Overwatch 2’s big Invasion season starts next week. Not only will there be a swathe of new content to check out, many heroes will be getting balance changes. We’ll need to wait for the patch notes to find out exactly what’s different. However, Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller has said nearly half of the game’s heroes are getting changes and he spilled the beans on some of them.
Let’s start with Mercy, the bane of many Overwatch 2 players’ existence. Her damage boost is dropping from 30% to 25%, which may be music to many folks’ ears. “We feel that the ability will still feel effective while giving us room to rein in certain damage spikes,” Keller wrote in his latest director’s take blog post. “We’re aware this is a contentious topic and are doing our best to be receptive to the various community opinions.”
The post didn’t mention all of the upcoming support changes, but Kiriko’s Protection Suzu will soon heal a little less. That’s balanced out with an extra burst of healing when it cleanses a status effect. The ability has a slight knockback effect that’s going away too. “We’d like this ability to feel more pointed, we don’t want players to feel like they have to hold it, and would like to reward them more for using it situationally,” Keller wrote.
As for Lifeweaver, Blizzard still hasn’t quite found the sweet spot for him, four months after his debut. While Team 4 thinks he’s in a much better place than when he arrived at the start of Season 4, he’s still getting some notable changes when Invasion goes live.
Lifeweaver’s Tree of Life Ultimate will soon provide up to 100 overhealth per ally. That should make it a much more effective ability. Some of Lifeweaver’s own health will be converted to shields and he’ll get more healing when he uses Rejuvenating Dash. Both of those tweaks will help his durability.
Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade is getting another tweak — it will have a 1.5-second maximum travel time. The cowboy’s getting more health and the Peacekeeper is getting damage falloff tweaks as well.
Torbjorn will get a faster fire rate and it’ll be quicker to switch between the Rivet Gun and his mighty hammer to help keep your turret alive. Soldier: 76 recently got some significant buffs, but Blizzard is walking those back a bit by having lower Helix Rocket damage and a higher Ult cost.
On the tank front, Orisa will receive 125 bonus heath when she activates Fortify and “the start of her damage falloff will be slightly extended,” Keller noted. Additionally, Doomfist and Ramattra’s block abilities will reduce stuck damage (i.e. from the likes of Magnetic Grenade and Tracer’s Pulse Bomb).
Elsewhere, Sombra’s getting some smaller tweaks when Invasion starts ahead of a bigger rework in the future. Bastion’s kit is getting some changes as well “to help him feel more fluid and increase the potential for his Tactical Grenade,” according to Keller.
Elsewhere, there will be some changes to how damage impacts armor as a whole. “Armor damage reduction is now additive with other sources of damage reduction and respects the current cap of 50%,” Keller explained. “It used to be multiplicative with damage reduction from abilities, creating situations where certain heroes were much more difficult to damage than intended since they were bypassing the damage reduction cap. This shouldn’t be a big change and will mostly affect Ramattra and Orisa.”
There are already a bunch of interesting changes there, with a lot more to come. We’ll find out all the details when Invasion goes live next week, or perhaps just beforehand.
Meanwhile, Keller had a little something to say about the brand-new support hero and, no, he didn’t touch on any related leaks that may or may not have happened. Team 4 doesn’t really want to get into another Lifeweaver situation in which a new hero arrives and they aren’t immediately impactful enough. The devs don’t want the new hero to be very overpowered, though.
“We’d prefer that people play her because she brings value, not just because she’s new,” Keller wrote. “We will be watching her very closely, listening to player feedback, and will make early changes if necessary.”
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