Overwatch players discover Reinhardt is “broken” with new hammer buff

A new buff to Reinhardt on the Overwatch Experimental Card may be a bit too strong after players did some testing with his hammer.

The December 3 Overwatch patch brought in some big changes to three different heroes with Baptiste getting a nerf to Immorality Field, D.Va’s health getting reconfigured and Reinhardt seeing an increase to his hammer swing damage.

With his swing damage improved from 75 damage to 85, these has opened up some new damage breakpoints when factoring in Mercy and Zenyatta damage boosts.

The key thing to keep in mind with most Overwatch buffs is how they are influenced by other modifiers. With most heroes being at 200 HP, the sooner your damage can exceed that, the better.

In the case of Reinhardt, his damage increase from 75 to 85 may not seem too insane until you start to factor in damage boosts. Mercy’s damage boost amplifies a hero’s attacks by 30% while Zenyatta’s Discord Orb makes it so any hero who is discorded takes 30% extra damage.

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Previously, with 75 damage, one swing by Reinhardt while damage boosted or attacking a discorded target would deal 97.5. Now, however, when factoring in the 10 additional damage, that number becomes 110.5.

All it takes now is just two swings onto a 200 HP hero for Reinhardt to delete them, making the buff extra strong when he’s paired with a Mercy or Zenyatta.

Plus, there are a couple of extra elements to factor in. Reinhardt’s hammer deals cleave damage, which means that he can hit multiple enemies with a single blow. If he’s damage boosted by Mercy, he could take down teams with ease.

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Not only that, but the Experimental patch also gave Reinhardt 50 extra health, meaning he has a bit more room to swing and live to tell the tale. This doesn’t even include the additional ultimate charge he will generate by doing more damage.

As you can see in the short clip, with the boost, Reinhardt can delete the 200 HP practice range bot in just one second, prompting Jon to caption the video: “Rein is broken.”

Others agreed. “Buffing Rein and D.Va when they don’t need it instead of nerfing overpowered heroes isn’t good man,” a user replied.

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“I don’t think this is the answer we are looking for but I guess it’s better than what we got?” Florida Mayhem content creator Samito further chimed in referring to the state of the meta.

It will be interesting to see what the devs decide to do with these Reinhardt buffs and if they make it through to the live game after the experimental period ends.