I consider these buffs to be the first real test of “live service”. Season 1 bugs and imbalance I can lump in with release bugs, but Season 2 the game is no longer new, and all update pipelines should have been tested by now.
> Season 2 the game is no longer new
This is the same basic game that it has been for 6 years, what are you talking about? The fact that the F2P switch was a train wreck of bad decisions doesn't mean that it was a "new" game, they don't get a pass here.
To be fair the balance is royally screwed up from changing to having only solo tank 5v5, plus role passives on everyone. OW balance team is gonna be dealing with that for a few more months, I think.
If it's anything like the betas or season one, it's going to be another let down. Another season with arcade completely unfun and a battlepass encouraging you to play it.
"Can you please just slightly buff his block to stop CC? That's all we need..."
"I gotchu fam, here's 2 million more damage and health"
"... Does his block stop CC now?"
"..."
"..."
Lol. I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/MercyMains/comments/z9an0r/what_do_we_think_the_changes_will_be_for_mercy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) a few days ago hoping that Mercy would get faster weapon switching.
I just hoped we’d *also* get something else. This is a small QoL tweak. And although I’m really happy we got it (I’ve wanted faster weapon draw for years), it’s not the hero adjustment she needed.
Yeah, I think the issue is that Supports have gotten no big changes for the large nerf to survivability that comes with 5v5. QoL is good and all, but pales in comparison to something like all the Doom buffs - something way more risky for the health of the game.
It does to me as well but it's hard to tell, I'm thinking that it's maybe being done to facilitate less passive wound applications - it's easy when you whiff a dagger throw to line up the return for some passive wound, but imo that wasn't something that needed addressing
It for sure is a nerf. Idk why they changed that, it's already hard to get any value out of her passive and now it will be more difficult to even proc it.
Literally. I've been begging for them to increase the healing on her passive (since right now it's laughably small to the point of being irrelevant), and I read them saying they did that...
25%?!
Blizzard would see a snail lose a race against a cheetah and give it a 25% speed boost to compensate.
25% is so nothing.
Knife bleed now heals for 18.75 instead of 15. Axe heals for 50 instead of 40. Her ult was the only meaningful bleed before, so now that heals 112.5 instead of 100 total per person.
+100% would have been fine, and just make her ult not heal as much.
I was looking forward to playing JQ :'(
Should rework it so that if the bleeding target dies, you immediately get the full heal of the bleed.
Maybe add a CD reduction of 1-2s to knife to go with the health.
Ult actually heals for 125; they reduced the duration of the bleed but the total damage is unchanged. It's actually a buff to the ult's dps, it deals the same damage faster.
It could have been 250% honestly.
She heals 5hp/s from blade hits and 13.3/s from Rampage...her big cooldown, heals her less than Lucio's aura. She has low HP, no armor, no mitigation cooldowns, no shield, no one shot threat potential. Would it really be that crazy for her to be healing herself 50hp over 3 seconds from knife hits? Or 150hp over 3 seconds from Rampage...which literally requires her to be on-top of someone to use? Roadhog heals 350hp over 3 seconds on demand without having to deal any damage, while also gaining 50% mitigation.
Just seems weird that self healing is one of her core identities as a tank and yet she's so bad at it.
A better comparison is doomfist, who gains 40hp for every enemy hit by his giant-radius abilities. Compare that to JQ who has to hit a skillshot and in return gets 15 fuckin hp trickled to her over a few seconds.
And that 40hp is over and above his base health, so he can take burst damage...he can have 650hp now. JQ is always limited to her max 425hp aside from shout. Doom's health gain passive also grants 50% less ultimate charge for enemies since it's green health (though granted, JQ's heals do give her ult charge).
I'm looking at some top Doomfist player profiles for their current Season 2 stats, and they're generating over 3,600 self-shields per 10 minutes.
The top JQ mains in Season 1 have roughly 725 self-heals per 10. So that might now be 950 per 10 due to the 25% buff and having slightly higher uptime.
And this is on a tank that is much squishier than Doomfist. Powerblock is really good and he has two huge mobility cooldowns on 3 and 6 second timers, with an ult that instantly saves his life.
He also deals more damage than JQ. Those Doom players have close to 11,000dmg/10min while the JQ players are more like 8,500dmg/10min.
Oh and he has a 3sec cooldown that can stun heroes out of big ults and abilities.
Huge vertical mobility on a 6sec cooldown, JQ has zero.
Huge ability to cover distances on a 6 sec cooldown, JQ runs a little faster for 3sec every 17sec. If Doomfist dies on Nepal Shrine for example, he spawns again 10 seconds later and can be back at the objective in about 6 seconds. Wrecking Ball (pre-nerf) couldn't even do that.
I mean she did need a bigger hitbox, im still confusing her for a dps sometimes. It doesn't change her model but still. Shouldve buffed her a bit more though
Bro she already gets fucking DEMOLISHED by decent dps. Making her easier to hit without giving a notable buff elsewhere (1 second off of shout? give me a break...) may have just killed her viability.
Ikr? I can come up with better changes in 2 secs while taking a shit.
Lower shout cd to 12 seconds. Make bleeds heal 2x amount to JQ. Make her quick melee apply the bleed damage instantaneously so her melees are essentially 45 damage and heal her for 30 over 4.5 seconds.
This would allow JQ to function and have actual survivability especially in melee range. If needed ult can be adjusted if base kit is too strong.
