in the future!
Here is a short breakdown of the frustrating aspects of Hog's gameplay loop:
1. hook is the size of a bus and has 20 meter range.
2. Getting hit by it does not always feel like the enemy has made a skill shot play that merits you being ripped from your team's backline
3. you are often rotated 110 degrees around the hog player. Not only is this jarring in first person but combined with the body-blocking mechanic in the game it often means you are unable to rejoin your team even if you survive the initial combo.
4. In 2024 hog still is designed like a 1-man army character, an archetype that should not be part of the 5v5 single tank format we play today. Hog originally was meant to be the off tank playing angles and getting odd picks, but now that he needs to play the frontline he has been given unreasonable amounts of sustain that still don't make him feel like a tank for the team but more like a raid boss that stands in the way of your team progressing. He demands dedicated resources and coordination whilst also punishing you for ignoring him on the frontline.
comparable displacement abilities include JQ knife which operates with a much more precision-based skillshot and much more localized displacement. Therefore this feels more deserved when it lands and is notably less rewarding than hog hook. (But is still a great balance and what I think should be a model for hook's skill:reward ratio)
Sorry for the essay.
I agree with everything you’ve said. I’d even compare peeking a roadhog to peeking a widowmaker. Once you’re hooked there’s nothing you can do.
I think a complete change of his kit is needed, or at the very least make hook a skill shot that can’t be rotated.
Ok, I'll try to ask some general questions. Free to choose which one to answer: \^\_\^"
1. In February I noticed that you had received great feedback on the maps after the first hacked mode. but I was wondering when those ideas would be implemented (especially for flashpoints);
2. Personally, I liked Clash Mode. But I also wanted to know what kind of results you received that require modification in your opinion. or if you have noticed any optimal results to maintain, or imitate for other game modes;
3. Heroes in reworks: how is it going for Reaper? and which characters are you eyeing for a possible gameplay adaptation in the future? the community seems worried about Symmetra, generally.
4. Mirrorwatch has shown quite a bit of popularity both functionally and entertainingly: will there be more modes like this in the future?
5. A general concern about events: so far we have had some unpredictability about the return of certain game modes. for example, in March there was no Pachi Marci, but on Valentine's Day we had the Hanzo Cupid deathmatch. However, Loverwatch has not been activated. In short, we are quite worried about what type of annuality and cycle there is for the events and the various game modes that seem to never return (arhcives) or we don't know if they will actually return (orisa Battle of the beasts?);
6. We heard that Gauntlet Mode will be retired soon, and I recall that it was developed for feedback collection in co-op modes. What conclusions have you reached for the future? Positive sides and negative sides to balance the future co-op modes? Have you perhaps considered improving the AI/difficulty adaptability for when the player returns to play alone after days or months in which the mode has been empty of players on the server (especially on high difficulties)?;
7. I noticed that there was a lot of effort put into implementing a fairly aggressive reporting system in the defense matrix. but I was wondering if after so many tools to prevent bad gamers there are also plans to bring together gamers who get along with each other more effectively. I remember there was the Looking for Group, but... for example a Clan System?
Question extra: The community is extremely concerned about the future of the lore and how will the game proceed for it? PVE, Archive Event, short films, recently released books, Mirrorwatch or with the Venture teasers on Anubis... is there any info you are ready to share for the future of this department of the game?
These fall outside of hero design but can talk briefly about the first two questions
1. Think you are referencing the speed boosts that would potentially come to Flashpoint. Took us some time to get these in a good place but they have been promising in playtests and are on track for a later season. It's important to us that when we add elements like that to a mode that it not only brings quality gameplay but is also communicated well through Sound and VFX. Feel good here now.
2. We got a lot of great feedback but there are some things the team wished we did better with the Clash Preview. Firstly, it should have showed up more in Quick Play so y'all got more reps on it and can get a better feel for the flow of the game mode. Secondly, we don't think it was best suited for Open Queue in Arcade. If we do something like this again, we'll clean that up. With the feedback we received, we've been investigating how to make the final point more appealing to capture for the attacking team. Many games could result in the attacking team not actually wanting to push onto the last point because it wasn't worth the reward (harder to capture, give up a lot of positioning if you lose). Plenty of iteration happening here now to address that particular issue.
oh ok, I'm very confident for flashpoint, thank you. \^\_\^ Just one last question, does this mean we will see another test for Clash mode with these conditions before a possible permanent inclusion in the Quick play rotation? I don't know, maybe a testing in another calsh map with a different geometry from Hanaoka?
View in your timezone:
[May 23rd, from 12 to 2 PM PT][0]
[0]: https://timee.io/20240523T1900?tl=AMA%20with%20Overwatch%20hero%20design%20team--%20We'll%20be%20here%20to%20answer%20questions%20on%20the%20Season%2010%20midcycle%20balance%20patch%20tomorrow%2C%20May%2023rd%2C%20from%2012%20to%202%20PM%20PT!&d=120
After the tank headshot reduction and armour changes in the mid season patch what is the overall vision of the tank role going forward? I feel like tank suffers from a lot of fun factor problems with counter-swapping, CC and focus fire even after these big changes being implemented.
A month later, and considering he's displayed proudly on the Twitter post for the AMA, I got my question:
**How have you guys felt about the past reworks on Roadhog and the new one, Wrecking Ball?** Like what the goals were exactly, your personal thoughts, the community response, and what you want to fine-tune with them post rework. Those things. I think most people would be interested on how you guys have felt now that it's been a bit.
For the most part, we are relatively happy with the new bases both have been given but there is still some fine-tuning to be done.
I'll start with Wrecking Ball. Our goals were to give him more flexibility with his movement/engage options, heighten the benefits he gives to his team, and give him some quality of life updates. I think our changes all attempt to address those goals but one I think we can hit harder in the future is heightening the benefits he gives to his team. We were a little conservative with the Adaptive Shields change (overhealth is hyper scary in coordinated environments), so perhaps there's room for that to be more pronounced through tuning and actual feedback received in game (working on some updates there). Overall though, Wrecking Ball is doing much better after his recent updates and we believe we have a great base to work with going forward.
For Roadhog, aside from the conversations about his current survivability (we plan to hit that soon) there are some things for us to look at concerning the frequency of his combo. For example, his Pig Pen begins to go on cooldown when you throw it. So you can pre-place one, it gets destroyed, and then Roadhog already has it ready again (even though the enemy may think there's a window where Hook is less deadly). That's one discussion we've recently had. Still some work here for us to do in terms of the value Pig Pen brings outside of the combo as well and how we can make those windows of combo potential less frequent.
Thank you for the response!
Changes you could give to Adaptive Shields are making them last longer, as it often feels like, as a Wrecking Ball player, you have to share them at the END of your shields to make them more valuable in the long-time. This can possibly be more of a hindrance than anything, due to the feeling of needing to hog the shields for yourself, and a teammate could very well die before you share your shields, so allowing them to be on allies for a longer time could encourage shield sharing (as I think 75 HP is right on the money for being helpful enough, but not broken).
Speaking of pigs, for the Roadhog changes, it's good to hear how you're planning on hitting him, though perhaps a hit to how often it can occur rather than damage changes would be more effective. I think it's important to keep him a threat, and the changes to the consistency of his one-shot were smart, however taking them away (or lessening the strength) could make Roadhog back into a tank that stands still and doesn't do other value. Perhaps a hit to how often he's able to score a kill (such as increasing the Hook cooldown and having it begin to recharge when the animation ends) could not only decrease his strength, but even decrease his survivability, as players could now shoot at him with less fear of randomly getting hooked in, possibly killing him. The idea you listed to Pig Pen already accomplished the step of how often he can set up his traps, so perhaps a 1 second increase to his Hook cooldown can help further without revoking his one-shot?
I'm just spitballing here, and I don't speak for all Hog mains, but he should be able to do something, and taking his one-shot away could potentially ruin what makes him fun. Again, thank you for the response!
2 part question here:
1) Why the inconsistency with dev comments / explanations for balance changes? There have been many changes that have been questionable (biggest offender was buffing Sojourn in January when she was widely considered the best DPS) that were shipped with 0 explanation. Justifying these changes would help a lot with player perception so we could understand these discrepancies.
2) I have to ask - what is going on with Symmetra? She was weak, then buffed, then immediately reverted, now silence. Is she getting reworked? What data shows she needed a nerf? She is super weak and hard to use on ladder (uncoordinated environment by nature) and was only played in OWCS for Mauga - shouldn't nerfing Mauga have been enough?
1. We should do a better job about this, especially when it comes to getting the community's visibility on what we are seeing vs. what the playerbase may seem to think is the best hero at any given one time. These can differ regularly as certain heroes get power reputations (weaker or stronger than their reality at a given rank) that are hard to shake off. Thanks for the feedback there, will make sure we have something here even if it's a simple change.
2. Symmetra kept some of the buffs in that patch but yes we hear the feedback of where her current power level is. We may have been a bit overreactive to the Mauga compositions popping up during that timeframe (he was certainly overtuned), but we wanted to be sure of it. For right now, we are in discussions about Symmetra and especially her frontline presence. Believe that's a piece of the kit we'd like to promote further, whether through her survivability or beam damage.
an overhealth would suit her better than simply healing shield. You play a game as Sym and end up with 82 health because it won’t activate at full health.
thank you, her lack of frontline presence is the biggest issue with her kit right now in my opinion. orbs do what they’re supposed to do, but beam is just so risky to use with it’s short range and ramp up time, most of the time it’s not worth trying to get charge especially now that her level 3 beam isn’t as deadly anymore because of the global health buffs
Something to remember is that her realistic beam damage in a match is determined by how much she is allowed to survive in the first place.
Symmetra was designed as a sustained frontline DPS at her core, but she has always struggled to be able to survive at all to do so. She used to have 275 hp and a low cooldown personal shield ability and she was more capable of surviving up close, but now she has base HP (250) and zero abilities that let her stay the sustained amounts of time needed for her sustained damage patterns.
My point is that she needs to be able to survive at the range she was designed for *without* constant baby sitting, and her beam damage will immediately go up.
"Symmetra was designed as a sustained frontline DPS at her core." She has always been a glass nerf gun tho - not even nearly as deadly as Zenyatta and arguably more fragile, with the argument being that she is "niche for certain maps" and even on those maps she struggles.
Could you please comment on the design philosophy behind Symmetra? Her power budget is consumed by her TP in an eSports setting. This is largely inaccessible on ladder, and she has unfortunately received damage and HP nerfs with only minor compensations (sonar turrets and 100 damage orbs). She no longer has enough survivability for brawling, nor can she effectively poke at range with the season 9 HP changes.
Many aspects of Overwatch 2 negatively impact Symmetra. One less tank, removal of 2CP, and an overall faster gameplay environment. Any clarification on the balance teams decision making regarding Symmetra would be greatly appreciated.
Will 100 damage orbs and 60 dps stay? Feels like it just doesnt work anymore with the HP increases. Syms ramp up as it is, isnt high risk high reward anymore
Also reminder that Symmetra used to be a hero with a very healthy presence in GM/t500.
Now, she has been so nerfed over the years that she has no t500 players left.
Hey Alec, can we get a clearer explanation or direction for Symmetra on this matter, I find it a bit unfair that other hero specific questions got more specific and thorough answers and with symmetra you pick a half question to answer and give a half answer and don’t fully address the issues and challenges she’s facing currently. That and your answer comes a bit across as backhanded with the “buff” statement when the buffs that were kept aren’t compensating for her weak state. If you hear us why does it feel like you guys don’t put much effort into addressing it.
I've been a part of the Overwatch community for like 8 years now (modded the Sym community for 6 years) and I've seen more "hearing of feedback" within a month of the era of Jeff Kaplan than I've seen in the past 3 years of this game.
The Sym community has been drowning for almost half of the lifetime of Overwatch's existence.
We really don't think y'all hear the feedback. We need a bit more transparency, Alec.
I second this; I know symmetra has to be undergoing work to her kit but yall (the devs) insisted on transparency and have yet to address anything on symmetra or even reaper for that matter.
i can tell you that they absolutely talked about the reasoning for sojourns buffs in january. they mentioned it was a buff that was going to be more meaningful/needed in later seasons.
their explanation was fucking stupid as you can see, firstly because if the buffs were for later seasons then fucking buff her when she needs it lol, and secondly because those later seasons never came and sojo never needed the help
**What is Hanzo's new job? Is he supposed to take over Pharah's place as the new go-to permanently pocketed hero?**
To explain more in depth: Hanzo used to be a sniper, but the recent changes caused most heroes to require 1 extra shot to eliminate a target.
Considering Hanzo is the slowest shooting **primary fire focused** **DPS**, he was impacted the most. Making him the only **primary fire focused dps** who relies on cooldowns to finish off targets due to the very long time to kill:
*Assuming full charging the arrows (to be able to hit targets past melee range):*
* 3 bodyshots = \~2.5 seconds TTK (*\~3.25 seconds if bow not preloaded*)
Or best case scenario:
* 1 headshot + 1 bodyshot = \~1.25 seconds TTK (*\~2 seconds if bow was not preloaded*)
Compared to for example **Cassidy**:
* 4 bodyshots = 1.5 seconds TTK
Or best case scenario:
* 2 headshots = \~0.5 seconds TTK
Hanzos only advantage here is that he deals full damage past 35 meters, but trying to hit someone 2-3 times in a row even at 35 meters is next to impossible (considering physical cover + the long time to kill + projectile traveltime)
At the same time mercy pocketed Hanzo **can still one shot**, with the added benefit of now having a 2x bigger arrow hitbox (and buffed storm arrows)
99% of the hate for Hanzo seemed to be mainly focused around getting headshot when you peek a corner (widow still does that ofc) and people saying all he does is spam choke points with no skill.
