During our interview, we reached out to him about the rumours of him leaving Complexity. While he could not confirm whether the comments on his stream had been jokes or were serious, we did take the opportunity to ask him about the future of competitive Overwatch and the upcoming balance changes.
The Overwatch League is starting soon. How do you view the current state of the Overwatch pro scene and how do you see the future? What changes would you like to see?
The North American and Korean scenes seem to be in good spots, but the lack of tournaments in Europe is pretty disheartening. If Overwatch wants to be a truly global esport then there needs to be support for every region. That being said the fact that the game has only been out for about half a year it's still nice to see how the scene is shaping up.
Two big changes I would like to see are a standardized ruleset across tournaments and the removal of two control point as a whole unless it is reworked. Maps such as Hanamura and Temple of Anubis are neither fun from a player, nor spectator's point of view in my opinion. The ability to stall out last by switching to heroes such as Mei and D.Va just makes the entire game mode a mess. There are two easy fixes I could see that would improve the game mode, the first making it so untargetable heroes such as Mei in her Ice Block don't stop the capture, or the other change just increasing the spawn times on defense an extra couple of seconds to prevent staggering back in.
Are there any hero balance changes you would like to see? What are your thoughts on the upcoming changes to Bastion?
The upcoming Bastion changes seem pretty interesting, it looks like they tried to make him less team reliant which is good. It was never fun for the other five players to be forced to play around the Bastion to make him work. The [Roadhog] nerfs that they announced on the PTR seem okay also. As a Roadhog main myself, he looks like he'll still be a viable pick, will just make it so you have to focus more on your hooks instead of throwing them out off cooldown.
There's been rumors that Bastion can potentially replace Soldier: 76. Do you think those thoughts have any merit?
If the current Bastion changes go through onto live I could definitely see that as a possibility. Obviously, he has less mobility than Soldier does but he also has tank shredding power that Soldier lacks. I think it will take time for teams to play with him to see where he fits in exactly, but he does seem extremely strong from what I've seen. I do think overall the game is in a pretty good place balance wise, the Ana and D.Va nerfs opened up a lot of possibilities for team comps that you wouldn't see before.
One last change I would like to see would be globally decreasing the ult charge speed again. I know a few months back they decreased it by 25% but it still seems like some heroes can get ult way too fast. I would like to see the game less ult reliant and more based off of individual skill.
It is exciting to hear from players such as Harbleu that the Overwatch professional scene is in a healthy state, but does still need improvements to reach its maximum potential. After every major tournament and server patch, Overwatch gains strength attracting top organizations to invest in its future.
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