Overwatch Developers reveal upcoming hero balance changes

Bill Cooney

like Lucio for example, still have nerfs that were handed to them when GOATs reigned supreme.

But now in 2-2-2, those changes don’t make as much sense, and there are plenty of players who would like to see some of those changes reverted.

Lucio saw a reduction to his speed during the reign of GOATs.

What did the developers say?

In response to a user’s post on the official Blizzard forums, Overwatch developer Josh Noh confirmed that more balance changes were on the way – but warned that it could take some time.

“Balance changes take time and there will, of course, be more to come,” Noh replied. “We’ve just barely entered into 2-2-2 role queue and released a new hero at the same time. It’s important to collect statistics/data, as well as feedback to make informed decisions.”

Sigma also arrived to the game along with Role Lock.

“Reverting all balance changes over the last year is unlikely to happen,” Noh continued. “Any hero change could potentially affect a meta to some degree, but not all changes are directly targeted at the current meta, if that makes sense.”

Not all of the recent balance changes were made to “kill GOATs” Noh explained, as Developers were obviously aware that the 2-2-2 Role Lock was coming before everyone else.

“For some transparency, we’ve known for awhile that we would be moving to a 2-2-2 format (it required a long time to implement),” Noh wrote. “And not all changes over the last year were directly targeted at affecting the 3-3 GOATS meta (eg. Soldier, McCree, Junkrat buffs).”

McCree has received some major buffs over the last year.

Noh also said that Symmetra and Zarya’s damage output would be getting a balance update after a recent bug fix increased their damage output.

“Aside from meta considerations, it’s important to prioritize individual hero balance which is why we’re tuning Zarya and Symmetra damage output,” the developer revealed. “The recent beam bug fix was much more potent than expected, with those heroes on average seeing a 20-40 percent increase in damage. Their original damage values were tuned without knowledge of this bug.”

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/revert-hero-balance-back-to-where-it-was-before-goats/398645/55

Besides the upcoming Zarya and Symmetra changes, it will be interesting to see what other Overwatch balance changes Blizzard rolls out in the months to come in light of Noh’s recent statements.

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