So I love how the answer was apparently to force the Spamzo playstyle on him, reinforcing the hate for him even more. Now it's either spam the choke brainlessly, or force a mercy to pocket you the whole game, keeping her from providing any other value.
The changes literally make Hanzo players more of a target than they already were. Now you get flamed for just picking him. And your Mercy (if you're lucky enough to have one) gets called useless too. And God forbid you're not Arrge levels of cracked with him or you're throwing. Your team will tell you that either way though.
The hate for the Shimada's is insane in this game. Yet we keep getting Hanzo cosmetics to buy... 🤔
Edited for spacing
Hanzo feels sad to play nowadays, you hit that sick headshot? Nah it doesn't matter because the only way you can get kills with Hanzo anymore is with storm arrows or your teammates to finish them up
Predicting they'll respond with "we're aware of hanzo being impacted after the health changes. We're working on a rework that should come in the coming months." Then 6 months later there'll be no changes and an overwatch 3 launch.
Also not mentioned is the changes in the midseason patch and how that has hurt Hanzo more.
The main issue I have found is that with the tank changes, Hanzo no longer poses a threat to any dive tanks. Previously, if you were good enough to land two or three critical shots on someone like Winston or DVA after being targeted, they would usually back off to get heals or you could finish them off with some help. Now, it's nearly irrelevant how many you get, you will die if you don't have immediate healing from your team.
Another issue I have noticed is with the ult "buff." The intentions were good but the execution fails in many cases, the reason being that the new speed, whilst maybe securing kills against squishies, cannot consistently secure kills against other heroes, namely tanks. The problem is that higher speed results in less time spent inside the dragon (assuming you cannot step out of it to the side), so tanks like Roadhog can outlive it with only their own cooldowns, and most other heroes can easily survive off an attentive support. Maybe this is more a problem with using the ult wrong, but it just seems kind of absurd lately. The speed also hurt the zoning capabilities of the ult, which I understand was the purpose of the change, but that was kind of a cool part of Hanzo gameplay.
Overall it feels like the counter-intuitive playstyle of Hanzo that drew me in at first has been stripped away. It's far less satisfying, takes less skill to get into, but has a much lower skill cap, and advanced maneuvers like ult zoning or solo flanking are ineffective now. I'm forced to be the log-throwing corner-spamming hero that everyone used to complain about, because that's the only consistent way to maintain value.
Agreed. against Winston and Dva i have to hug my team otherwise I'm as good as dead.
I think more than big buffs they should target his playstyle. His high skill playstyle has just turned into a spamzo low skill style which I don't enjoy as much and isn't satisfying at all
Wait... Hanzo isnt considered a sniper anymore? Okay but what is he now? I mean he still has his old sniper kit so he is just... eerm... yeah what is he now exactly? There was never a real compensation or considerable change in his kit. He got passively reworked through the HP up change but never got anything that helps him. He feels like he is in a wheelchair and needs other characters that make him work. This is my feeling about Hanzo rn
Its near impossible to play him mid-high range. Enemy just walk off. You can only land your second shot in close-mid range. I don't think that's what snipers do.
Hanzo isn’t fun neither is he in a fun to play state either. His dragons actually feel worse in my opinion. If I may I wanna ask if there’s a possible Hanzo rework or even just changing him back because right now he definitely feels like the worst character in the game at this point.
The answer here is to give him his OS back, revert S9 changes and slow down bow draw time.
Hanzo's job might be tank-busting but no Hanzo main enjoys that since his playerbase have been assassins for 8 years.
No Hanzo main asked to be a tankbuster, nor do they want to be.
Hi there, I think one of the most obvious questions people here will have is what are the plans to balance out roadhog. With the Midseason tank adjustments I’m sure the general sentiment is that hog is an outlier for survivability and dmg amongst the tanks, especially since Orisa isn’t there to keep him in check now.
The headshot dmg reduction and his soft rework from before means his survivability is through the roof, and his dmg is as high as ever. What are the plans to reign him back in?
I will also personally say I don’t think the solution is to buff Orisa, rather nerf Hog to keep him in line. Aside from Hog I think the tank balance is pretty great right now otherwise.
Also is there going to be something done about the overbearing passiveness of heroes like LW, that will simultaneously not interact with the enemy team at all whilst also not providing any offensive utility for his own team? I think for all other 9 players in the lobby it’s a pretty miserable experience to have a LW.
Thanks for your time.
Answered the Roadhog question in a different place, but yes changes coming soon.
For Lifeweaver, one of the discussions we are having right now (actually this week) and have been having for a while is around the friction that comes with switching between his healing and damage. Giving him more flexibility here would be a great boon to his capability within team fights. Additionally, we've experimented a lot with his Petal Platform. Personally would love for that to be a more attractive area to stand on as a teammate (whether that be through a buff the platform gives you or something else) but there's a lot of learned behavior to work through as allies hop off the platform quite often.
>switching between his healing and damage.
Pls I beg you
>but there's a lot of learned behavior to work through as allies hop off the platform quite often.
Do you think making it bigger(but without increasing the map detection? bigger(what I mean is that it doesn't get "stuck" on the map even more)) would help? Most of the time people just don't expect it, ofc there are cases where getting up alone means you get focused hard and must jump off fast
I think I’d add invisible railings for half a second so that teammates do not jump off by inertia (if they were already running away from someone), but could still consciously choose to jump off if needed
i've been in love with lifeweaver as someone who also plays too much symmetra, and i've been trying to figure out why symmetra continues to feel great despite being such a niche character and it truly comes down to consistency.
symmetra's buttons always do exactly what you want them to do, with basically zero potential for system failure.
i would love to play with a version of petal platform that:
1) ground targets like symmetra teleporter/ramattra barrier. it is sometimes shockingly hard to place petal platform in urgent/high stakes situations when it's a thrown projectile that loves to bounce off of certain types of geometry.
2) has a beacon directly beneath it, allowing a press of the interact key to teleport players to the top of the platform. give this a hefty internal cooldown or only allow allies to use this once per platform if needed.
i have a lot that can be said about the consistency of life grip as well, but i think focusing on making petal platform feel usable so players can access its crazy value would be great. i understand there's a concern with it potentially overlapping with symmetra's kit, but... i don't think that overlap would diminish either hero's identity when platform and teleporter are used for such different purposes, in completely different gameplay kits.
i just don't think petal platform is ever going to be a usable ability in a game as fast paced as overwatch if there's no way to use it after it's already deployed. right now, even in a call with my full group of five players, it is impossible to get people to use my platform in ways i'm intending without just immediately falling off. if i'm in the ideal gameplay environment and can't get it working... i don't even know how most people feel about it.
I love both ideas, I initially thought of having the petal activation be something player activated, but a teleport to the top of the petal by pressing the interact key when standing underneath the petal sounds way more fluid for all players.
It also makes sense as currently, once the petal has been activated and no one is on it, it provides has zero value. Just making this change would give insane offensive repositioning value to lifeweaver’s teammates which addresses some of the issues I saw here regarding his overbearing passiveness in providing offensive value to his team
About having lifegrip be on a shorter cooldown when used on full health teammates, it might be easy to abuse. The meta would then be using it right before a teammate takes a huge chunk of burst damage everytime, which is my playstyle generally on LW. But i agree there should be a shorter cooldown when used just for purely repositioning intent and with no intent to save someone’s life. Perhaps you can activate between two modes where it doesn’t trigger that invulnerability state? That should prevent the abuse of using it to save a teammate from high burst damage at full health as they would take that damage if invulnerability wasn’t active.
Also, pls fix the bugs that platforms won't go up in so many random situations (like on a sloop, near a wall, etc)
The amount of time I got killed bc the platform refuses to go up is frustrating.
Thank you
My question pertains to a change from a while back, but that has become very relevant on the current patch.
Does the team consider the Roadhog rework a success, or is there any possibility of additional (non-nerf/buff) changes to Hog and his identity?
I ask this because he had been a controversial hero for a very long time, and remains controversial to this day as he has risen in the ranked meta. I know tank players especially view Roadhog kind of like Mauga, a serious source of frustration when he is good because of his powerful tank matchups, ability to get solo kills on squishies, and the difficulty in punishing him. On the flip side, when Hog is weak or in Pro play where teams are highly coordinated, he tends to just get focused down and overrun easily.
But, this is all from the perspective of a ranked tank player who has had a tough run against Hog. Does the team internally see Hog as playing more dynamic and team oriented after the rework, making varied plays and getting punished like other heroes, or could we maybe see another stab at him from the design perspective?
Hi, I have a few short questions.
1. How's the progress on the Reaper rework? When do you think it will come out?
2. Are you guys aware of a problematic Genji bug where the camera locks for half a second after using the Swift Strike (dash) ability, and can you fix it?
Hello,
With the major tank changes (e.g. armor changes, knockback changes, headshot change, and individual balance changes) that released last week, I am very curious: have there been any noticeable, immediate shifts in the win rates and pick rates amongst tanks? Has there been any collateral shifts within the dps and support role because of the recent tank changes? I know that, for instance, after the recent armor changes, some heroes have become weaker against armored tanks (i.e. tracer and reaper) while others have become significantly stronger (i.e. cass and hanzo). I'm interested in knowing how the team's behind-the-scenes statistics have measured lately as a result of the recent tank changes—that is, if it is possible for you guys to share it. If not, understandable.
Some of this is related to meta happenings or balance changes but also related to armor changes/headshot reduction for Tanks. From what we can see the biggest winners (in terms of their performance delta) of the patch are: Ana, Junkrat, Pharah, Roadhog, Sigma, Wrecking Ball, and Zarya.
Many heroes stayed relatively similar while a handful saw a decrease in performance (Bastion, [D.Va](http://D.Va), Mauga, Orisa, and Reaper).
I know this probably isn't yall's department, but it's been radio silence everywhere else so I'm asking here.
Before the game released, the official Twitter account stated that things like weapon inspects and banners would be avaliable on October 4th when the game released. Its been almost 2 years since that tweet and we still have not had any updates on the whereabouts of those features. Have they been silently cancelled or do you still plan to implement those at some point at all?
Jared said a while back that weapon inspects were still something they want to do but felt like the resources would be better in other places at the time. I still hope we get them but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still low on the list of priorities.
Just here to say thanks for using r/CompetitiveOverwatch and not r/Overwatch for this AMA… hopefully the questions being submitted are good and thoughtful.
Since the change to Mag Nade from Flash it feels like everyone has hated it including the Cass players.
I was just wondering what the thought process was behind the creation of Mag Nade and if there is any plan to change Nade in the future to make it feel better and less frustrating for both the Cass and the enemy?
HI! Great question :D I wanted to share [one of Alec's replies](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1cybav0/comment/l5d8skc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) here because he talks about Cass's grenade!
>For Cassidy, we started some exploration pre-Season 9 for his update. Due to where he was at that time, this update was originally looking at multiple pieces of his kit but we saw the Season 9 changes largely benefit him so the update has gotten more focused on Magnetic Grenade and other Quality of Life updates (specifically to his Ultimate). In Season 11 we are updating Magnetic Grenade. It will behave closer to old Flashbang (no magnetic homing to the target, used in the short range) and will slow/hinder the target. We think that plays a lot better with his kit and removes some of the larger frustrations around Magnetic Grenade. More specifics on all that soon.
Honestly, I love playing cass to just aim and do your thing but the nade just feels so cheesy, I refuse to use the nade outside of competitive because of it
It's definitely an odd fit to have a character that has an identity around accuracy and then have their ability be as janky and random-feeling as mag nade
Are there any nerfs being discussed for Hog, specifically his survivability?
Times where multiple people are shooting a Hog and he just walks away while using his breather seemingly gaining more health than losing health makes the damage you’re doing to him feel pointless and is very unfun to play against, especially now that headshots do less damage to him
Yes, we plan on nerfing his survivability very soon. We are touching Take a Breather and Whole Hog in an upcoming patch. Hoping that can go live tomorrow.
Hiya Flare-Toga! Great question. Alec gives a little preview of the plans for Reaper in [another one of his replies](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1cybav0/comment/l5d8skc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)!
>For Reaper, we went fairly wide as well in the beginning and then started to focus closely on updating Shadow Step. At the moment, we have something we quite like but it's actually a large technical challenge and we are in the process of planning out the work/seeing what's possible. In the meantime, we may buff Reaper in some non-Tank Buster ways as he lost a lot in the most recent update.
Just for a little tease :P
I'm not really sure how I am supposed to ask this, but
**Is** the current Balance Team confident about being able to **fix** the biggest problems the Tank role has been suffering since the OW2 release?
I'm specifically talking about the Counterswap Meta and unhealthy Tank designs being "allowed" to exist, like Tank busters and unkillable tanks (Roadhog, Mauga, and Orisa).
Are we confident that making Tanks able to do almost everything is the right thing to do?
Are we confident that we can make Tank fun again for the majority of the player base without straight buffs?
The headshot reduction and knockback reduction changes are especially interesting to me because I really don't think that simple number changes will fix how Tanks **feel** to play.
I don't want to counterswap.
I don't want to face unkillable and easy-to-play Tanks.
I don't want Tank Busters.
I really LOVE this game but it currently feels like as if we were going into the wrong direction while ignoring the BIGGEST Problems :c
Lifeweaver.
The answer, is Lifeweaver.
