Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan Comments on Upcoming Changes to Brigitte and Ana
Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has commented on potential changes to Support heroes Brigitte and Ana.
Kaplan took to the Blizzard forums to give an update on the some of the team’s plans for upcoming patches.
Brigitte in particular has been the topic of much debate recently. Having been added to the game on March 20th, Brigitte was thrown back into the spotlight with the arrival of competitive season 10 on April 30th, which saw her unlocked in rank play for the first time.
General consensus among both casual and professional players seems to be that Brigitte is at least a little overpowered in her current form, and likely in need of tuning.
Ana, meanwhile, has for some time been a hero that many consider in need of a slight buff. The prevalence of heroes such as Mercy, Zenyatta, and now Brigitte in recent months has resulted in her seeing less play, a disappointing state of affairs for many players who see Ana as one of the most engaging and skill-dependent heroes on the Support roster.
Kaplan touched on the plans for both heroes, stating that each has adjustments coming to the PTR in the near future.
Hi. Sorry for not posting in awhile. This is the first time I’ve had time to check the forums all week. As you know, we have some changes patching in to the game today (Rialto PvP, Hanzo Storm Arrow, Brigitte shield adjustment). We also have a PTR deploy that we’re hoping to get up by the end of the week (originally it was scheduled for earlier this week but some bugs came up that were critical to fix so we held on to it). We expected the PTR w/ patch notes to go live so therefore were less concerned with communicating via forums and/or social and were surprised when it did not go live.
The PTR build (when it goes live) has some balance adjustments. The max armor from Brigitte’s ultimate is down from 150 to 100. We’re also discussing some other changes that might make it onto the PTR when it goes live or might go live next week (if at all).
We were trying some interesting things with Ana as well. I’m not sure which of the changes (if any) will make it on to this PTR cycle (some of the changes required new tech so we need to keep testing before rushing something out). Please interpret that as: we’re interested in making some minor improvements to Ana but they may or may not make this PTR cycle. We’re also looking closely and Brigitte and we are reading and appreciative of the feedback.
Lead designer Geoff Goodman revealed in a separate post a specific update to Ana’s magazine size that the team plan on implementing.
There is another Ana change we’re making which didn’t quite make this PTR build, but will be up there soon.
We’re changing Ana’s magazine size from 10 to 14, which should help her maintain healing uptime and allow her to more carefully choose when to reload as opposed to just healing until the reload is forced upon you.
The most recent PTR patch went live on May 3rd, with both Ana and Brigitte receiving minor changes. These statements suggest, however, that additional adjustments will be coming in a later update.
