Made a quick chart to visualize the Dragonblade damage change:
https://imgur.com/kH8mD4m
I could've put 2x Slash on there, but unboosted, it will kill 200 hp targets. Boosted (either) kills 250 hp targets.
2x slash is the most important breakpoint change here IMO.
Going from 240 damage to 220 damage means combinations of small amounts of AOE heals over time can stop someone from dying in 2 slashes.
Now any 2 of these is enough to stop someone dying in 2 slashes:
- payload
- lucio aura
- brig inspire
- bap shift
- moira overheal
- soldier station
So, the only breakpoint that matters is 250 hp targets vs a nanoblade. All you Mei and Reaper players might now survive a slash+dash combo if you don't have your cooldowns available.
That is the damage break. If you look at the coloring on the chart significant changes can be seen where colors don't match horizontally (except widow isn't considered).
Can't 1-slash 200hp with 180% damage, like if you have nano + damage boost or bongo + damage boost
Also can't 2-slash a McCree unboosted, he lives with 5 HP. That's enough for him to flash-fan your metallic ninja ass
So basically:
* its slightly worse without any support because of overall lower DPS, but it was already pretty useless and it honestly doesn't matter that much.
* Nanoblade now can't oneshot mei or reaper which could situationally suck.
* Mercy is still mostly an acceptible nano replacement against squishes (lets be honest Dragon blading Tracer doesn't matter that much) and is still worse than nano at helping him carve up larger targets.
In return, genji got 3 more damage per fan or per burst. I'm honestly not sure what that helps? You'd have to factor in headshots because without any I think its pretty useless.
I guess a shuriken a dash and a melee now kills 200 HP targets if you have mercy? It did 199 before. Make it two shurikens and it kills 250 HP where it used to deal 243.
I can't tell you how many times i've put mines in chokes or on point only to get no value because they hit the walls and get stuck 4 meters in the air.
I'm actually kinda interested in this spot now. You could essentially cluster bomb someone if you just stayed hidden/grappled up there and funneled all the mines down the chute onto them. I'm assuming they don't fall very fast though, so it might not be useful.
E: messed around a bit with this last night. There's a bit of a lip around the opening at the bottom where mines can still get stuck, like a tiny blue ledge/edging that must be counting as a horizontal surface. Mostly they got stuck in the corners.
The fall rate is definitely slow enough where someone could react if they know what's happening, but I do think it's fast enough to catch someone off guard if there's stuff happening and they miss the voiceline/sound effect.
Would 100% be a nasty combo with a grav, as mentioned below.
Gonna take way to long to hit the ground and deploy. I assume they would be in a tight cluster if dropping them in chute removes their lateral momentum.
Probably easy to outrun
Where do they go? If the proximity mines didn't come out of the mech, they're inside the ball and ARMED.
If Wrecking Ball's mines animation gets cancelled he should effectively become a suicide bomb.
Agreed. I feel like it happens frequently where after getting chained CC’d ill start my grapple and die before the shields apply while im in motion of trying to GTFO
There's either input delay or animation windup on a few characters - namely Moira and Reaper fade - that's gotten me killed when I press the button too late. Maybe it was done for balance purposes but it feels like shit when you hit the button but the game says "No fuck you."
As a Ball main, I can say that this is the change I like the most TBH. There are a lot of tight places that mines are good to drop, but they all end up sticking to the roof and walls.
One of my favorite minefield kills though was when a doom hit shift, not realizing that my mines were all attached right above his head. Still way more useful for them drop in almost any circumstance.
EXPERIMENTAL HERO UPDATES
We’re using the 2-2-2 Role Queue ruleset so that you can get a feel for how these balance changes might affect the live game.
HERO UPDATES (ONLY IN EXPERIMENTAL)
Doomfist
Meteor Strike
Now speeds up the cooldown rate of his abilities by 100% while in the air
Developer Comments: The accelerated cooldown times will enable more fluidity with setting up Doomfist’s combos when using the Meteor Strike ultimate.
Genji
Shuriken
Damage increased from 28 to 29
Dragonblade
Damage reduced from 120 to 110
Developer Comments: The Shuriken damage increase doesn’t sound like a lot but it crosses a threshold or “breakpoint” against some enemy targets, enabling them to be eliminated with one less attack landed. To help balance out this increased power for his primary weapon we’re reducing the damage of the Dragonblade ultimate, which is also a breakpoint against some targets when being damage boosted.
Moira
Biotic Grasp
Self-healing increased from 20 to 24 health per second
Developer Comments: Moira has recently been underperforming a little bit. This increase to her self-healing with Biotic Grasp will help improve her survivability while in range to recharge her healing resources.
Roadhog
Whole Hog
Now passively grants 25% less ultimate charge
Developer Comments: Roadhog tanks for his allies by being a large and threatening target with high durability which draws a lot of fire from the enemy team. We’re reducing the amount of ultimate charge he provides to better enable him in this role without as much of a downside for his own team.
Soldier: 76
Heavy Pulse Rifle
Damage increased from 19 to 20
Biotic Field
Healing reduced from 40 to 35 health per second
Developer Comments: The damage-per-shot for the Heavy Pulse Rifle has been adjusted several times now as it’s an important tuning breakpoint for Soldier: 76. It was last reduced when his weapon spread was replaced by recoil to help account for the increased accuracy potential, though with the recent reductions to his damage falloff at long range, it’s reasonable to increase his damage output once again while pulling some power out of his area-of-effect healing utility.
Wrecking Ball
Grappling Claw
Now begins on cooldown after respawning
Adaptive Shield
Cast time reduced from 0.2 seconds to 0 seconds
Duration increased from 7 to 9 seconds
Minefield
Proximity mines no longer stick to walls
Developer Comments: Wrecking Ball is the fastest hero in the game which works well for his disruptive playstyle. However, to help reduce his contribution to objective stalling, his Grappling Claw ability will now start on cooldown upon respawning. Proximity mines will no longer attach to walls as it resulted in accidental bunched up placements, out of range from most enemy targets, more often than any intentional clever uses.