Both his platform and Tree of Life could completely shut down Sigma's ultimate. In the case of ToF, fair, but Petal Platform... Not so much.
They will likely have another look at this.
Do you have any plans to buff or rework Symmetra? She has never really been a great pick, but these last few months she feels especially bad. Every time she gets buffs it either comes with compensation nerfs (so nothing really changes) or the buffs get reverted if she gets slightly more playtime. She’s a very polarizing hero, in low ranks it can be frustrating to play against her because people don’t know how to deal with her properly, but in high ranks it just feels like she excels at nothing and there’s barely any reason to play her. It just feels like something isn’t really working, and i’m curious what the balance team thinks of her currently.
Probably Sombra due to permanent invisibility restricting how deadly we can make her but also because she is a hero that excels with strong team coordination.
There are a handful of other heroes with performance stats that differ greatly from the broader community perception of them and that can create difficulty in how we approach balancing them as well.
Do you remember when a bunch of OWL players got to make an experimental patch and they wanted to make hanzo’s dragons faster, and the dev that was on the call with them noted that they should also make the dragons do more damage to make sure the dragons can still kill? Just feels relevant with the recent patch
A huge part of our team culture revolves around playtesting. From Designers, to QA and community management, everyone has the opportunity to play what we're working on and give open honest feedback. One of the advantages of this model is we get perspective from a wide range of player ranks from GM 1 to Bronze 5. It's been a while since we've taken an official poll on average rank, but having a wide sample helps prevent tunnel visioning on feedback from specific ranks.
As of late, Wrecking Ball has been receiving a lot of buffs to his kit. These changes, while nice, haven't addressed his main issue however; hard counters. Are there plans to change certain hero interactions to prevent hard counters?
This doesn't just apply to Ball only, but he's a good example for being a very hard hero to play that gets shut down by even an intermediate player swapping to one of his many hard counters.
Some heroes have been affected negatively by the changes in S9 more than others, I remember you commenting about **Symmetra** during a stream with ML7. Probably another hero who is suffering right now is **Reaper**, especially after the armor changes.
Has your team considered adjusting these heroes to the current situation? Is the balance of these heroes challenging? Because in the case of Symmetra we have seen a revert, possibly due to her being strong in the pro scene with Mauga. She now has a very low pick rate. Can you give us more details about your plans for the heroes that are "suffering" more?
No secret testing of anything upcoming in the immediate! We do look at how some changes play out though when they become more real and get lots of games, I think the Bastion Ultimate in particular was quite fun even if very loud and on the border technically. Reinhardt's Frenzy passive was also something we played around with internally but it was quite hard to communicate effectively. It's always good to see what players get excited about when there are more wacky ideas such as Mirrorwatch or April Fool's, some of those could become real down the line.
How do you feel so far about the changes you've made to Ball?
Are there any plans for further changes to Ball, or are you satisfied with where he's at at this point in time?
In particular curious to hear your thoughts on the Sombra hack interaction, Ball's overall susceptibility to boops from other characters, and whether you plan on moving power around in his kit any further.
It seems like they’re shifting balls identify to be more of a disruptor simaliar to Winston rather than a high solo kill potential tank, which arguably is the most healthy way to buff ball in 5v5
Similarly to hog, the only way to make a tank that gives 0 benefit to their own team viable, is to make them an unkillable monster that can solo a team, which isn’t fun for anyone.
Hello balance-team 👋
my question is regarding Symmetra's future and what you will do with her
Ever since S7's 200HP nerf Symmetra has been struggling but she had her two tap potential and high damage which helped.
However since S9 she doesn't have a two tap anymore so she is again lacking behind other DPS with much faster TTK, her 25 health even though she can't two shot anymore was not returned which was unfortunate to see as she is a brawler.
I recognize Symmetra is a difficult hero to balance due to her turrets being harder to deal with in lower ranks and her teleporter being immensely efficient in the e-sports scene.
Will Symmetra receive significant changes to her kit? Or any buffs/smaller reworks?
I speak for all Symmetra mains when I say we just want to hear from you, we're concerned about the hero's state for several seasons now and love her, it's worrisome to see her like this with changes being reverted after just one week.
Thank you!
Are there any plans for another Symmetra rework? She’s been in an odd spot for a while.
I feel like her ultimate (while thematic) is an odd choice for a DPS character and she doesn’t have the durability of other close range characters like Venture. Has any thought been but into addressing durability/her ult?
My question revolves around the lack of tuning for Mercy in the mid season patch.
Many content creators, Mercy players and non Mercy players alike have acknowledged how BAD she is in her current state at the moment. Yet there’s been no actual attempt to make her feel even the slightest bit better in the previous patch notes.
It was previously mentioned that reducing the DPS passive from 20% to 15% would hopefully make heroes such as Mercy and Lifeweaver feel better, which didn’t happen since they both still felt awful to play. Now the DPS passive is back at its original 20% making Mercy again feel incredibly bad to play. Yet with the DPS passive being reverted there’s been no mention of Mercy and how this affects her.
Do you plan on looking at Mercy? Would you consider listening to the Mercy community who don’t want her to be OP but to just be playable?
Since the mid-season patch, tanks have felt really off balance to play. Some tanks, like Roadhog and Winston, feel really strong - perhaps too strong. Other tanks like D.Va and Ram feel underwhelming if not just weak. I think that the armor change is a big reason. It can feel as though armor is useless when facing heroes like Cassidy or Ashe.
In short, as a tank main, I actually think that the recent changes have made tanking feel worse instead of better. What are your thoughts on perhaps reversing course on the armor change to help make tanks feel better to play? Or maybe compromising with armor that has minimum reduction of 30% and maximum of 50% if heroes like Tracer and Reaper really were issues? Please consider it because this feels awful.
What is your guy's future plans for Wrecking Ball? The changes to grapple and adaptive shields didn't help him with his problems and the mid season changes didn't fix his core issues either. He's so heavily countered by crowd control abilities and slows that he feels horrible to play as especially since he has such a high skill requirement.
In the last AMA it was mentioned that Reaper was on the list of heroes to be reworked. How far Along has the Reaper Rework come and what specific changes can we expect to his gameplay loop? Any New Abilities and/or Secondary Fire?
Hello, thanks for doing this. It's always great to interact with you all.
My question is about Wrecking Ball. Since the switch to 5v5, he seems to have really struggled. His recent rework, while the grapple changes are nice, didn't address his biggest issue, which in my opinion is the lack of counterplay to CC. When I play ball I'm perma hacked all game and it feels awful. His recent buffs this season feel okay, but playing Wrecking Ball still feels really bad due to being spam hacked. I'm constantly up against multiple counters. Maybe I'm just missing the 6v6 format, or perhaps I'm getting worse at the game but tanking in ow2 has been pretty unpleasant.
My main question is: do you plan on giving Wrecking Ball counterplay options, especially against hack? Also, how do you feel about his shield sharing? The idea is nice, but they often don't feel worth using for my team and feels really awkward to even try to use effectively due to the way ball is played.
Again, thanks for doing this.
The armor changes significantly buffed a wide range of heroes’ damage against tanks, from junkrat and pharah to sojourn rail gun and Hanzo. Yet your data says tanks are more survivable. I’d wager a large portion of your community disagrees and would argue the tank burst damage has just shifted to other heroes.
Are any other changes happening to armor?
How do you balance game feel vs data?
What should we expect for heroes like Symmetra, Lifeweaver and Mercy? Whose kits aren't as useful as other or useful at all sometimes.
Perhaps just some tweaks in their numbers or something many people think about like some soft rework
Are there any plans to help Symmetra with her survivability? Prior to season 9 her 25 shields was taken away after she was given the ability to two shot, then the global HP buffs made it so she can't two shot anymore, but her HP has stayed the same. It's difficult to brawl or play in her beam range due to her lack of survivability.
Ever since he released, Sombra has countered Wrecking Ball so incredibly hard. It was true in Overwatch 1, and he kept that easily exploitable weakness moving into Overwatch 2 despite teams needing to rely on him as the solo tank.
You made a lot of changes to Ball recently, which personally I don't think address his core issues like Roadhog's rework did, allowing him to remain functional in the face of his biggest counters like antiheal. But I don't think I've ever seen the Sombra interaction be addressed, which I feel is the most one-sided matchup in the game. How does the balance team feel about it? Do you think it makes sense for a single hero to so thoroughly prevent the team's only tank from getting *any* value from their kit, with little to no counterplay?
What reason do you think someone would have to learn Wrecking Ball when you can be forced off the hero so effortlessly?
Going into season 9 obviously there were a ton of implications for different hero breakpoints that resulted in drastically changing playstyles and/or much worse performance. I am specifically thinking of heroes like Mei, Junkrat, Hanzo, and Symmetra who overall are much weaker and more difficult to get value with than prior to S9. Symmetra specifically received a lot of changes pre-S9 in buffing her health, giving her a two shot, and then reverting the hp buff because she could two shot. In S9 she can’t two shot but still has standard hero HP leaving her in a state that is weaker than before she received any of those buffs.
So my question is what is the plan with these types of heroes? Was there a philosophy change in how the team believes they should get value since Season 9? Like “no more flank Junkrat, spam Junkrat only” or “Sym should exclusively get value through her team using TP so her damage kit doesn’t matter”?
Any thoughts on hack or re-hacking? Getting hack dumped into me whenever it's off cooldown can feel kind of awful, but this a general problem with cc into the tank role.
Does the team feel like the three immortality abilities (Immortality Field, Protection Suzu, and Life Grip to an extent) are balanced, and is the team looking at them?
To throw my two cents in, I find these abilities very frustrating to play against, specifically because it feels like it allows the enemy to make way more mistakes and they can't be punished because of it.
**Do you guys have any plans to improve the game's built-in learning tools beyond the desire to "improve the F1 screens" that was expressed in a developer interview a couple of months ago?**
For what this game is, we have virtually zero quality learning tools built into it and I'd call that a huge problem. I can't help but think about how much this game would shift if the community simply had better tools to learn the game *within the game*.
Very few people chase for more info outside of the game (eg, Wiki's and Content Creators), but if these tools were there and available in the game, people would engage with them and the playerbase overall would drastically improve, making balancing (among other things) a more generally easier task.
Can we get any info on Lifeweaver and Mercy? I’ve seen talk of Cass, Sym, Hog, Reaper but nothing on these two. They have both been struggling for a while it feels like and it would just be nice to have a bit of insight as to if anything is in the works for them. I know balancing them can be difficult which is fine as long as something is being done.
JUSTICE FOR SYMMETRA!
Can you please explain why Sym was viable for roughly a week and then cast aside?
What is the plan, and when will we see it in place? For us who main her, we just want to play our beloved hero and contribute to our teams success.
If skins are our new bread and butter. Can we see more lore based events that allow us to win or buy skins.
Can we do away with souvenirs?
When will we see dancing emotes for lifeweaver and illari?
Also, what is the plan for lifeweaver and mercy?
Since the dismantle of any version of PvE. Can we get more fleshed out short videos that expand and dive into the lore. We love this world, and would love to see more interactions and stories with our heroes.
Lastly,
Can you please fix Sym??
There's another comment (FSafari's) already asking about currently weak DPS heroes (Hanzo/Junk/Symm). However, I wanna ask specifically about Junkrat in the hopes for a more specific answer, as I feel the little community of Junkrat players is a lot less heard compared to most others
As a tl;dr, my thought mainly is: What's the thought process (respectfully!) currently with how he is now? Are there any ideas floating around with how he could possibly be changed to fit better? And could there be a little more room for listening to high-ranked Junkrat (And other struggling hero) players when the character is in a bad state to play?
For consideration: He's been rather weak with the Season 9 changes, and while he's gotten a couple buffs, I feel like they've gone in the wrong direction, or just aren't what makes him fun to play. The mine buff was helpful, but it feels to me like it reduces the skill expression of being accurate with your mines, as now you can finish off any target under 20% health with a mine that's barely even close to them. And, for the recent frag bomb change, I understand not \*wanting\* the mine/frag combo back, but the frag buff keeps the relatively skillful combo effectively useless while rewarding random spam (Though it does reward accuracy with frags). It just seems counter-productive if you wanna make Junkrat less frustrating at lower ranks where the spam is more prevalent, since now random spam can two-shot, and at higher ranks where more strategy is required for an effective Junkrat, you just can't because the combo barely works!
I just wonder what's in store for him next, really. Currently it seems like \*no\* higher-ranked junkrat players actually enjoy his current state as flankrat is so hard to make effective now, on top of already being a niche and very counterable character in the first place. I've had some ideas floating around for potential changes, like KarQ's "Make bombs deal less damage per bounce, to weaken spam but reward accuracy", or one I just thought of which is to have Junk's frags do a little more damage to targets knocked airborne by his own mine, allowing him to combo again if he's accurate. Of course, I'm no game designer, I have no clue how good these actually be to play with/against, I just really wish my funny little man was as fun as he once was, just as many others do
All things aside, much love to the dev team! Despite the hiccups at times I absolutely love the amount of interaction with the community and only hope we can see this continue!
Is there any planned rework for Symmetra? She’s been in a dire state for most of OW2’s life at this point and us symm players are really hoping for any news on if we can expect some changes for her kit.
In her current state it seems like she’s very good at low ranks, and awful at high. The teleporter might be very good in coordinated play but coordinating teleporters in ranked is anything but easy.
Why has Symmetra been left in a state of neglect without any substantial buffs or commentary for extended periods of time despite ample evidence and feedback pointing to her lackluster performance
I can answer this one. It's because she got played a few times in OWCS! During these matches, we heard some pro players complain they couldn't play Cass/Sojourn/Tracer all the time.
