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Overwatch8 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Patch notes: the return of the Overwatch beta breaths new life into forgotten heroes


Bastion and Torbjörn have received massive buffs while power house heroes like Reinhardt and Mercy have had their most opressive aspects nerfed.

Patch day! Is there a more exciting time for the competitive gamer? Now only has Overwatch returned from it's hiatus, but included in the huge list of features are loads of balance updates. The list is extensive and anyone familiar with Overwatch before the break can appreciate just how much the competitive landscape will change:

Full patch notes here

Let's talk about the biggest changes that affect every hero:

Ultimate Charge (All Heroes)

  • Players no longer gain Ultimate charge from taking damage
  • Ultimate charge will now generate slowly over time for all heroes
  • To accommodate for these changes, many heroes’ Ultimate cost has been rebalanced
     

This change alone is game changing. It's a buff to spam oriented characters like Junk Rat or D.Va who no longer have to worry about feeding the enemy ultimate charge, but it is also a targetted blow to Tank heroes like Reinhardt, Winston, and Roadhog. Before these changes, it was a popular strategy to suicide constantly with these heroes, taking reckless amounts of damage and gaining ultimate charge. Once all members of your team had Ultimate abilities ready, you use all 6 of them in unison to take the objective.

Because individual kills don't count for a game win, this strategy was almost impossible to defend against. Now, players who take damage aren't rewarded, accuracy and skill is instead.

General

  • All healing effects now work on shields
  • Quick Melee now pauses weapon recovery time while active
  • Ammo will now reload in the middle of a weapon’s reload animation, instead of at the end of it


Buff to shield heroes, as they no longer have to wait around for their shields to regenerate (being completely vulnerable the whole time). No one benefits from this more than Zarya, the Tank character who relies entirely on shields to survive.

The Quick Melee changes is likely a nerf to burst oriented characters like Tracer or Heroes that use their Quick Attack a lot like Roadhog, but more time with the changes is needed to make any conclusive statements.

The Heroes

Many heroes were affected by the patch have been changed a lot, but let's only go over the big changes that matter most:

Reinhardt

  • Earthshatter
    • Damage decreased by 50%
    • Cone width decreased by 40%
       

Reinhardt simply did too much damage with his Earthshatter Ultimate ability. A flat nerf to it's AoE and damage allows the ability to function as it was intended (to set up for your team) and brings down the number of  Reinhardt vs. the world highlight reels that, while fun, were all too easy.

Mercy

  • Guardian Angel
    • Can now target the souls of dead allies
  • Resurrect
    • Ultimate charge cost decreased by 25%
    • Activation time decreased from 1.5 seconds to 1 second
    • Range decreased from 40 meters to 15 meters
    • No longer locks aim during activation


Mercy was widely considered to be the best hero in the game and it was largely due to her Resurrect ability. Strong heroes are fine, but Resurrect was becoming a necessity that all competitive teams needed in order to compete. In the words of Blizzard developers, this was a problem:

We don’t want any hero—or any hero ability—to feel like an “auto pick.” Our goal with these changes is to tone down Resurrect by allowing opponents to counter it, but still make sure it can feel game-changing. 

The biggest opportunity players now have to counter Resurrect is the increased risk Mercy must take when casting it. The old 40 meter range allowed Mercy to stay well out of danger when Resurrecting her entire team, however the change down to 15 allows aggressive heroes to close the distance and punish. This coupled with a longer Activation time are solid nerfs that don't cripple the hero, but bring her to a normal level of power.

Bastion

  • Base health increased by 50 armor (now 200 HP/100 Armor)
  • Configuration: Recon
    • Minimum weapon spread has been removed
    • Maximum weapon spread increased by 10%
    • Weapon spread will now start to recover more quickly
  • Configuration: Sentry
    • Transforming from Sentry to Recon decreased from 1 second to 0.5 seconds
    • Aim restrictions have been removed (Bastion can now aim in 360 degrees)
    • Weapon spread decreased by 20%
    • Weapon reload speed decreased from 2.5 seconds to 2 seconds
    • Bullet damage decreased by 33%
    • Bastion’s survivability in Sentry Mode has been rebalanced:
      • Now grants 300 armor
      • Frontal barrier has been removed
      • Bastion’s core is now exposed when deployed in Sentry mode, located on its back. All successful attacks to the core will deal triple damage.
  • Self-Repair:
    • Now heals 25% of total health per second, instead of a flat value

 

Where do you even begin with Bastion? The hero has always been a pubstar, but had virtually 0 playability in a competitive setting, and Blizzard sought to change this. Bastion now has more armor with a more potent Recon form. The biggest change however, is in his Sentry configuration: Bastion no longer has an aim restriction.

Bastion can now aim in 360 degrees. My mind is blown.

With this huge buff, the damage on his Sentry gun was expectedly nerfed. However, this new style of Bastion is exactly what the hero needed to attract competitive players. These aren't even his full list of changes, but are the ones that most will remember.

 

Torbjörn

  • Rivet Gun
    • Primary Fire
      • Damage increased by 25%
      • Fire rate decreased by 20%
    • Alternate Fire
      • Damage increased by 50%
      • Damage falloff increased at minimum range
      • Fire rate decreased by 33%
      • Now shoots projectiles that need to be aimed
  • Build Turret
    • Upgrading the turret no longer costs Scrap and occurs more quickly
    • Level 1
      • Damage increased by 15%
      • Health decreased from 250 to 150
    • Level 2
      • Damage increased by 15%
      • Health decreased from 425 to 300
      • Can no longer be upgraded to level 3 with Forge Hammer (see Molten Core changes below)
  • Armor Pack
    • Cooldown has been removed
    • Armor granted increased from 50 to 75
    • Packs are no longer visible to enemies
  • Molten Core
    • No longer fills Scrap meter
    • No longer makes abilities cost 0 Scrap
    • Can now be activated while moving
    • Now automatically upgrades level 2 turrets to level 3 turrets while Molten Core is running (turrets will revert back to level 2 once Molten Core ends)
       

The biggest change to Torbjörn is the damage increasesto his Rivet Gun. More damage is always good, especially for a hero that is too fragile to take advantage of the fast fire rate he originally possessed. These changes slow down his shots, but make them hit for a lot more damage, allowing the rare instances where Torbjörn goes head-to-head with an enemy to be more in his favor.

On the other end, we have a complete change to the way Torbjörn's Ultimate Molten Core works. The old gameplay had Torbjörn players ignore their Turrets until Molten Core was available. From there, you would speed build a Level 3 Turret and call it a day. It wasn't the most fun style of gameplay and was near useless against a competitive team. Blizzard developers knew this:

less-experienced players had a difficult time figuring out how to deal with Torbjörn’s level 3 turret. On the flipside, more experienced players could easily prevent Torbjörn from setting up a level 3 turret or otherwise getting too established, which in turn made him feel helpless.

So they changed the hero completely. This new style of play however, allows Torbjörn players to feel less reliant on their turrets and use Molten Core strategically to instantly upgrade a level 2 Turret to a Level 3 one. Also, Armor packs no longer have a cool down and provide more armor. What a beast.

The bottom line

We can't tell how these changes will affect competitive Overwatch, but it's safe to say that teams are already pouring through the patch notes and experimenting with new strategies and team compositions. Our weekly Overwatch Tournament series resumes this Sunday, and the matches are sure to entertain in light of the massive balance changes.

if you and your friends got lucky enough to be invited to the newest wave of Beta invites, Teams can register for our EU weekly tournament #3 here, and our NA weekly tournament #3 here.

For more Competetive Overwatch, follow @GosuOverwatch

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