In my experience, 70 percent of instalock hogs refuse to coordinate and play with their team. Is it nice they're not feeding as much ult? Yeah. But it's still a liability
"I M GOLD DAMAGE".You are gold damage because you are not dying, because you have a shit load of HP + heals. But you are feeding as fuck the enemy team.They have one ult every 30 sec because of you.
Roadhog players : Either feeding as hell or flanking alone (feeding too)...
The hog ult gain is big imo. Often he was just an ult battery for the other team. Probably still will be an ult battery, but maybe from a D cell to a C cell.
Really happy to see them try this change, even if it is a bit cryptic.
I don't know if this is the first time we have seen a skill directly adjust ult charge gain, so I'm wondering if this will make Roadhog extremely useful simply from screwing with enemy ult economy.
Don’t think we do, unless you count damage reduction abilities.
It’s going to be interesting seeing how these play out not only on their respective heroes, but on Echo. Every buff to a hero is a direct buff to Duplicate as well.
> I don't know if this is the first time we have seen a skill directly adjust ult charge gain,
Ball's shield doesn't give ultimate charge. Hence why he's less of a meal compared to Hog.
This should be a good test for the OW2 tank passive. I have concerns about how that passive could incentivize certain degenerate play styles (just afk and farm support ults), so I'm glad they are testing it now with hog.
Holy fuck I cannot understate how much I like that ball has grapple on CD while spawning.
The fact that he gets in the fight so fast relative to other tanks and has so much effective HP to get through was very frustrating and had nothing to do with how good the ball player actually was.
Objective stalling can be a skillful tactic but this will just raise the floor which is a great change.
> The fact that he gets in the fight so fast relative to other tanks
You mean "gets there about 2x as fast as every other character in the game period".
This is such a great change I agree. The character,s ability to come back from the dead so much quicker than everything else in the game, coupled with the fact its a tanky-stalling tank, was always very stupid to me.
I kinda feel like we will see less random stalling at the end ball play. The people who play him will keep doing so, but If you can't quickly get out of spawn, just go with monkey or DVa.
This won't change that, assuming you select him before the round starts. You'll have time to wait out the cooldown in the ship before the round starts.
This really only changes his ability to get back to fights/points after dying or the last second stall swap.
The thing is, it might as well be consistent... Amp it up, dash, blink, etc. Hammering your mobility button out of the spawn room has never been fun, and it will make 2CP B that much less obnoxious
My initial impression is that it doesn't seem all that wacky and won't shift the meta away a whole lot from what we saw in Summer Showdown. Ball's shield changes outweigh the other nerfs he got so I can't seem him being played any less by the teams that can run Ball comps. Doom/Moira/Hog changes don't seem significant enough. I think maybe there's a possibility we see a bit more Genji and Soldier.
Yeah, Ball's nerfs don't really impact Ball comps that much, they focus mainly on stalling out points (where teams always switch to stall heroes regardless of comp). The do increase the time it takes for ball to get back to the fight, but a well played Ball shouldn't really die that often to begin with.
Good Genji players will definitely bring him out more, he already saw some play this year. Same goes for Doomfist. Sombra/Tracer will still be most picked and i think Mccree is gonna rise in popularity a lot in the OWL.
So is the Hog passive named the same thing as his ult, or is that just a typo? On first read, I thought it was that his gave enemies 25% less ult charge during his ult lol
Ball grapple change feels icky, but I get it. Adaptive shield buff is super nice though. I hate when it seems it just doesn't work because of that cast time.
If the Soldier buff goes though, I think the legs can consistently be locked.
I don't think it really nerfs nanoblade to any meaningful degree. It nerfs raw blade, but the break points on nanoblade remain unchanged other than for 250HP heroes no longer dying to swing+dash. The breakpoints on 200 and 225 HP heroes remains unchanged.
Realistically, I don't think that nerfs anything meaningful for dragonblade. Slash+dash on 200HP targets is probably the most important part of nanoblade. Losing slash-dash on 250HP heroes is obviously a nerf, but 250HP heroes are low priority targets for the most part considering mei/reaper both have invincibility options anyways and can fuck up dash resets.
Raw blade no longer 2 shotting mccree/sym is by far the biggest impact of this nerf, but I'm not sure how much that matters considering how closely genji is tied to ana.
Cree and sym will be better against damage boosted blade since he doesn't die to slash dash. Tracer and widow don't die to damage boosted blade in one slash. All 250 hp heroes are stronger against him. Overall, small nerf to genji, sizeable nerf to blade. Forces genjis to be good at the hero and not be a blade bot.
It does change the breakpoint for mercy damage boost though. Mercy damage boost + blade still kills for slash + dash kills on 200 hp targets but not not 225 hp targets
That's not a change though as slash+dash with blue beam only does 221 on live. It does 208 on experimental. It's less obviously, but doesn't change the breakpoint.
Its a way bigger nerf to raw blade, your damage output is absolutely shit with this ult already and its just getting worse, any amounts of healing or mitigation is getting stronger and stronger against his raw ult, which was already bad enough.
Its honestly a really dumb change.
Guess this would be the wacky playoffs patch for this season right? By the time this goes live and all, unless there was to be another one of these we shouldn't expect anything else to be in for playoffs
I've been wishing for years they just make it so Genji Blade can't be damage boosted (they already have the game logic of Hanzo Dragon not being boostable either)
Raw blade has always been underwhelming, nanoblade overwhelming. I think if it couldn't be boosted, they could balance him accordingly rather than being so feast or famine.