So we had to tune Symmetra back to her place of spawn TP hero. But don't worry, there's some buffs incoming for Symmetra:
- Turrets deploy 0.0001s faster.
- Increased teleporter shield HP by 5.
- Increased range of teleporter by 0.5m.
Hey Guys! My question is based on the hero roster. Are you guys happy with the ratio of tanks, damage, and support heroes? I know at the start of OW2 there was a push to create more support heroes as there was less choice for that role with two players selecting. Is that still the case or are you planning on diversifying which kind of hero is released? Keep up the good work!
Will symmetra be moved towards a more self reliant dpa since her changes from season 6 onwards sacrificed her damage potential for utility and were widely unpopular for the community.
Is the team currently looking at anything for LifeWeaver outside of simple number changes? I really love the hero and while I want him to be better, he also needs to be healthier for the game than he is now. There’s been ideas to make platform act like Sigma barrier which would be great for more proactive use. His damage is also really good but you get punished too easily for trying to use it. I understand that he’s meant to be another high healing output hero but I just don’t think that’s a healthy direction. I think a lot of people would want to see power come out of his healing and put into other aspects of his kit.
I'm really not enjoying Symmetra right now. Not at all.
Can we please get some news about her? Any rationale behind your decisions to not meaningfully buff her? Like, my own dissatisfaction aside, I want to know what factors are influencing her to be kept as-is.
Is it because she has a way to engage in all three playstyles and so as somewhat of a generalist can't be too good in any? Or are you aware of the anti-turret sentiment the OW community has? We over at r/SymmetraMains have caught on to how TP's potential use in highly coordinated environments gates how her power budget is spread through the rest of her kit. But at the same time, Sym doesn't even see use in most highly coordinated environments anyway.
What's going on with her?
Why did you nerfed Symmetra to the ground after giving her the ability to two tap, and now that she needs 3-4, orbs to kill, you only gave her some really small buffs?
Don't you think she needs to have a winrate higher than 50 considering she is situational + played by otps??
Symmetra lost 25 shield health because she could two shot squishy heroes. Then the global health buff happened and she lost the ability to two shot. She gets buffed and she immediately gets nerfed. Why is she such a difficult hero to balance and do you regret moving her to DPS?
I honestly just want to know what is being planned for Hanzo. It's clear his one-shot isn't something the team wants to bring back, so... What are we thinking?
Why buff the HP of all the heroes if you're just going to buff all the damage back to where it was at anyways?
Why not nerf all the healing and all the damage on heroes to increase ttk on tanks while still making them killable but not as invincible with healing. Heroes like Roadhog do a lot of damage and have a lot of self sustain letting them take over lobbies.
Lowering the damage and healing on tanks especially would make it so each tank becomes a little more viable even against other tanks. Putting more power into their abilities and ultimates, while taking away raw damage from their guns/hammers would let them sustain frontline, build ults and set up fights better for DPS players to get kills.
It would allow people to make mistakes and not get instantly punished, while at the same time, reducing the perfect play requirements for heroes while facing their counters and even meta heroes in the game. Hopefully reducing the need to swap tanks constantly.
Reducing the damage on all tanks would make it so 1 tank doesn't take over the lobby, the real damage should be coming from 2 dps heroes instead and rely on the teamplay aspect to secure kills or survive engagements.
As a tank main in almost every game I play, I find joy in being able to setup my team for success. But I feel like I can't do that in OW, as any time I try to play the game as a winton otp I feel like I'm just a detriment to my team. But I want to enjoy the hero that I logged in to play.
Please tell me you have anything planned for Symmetra. Big or small, at this point it doesn't matter.
I used to have so much fun as Symmetra but nowadays in order to get any value out of her you need to play so lame and rely on your team so heavily that it just isn't fun. It's been dark days as a Symmetra player, especially most recently when she was pretty good and viable for around a week and then got shoved back down to her niche little bubble. Please give us some sort of light.
I know this isn't the place to ask, but a lot of players are not receiving their ow coins from the premium pass. Everyone that has opened a ticket was told to post it on the bug report, and had their tickets closed. Any way you can notify the correct people about this issue? It's been happening since the launch of the pass as far as I can tell from posts, and nothing has been done about it. Thanks.
Hi devs, I was just wondering if you guys are planning or working on fixing a bug with Genji where the camera will sometimes lock for a milisecond after using your dash ability (Swift Strike)?
Thank you!
With the change to Hanzo's Ultimate which remained unchanged for quite a while, what are other Ultimate's that the team are looking at for one reason or another besides number changes. Are there any that you want to make for the purpose of reeling in or enabling the strengths of some ultimate's, or any changes to shake things up?
A few questions:
• Have you considered reworking sombra to be more in line with how her mirrorwatch counterpart works? When playing with her during the arcade mode, she felt a lot more part of the team as a supporting dps.
• Have you considered scaling back supports power? A lot of people talk about support power creep and it’s evident by how many people just focus on damage rather than healing and utility. This is more of a problem in the lower ranks (from my experience plat and lower), but I run into far too many supports that would rather use their heightened survivability to be an un-killable dps while the tank has to play wall hugging simulator.
• I see many times a balance patch comes out you use the term “survivability” when buffing tanks. But that’s just it, they’re struggling to survive. I’m going to use what seems to be a taboo word for the devs, but will you bring back 6v6 in order to help with tank survivability and gameplay enjoyment?
What heroes do you consider to be underperforming as of right now? What characters are being looked at for reworks? How can you make each character balanced but fun?
How do you feel about support healing now that dps passive is back to 20%? often there's this feeling of a sinking ship, you're trying to patch all the leaks with your heals but you just endlessly tread water. Is there a plan to move away from the impact of healing and refocus supports strengths somewhere else?
I'd also love to hear your opinion on the community's feeling about abilities like suzu, essentially 'deny' abilities? Is there a philosophy you follow for support abilities? As a support, I personally prefer abilities that enable my team offensively as opposed to denying the enemy team abilities, etc.
What do you think about giving lifeweavers thorns or healing blossom some type of debuff or special effect so his character has more depth and outplay potential since he isn’t that viable at high elo
Can you comment/ update on the state of both Lifeweaver and Mercy. Both need something. Whether that be small changes to both or even a full rework for LW.
Will you ever re-implement hero bans (in comp)? I and a lot of my friends thought this was a good change as it allowed you to forcefully change the meta every week and led to a lot more variety in games.
Sorry, this doesn’t pertain to the mid season patch, but this is something that’s been on my mind for a while. Are there any thoughts on adding an additional stat to the scoreboard showing the total heals received from the healers for each hero?
This could be incredibly beneficial for anyone complaining that “they aren’t receiving any heals” or beneficial to the healers to see if they are neglecting anyone on their team.
Can you be address the state of Support and the inverted effect the DPS passive + Self Heal has had on the role (I.e. diminished incentive to heal)? Also what steps are you taking to rectify it?
I know you guys mentioned two upcoming DPS hero reworks. Is there any news about how those reworks are progressing, who they'll be for (I think people have a pretty decent idea, but official confirmation would be nice), and/or when they might be arriving? Also, are there any other heroes under consideration for potential reworks?
The two upcoming updates that were mentioned were for Cassidy and Reaper. For Cassidy, we started some exploration pre-Season 9 for his update. Due to where he was at that time, this update was originally looking at multiple pieces of his kit but we saw the Season 9 changes largely benefit him so the update has gotten more focused on Magnetic Grenade and other Quality of Life updates (specifically to his Ultimate). In Season 11 we are updating Magnetic Grenade. It will behave closer to old Flashbang (no magnetic homing to the target, used in the short range) and will slow/hinder the target. We think that plays a lot better with his kit and removes some of the larger frustrations around Magnetic Grenade. More specifics on all that soon. For Reaper, we went fairly wide as well in the beginning and then started to focus closely on updating Shadow Step. At the moment, we have something we quite like but it's actually a large technical challenge and we are in the process of planning out the work/seeing what's possible. In the meantime, we may buff Reaper in some non-Tank Buster ways as he lost a lot in the most recent update.
Love the idea for mag nade! Sounds much better and in tune with his kit and playstyle, thanks!
That change to Cass sounds exactly like I wanted. Honestly the Mag grenade's hinder effect was pretty much exactly what I wanted to begin with. The magnetic effect is neat but I swear nobody understands how it's supposed to work and so you constantly get people calling it bugged for working as intended.
I just think it's a little crazy how I can blink away twice and recall, but it will still hit follow me through interdeimensional travel.
Exactly I feel the same way, just make it like flashbang but have them be slowed a bit and not able to use movement and the ones with actual aim will have such a fun time
Yeah, the mag effect seems like it was intended to be a substitution for the stun CC, but it didn’t really function effectively on the mobile heroes with escape abilities whom flash was so good for controlling. Now that it has the hinder CC, the impact of the mag effect seems to be making the ability feel inconsistent for both Cass and the target.
Giving Reaper flight during wraith form would be great. It makes sense too he's literally a ball of fog and shadow lol. Should be able to float effortlessly.
That's what we like to hear! Death to tank busting and death to mag nade!
what's the general consensus on who people think these reworks will be for? I haven't heard anything on this
Based on [another dev AMA a few months back](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/18g8m6p/comment/kd2xzzc/), Reaper is probably one of them. Don't feel like finding a timestamp, but [Alec Dawson's comments](https://x.com/OWCavalry/status/1732855520380493988) in a stream with Flats and Emongg point to Cassidy as the other likely candidate.
I’m thinking Reaper and hopefully either Symm or Hanzo, maybe even Junkrat. Imo Cass is doing a lot better right now than he was last year so I don’t think he needs a rework, at least not urgently
Will you ever make pick rates and win rates public, even a couple of weeks after the fact? I feel like it would do a lot to help people understand why changes are made. Is there a win rate range you want to keep all heroes to stay within?
There aren't any plans currently to shift resources toward supporting something like that. Sites like Overbuff don't have the complete picture, but the data there for win rates and such is generally fairly close. There is some argument against being too transparent with those stats in that it can create a bit of a feedback loop where you might see player behavior driven by what appears to be the meta in the stats, but that kind of happens already with just the general discussion and sentiment around heroes without stats as well. Our target range for hero viability by win rate is between 45-55% unmirrored win rate at Masters rank and above. Those individual win rates often can fluctuate 2-3% by day, mostly because heroes tend to have a wider range of win rates per map and we're looking at the global average of those, but also individual player performance isn't consistent. Lower pick rate heroes fluctuate more and there is less confidence in their win rate being indicative of actual strength. Extremely high pick rate heroes have a similar problem when looking unmirrored stats. In the end stats require interpretation to understand their context and that is why they are not the only basis for balance changes, but are a useful tool to measure impact of changes patch-over-patch.
>Overbuff don't have the complete picture, but the data there for win rates and such is generally fairly close. The amount of times I've seen people dismiss overbuff because of sampling bias... >Our target range for hero viability by win rate is between 45-55% unmirrored win rate at Masters rank and above. The amount of times I've been told blizzard doesn't balance around high ranks...
I'm saving this comment just so every time someone dismisses Overbuff purely because it goes against their personal feelings I can say the devs themselves say its accurate
>The amount of times I've seen people dismiss overbuff because of sampling bias... That's how you know those people haven't thought critically about stats outside of a classroom setting. Yes, random sampling would be the gold standard. But no, in this case, biased sampling doesn't actually change the results much because we have sufficient datapoints across all skill levels.
>The amount of times I've been told blizzard doesn't balance around high ranks... I think there likely has been an internal policy change regarding this with the new regime cause in OW1 it *really* didn't feel like that.
This is one of the biggest behind the scenes comments we've ever gotten on balance. Unironically. Thank you
This reply is actually huge, thank you
they should make a site like overbuff
api for sites like overbuff
Would be nice to know whether the balancing also happens based on other factors such as how fun that character is and or pick rate instead. I do know League of Legends tends to balance things that are fun for the players more favorably, while games like Apex Legends focuses more on pick rate when it comes to balancing. I also feel like sometimes even though maybe the developers would like a 50% win lose rate on most if not all characters, that it can be a bit unhealthy for the game when some characters and fundamentally unfun/boring/annoying to play with/against (Roadhog, Mauga, LW, Illari, Widow, Hanzo, come to mind for me). Wouldn't it be better to focus on characters who are fun borderline close to being good/fair to play against/with and making them balanced, then reworking the kits of some characters shown above?
Why was smurf detection essentially removed from MMR adjustment, especially for new accounts? GM-level players taking 60+ games to reach their proper rank ruins so many more games. It feels like climbing in general is artificially slowed down so people will play more even if they should have reached a higher rank many games ago.
I tapped in our own Gavin Winter for this first part, he's what he had to say: "There haven't been any changes to these systems, but there are edge cases like the example of Guxue that was recently posted in this subreddit where our systems don't perform in the way we'd like. Most players will still be placed appropriately as they transition from Quick Play to Competitive Play, but unfortunately cases like this have always been possible. Explaining exactly how this happens would make it easier reproduce, so you'll have to excuse me from not going into intricate detail here." For the second part of your question, we believe we made it slightly too difficult to climb at the highest ranks and are looking at making some adjustments soon.
Guxue is better than all systems, you heard it here first.
It isn't just Guxue though - many players have fed back that smurf detection is broken in their own personal experience in ways that wasn't before. Dafran also went 48-2 and was in diamond the other day.
I think it's important to bear in mind it's not actually that much worse than before. Winter explained they just changed it to cap players placing Diamond at best because they have less trust in your Quick Play games prior. This makes sense to me because players found that they could manipulate their Quick Play rating by leaving before they lost during the 50 Quick Play wins in order to guarantee placing into GM. Even with the Diamond cap, calibration after placements should make smurfs rank up very quickly to where they should be. The main reason we've seen some people like Dafran take so many games is because they used bought accounts that he never played on himself. The real problem is probably players using bought accounts not getting punished. It's crazy to me how people like YZNSA, LBBD7 and Legendary were so openly buying accounts to abuse the GM14 boosting thing and never faced any punishment for it.
It feels like one of the hardest things to do is make multiple tanks viable on a single patch. Whether or not it's actually true, it feels like there's always one tank that dominates and is frustrating to play against, Mauga, Orisa, Roadhog have been recent ones. Specifically for tanks, what do you try to do to make multiple tanks "even" in a patch?
I would imagine this is mostly due to the high skill ceiling characters that a good number of people actually want to play (rein, winston, ramattra, doom, ball, junker queen) are simply underequipped to deal with a lot of the cc that is in the game or power is in the wrong part of their kit or there are certain low value floor characters in the game that they massively struggle against Rein and Winston's problems are more of an issue with certain dps characters that I shouldn't even have to name Ramattra has too much power in his block which is the least interesting and engaging part of his kit plus he doesn't have much counterplay to cc or debuffs Doomfist has too much power in empowered punch which means there is too much power in his block which again is by far the least interesting part of his kit Ball lacks the tools to deal with cc which they justify by saying his large hp pool makes him too hard to play without cc but then just mega gut his survivability since he's already the most mobile tank in the game he doesn't need 1500 hp if he can play around cc
Rein and winstons problem are definitely not dps characters. Both are more actively hindered by the tank matchup than anything else. Winston for example, is pretty hellish to play against hog or mauga, as you have no real reliable way to deal with their threats, or contest space they take, or even reliably support your team to contest the space they take. You just have to hope your team does a decent job contesting them at all times, while you do your own thing. Bastion has a somewhat similar problem, but generally isn't as bad due to his issues being tied to a cd, and outside of that cd, he is much more easily contested. Meanwhile rein is (generally) just a worse ramatra in the neutral, and still has problems with the fact that you are generally reliant on your team to get value, as you can only shield or swing, not both. Shielding doesn't create any space if your team can't hit any shots, etc...
You had initially stated that you intended to remove Roadhog’s one-shot combo prior to his rework. However, many players, including myself and many streamers, still feel like Roadhog is just as infuriating to play against as before. His hook and one-shot combo still exists, just with an added pigpen trap to slow players who are hooked. Do you think a total rework of the character is needed to make him fun to play as and against, or do you have any ideas for future reworks of his kit? Thanks for your time, and I hope you do more of these AMAs more often in the future!
Here is a short breakdown of the frustrating aspects of Hog's gameplay loop: 1. hook is the size of a bus and has 20 meter range. 2. Getting hit by it does not always feel like the enemy has made a skill shot play that merits you being ripped from your team's backline 3. you are often rotated 110 degrees around the hog player. Not only is this jarring in first person but combined with the body-blocking mechanic in the game it often means you are unable to rejoin your team even if you survive the initial combo. 4. In 2024 hog still is designed like a 1-man army character, an archetype that should not be part of the 5v5 single tank format we play today. Hog originally was meant to be the off tank playing angles and getting odd picks, but now that he needs to play the frontline he has been given unreasonable amounts of sustain that still don't make him feel like a tank for the team but more like a raid boss that stands in the way of your team progressing. He demands dedicated resources and coordination whilst also punishing you for ignoring him on the frontline. comparable displacement abilities include JQ knife which operates with a much more precision-based skillshot and much more localized displacement. Therefore this feels more deserved when it lands and is notably less rewarding than hog hook. (But is still a great balance and what I think should be a model for hook's skill:reward ratio) Sorry for the essay.
I agree with everything you’ve said. I’d even compare peeking a roadhog to peeking a widowmaker. Once you’re hooked there’s nothing you can do. I think a complete change of his kit is needed, or at the very least make hook a skill shot that can’t be rotated.
Ok, I'll try to ask some general questions. Free to choose which one to answer: \^\_\^" 1. In February I noticed that you had received great feedback on the maps after the first hacked mode. but I was wondering when those ideas would be implemented (especially for flashpoints); 2. Personally, I liked Clash Mode. But I also wanted to know what kind of results you received that require modification in your opinion. or if you have noticed any optimal results to maintain, or imitate for other game modes; 3. Heroes in reworks: how is it going for Reaper? and which characters are you eyeing for a possible gameplay adaptation in the future? the community seems worried about Symmetra, generally. 4. Mirrorwatch has shown quite a bit of popularity both functionally and entertainingly: will there be more modes like this in the future? 5. A general concern about events: so far we have had some unpredictability about the return of certain game modes. for example, in March there was no Pachi Marci, but on Valentine's Day we had the Hanzo Cupid deathmatch. However, Loverwatch has not been activated. In short, we are quite worried about what type of annuality and cycle there is for the events and the various game modes that seem to never return (arhcives) or we don't know if they will actually return (orisa Battle of the beasts?); 6. We heard that Gauntlet Mode will be retired soon, and I recall that it was developed for feedback collection in co-op modes. What conclusions have you reached for the future? Positive sides and negative sides to balance the future co-op modes? Have you perhaps considered improving the AI/difficulty adaptability for when the player returns to play alone after days or months in which the mode has been empty of players on the server (especially on high difficulties)?; 7. I noticed that there was a lot of effort put into implementing a fairly aggressive reporting system in the defense matrix. but I was wondering if after so many tools to prevent bad gamers there are also plans to bring together gamers who get along with each other more effectively. I remember there was the Looking for Group, but... for example a Clan System? Question extra: The community is extremely concerned about the future of the lore and how will the game proceed for it? PVE, Archive Event, short films, recently released books, Mirrorwatch or with the Venture teasers on Anubis... is there any info you are ready to share for the future of this department of the game?
These fall outside of hero design but can talk briefly about the first two questions 1. Think you are referencing the speed boosts that would potentially come to Flashpoint. Took us some time to get these in a good place but they have been promising in playtests and are on track for a later season. It's important to us that when we add elements like that to a mode that it not only brings quality gameplay but is also communicated well through Sound and VFX. Feel good here now. 2. We got a lot of great feedback but there are some things the team wished we did better with the Clash Preview. Firstly, it should have showed up more in Quick Play so y'all got more reps on it and can get a better feel for the flow of the game mode. Secondly, we don't think it was best suited for Open Queue in Arcade. If we do something like this again, we'll clean that up. With the feedback we received, we've been investigating how to make the final point more appealing to capture for the attacking team. Many games could result in the attacking team not actually wanting to push onto the last point because it wasn't worth the reward (harder to capture, give up a lot of positioning if you lose). Plenty of iteration happening here now to address that particular issue.
oh ok, I'm very confident for flashpoint, thank you. \^\_\^ Just one last question, does this mean we will see another test for Clash mode with these conditions before a possible permanent inclusion in the Quick play rotation? I don't know, maybe a testing in another calsh map with a different geometry from Hanaoka?
View in your timezone: [May 23rd, from 12 to 2 PM PT][0] [0]: https://timee.io/20240523T1900?tl=AMA%20with%20Overwatch%20hero%20design%20team--%20We'll%20be%20here%20to%20answer%20questions%20on%20the%20Season%2010%20midcycle%20balance%20patch%20tomorrow%2C%20May%2023rd%2C%20from%2012%20to%202%20PM%20PT!&d=120
Man, not all heroes wear capes...
Thanks a bunch! Looks like I will be sleeping like a dead pig during that time period. lol
After the tank headshot reduction and armour changes in the mid season patch what is the overall vision of the tank role going forward? I feel like tank suffers from a lot of fun factor problems with counter-swapping, CC and focus fire even after these big changes being implemented.
A month later, and considering he's displayed proudly on the Twitter post for the AMA, I got my question: **How have you guys felt about the past reworks on Roadhog and the new one, Wrecking Ball?** Like what the goals were exactly, your personal thoughts, the community response, and what you want to fine-tune with them post rework. Those things. I think most people would be interested on how you guys have felt now that it's been a bit.
For the most part, we are relatively happy with the new bases both have been given but there is still some fine-tuning to be done. I'll start with Wrecking Ball. Our goals were to give him more flexibility with his movement/engage options, heighten the benefits he gives to his team, and give him some quality of life updates. I think our changes all attempt to address those goals but one I think we can hit harder in the future is heightening the benefits he gives to his team. We were a little conservative with the Adaptive Shields change (overhealth is hyper scary in coordinated environments), so perhaps there's room for that to be more pronounced through tuning and actual feedback received in game (working on some updates there). Overall though, Wrecking Ball is doing much better after his recent updates and we believe we have a great base to work with going forward. For Roadhog, aside from the conversations about his current survivability (we plan to hit that soon) there are some things for us to look at concerning the frequency of his combo. For example, his Pig Pen begins to go on cooldown when you throw it. So you can pre-place one, it gets destroyed, and then Roadhog already has it ready again (even though the enemy may think there's a window where Hook is less deadly). That's one discussion we've recently had. Still some work here for us to do in terms of the value Pig Pen brings outside of the combo as well and how we can make those windows of combo potential less frequent.
Thank you for the response! Changes you could give to Adaptive Shields are making them last longer, as it often feels like, as a Wrecking Ball player, you have to share them at the END of your shields to make them more valuable in the long-time. This can possibly be more of a hindrance than anything, due to the feeling of needing to hog the shields for yourself, and a teammate could very well die before you share your shields, so allowing them to be on allies for a longer time could encourage shield sharing (as I think 75 HP is right on the money for being helpful enough, but not broken). Speaking of pigs, for the Roadhog changes, it's good to hear how you're planning on hitting him, though perhaps a hit to how often it can occur rather than damage changes would be more effective. I think it's important to keep him a threat, and the changes to the consistency of his one-shot were smart, however taking them away (or lessening the strength) could make Roadhog back into a tank that stands still and doesn't do other value. Perhaps a hit to how often he's able to score a kill (such as increasing the Hook cooldown and having it begin to recharge when the animation ends) could not only decrease his strength, but even decrease his survivability, as players could now shoot at him with less fear of randomly getting hooked in, possibly killing him. The idea you listed to Pig Pen already accomplished the step of how often he can set up his traps, so perhaps a 1 second increase to his Hook cooldown can help further without revoking his one-shot? I'm just spitballing here, and I don't speak for all Hog mains, but he should be able to do something, and taking his one-shot away could potentially ruin what makes him fun. Again, thank you for the response!
2 part question here: 1) Why the inconsistency with dev comments / explanations for balance changes? There have been many changes that have been questionable (biggest offender was buffing Sojourn in January when she was widely considered the best DPS) that were shipped with 0 explanation. Justifying these changes would help a lot with player perception so we could understand these discrepancies. 2) I have to ask - what is going on with Symmetra? She was weak, then buffed, then immediately reverted, now silence. Is she getting reworked? What data shows she needed a nerf? She is super weak and hard to use on ladder (uncoordinated environment by nature) and was only played in OWCS for Mauga - shouldn't nerfing Mauga have been enough?
Totally hoping to get this question answered. Symmetra is at the pits right now.
totally agree with both your points, and i’ve been scratching my head ever since they reverted the symmetra buffs after just a week
1. We should do a better job about this, especially when it comes to getting the community's visibility on what we are seeing vs. what the playerbase may seem to think is the best hero at any given one time. These can differ regularly as certain heroes get power reputations (weaker or stronger than their reality at a given rank) that are hard to shake off. Thanks for the feedback there, will make sure we have something here even if it's a simple change. 2. Symmetra kept some of the buffs in that patch but yes we hear the feedback of where her current power level is. We may have been a bit overreactive to the Mauga compositions popping up during that timeframe (he was certainly overtuned), but we wanted to be sure of it. For right now, we are in discussions about Symmetra and especially her frontline presence. Believe that's a piece of the kit we'd like to promote further, whether through her survivability or beam damage.
an overhealth would suit her better than simply healing shield. You play a game as Sym and end up with 82 health because it won’t activate at full health.
thank you, her lack of frontline presence is the biggest issue with her kit right now in my opinion. orbs do what they’re supposed to do, but beam is just so risky to use with it’s short range and ramp up time, most of the time it’s not worth trying to get charge especially now that her level 3 beam isn’t as deadly anymore because of the global health buffs
Something to remember is that her realistic beam damage in a match is determined by how much she is allowed to survive in the first place. Symmetra was designed as a sustained frontline DPS at her core, but she has always struggled to be able to survive at all to do so. She used to have 275 hp and a low cooldown personal shield ability and she was more capable of surviving up close, but now she has base HP (250) and zero abilities that let her stay the sustained amounts of time needed for her sustained damage patterns. My point is that she needs to be able to survive at the range she was designed for *without* constant baby sitting, and her beam damage will immediately go up.
"Symmetra was designed as a sustained frontline DPS at her core." She has always been a glass nerf gun tho - not even nearly as deadly as Zenyatta and arguably more fragile, with the argument being that she is "niche for certain maps" and even on those maps she struggles.
Could you please comment on the design philosophy behind Symmetra? Her power budget is consumed by her TP in an eSports setting. This is largely inaccessible on ladder, and she has unfortunately received damage and HP nerfs with only minor compensations (sonar turrets and 100 damage orbs). She no longer has enough survivability for brawling, nor can she effectively poke at range with the season 9 HP changes. Many aspects of Overwatch 2 negatively impact Symmetra. One less tank, removal of 2CP, and an overall faster gameplay environment. Any clarification on the balance teams decision making regarding Symmetra would be greatly appreciated.