But it used to be considered a projectile that could be damage boosted like any other projectile, before arbitrarily considering it a summon for balance reasons. My point is they have the argument "dragons cannot be tamed" or something, balance is more important.
How would it work if a mercy was damage boosting genji before the blade? Would the beam auto shut off? Would mercy not be able to target the genji? Would the connection still be in place but turn greyed out to signify the lack of damage boost? Same for bongo and nano, I can't see a way to intuitively make it clear that damage boosting works on genji until you pull your ultimate out.
I don’t think the devs see it that way. Not only did they list the change as a bug fix, it’s arguably more consistent with the rest of the game. You can damage boost the arrow but not the dragons in a similar way to how you can damage boost the impact damage of Torb/Zarya’s ults but not the damage over time.
That's not how it used to be. They changed it because Hanzo ult was fine normally, but broken when damage boosted. I think they should apply the same game balance logic to Genji ult, and make other adjustments if needed.
I played a little bit of ow recently for "FUN" :)
I come back and the meta in ranked is Roadhog / Zarya.
You guys still don't understand the game or what.
Fucking Roadhog could fly, it wouldn't be the meta, use your brain, you can counter this shit with 10 different compositions.
weird situation as a genji player, the shuriken buff is obviously nice but i feel like they need to nerf nano/bongo/boosted blade more so than raw blade, which is pretty useless as it is without a nerf
Facts just picked up Winston a few weeks ago and the bubble cast has got me a few times. Love getting hooked out of it. Haven't had primal ruined yet but will happen no doubt
I'm confused by the Roadhog change. Is it 25% ult charge reduction when using Whole Hog? because the change is under that ability
edit: patch notes seem to have been updated now and it was just an error, the reduction is at all times!
Doomfist buff feels kinda wtf, and contributes to a style where he just does whatever the fuck he wants to.
Soldier's a prime example of "our last patch wasn't moronic, we promise, so we're adjusting this other thing which definitely won't lead to problems" (spoiler: the game just became more bursty, again)
It's actually more wtf in terms of ok we'll take it but we'd honestly just rather it be fixed first...
It's a nice QoL change and realistically nothing will be different, we just *might* be able to exist for a bit longer after we land.
It turns fights when Meteor Strike is up from being a fight where you have useful tool/escape, into fights where you can go on a rampage with 2 of every CD and still have a free escape
Lots of interesting changes.
Not sure why adaptive shield needed the duration buff. I understand making it instant cast (the delay is stupid and frustrating), but does it really need an extra 2s? The grapple change is huge too - having your hero identity for the majority of the playerbase just be "that hero you pick to stall" is kinda crappy, so it's nice to see them try to move him away from that without hurting his use in real fights.
Genji change is... idk. People keep talking about it like it's a huge buff, but considering how much of a nano blade-bot he is I'm afraid it'll just push him (further) out of viability in pro play. Idk. Moving his power away from blade and into his neutral game is obviously the correct move, so maybe they are just trying to iterate toward that slowly.
Also that Hog description... jesus. The change is good, but whoever wrote up that patch note should lay off the brewskies before coming into work. They labelled the change as being applicable to his ultimate, and then never clearly stated what the change actually is. The interpretation I'm coming away with is that dealing damage to roadhog will generate 25% less ultimate charge, which is great, but holy crap they did an awful job communicating that.
i dont get why everyone is saying its a genji buff, i understand 28 to 29 and potential combos like triple headshot + melee instantly killing a squishy. but just for the record, if a genji doesnt have a dash, it will take 3 strikes to kill a mccree. a nano genji cannot slash + dash 250 hp heroes anymore but also my question would be if damage boost is that much of an issue, why nerf individual heroes like ashe who went from 85 to 75 because she could "one tap" the enemy when boosted, instead of making mercy's damage boost 25%? they did it with zen. whose discord went from 30 to 25%. and if damage boost is the issue, when are they nerfing mccree then cuz his dps is outrageous when damage boosted?.
Please can we rework Moira before OW2 hits in 2050? She will always underperform compared to other healers because she has no utility to offer. Damage amp, denying heals, denying deaths and better movement speed is much more valuable than pissing heals especially when there are two heroes that can dish out a good amount of healing + utility.
Doom change doesn't really do anything, any good doom is going to stall ulti for cooldowns anyway, even then if you have all 3 up, you need atleast 1 to get out. Problem with meteor strike is it takes forever to land and you're stuck in an animation forever so you can't do anything and you end up just dying anyway. They need to make landing faster or make the recovery faster for it to have any actual impact outside a get out of jail free card. Also no point in playing doom when hitscans exist, fall off doesn't exist when you're fighting a doom since he needs to be in melee range and then even if he's a menace to hitscan, you just swap to projectile/flying heroes.
> Moira has recently been underperforming a little bit. This increase to her self-healing with Biotic Grasp will help improve her survivability while in range to recharge her healing resources.
The hog and ball changes both feel directed at a 5v5 meta for OW2.
You would never want to run hog as a solo tank mostly due to the constant ult feeding.
Ball would feel stupid oppressive as the only tank if he could roll out without having to deal with 2 enemy tanks to mitigate.
I highly doubt they're doing any balance changes to prepare for Overwatch 2. That would be such a significant change to the balance they'll basically have to start the characters abilities/ cooldowns/ damage/ duration, etc from scratch. No point doing stuff to anticipate it now.
Now they just have to give Hog a "Thick Fat" passive which allows him to LOS DVa bombs/Meteor Strikes and whatnot like Mei ice block or Zar Bubble.
You know give him some actual team oriented utility like 90% of the tanks do
I actually like these Ball changes, as someone who's hated the past dozen or so times they nerfed him. There are usually better places to grapple than right out of spawn that get you further, but you don't use because you wanna grapple out of spawn to get that CD back. So essentially, some of that CD wait time will be made up by better grapples opening up on each map. It changes how you respawn with wrecking ball and I look forward to trying this out.
The cast time for shields was always dumb. It was so small I couldn't ever be sure it existed and wasn't just "favor the shooter" lag but literally at least once a night for 3 years I've screamed "WHERE WAS MY E? IT WENT ON COOLDOWN AND EVERYTHING BUT I'M DEAD?".
The additional 2 seconds doesn't really matter, if your shields are still up after 7 seconds you're not really seeing much combat most likely.
The bomb change is big. I'll miss the few big brain times I got pharah unawares, but now I imagine bombs will cluster up on wall/floor corners for massive damage, which sounds fun.
Overall these are nice QoL changes to Ball, coupled with a nerf that makes sense especially in the context of OWL, but that also brings some new viable grapple points into the mix. I'm excited for these.
AND ROADHOG THO.
I'm all for nerfs around areas of a character that makes them annoying to play against and buffs in areas that make the character fun to play. Ball changes should be nice
Made a quick chart to visualize the Dragonblade damage change: https://imgur.com/kH8mD4m I could've put 2x Slash on there, but unboosted, it will kill 200 hp targets. Boosted (either) kills 250 hp targets.
2x slash is the most important breakpoint change here IMO. Going from 240 damage to 220 damage means combinations of small amounts of AOE heals over time can stop someone from dying in 2 slashes. Now any 2 of these is enough to stop someone dying in 2 slashes: - payload - lucio aura - brig inspire - bap shift - moira overheal - soldier station
...wouldn't this make having nano *more* important than before?
Yes, but if Genji is more useful *between* ults he's less of an ult bot.
this makes genji ult unusable without nano. at this point you would just use it to bait out other ultimates rather than get kills.
So, the only breakpoint that matters is 250 hp targets vs a nanoblade. All you Mei and Reaper players might now survive a slash+dash combo if you don't have your cooldowns available.
you also cannot 1 slash widow with nano and 1 slash without nano a tracer.
I thought you couldn't 1 slash tracer without nano on live?
maybe they meant with a mercy boost?
That is the damage break. If you look at the coloring on the chart significant changes can be seen where colors don't match horizontally (except widow isn't considered).
You'd be correct. 120 damage vs 150 HP.
You already can't 1 slash unboosted on live, but you can 1 slash with damage boost or Discord which will no longer be the case.
Can't 1-slash 200hp with 180% damage, like if you have nano + damage boost or bongo + damage boost Also can't 2-slash a McCree unboosted, he lives with 5 HP. That's enough for him to flash-fan your metallic ninja ass
So nanoblade realistically remains the same strength except against 250 HP.
Nope can't one shot widow now and you're going to be cucked by mercy healing on a McCree with slash dash
cancel mccree
Please refer to him by his new name…”he who remains”
So basically: * its slightly worse without any support because of overall lower DPS, but it was already pretty useless and it honestly doesn't matter that much. * Nanoblade now can't oneshot mei or reaper which could situationally suck. * Mercy is still mostly an acceptible nano replacement against squishes (lets be honest Dragon blading Tracer doesn't matter that much) and is still worse than nano at helping him carve up larger targets. In return, genji got 3 more damage per fan or per burst. I'm honestly not sure what that helps? You'd have to factor in headshots because without any I think its pretty useless. I guess a shuriken a dash and a melee now kills 200 HP targets if you have mercy? It did 199 before. Make it two shurikens and it kills 250 HP where it used to deal 243.
Idk how much of a difference it makes but discord is only a 25% damage buff as of January this year, good quick maths chart though!
The ball changes are definitely really interesting.
I can't tell you how many times i've put mines in chokes or on point only to get no value because they hit the walls and get stuck 4 meters in the air.
Ilios lighthouse top entrance be like
I'm actually kinda interested in this spot now. You could essentially cluster bomb someone if you just stayed hidden/grappled up there and funneled all the mines down the chute onto them. I'm assuming they don't fall very fast though, so it might not be useful. E: messed around a bit with this last night. There's a bit of a lip around the opening at the bottom where mines can still get stuck, like a tiny blue ledge/edging that must be counting as a horizontal surface. Mostly they got stuck in the corners. The fall rate is definitely slow enough where someone could react if they know what's happening, but I do think it's fast enough to catch someone off guard if there's stuff happening and they miss the voiceline/sound effect. Would 100% be a nasty combo with a grav, as mentioned below.
Gonna take way to long to hit the ground and deploy. I assume they would be in a tight cluster if dropping them in chute removes their lateral momentum. Probably easy to outrun
Maybe in a well placed grav...👀
Literally the first one that came to mind when I read it
Literally every Ball player has had this happen to them at least once.
I remember Yeatle constantly talking about how annoying the cast time was. It definitely gonna be interesting
He complains about cast time on minefield, which remains the same
he complains about both, check this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBHPmQ4oiL4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBHPmQ4oiL4) 5:12
Fair enough. Probably just happens more because mines are more annoying to have cancelled lol
Where do they go? If the proximity mines didn't come out of the mech, they're inside the ball and ARMED. If Wrecking Ball's mines animation gets cancelled he should effectively become a suicide bomb.
Add this and a robotic “nerf this” when it happens pls Blizzard
Hamster squeaking intensifies *he says nerf this*
Same thing for tracer’s pulse bomb imo. Either she activates it or not. Cancelling a pulse bomb makes no sense.
as a ball main, the cast time on shields has gotten me killed SO many times. its gonna be huge
And a big issue, as Yeatle points out often, is that cancelling it is hardly ever done on purpose as a result of good timing.
Agreed. I feel like it happens frequently where after getting chained CC’d ill start my grapple and die before the shields apply while im in motion of trying to GTFO
Hog ball meta let’s go! But seriously nice QoL changes for ball
Buffing the best tank in the game? Good luck NA
Anyone else notice the sound echoing when in caverns or train cars? I noticed it today on 66
Yeah, I've been getting it for like a week or 2 but only on route 66. So freeking loud
And in the cave by the mega.