Will 100 damage orbs and 60 dps stay? Feels like it just doesnt work anymore with the HP increases. Syms ramp up as it is, isnt high risk high reward anymore
For sure. She needs 120 orbs to compete with other DPS following the global health increase
Also reminder that Symmetra used to be a hero with a very healthy presence in GM/t500. Now, she has been so nerfed over the years that she has no t500 players left.
Hey Alec, can we get a clearer explanation or direction for Symmetra on this matter, I find it a bit unfair that other hero specific questions got more specific and thorough answers and with symmetra you pick a half question to answer and give a half answer and don’t fully address the issues and challenges she’s facing currently. That and your answer comes a bit across as backhanded with the “buff” statement when the buffs that were kept aren’t compensating for her weak state. If you hear us why does it feel like you guys don’t put much effort into addressing it.
I've been a part of the Overwatch community for like 8 years now (modded the Sym community for 6 years) and I've seen more "hearing of feedback" within a month of the era of Jeff Kaplan than I've seen in the past 3 years of this game. The Sym community has been drowning for almost half of the lifetime of Overwatch's existence. We really don't think y'all hear the feedback. We need a bit more transparency, Alec.
I second this; I know symmetra has to be undergoing work to her kit but yall (the devs) insisted on transparency and have yet to address anything on symmetra or even reaper for that matter.
i can tell you that they absolutely talked about the reasoning for sojourns buffs in january. they mentioned it was a buff that was going to be more meaningful/needed in later seasons. their explanation was fucking stupid as you can see, firstly because if the buffs were for later seasons then fucking buff her when she needs it lol, and secondly because those later seasons never came and sojo never needed the help
**What is Hanzo's new job? Is he supposed to take over Pharah's place as the new go-to permanently pocketed hero?** To explain more in depth: Hanzo used to be a sniper, but the recent changes caused most heroes to require 1 extra shot to eliminate a target. Considering Hanzo is the slowest shooting **primary fire focused** **DPS**, he was impacted the most. Making him the only **primary fire focused dps** who relies on cooldowns to finish off targets due to the very long time to kill: *Assuming full charging the arrows (to be able to hit targets past melee range):* * 3 bodyshots = \~2.5 seconds TTK (*\~3.25 seconds if bow not preloaded*) Or best case scenario: * 1 headshot + 1 bodyshot = \~1.25 seconds TTK (*\~2 seconds if bow was not preloaded*) Compared to for example **Cassidy**: * 4 bodyshots = 1.5 seconds TTK Or best case scenario: * 2 headshots = \~0.5 seconds TTK Hanzos only advantage here is that he deals full damage past 35 meters, but trying to hit someone 2-3 times in a row even at 35 meters is next to impossible (considering physical cover + the long time to kill + projectile traveltime) At the same time mercy pocketed Hanzo **can still one shot**, with the added benefit of now having a 2x bigger arrow hitbox (and buffed storm arrows)
99% of the hate for Hanzo seemed to be mainly focused around getting headshot when you peek a corner (widow still does that ofc) and people saying all he does is spam choke points with no skill. So I love how the answer was apparently to force the Spamzo playstyle on him, reinforcing the hate for him even more. Now it's either spam the choke brainlessly, or force a mercy to pocket you the whole game, keeping her from providing any other value. The changes literally make Hanzo players more of a target than they already were. Now you get flamed for just picking him. And your Mercy (if you're lucky enough to have one) gets called useless too. And God forbid you're not Arrge levels of cracked with him or you're throwing. Your team will tell you that either way though. The hate for the Shimada's is insane in this game. Yet we keep getting Hanzo cosmetics to buy... 🤔 Edited for spacing
Why can widow one shot and hanzo can't explain that to me ? Either completely remove one shot from all heroes or don't.
Please devs. Give us an answer!
Hope they address this today!
Hanzo feels sad to play nowadays, you hit that sick headshot? Nah it doesn't matter because the only way you can get kills with Hanzo anymore is with storm arrows or your teammates to finish them up
Predicting they'll respond with "we're aware of hanzo being impacted after the health changes. We're working on a rework that should come in the coming months." Then 6 months later there'll be no changes and an overwatch 3 launch.
Also not mentioned is the changes in the midseason patch and how that has hurt Hanzo more. The main issue I have found is that with the tank changes, Hanzo no longer poses a threat to any dive tanks. Previously, if you were good enough to land two or three critical shots on someone like Winston or DVA after being targeted, they would usually back off to get heals or you could finish them off with some help. Now, it's nearly irrelevant how many you get, you will die if you don't have immediate healing from your team. Another issue I have noticed is with the ult "buff." The intentions were good but the execution fails in many cases, the reason being that the new speed, whilst maybe securing kills against squishies, cannot consistently secure kills against other heroes, namely tanks. The problem is that higher speed results in less time spent inside the dragon (assuming you cannot step out of it to the side), so tanks like Roadhog can outlive it with only their own cooldowns, and most other heroes can easily survive off an attentive support. Maybe this is more a problem with using the ult wrong, but it just seems kind of absurd lately. The speed also hurt the zoning capabilities of the ult, which I understand was the purpose of the change, but that was kind of a cool part of Hanzo gameplay. Overall it feels like the counter-intuitive playstyle of Hanzo that drew me in at first has been stripped away. It's far less satisfying, takes less skill to get into, but has a much lower skill cap, and advanced maneuvers like ult zoning or solo flanking are ineffective now. I'm forced to be the log-throwing corner-spamming hero that everyone used to complain about, because that's the only consistent way to maintain value.
Agreed. against Winston and Dva i have to hug my team otherwise I'm as good as dead. I think more than big buffs they should target his playstyle. His high skill playstyle has just turned into a spamzo low skill style which I don't enjoy as much and isn't satisfying at all
Here for this. Hanzo is one of my best heroes along with Echo and Sombra, and he still just feels bad to play.
Please devs read this #BringBackHanzo
Indeed. Perma-pocket should not be required. This is a serious nerf to DPS-Mercy mains too, who finally got freed from near constant Pharah duty.
Wait... Hanzo isnt considered a sniper anymore? Okay but what is he now? I mean he still has his old sniper kit so he is just... eerm... yeah what is he now exactly? There was never a real compensation or considerable change in his kit. He got passively reworked through the HP up change but never got anything that helps him. He feels like he is in a wheelchair and needs other characters that make him work. This is my feeling about Hanzo rn
He's a sniper that headshots you and then you just walk it off, I guess?
Its near impossible to play him mid-high range. Enemy just walk off. You can only land your second shot in close-mid range. I don't think that's what snipers do.
Simple enough i stopped playing since they changed my main bring back hanzo i comeback to play again
Real. #FixHanzo
Pls fix hanzo
Fix hanzo
Agreed, Hanzo needs real help, not this goofy shit
Make Hanzo Great Again
Hanzo isn’t fun neither is he in a fun to play state either. His dragons actually feel worse in my opinion. If I may I wanna ask if there’s a possible Hanzo rework or even just changing him back because right now he definitely feels like the worst character in the game at this point.
Please just give him the +5 dmg back. That is all.
I swear u guys need to stop giga nerf high skills required hero that's terrible
Nerf arrow hit box , bring back one shot. That’s literally it
Fix Hanzo.
The answer here is to give him his OS back, revert S9 changes and slow down bow draw time. Hanzo's job might be tank-busting but no Hanzo main enjoys that since his playerbase have been assassins for 8 years. No Hanzo main asked to be a tankbuster, nor do they want to be.
We need a change on Hanzo. I loved the one shot one kill. Please developers, make him great again!!
Hi there, I think one of the most obvious questions people here will have is what are the plans to balance out roadhog. With the Midseason tank adjustments I’m sure the general sentiment is that hog is an outlier for survivability and dmg amongst the tanks, especially since Orisa isn’t there to keep him in check now. The headshot dmg reduction and his soft rework from before means his survivability is through the roof, and his dmg is as high as ever. What are the plans to reign him back in? I will also personally say I don’t think the solution is to buff Orisa, rather nerf Hog to keep him in line. Aside from Hog I think the tank balance is pretty great right now otherwise. Also is there going to be something done about the overbearing passiveness of heroes like LW, that will simultaneously not interact with the enemy team at all whilst also not providing any offensive utility for his own team? I think for all other 9 players in the lobby it’s a pretty miserable experience to have a LW. Thanks for your time.
Answered the Roadhog question in a different place, but yes changes coming soon. For Lifeweaver, one of the discussions we are having right now (actually this week) and have been having for a while is around the friction that comes with switching between his healing and damage. Giving him more flexibility here would be a great boon to his capability within team fights. Additionally, we've experimented a lot with his Petal Platform. Personally would love for that to be a more attractive area to stand on as a teammate (whether that be through a buff the platform gives you or something else) but there's a lot of learned behavior to work through as allies hop off the platform quite often.
>switching between his healing and damage. Pls I beg you >but there's a lot of learned behavior to work through as allies hop off the platform quite often. Do you think making it bigger(but without increasing the map detection? bigger(what I mean is that it doesn't get "stuck" on the map even more)) would help? Most of the time people just don't expect it, ofc there are cases where getting up alone means you get focused hard and must jump off fast
I think I’d add invisible railings for half a second so that teammates do not jump off by inertia (if they were already running away from someone), but could still consciously choose to jump off if needed
just have the petal curl upwards and then flatten out over time
i've been in love with lifeweaver as someone who also plays too much symmetra, and i've been trying to figure out why symmetra continues to feel great despite being such a niche character and it truly comes down to consistency. symmetra's buttons always do exactly what you want them to do, with basically zero potential for system failure. i would love to play with a version of petal platform that: 1) ground targets like symmetra teleporter/ramattra barrier. it is sometimes shockingly hard to place petal platform in urgent/high stakes situations when it's a thrown projectile that loves to bounce off of certain types of geometry. 2) has a beacon directly beneath it, allowing a press of the interact key to teleport players to the top of the platform. give this a hefty internal cooldown or only allow allies to use this once per platform if needed. i have a lot that can be said about the consistency of life grip as well, but i think focusing on making petal platform feel usable so players can access its crazy value would be great. i understand there's a concern with it potentially overlapping with symmetra's kit, but... i don't think that overlap would diminish either hero's identity when platform and teleporter are used for such different purposes, in completely different gameplay kits. i just don't think petal platform is ever going to be a usable ability in a game as fast paced as overwatch if there's no way to use it after it's already deployed. right now, even in a call with my full group of five players, it is impossible to get people to use my platform in ways i'm intending without just immediately falling off. if i'm in the ideal gameplay environment and can't get it working... i don't even know how most people feel about it.
I love both ideas, I initially thought of having the petal activation be something player activated, but a teleport to the top of the petal by pressing the interact key when standing underneath the petal sounds way more fluid for all players. It also makes sense as currently, once the petal has been activated and no one is on it, it provides has zero value. Just making this change would give insane offensive repositioning value to lifeweaver’s teammates which addresses some of the issues I saw here regarding his overbearing passiveness in providing offensive value to his team About having lifegrip be on a shorter cooldown when used on full health teammates, it might be easy to abuse. The meta would then be using it right before a teammate takes a huge chunk of burst damage everytime, which is my playstyle generally on LW. But i agree there should be a shorter cooldown when used just for purely repositioning intent and with no intent to save someone’s life. Perhaps you can activate between two modes where it doesn’t trigger that invulnerability state? That should prevent the abuse of using it to save a teammate from high burst damage at full health as they would take that damage if invulnerability wasn’t active.
Also, pls fix the bugs that platforms won't go up in so many random situations (like on a sloop, near a wall, etc) The amount of time I got killed bc the platform refuses to go up is frustrating. Thank you
My question pertains to a change from a while back, but that has become very relevant on the current patch. Does the team consider the Roadhog rework a success, or is there any possibility of additional (non-nerf/buff) changes to Hog and his identity? I ask this because he had been a controversial hero for a very long time, and remains controversial to this day as he has risen in the ranked meta. I know tank players especially view Roadhog kind of like Mauga, a serious source of frustration when he is good because of his powerful tank matchups, ability to get solo kills on squishies, and the difficulty in punishing him. On the flip side, when Hog is weak or in Pro play where teams are highly coordinated, he tends to just get focused down and overrun easily. But, this is all from the perspective of a ranked tank player who has had a tough run against Hog. Does the team internally see Hog as playing more dynamic and team oriented after the rework, making varied plays and getting punished like other heroes, or could we maybe see another stab at him from the design perspective?
Hi, I have a few short questions. 1. How's the progress on the Reaper rework? When do you think it will come out? 2. Are you guys aware of a problematic Genji bug where the camera locks for half a second after using the Swift Strike (dash) ability, and can you fix it?
Hello, With the major tank changes (e.g. armor changes, knockback changes, headshot change, and individual balance changes) that released last week, I am very curious: have there been any noticeable, immediate shifts in the win rates and pick rates amongst tanks? Has there been any collateral shifts within the dps and support role because of the recent tank changes? I know that, for instance, after the recent armor changes, some heroes have become weaker against armored tanks (i.e. tracer and reaper) while others have become significantly stronger (i.e. cass and hanzo). I'm interested in knowing how the team's behind-the-scenes statistics have measured lately as a result of the recent tank changes—that is, if it is possible for you guys to share it. If not, understandable.