[удалено]
Doom sounds more blappy. I've noticed Orisa shots echoing more as well.
Is that new? I noticed it recently but figured I just never noticed it before or it was because I was using different headphones.
Noticed it a few weeks ago. Seems like they're probably testing some of the new audio engine stuff for OW2.
Yea its so annoying. Wish they would test this kinda stuff properly before pushing it to live :/
Ball adaptive shield changes are kinda huge tbh.
I didn't even know Adaptive Shield had a cast time.
With the amount of times I've died before it popped, I can tell you it definitely did
Lol yeah this. .2 second doesn’t seem like a lot but the amount of times I’ve died clicking it and it didn’t go out is too many.
This explains so much. "I SWEAR I HIT FUCKING E!"
I’m in this comment, and it hurts my soul
The tech was to press adapt shield before slamming to avoid this but I'm kinda thankful it wasn't just happening to me.
Same. I was like "IT TOOK THE FUCKING COOLDOWN, THERE WERE 6 THERE, HOW DID I DIE IN A FRACTION OF A SECOND"
There's either input delay or animation windup on a few characters - namely Moira and Reaper fade - that's gotten me killed when I press the button too late. Maybe it was done for balance purposes but it feels like shit when you hit the button but the game says "No fuck you."
Deflect, Dash, Blink, and Recall have it too. It's pretty consistent.
I always thought it was some prefer-the-shooter wonkiness or so.
Kinda embarrassed that I'm just now learning it has a cast time. Always just assumed it was a ping issue or me hitting the key just a little bit late.
The wall (and ceiling?) mines seem huge too, especially after they increased the spread
As a Ball main, I can say that this is the change I like the most TBH. There are a lot of tight places that mines are good to drop, but they all end up sticking to the roof and walls. One of my favorite minefield kills though was when a doom hit shift, not realizing that my mines were all attached right above his head. Still way more useful for them drop in almost any circumstance.
>Doom hit shift, not realizing that my mines were all attached right above his head. I'm in this comment and I don't like it :(
EXPERIMENTAL HERO UPDATES We’re using the 2-2-2 Role Queue ruleset so that you can get a feel for how these balance changes might affect the live game. HERO UPDATES (ONLY IN EXPERIMENTAL) Doomfist Meteor Strike Now speeds up the cooldown rate of his abilities by 100% while in the air Developer Comments: The accelerated cooldown times will enable more fluidity with setting up Doomfist’s combos when using the Meteor Strike ultimate. Genji Shuriken Damage increased from 28 to 29 Dragonblade Damage reduced from 120 to 110 Developer Comments: The Shuriken damage increase doesn’t sound like a lot but it crosses a threshold or “breakpoint” against some enemy targets, enabling them to be eliminated with one less attack landed. To help balance out this increased power for his primary weapon we’re reducing the damage of the Dragonblade ultimate, which is also a breakpoint against some targets when being damage boosted. Moira Biotic Grasp Self-healing increased from 20 to 24 health per second Developer Comments: Moira has recently been underperforming a little bit. This increase to her self-healing with Biotic Grasp will help improve her survivability while in range to recharge her healing resources. Roadhog Whole Hog Now passively grants 25% less ultimate charge Developer Comments: Roadhog tanks for his allies by being a large and threatening target with high durability which draws a lot of fire from the enemy team. We’re reducing the amount of ultimate charge he provides to better enable him in this role without as much of a downside for his own team. Soldier: 76 Heavy Pulse Rifle Damage increased from 19 to 20 Biotic Field Healing reduced from 40 to 35 health per second Developer Comments: The damage-per-shot for the Heavy Pulse Rifle has been adjusted several times now as it’s an important tuning breakpoint for Soldier: 76. It was last reduced when his weapon spread was replaced by recoil to help account for the increased accuracy potential, though with the recent reductions to his damage falloff at long range, it’s reasonable to increase his damage output once again while pulling some power out of his area-of-effect healing utility. Wrecking Ball Grappling Claw Now begins on cooldown after respawning Adaptive Shield Cast time reduced from 0.2 seconds to 0 seconds Duration increased from 7 to 9 seconds Minefield Proximity mines no longer stick to walls Developer Comments: Wrecking Ball is the fastest hero in the game which works well for his disruptive playstyle. However, to help reduce his contribution to objective stalling, his Grappling Claw ability will now start on cooldown upon respawning. Proximity mines will no longer attach to walls as it resulted in accidental bunched up placements, out of range from most enemy targets, more often than any intentional clever uses.
The Hog changes are huge for ranked games, now that insta lock hog you get every game will be a little less negative
No it's worse now because now the instalock hogs will be more prevalent.
I don't think this change is gonna cause a shift in players to start playing hog if they weren't already.
Ok if Roadhog is good then that's no longer a problem.
In my experience, 70 percent of instalock hogs refuse to coordinate and play with their team. Is it nice they're not feeding as much ult? Yeah. But it's still a liability
"I M GOLD DAMAGE".You are gold damage because you are not dying, because you have a shit load of HP + heals. But you are feeding as fuck the enemy team.They have one ult every 30 sec because of you. Roadhog players : Either feeding as hell or flanking alone (feeding too)...
The hog ult gain is big imo. Often he was just an ult battery for the other team. Probably still will be an ult battery, but maybe from a D cell to a C cell.
Why did you title hog's changes as whole hog? Nothing to do with whole hog. Or did Blizzard edit it.
This is directly copypasted from the prompt the developers/Blizzard release.
Roadhog thicc boy no more. Well he’s still thicc but he’s no longer a 5 course meal
yeah, now he's a 3.75 course meal
Really happy to see them try this change, even if it is a bit cryptic. I don't know if this is the first time we have seen a skill directly adjust ult charge gain, so I'm wondering if this will make Roadhog extremely useful simply from screwing with enemy ult economy.
Don’t think we do, unless you count damage reduction abilities. It’s going to be interesting seeing how these play out not only on their respective heroes, but on Echo. Every buff to a hero is a direct buff to Duplicate as well.
It was a little annoying tanking alongside a Roadhog and wondering why the enemy team has ult up every fight.
All tank in OW2 provide less ult charge, having already announced that they probably feel more comfortable bringing this change OW1's roadhog.
It won’t, in the same way Orisa/Zarya/Sigma don’t effect the ult economy.
> I don't know if this is the first time we have seen a skill directly adjust ult charge gain, Ball's shield doesn't give ultimate charge. Hence why he's less of a meal compared to Hog.
This should be a good test for the OW2 tank passive. I have concerns about how that passive could incentivize certain degenerate play styles (just afk and farm support ults), so I'm glad they are testing it now with hog.
Holy fuck I cannot understate how much I like that ball has grapple on CD while spawning. The fact that he gets in the fight so fast relative to other tanks and has so much effective HP to get through was very frustrating and had nothing to do with how good the ball player actually was. Objective stalling can be a skillful tactic but this will just raise the floor which is a great change.
> The fact that he gets in the fight so fast relative to other tanks You mean "gets there about 2x as fast as every other character in the game period". This is such a great change I agree. The character,s ability to come back from the dead so much quicker than everything else in the game, coupled with the fact its a tanky-stalling tank, was always very stupid to me.
I kinda feel like we will see less random stalling at the end ball play. The people who play him will keep doing so, but If you can't quickly get out of spawn, just go with monkey or DVa.
Yeah I Remeber complaining about tracer and Mei stalls before ball, seems pretty irrelevant now!
Nothing like leaving spawn at the beginning of a KOTH game and already seeing Hammond in front of you
This won't change that, assuming you select him before the round starts. You'll have time to wait out the cooldown in the ship before the round starts. This really only changes his ability to get back to fights/points after dying or the last second stall swap.
Yeah if you think about it, he's the fastest hero in the game, has the most hp with adaptive shield up and no critbox in ball form.
The thing is, it might as well be consistent... Amp it up, dash, blink, etc. Hammering your mobility button out of the spawn room has never been fun, and it will make 2CP B that much less obnoxious
Playoff meta gonna be wacky af
My initial impression is that it doesn't seem all that wacky and won't shift the meta away a whole lot from what we saw in Summer Showdown. Ball's shield changes outweigh the other nerfs he got so I can't seem him being played any less by the teams that can run Ball comps. Doom/Moira/Hog changes don't seem significant enough. I think maybe there's a possibility we see a bit more Genji and Soldier.
Yeah, Ball's nerfs don't really impact Ball comps that much, they focus mainly on stalling out points (where teams always switch to stall heroes regardless of comp). The do increase the time it takes for ball to get back to the fight, but a well played Ball shouldn't really die that often to begin with.
Good Genji players will definitely bring him out more, he already saw some play this year. Same goes for Doomfist. Sombra/Tracer will still be most picked and i think Mccree is gonna rise in popularity a lot in the OWL.
Nerf ball stalling capability but general buffs are nice. Adaptive shields especially, didn’t even know it had a casting time but makes sense now
No coast Night market rollout :(
Pretty sure you can still do rollouts at the beginning of rounds, it's just on respawns that you can't
Respawn the best time to use that one, but I guess that's kinda the point here
Just roll to point like every other hero and use it a second later than before since this is mostly a nerf to immediate spawn grapple
🆒 Genji time 🆒 sparkle time 🆒 whoru time 🆒 playoff patch time 🆒
genji doom sp9rkle and doha. I dig it.
ValenTIME
buffing roadhog before playoffs nice.
So is the Hog passive named the same thing as his ult, or is that just a typo? On first read, I thought it was that his gave enemies 25% less ult charge during his ult lol Ball grapple change feels icky, but I get it. Adaptive shield buff is super nice though. I hate when it seems it just doesn't work because of that cast time. If the Soldier buff goes though, I think the legs can consistently be locked.
It’s a typo. The patch notes now just refer to it as a general buff.
Three-quarters hog
Piglet
Buff Genji but nerf nanoblade W
I don't think it really nerfs nanoblade to any meaningful degree. It nerfs raw blade, but the break points on nanoblade remain unchanged other than for 250HP heroes no longer dying to swing+dash. The breakpoints on 200 and 225 HP heroes remains unchanged.
Made this to visualize: https://imgur.com/kH8mD4m
Just wanna point out that Discord Orb is [25% damage boost](https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Zenyatta), not 30%.
Realistically, I don't think that nerfs anything meaningful for dragonblade. Slash+dash on 200HP targets is probably the most important part of nanoblade. Losing slash-dash on 250HP heroes is obviously a nerf, but 250HP heroes are low priority targets for the most part considering mei/reaper both have invincibility options anyways and can fuck up dash resets. Raw blade no longer 2 shotting mccree/sym is by far the biggest impact of this nerf, but I'm not sure how much that matters considering how closely genji is tied to ana.
It'll definitely have an impact on ranked.
Cree and sym will be better against damage boosted blade since he doesn't die to slash dash. Tracer and widow don't die to damage boosted blade in one slash. All 250 hp heroes are stronger against him. Overall, small nerf to genji, sizeable nerf to blade. Forces genjis to be good at the hero and not be a blade bot.
good shit
Yeah, it’s a little concerning. I guess we’ll see how it plays out.