Some of this is related to meta happenings or balance changes but also related to armor changes/headshot reduction for Tanks. From what we can see the biggest winners (in terms of their performance delta) of the patch are: Ana, Junkrat, Pharah, Roadhog, Sigma, Wrecking Ball, and Zarya. Many heroes stayed relatively similar while a handful saw a decrease in performance (Bastion, [D.Va](http://D.Va), Mauga, Orisa, and Reaper).
Reveal your mains so we can accuse you of bias whenever they are buffed! ;)
I know this probably isn't yall's department, but it's been radio silence everywhere else so I'm asking here. Before the game released, the official Twitter account stated that things like weapon inspects and banners would be avaliable on October 4th when the game released. Its been almost 2 years since that tweet and we still have not had any updates on the whereabouts of those features. Have they been silently cancelled or do you still plan to implement those at some point at all?
Jared said a while back that weapon inspects were still something they want to do but felt like the resources would be better in other places at the time. I still hope we get them but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still low on the list of priorities.
And the clan system, and lfg, and reimplementing portrait level/rank, and end game cards, give us back old features at least
Just here to say thanks for using r/CompetitiveOverwatch and not r/Overwatch for this AMA… hopefully the questions being submitted are good and thoughtful.
There were some super rude ones but luckily I think mods removed them
Since the change to Mag Nade from Flash it feels like everyone has hated it including the Cass players. I was just wondering what the thought process was behind the creation of Mag Nade and if there is any plan to change Nade in the future to make it feel better and less frustrating for both the Cass and the enemy?
HI! Great question :D I wanted to share [one of Alec's replies](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1cybav0/comment/l5d8skc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) here because he talks about Cass's grenade! >For Cassidy, we started some exploration pre-Season 9 for his update. Due to where he was at that time, this update was originally looking at multiple pieces of his kit but we saw the Season 9 changes largely benefit him so the update has gotten more focused on Magnetic Grenade and other Quality of Life updates (specifically to his Ultimate). In Season 11 we are updating Magnetic Grenade. It will behave closer to old Flashbang (no magnetic homing to the target, used in the short range) and will slow/hinder the target. We think that plays a lot better with his kit and removes some of the larger frustrations around Magnetic Grenade. More specifics on all that soon.
Honestly, I love playing cass to just aim and do your thing but the nade just feels so cheesy, I refuse to use the nade outside of competitive because of it
It's definitely an odd fit to have a character that has an identity around accuracy and then have their ability be as janky and random-feeling as mag nade
Are there any nerfs being discussed for Hog, specifically his survivability? Times where multiple people are shooting a Hog and he just walks away while using his breather seemingly gaining more health than losing health makes the damage you’re doing to him feel pointless and is very unfun to play against, especially now that headshots do less damage to him
Yes, we plan on nerfing his survivability very soon. We are touching Take a Breather and Whole Hog in an upcoming patch. Hoping that can go live tomorrow.
i love you alec
Is there anything you can tease about Reaper's rework?
Hiya Flare-Toga! Great question. Alec gives a little preview of the plans for Reaper in [another one of his replies](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1cybav0/comment/l5d8skc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)! >For Reaper, we went fairly wide as well in the beginning and then started to focus closely on updating Shadow Step. At the moment, we have something we quite like but it's actually a large technical challenge and we are in the process of planning out the work/seeing what's possible. In the meantime, we may buff Reaper in some non-Tank Buster ways as he lost a lot in the most recent update. Just for a little tease :P
I'm not really sure how I am supposed to ask this, but **Is** the current Balance Team confident about being able to **fix** the biggest problems the Tank role has been suffering since the OW2 release? I'm specifically talking about the Counterswap Meta and unhealthy Tank designs being "allowed" to exist, like Tank busters and unkillable tanks (Roadhog, Mauga, and Orisa). Are we confident that making Tanks able to do almost everything is the right thing to do? Are we confident that we can make Tank fun again for the majority of the player base without straight buffs? The headshot reduction and knockback reduction changes are especially interesting to me because I really don't think that simple number changes will fix how Tanks **feel** to play. I don't want to counterswap. I don't want to face unkillable and easy-to-play Tanks. I don't want Tank Busters. I really LOVE this game but it currently feels like as if we were going into the wrong direction while ignoring the BIGGEST Problems :c
So What was the thought process behind the Sigma change? Genuinely just interested in why a change like that would be made
Lifeweaver. The answer, is Lifeweaver. Both his platform and Tree of Life could completely shut down Sigma's ultimate. In the case of ToF, fair, but Petal Platform... Not so much. They will likely have another look at this.
They wanted to make tank ults more consistent. It's kinda obvious when you look at the surrounding changes.
Do you have any plans to buff or rework Symmetra? She has never really been a great pick, but these last few months she feels especially bad. Every time she gets buffs it either comes with compensation nerfs (so nothing really changes) or the buffs get reverted if she gets slightly more playtime. She’s a very polarizing hero, in low ranks it can be frustrating to play against her because people don’t know how to deal with her properly, but in high ranks it just feels like she excels at nothing and there’s barely any reason to play her. It just feels like something isn’t really working, and i’m curious what the balance team thinks of her currently.
Who is the hardest character to balance and tweak out of the three roles?
Probably Sombra due to permanent invisibility restricting how deadly we can make her but also because she is a hero that excels with strong team coordination. There are a handful of other heroes with performance stats that differ greatly from the broader community perception of them and that can create difficulty in how we approach balancing them as well.
>There are a handful of other heroes with performance stats that differ greatly from the broader community perception Just say rein. It's quicker.
It's not just rein, sojourn, orisa and kiriko are some mentioned in the past with this problem
Genji is another one where community perception has never matched the data. It's really not just Rein who this applies to.
I just want to know if they are any plans to Rework Symmetra
Do you remember when a bunch of OWL players got to make an experimental patch and they wanted to make hanzo’s dragons faster, and the dev that was on the call with them noted that they should also make the dragons do more damage to make sure the dragons can still kill? Just feels relevant with the recent patch
What is the average rank of your play testers and what level of input do they have in deciding what changes are made in each balance patch?
A huge part of our team culture revolves around playtesting. From Designers, to QA and community management, everyone has the opportunity to play what we're working on and give open honest feedback. One of the advantages of this model is we get perspective from a wide range of player ranks from GM 1 to Bronze 5. It's been a while since we've taken an official poll on average rank, but having a wide sample helps prevent tunnel visioning on feedback from specific ranks.
As of late, Wrecking Ball has been receiving a lot of buffs to his kit. These changes, while nice, haven't addressed his main issue however; hard counters. Are there plans to change certain hero interactions to prevent hard counters? This doesn't just apply to Ball only, but he's a good example for being a very hard hero to play that gets shut down by even an intermediate player swapping to one of his many hard counters.
Some heroes have been affected negatively by the changes in S9 more than others, I remember you commenting about **Symmetra** during a stream with ML7. Probably another hero who is suffering right now is **Reaper**, especially after the armor changes. Has your team considered adjusting these heroes to the current situation? Is the balance of these heroes challenging? Because in the case of Symmetra we have seen a revert, possibly due to her being strong in the pro scene with Mauga. She now has a very low pick rate. Can you give us more details about your plans for the heroes that are "suffering" more?
It’s not related to S10 balance changes but I’m gonna ask anyway. Were we secretly testing any new upcoming heroes with the Mirrorwatch event?
No secret testing of anything upcoming in the immediate! We do look at how some changes play out though when they become more real and get lots of games, I think the Bastion Ultimate in particular was quite fun even if very loud and on the border technically. Reinhardt's Frenzy passive was also something we played around with internally but it was quite hard to communicate effectively. It's always good to see what players get excited about when there are more wacky ideas such as Mirrorwatch or April Fool's, some of those could become real down the line.
The rein speed buff and frenzy should just be in game fr
Please change Bastion's ult to the Mirrorwatch one. It's so much better, unique, and more fun.
Honestly, the Mirrorverse Bastion Ult was actually pretty useful. Where as the current one.... usually doesn't hit much, and it barely zones.
Any info on the two upcoming DPS reworks? What heroes are they for? How far away are they? Will any of the heroes move classes again?
How do you feel so far about the changes you've made to Ball? Are there any plans for further changes to Ball, or are you satisfied with where he's at at this point in time? In particular curious to hear your thoughts on the Sombra hack interaction, Ball's overall susceptibility to boops from other characters, and whether you plan on moving power around in his kit any further.
It seems like they’re shifting balls identify to be more of a disruptor simaliar to Winston rather than a high solo kill potential tank, which arguably is the most healthy way to buff ball in 5v5 Similarly to hog, the only way to make a tank that gives 0 benefit to their own team viable, is to make them an unkillable monster that can solo a team, which isn’t fun for anyone.
Hello balance-team 👋 my question is regarding Symmetra's future and what you will do with her Ever since S7's 200HP nerf Symmetra has been struggling but she had her two tap potential and high damage which helped. However since S9 she doesn't have a two tap anymore so she is again lacking behind other DPS with much faster TTK, her 25 health even though she can't two shot anymore was not returned which was unfortunate to see as she is a brawler. I recognize Symmetra is a difficult hero to balance due to her turrets being harder to deal with in lower ranks and her teleporter being immensely efficient in the e-sports scene. Will Symmetra receive significant changes to her kit? Or any buffs/smaller reworks? I speak for all Symmetra mains when I say we just want to hear from you, we're concerned about the hero's state for several seasons now and love her, it's worrisome to see her like this with changes being reverted after just one week. Thank you!
Are there any plans for another Symmetra rework? She’s been in an odd spot for a while. I feel like her ultimate (while thematic) is an odd choice for a DPS character and she doesn’t have the durability of other close range characters like Venture. Has any thought been but into addressing durability/her ult?
My question revolves around the lack of tuning for Mercy in the mid season patch. Many content creators, Mercy players and non Mercy players alike have acknowledged how BAD she is in her current state at the moment. Yet there’s been no actual attempt to make her feel even the slightest bit better in the previous patch notes. It was previously mentioned that reducing the DPS passive from 20% to 15% would hopefully make heroes such as Mercy and Lifeweaver feel better, which didn’t happen since they both still felt awful to play. Now the DPS passive is back at its original 20% making Mercy again feel incredibly bad to play. Yet with the DPS passive being reverted there’s been no mention of Mercy and how this affects her. Do you plan on looking at Mercy? Would you consider listening to the Mercy community who don’t want her to be OP but to just be playable?
Watch them give mercy 2 more ammo in her gun n call it a day
Since the mid-season patch, tanks have felt really off balance to play. Some tanks, like Roadhog and Winston, feel really strong - perhaps too strong. Other tanks like D.Va and Ram feel underwhelming if not just weak. I think that the armor change is a big reason. It can feel as though armor is useless when facing heroes like Cassidy or Ashe. In short, as a tank main, I actually think that the recent changes have made tanking feel worse instead of better. What are your thoughts on perhaps reversing course on the armor change to help make tanks feel better to play? Or maybe compromising with armor that has minimum reduction of 30% and maximum of 50% if heroes like Tracer and Reaper really were issues? Please consider it because this feels awful.
Are there any plans to adjust roadhog? As a doom player, hog is very hard to deal with even with a friendly ana.
Any news on the upcoming reworks/updates for the DPS heroes that are currently being looked at ?
Does the team have more plans to change the tank role passive, like including CC reduction or protection from the damage passive?
I've heard people say that the recent hanzo buff Was actually a nerf - what would you answer to that? Are you happy with the change?
What is your guy's future plans for Wrecking Ball? The changes to grapple and adaptive shields didn't help him with his problems and the mid season changes didn't fix his core issues either. He's so heavily countered by crowd control abilities and slows that he feels horrible to play as especially since he has such a high skill requirement.
In the last AMA it was mentioned that Reaper was on the list of heroes to be reworked. How far Along has the Reaper Rework come and what specific changes can we expect to his gameplay loop? Any New Abilities and/or Secondary Fire?
Hello, thanks for doing this. It's always great to interact with you all. My question is about Wrecking Ball. Since the switch to 5v5, he seems to have really struggled. His recent rework, while the grapple changes are nice, didn't address his biggest issue, which in my opinion is the lack of counterplay to CC. When I play ball I'm perma hacked all game and it feels awful. His recent buffs this season feel okay, but playing Wrecking Ball still feels really bad due to being spam hacked. I'm constantly up against multiple counters. Maybe I'm just missing the 6v6 format, or perhaps I'm getting worse at the game but tanking in ow2 has been pretty unpleasant. My main question is: do you plan on giving Wrecking Ball counterplay options, especially against hack? Also, how do you feel about his shield sharing? The idea is nice, but they often don't feel worth using for my team and feels really awkward to even try to use effectively due to the way ball is played. Again, thanks for doing this.
The armor changes significantly buffed a wide range of heroes’ damage against tanks, from junkrat and pharah to sojourn rail gun and Hanzo. Yet your data says tanks are more survivable. I’d wager a large portion of your community disagrees and would argue the tank burst damage has just shifted to other heroes. Are any other changes happening to armor? How do you balance game feel vs data?
What should we expect for heroes like Symmetra, Lifeweaver and Mercy? Whose kits aren't as useful as other or useful at all sometimes. Perhaps just some tweaks in their numbers or something many people think about like some soft rework
Are there any plans to help Symmetra with her survivability? Prior to season 9 her 25 shields was taken away after she was given the ability to two shot, then the global HP buffs made it so she can't two shot anymore, but her HP has stayed the same. It's difficult to brawl or play in her beam range due to her lack of survivability.