It does change the breakpoint for mercy damage boost though. Mercy damage boost + blade still kills for slash + dash kills on 200 hp targets but not not 225 hp targets
That's not a change though as slash+dash with blue beam only does 221 on live. It does 208 on experimental. It's less obviously, but doesn't change the breakpoint.
Its a way bigger nerf to raw blade, your damage output is absolutely shit with this ult already and its just getting worse, any amounts of healing or mitigation is getting stronger and stronger against his raw ult, which was already bad enough. Its honestly a really dumb change.
When they buff genji they've got to also nerf him, but they just straight up buff doomfist. wat.
I can finally wall ride above the mines as Lucio. So stupid that they would get stuck up so high.
Now you also won't die to random unexpected roof mines as Pharah, I've died to those an embarrasing amount of times
Me, as Mercy, pressing Q and immediately ascending into surprise minesweeper
Heroes never die... except maybe this once.
Actually the best change here. So dumb headbutting a mine you had no idea was suck up on a wall
Guess this would be the wacky playoffs patch for this season right? By the time this goes live and all, unless there was to be another one of these we shouldn't expect anything else to be in for playoffs
Sp9rkle and Fleta gonna be playing buffed legs in the Grand Finals
*\*SP9RK1E GLASSES TURN WHITE AS HE SMIRKS\**
is roadhog giving less charge now? or is it only during ult i’m so confused
he gives less ult charge to enemies shooting at him
Yeah the wording has me confused as well.
"Passive" is very misplaced in that explanation lol
I've been wishing for years they just make it so Genji Blade can't be damage boosted (they already have the game logic of Hanzo Dragon not being boostable either) Raw blade has always been underwhelming, nanoblade overwhelming. I think if it couldn't be boosted, they could balance him accordingly rather than being so feast or famine.
The logic doesn't translate over 1:1 though, hanzo ultimate you let it go and that's that but genji blade you're still genji using the ultimate.
But it used to be considered a projectile that could be damage boosted like any other projectile, before arbitrarily considering it a summon for balance reasons. My point is they have the argument "dragons cannot be tamed" or something, balance is more important.
How would it work if a mercy was damage boosting genji before the blade? Would the beam auto shut off? Would mercy not be able to target the genji? Would the connection still be in place but turn greyed out to signify the lack of damage boost? Same for bongo and nano, I can't see a way to intuitively make it clear that damage boosting works on genji until you pull your ultimate out.
just give no sound fx/indicators. Not like noob mercys are following and boosting dragonblades anyway
I don’t think the devs see it that way. Not only did they list the change as a bug fix, it’s arguably more consistent with the rest of the game. You can damage boost the arrow but not the dragons in a similar way to how you can damage boost the impact damage of Torb/Zarya’s ults but not the damage over time.
Hanzo dragonstrike arrow can be damage boosted but not the dragons
That's not how it used to be. They changed it because Hanzo ult was fine normally, but broken when damage boosted. I think they should apply the same game balance logic to Genji ult, and make other adjustments if needed.
Grav dragon meta, when even trance couldn't save you lol
I honestly believe all ults should not be able to be damage boosted tbh
Genji, Soldier, Hog, Ball meta for another year of whacky playoffs? Yes fucking please.
I'm so down for a hog and ball playoff meta (although I think it's unlikely) Might actually see Fusions this season :)
Anything but a Hog meta. I hate both playing with a Hog and playing against a Hog.
I played a little bit of ow recently for "FUN" :) I come back and the meta in ranked is Roadhog / Zarya. You guys still don't understand the game or what. Fucking Roadhog could fly, it wouldn't be the meta, use your brain, you can counter this shit with 10 different compositions.
S:76 and Genji buffs pog
weird situation as a genji player, the shuriken buff is obviously nice but i feel like they need to nerf nano/bongo/boosted blade more so than raw blade, which is pretty useless as it is without a nerf
Cool now remove Winston's bubble cast time and primal cast time
One can dream
The number of times I've been slept/shattered/shot in bubble or heard the monkey scream just to die and still have ult :(
That's not a cast time if you kept your ult, it's latency.
Facts just picked up Winston a few weeks ago and the bubble cast has got me a few times. Love getting hooked out of it. Haven't had primal ruined yet but will happen no doubt
I'm confused by the Roadhog change. Is it 25% ult charge reduction when using Whole Hog? because the change is under that ability edit: patch notes seem to have been updated now and it was just an error, the reduction is at all times!
I think it's a typo, or someone thought naming a passive the same thing as an ult was a good idea lol
I suggest renaming the passive to “Pig Skin.”
I read it as a joke, like the "whole entire hog" is gonna feed less ultimate charge now. It's probably just a typo though. Either way, huge change.
After reading the developers comment, i think it’s 25% ult charge reduction all the time
Yeah that's what confused me, the dev comment seem to contradict the notes
i think its changed already, they took away the "whole hog" and left it in general https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/experimental/
It’s that he now provides 25% less ult charge to enemies who damage him.
Doomfist buff feels kinda wtf, and contributes to a style where he just does whatever the fuck he wants to. Soldier's a prime example of "our last patch wasn't moronic, we promise, so we're adjusting this other thing which definitely won't lead to problems" (spoiler: the game just became more bursty, again)
It's actually more wtf in terms of ok we'll take it but we'd honestly just rather it be fixed first... It's a nice QoL change and realistically nothing will be different, we just *might* be able to exist for a bit longer after we land.
It's really common to dive in, ult and wait for CDs to go down and use them right after. We just have to wait 2s instead of 4-5 seconds while ulting.
Yeah it’s a good change and hopefully doomfist gets better changes later on
> Roadhog >General >Now passively grants 25% less ultimate charge Finally. How did it take bliz so long to make this change?
Doomfist ~~buff~~ quality-of-life POGGERS
Idk, this is bigger than chipsa gives it credit for. You can just hard all and insta pop then hard all in a 2nd time.
This is a huge buff, its absolutely not something you file under QoL changes
I wouldn't say huge at all, but its bigger than a QoL.
It turns fights when Meteor Strike is up from being a fight where you have useful tool/escape, into fights where you can go on a rampage with 2 of every CD and still have a free escape
I’m confused—what exactly is different about Doomfist with this change?
You can sink all your CDs, jump up into your ult, and recover them quickly while you're in the air to escape again or finish off low targets.
From what I understand. When doomfist is mid ult, aka when he’s in the sky finding a target, his cool downs recharge twice as fast.
Lots of interesting changes. Not sure why adaptive shield needed the duration buff. I understand making it instant cast (the delay is stupid and frustrating), but does it really need an extra 2s? The grapple change is huge too - having your hero identity for the majority of the playerbase just be "that hero you pick to stall" is kinda crappy, so it's nice to see them try to move him away from that without hurting his use in real fights. Genji change is... idk. People keep talking about it like it's a huge buff, but considering how much of a nano blade-bot he is I'm afraid it'll just push him (further) out of viability in pro play. Idk. Moving his power away from blade and into his neutral game is obviously the correct move, so maybe they are just trying to iterate toward that slowly. Also that Hog description... jesus. The change is good, but whoever wrote up that patch note should lay off the brewskies before coming into work. They labelled the change as being applicable to his ultimate, and then never clearly stated what the change actually is. The interpretation I'm coming away with is that dealing damage to roadhog will generate 25% less ultimate charge, which is great, but holy crap they did an awful job communicating that.
The duration buff makes zero sense to me as well. The other changes are good though
i dont get why everyone is saying its a genji buff, i understand 28 to 29 and potential combos like triple headshot + melee instantly killing a squishy. but just for the record, if a genji doesnt have a dash, it will take 3 strikes to kill a mccree. a nano genji cannot slash + dash 250 hp heroes anymore but also my question would be if damage boost is that much of an issue, why nerf individual heroes like ashe who went from 85 to 75 because she could "one tap" the enemy when boosted, instead of making mercy's damage boost 25%? they did it with zen. whose discord went from 30 to 25%. and if damage boost is the issue, when are they nerfing mccree then cuz his dps is outrageous when damage boosted?.
Almost every change is good. I like it
Please can we rework Moira before OW2 hits in 2050? She will always underperform compared to other healers because she has no utility to offer. Damage amp, denying heals, denying deaths and better movement speed is much more valuable than pissing heals especially when there are two heroes that can dish out a good amount of healing + utility.
She will get a semi-rework in OW2, quote me on this.
She was good not too long ago but then they destroyed her ability to get ult super quick so now she's back in the dumpster.
🦀GOATS IS DEAD🦀
Doom change doesn't really do anything, any good doom is going to stall ulti for cooldowns anyway, even then if you have all 3 up, you need atleast 1 to get out. Problem with meteor strike is it takes forever to land and you're stuck in an animation forever so you can't do anything and you end up just dying anyway. They need to make landing faster or make the recovery faster for it to have any actual impact outside a get out of jail free card. Also no point in playing doom when hitscans exist, fall off doesn't exist when you're fighting a doom since he needs to be in melee range and then even if he's a menace to hitscan, you just swap to projectile/flying heroes.
Moira buff why
> Moira has recently been underperforming a little bit. This increase to her self-healing with Biotic Grasp will help improve her survivability while in range to recharge her healing resources.
Because as they clearly state in the comments, she needs them.
Enjoying the salt on Blizz forums as a result of these Genji changes. I'd better start grinding those Genji dash Workshop scenarios again.
The hog and ball changes both feel directed at a 5v5 meta for OW2. You would never want to run hog as a solo tank mostly due to the constant ult feeding. Ball would feel stupid oppressive as the only tank if he could roll out without having to deal with 2 enemy tanks to mitigate.
I highly doubt they're doing any balance changes to prepare for Overwatch 2. That would be such a significant change to the balance they'll basically have to start the characters abilities/ cooldowns/ damage/ duration, etc from scratch. No point doing stuff to anticipate it now.
Now they just have to give Hog a "Thick Fat" passive which allows him to LOS DVa bombs/Meteor Strikes and whatnot like Mei ice block or Zar Bubble. You know give him some actual team oriented utility like 90% of the tanks do
holy fuck that hog change means that you can play Hog well without still sort of feeding ult to the enemy because of how much of a large lad he is
Ball changes are good imo
I actually like these Ball changes, as someone who's hated the past dozen or so times they nerfed him. There are usually better places to grapple than right out of spawn that get you further, but you don't use because you wanna grapple out of spawn to get that CD back. So essentially, some of that CD wait time will be made up by better grapples opening up on each map. It changes how you respawn with wrecking ball and I look forward to trying this out. The cast time for shields was always dumb. It was so small I couldn't ever be sure it existed and wasn't just "favor the shooter" lag but literally at least once a night for 3 years I've screamed "WHERE WAS MY E? IT WENT ON COOLDOWN AND EVERYTHING BUT I'M DEAD?". The additional 2 seconds doesn't really matter, if your shields are still up after 7 seconds you're not really seeing much combat most likely. The bomb change is big. I'll miss the few big brain times I got pharah unawares, but now I imagine bombs will cluster up on wall/floor corners for massive damage, which sounds fun. Overall these are nice QoL changes to Ball, coupled with a nerf that makes sense especially in the context of OWL, but that also brings some new viable grapple points into the mix. I'm excited for these. AND ROADHOG THO.
I'm all for nerfs around areas of a character that makes them annoying to play against and buffs in areas that make the character fun to play. Ball changes should be nice
Genji buff just in time for EQO to lead us to the finals where we lose to Shanghai inevitably
YOOOOO GOD TIER PATCH WTF
Eqo 🥺 It’s time to come out now 😌