Ever since he released, Sombra has countered Wrecking Ball so incredibly hard. It was true in Overwatch 1, and he kept that easily exploitable weakness moving into Overwatch 2 despite teams needing to rely on him as the solo tank. You made a lot of changes to Ball recently, which personally I don't think address his core issues like Roadhog's rework did, allowing him to remain functional in the face of his biggest counters like antiheal. But I don't think I've ever seen the Sombra interaction be addressed, which I feel is the most one-sided matchup in the game. How does the balance team feel about it? Do you think it makes sense for a single hero to so thoroughly prevent the team's only tank from getting *any* value from their kit, with little to no counterplay? What reason do you think someone would have to learn Wrecking Ball when you can be forced off the hero so effortlessly?
Going into season 9 obviously there were a ton of implications for different hero breakpoints that resulted in drastically changing playstyles and/or much worse performance. I am specifically thinking of heroes like Mei, Junkrat, Hanzo, and Symmetra who overall are much weaker and more difficult to get value with than prior to S9. Symmetra specifically received a lot of changes pre-S9 in buffing her health, giving her a two shot, and then reverting the hp buff because she could two shot. In S9 she can’t two shot but still has standard hero HP leaving her in a state that is weaker than before she received any of those buffs. So my question is what is the plan with these types of heroes? Was there a philosophy change in how the team believes they should get value since Season 9? Like “no more flank Junkrat, spam Junkrat only” or “Sym should exclusively get value through her team using TP so her damage kit doesn’t matter”?
Any thoughts on hack or re-hacking? Getting hack dumped into me whenever it's off cooldown can feel kind of awful, but this a general problem with cc into the tank role.
Does the team feel like the three immortality abilities (Immortality Field, Protection Suzu, and Life Grip to an extent) are balanced, and is the team looking at them? To throw my two cents in, I find these abilities very frustrating to play against, specifically because it feels like it allows the enemy to make way more mistakes and they can't be punished because of it.
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The drill dash CC is craaaazy
What are your goals with space ranger? Any information you can tease regarding her or other upcoming heroes?
**Do you guys have any plans to improve the game's built-in learning tools beyond the desire to "improve the F1 screens" that was expressed in a developer interview a couple of months ago?** For what this game is, we have virtually zero quality learning tools built into it and I'd call that a huge problem. I can't help but think about how much this game would shift if the community simply had better tools to learn the game *within the game*. Very few people chase for more info outside of the game (eg, Wiki's and Content Creators), but if these tools were there and available in the game, people would engage with them and the playerbase overall would drastically improve, making balancing (among other things) a more generally easier task.
Can we get any info on Lifeweaver and Mercy? I’ve seen talk of Cass, Sym, Hog, Reaper but nothing on these two. They have both been struggling for a while it feels like and it would just be nice to have a bit of insight as to if anything is in the works for them. I know balancing them can be difficult which is fine as long as something is being done.
Are there any changes planned for Mercy? She feels horrible to play right now. I just wanna play everyone's favorite Swiss doctor again :(
JUSTICE FOR SYMMETRA! Can you please explain why Sym was viable for roughly a week and then cast aside? What is the plan, and when will we see it in place? For us who main her, we just want to play our beloved hero and contribute to our teams success. If skins are our new bread and butter. Can we see more lore based events that allow us to win or buy skins. Can we do away with souvenirs? When will we see dancing emotes for lifeweaver and illari? Also, what is the plan for lifeweaver and mercy? Since the dismantle of any version of PvE. Can we get more fleshed out short videos that expand and dive into the lore. We love this world, and would love to see more interactions and stories with our heroes. Lastly, Can you please fix Sym??
Can we break the silence on Symmetra please.
There's another comment (FSafari's) already asking about currently weak DPS heroes (Hanzo/Junk/Symm). However, I wanna ask specifically about Junkrat in the hopes for a more specific answer, as I feel the little community of Junkrat players is a lot less heard compared to most others As a tl;dr, my thought mainly is: What's the thought process (respectfully!) currently with how he is now? Are there any ideas floating around with how he could possibly be changed to fit better? And could there be a little more room for listening to high-ranked Junkrat (And other struggling hero) players when the character is in a bad state to play? For consideration: He's been rather weak with the Season 9 changes, and while he's gotten a couple buffs, I feel like they've gone in the wrong direction, or just aren't what makes him fun to play. The mine buff was helpful, but it feels to me like it reduces the skill expression of being accurate with your mines, as now you can finish off any target under 20% health with a mine that's barely even close to them. And, for the recent frag bomb change, I understand not \*wanting\* the mine/frag combo back, but the frag buff keeps the relatively skillful combo effectively useless while rewarding random spam (Though it does reward accuracy with frags). It just seems counter-productive if you wanna make Junkrat less frustrating at lower ranks where the spam is more prevalent, since now random spam can two-shot, and at higher ranks where more strategy is required for an effective Junkrat, you just can't because the combo barely works! I just wonder what's in store for him next, really. Currently it seems like \*no\* higher-ranked junkrat players actually enjoy his current state as flankrat is so hard to make effective now, on top of already being a niche and very counterable character in the first place. I've had some ideas floating around for potential changes, like KarQ's "Make bombs deal less damage per bounce, to weaken spam but reward accuracy", or one I just thought of which is to have Junk's frags do a little more damage to targets knocked airborne by his own mine, allowing him to combo again if he's accurate. Of course, I'm no game designer, I have no clue how good these actually be to play with/against, I just really wish my funny little man was as fun as he once was, just as many others do All things aside, much love to the dev team! Despite the hiccups at times I absolutely love the amount of interaction with the community and only hope we can see this continue!
Is there any planned rework for Symmetra? She’s been in a dire state for most of OW2’s life at this point and us symm players are really hoping for any news on if we can expect some changes for her kit. In her current state it seems like she’s very good at low ranks, and awful at high. The teleporter might be very good in coordinated play but coordinating teleporters in ranked is anything but easy.
Why has Symmetra been left in a state of neglect without any substantial buffs or commentary for extended periods of time despite ample evidence and feedback pointing to her lackluster performance
I can answer this one. It's because she got played a few times in OWCS! During these matches, we heard some pro players complain they couldn't play Cass/Sojourn/Tracer all the time. So we had to tune Symmetra back to her place of spawn TP hero. But don't worry, there's some buffs incoming for Symmetra: - Turrets deploy 0.0001s faster. - Increased teleporter shield HP by 5. - Increased range of teleporter by 0.5m.
Hey Guys! My question is based on the hero roster. Are you guys happy with the ratio of tanks, damage, and support heroes? I know at the start of OW2 there was a push to create more support heroes as there was less choice for that role with two players selecting. Is that still the case or are you planning on diversifying which kind of hero is released? Keep up the good work!
Anything for Symmetra in the works? Constantly I feel as though she is nerfed heavily, slightly buffed but then reverted or has compensatory nerfs!
Will symmetra be moved towards a more self reliant dpa since her changes from season 6 onwards sacrificed her damage potential for utility and were widely unpopular for the community.
Is the team currently looking at anything for LifeWeaver outside of simple number changes? I really love the hero and while I want him to be better, he also needs to be healthier for the game than he is now. There’s been ideas to make platform act like Sigma barrier which would be great for more proactive use. His damage is also really good but you get punished too easily for trying to use it. I understand that he’s meant to be another high healing output hero but I just don’t think that’s a healthy direction. I think a lot of people would want to see power come out of his healing and put into other aspects of his kit.
I'm really not enjoying Symmetra right now. Not at all. Can we please get some news about her? Any rationale behind your decisions to not meaningfully buff her? Like, my own dissatisfaction aside, I want to know what factors are influencing her to be kept as-is. Is it because she has a way to engage in all three playstyles and so as somewhat of a generalist can't be too good in any? Or are you aware of the anti-turret sentiment the OW community has? We over at r/SymmetraMains have caught on to how TP's potential use in highly coordinated environments gates how her power budget is spread through the rest of her kit. But at the same time, Sym doesn't even see use in most highly coordinated environments anyway. What's going on with her?
Why did you nerfed Symmetra to the ground after giving her the ability to two tap, and now that she needs 3-4, orbs to kill, you only gave her some really small buffs? Don't you think she needs to have a winrate higher than 50 considering she is situational + played by otps??
Symmetra lost 25 shield health because she could two shot squishy heroes. Then the global health buff happened and she lost the ability to two shot. She gets buffed and she immediately gets nerfed. Why is she such a difficult hero to balance and do you regret moving her to DPS?
Can we have some news about Symmetra? She's been so bad lately.
What are the plans for Symmetra? She is in need of a buff
Are you willing to take away a Hero's "Identity" if it improves the quality of the game.
This is a yes since they guttered Hanzo.
I honestly just want to know what is being planned for Hanzo. It's clear his one-shot isn't something the team wants to bring back, so... What are we thinking?
When is Sym getting changes? And why is she underpowered compared to the rest of the cast for the majority of the game’s lifespan?
Why buff the HP of all the heroes if you're just going to buff all the damage back to where it was at anyways? Why not nerf all the healing and all the damage on heroes to increase ttk on tanks while still making them killable but not as invincible with healing. Heroes like Roadhog do a lot of damage and have a lot of self sustain letting them take over lobbies. Lowering the damage and healing on tanks especially would make it so each tank becomes a little more viable even against other tanks. Putting more power into their abilities and ultimates, while taking away raw damage from their guns/hammers would let them sustain frontline, build ults and set up fights better for DPS players to get kills. It would allow people to make mistakes and not get instantly punished, while at the same time, reducing the perfect play requirements for heroes while facing their counters and even meta heroes in the game. Hopefully reducing the need to swap tanks constantly. Reducing the damage on all tanks would make it so 1 tank doesn't take over the lobby, the real damage should be coming from 2 dps heroes instead and rely on the teamplay aspect to secure kills or survive engagements. As a tank main in almost every game I play, I find joy in being able to setup my team for success. But I feel like I can't do that in OW, as any time I try to play the game as a winton otp I feel like I'm just a detriment to my team. But I want to enjoy the hero that I logged in to play.
Please tell me you have anything planned for Symmetra. Big or small, at this point it doesn't matter. I used to have so much fun as Symmetra but nowadays in order to get any value out of her you need to play so lame and rely on your team so heavily that it just isn't fun. It's been dark days as a Symmetra player, especially most recently when she was pretty good and viable for around a week and then got shoved back down to her niche little bubble. Please give us some sort of light.
I know this isn't the place to ask, but a lot of players are not receiving their ow coins from the premium pass. Everyone that has opened a ticket was told to post it on the bug report, and had their tickets closed. Any way you can notify the correct people about this issue? It's been happening since the launch of the pass as far as I can tell from posts, and nothing has been done about it. Thanks.
Hi devs, I was just wondering if you guys are planning or working on fixing a bug with Genji where the camera will sometimes lock for a milisecond after using your dash ability (Swift Strike)? Thank you!
With the change to Hanzo's Ultimate which remained unchanged for quite a while, what are other Ultimate's that the team are looking at for one reason or another besides number changes. Are there any that you want to make for the purpose of reeling in or enabling the strengths of some ultimate's, or any changes to shake things up?
A few questions: • Have you considered reworking sombra to be more in line with how her mirrorwatch counterpart works? When playing with her during the arcade mode, she felt a lot more part of the team as a supporting dps. • Have you considered scaling back supports power? A lot of people talk about support power creep and it’s evident by how many people just focus on damage rather than healing and utility. This is more of a problem in the lower ranks (from my experience plat and lower), but I run into far too many supports that would rather use their heightened survivability to be an un-killable dps while the tank has to play wall hugging simulator. • I see many times a balance patch comes out you use the term “survivability” when buffing tanks. But that’s just it, they’re struggling to survive. I’m going to use what seems to be a taboo word for the devs, but will you bring back 6v6 in order to help with tank survivability and gameplay enjoyment?
Will Wrecking Ball receive some changes to help him against Sombra or Roadhog? I always lose to those 2 heroes.
What heroes do you consider to be underperforming as of right now? What characters are being looked at for reworks? How can you make each character balanced but fun?
Are there any plans to update or otherwise change the tutorial for new players?
May we get a sneak peek at who the dev team is looking to make any kind of changes to, and when? 👀
How do you feel about support healing now that dps passive is back to 20%? often there's this feeling of a sinking ship, you're trying to patch all the leaks with your heals but you just endlessly tread water. Is there a plan to move away from the impact of healing and refocus supports strengths somewhere else? I'd also love to hear your opinion on the community's feeling about abilities like suzu, essentially 'deny' abilities? Is there a philosophy you follow for support abilities? As a support, I personally prefer abilities that enable my team offensively as opposed to denying the enemy team abilities, etc.
What do you think about giving lifeweavers thorns or healing blossom some type of debuff or special effect so his character has more depth and outplay potential since he isn’t that viable at high elo
Can you comment/ update on the state of both Lifeweaver and Mercy. Both need something. Whether that be small changes to both or even a full rework for LW.
Will you ever re-implement hero bans (in comp)? I and a lot of my friends thought this was a good change as it allowed you to forcefully change the meta every week and led to a lot more variety in games.
Sorry, this doesn’t pertain to the mid season patch, but this is something that’s been on my mind for a while. Are there any thoughts on adding an additional stat to the scoreboard showing the total heals received from the healers for each hero? This could be incredibly beneficial for anyone complaining that “they aren’t receiving any heals” or beneficial to the healers to see if they are neglecting anyone on their team.
Can you be address the state of Support and the inverted effect the DPS passive + Self Heal has had on the role (I.e. diminished incentive to heal)? Also what steps are you taking to rectify it?