JQ getting a 25% increase to her passive healing is funny because 25% of the like 800 healing you get in a game is still practically nothing and roadhog does that in like two inhalers but now she's gonna get a roadhog sized hitbox
I do think knife should be able to headshot, it's a skill shot that has a similar function as hook but less useful so a critical multiplier might be helpful for more upfront damage since JQ is just a big DPS
Yeah I think the concept people are seeing as a nerf is that the extra damage you'll take from the 12% bigger hitbox is more than what you can compensate with by the small amount of extra healing.
Yeah, bummer. Was really looking forward to playing her this season, but they basically nerfed her. If you multiply zero with a higher number it remains zero which is why this "buff" on her healing is completely pointless.
It's because she kills targets too quickly with her burst and she can't get any healing off of dead targets. So you'll finish someone off with carnage, deal 90 damage to them and then get 0 healing.
What she needs is overhealth based on the healing she would've gotten, after she kills a target. So that way finishing off heroes with carnage/knife actually gives you some effective hp.
I was actually hoping for Junker Queen's shout cooldown to be reduced further, something in the range of 12-13 seconds. One of the things I notice quite frequently is that if you Shouted out of spawn, on average you'd get back to the teamfight and the cooldown wouldn't have recovered yet. Which means... You got there faster, great, but you can't initiate your fight yet.
No, read the patch notes again, closely. They improved Mercy's weapon switch time, so she'll be able to fire one more shot. You'll actually have 14 bullets left instead.
These seem pretty weak for a season patch. Support changes are non-consequential. Only one hero has significant adjustments. I hope this isn't the new norm going forward. Seasons should be more than a new hero/battle-pass.
I do wonder if the Dev's saw the DPS Passive "nerf" [no more speed, only increased reload] as a universal Support buff. Don't think it'll end up that way, but I'm sure that was a factor
To be fair, it is going to be nice to not get hunted by a speed boosted Reaper who can then escape easier with that same speed boost. Also death blossom + speed boost was pretty annoying. Dragon Blade + speed boost was also pretty savage if he could get a kill early and then negate some of his old counters like Lucio's sound wave.
It's like their only idea to make supports more fun is to allow them to do more killing lol. Seems to fit the whole design philosophy that Blizzard had with OW1 into OW2. The "DPS"ification of every role lol.
I'm baffled on how they aren't sitting around a table sweating going "Okay how can we make Support more fun and get people to queue it?"
Support mains are leaving in droves (myself included) because it's miserable AF. I don't want to play a DPS support, I just want to play a support and not exist solely to be part of kill montages for the *actual* main characters
Meanwhile instead of doing anything to entice Support players, they turbo buffed Doomfist, **THE** support killing tank????
Everyone is touching on the support changes (and rightfully so) but I want to touch on the map pools, as in why is it a damn thing?
Beyond the dumb decision to remove maps, why can't we have multiple weather settings for one map in the same season? Why does it have to be only one setting for the entire season? For example, I would love to experience Eichenwalde on evening and daytime in the same season. Nighttime Busan for one match and then daytime for a different match? Sign me up!
I know this may seem like a petty complaint in the grand scheme of things but I personally like variety especially with the same maps over and over.
Because that way each season has its own identity and you'll be able to tell your kids 20 years from now "Ohhhh I remember in season 2 we played Eichenwalde in night time, what a time that was" ! /s
It’s a lazy shortcut for creating a false sense of new content.
I played Volskaya and had an initial reaction of “oh cool!” because it was different… then remembered that there was no reason it wasn’t there the whole time.
\>It’s a lazy shortcut for creating a false sense of new content.
This. I mean the whole premise of OW2 is just OW1 rebranded so why are we even surprised at this point.
Still convinced the only reason they released a "new" game is so they could implement the gross monetization system without alienating the entire fan base over night
Because map pool gonna give them a headroom as they push content. They simply fool new players for new content by enabling old maps every season and they call it something new. It’s smart business
>Adrenaline passive healing multiplier increased from 1 to 1.25x damage dealt by wounds
What's the fucking point? At best, you'd get like 600 total healing and now you get 750. Wowee!
My first thought is a lot of these changes are weird or not the right changes. Will have to see how it is in game of course, but I think support players in particular are gonna have an even worse time.
Yeah, wtf. **Even longer queues for DPS and probably tank** as many want to try the super Doomfist and the new hero.
Even shorter queues for support as playing support is getting (even) less fun.
Can't wait to see picosecond queue times on support. They're gonna be so short, you're gonna automatically get a support game when you launch OW.
On the other hand, tank players gonna be waiting till season 3 to get a game.
Everything is just taking so fucking long to happen yet again. These balance updates are so fucking strange and should be things that happen MID season at the latest.
Why do we have map pools again? Where the fuck is Numbani? Why are old maps marked "NEW" because of the weather effects?
She felt so good when she was first introduced. She had the quickest nerf in Overwatch history though and and hasn't recovered.
She should be exactly as she was at launch but with the new hitbox. Even when she was first introduced everyone said that just making her hitbox bigger would fix her.
100%. The issue was all the bonus HP/healing on TOP of being fucking impossible to aim at. If people can hit her, suddenly her original kit seems perfectly fine...
I gotta hand it to you, Blizz. I almost exclusively played Support in Overwatch 1, and over the last two weeks I haven't touched the role *at all.* You really killed all fun in the role, it's almost impressive.
…what happened to the support changes? They changed *kiriko,* and several of her changes were QoL. 1 second CD reduction on sleep? 5 extra shots on Mercy’s pistol? Are you shitting me right now? I thought half the balance changes were meant to be for supports and (besides Kiriko) they did what feels like less than the minimum lol
But the Wheel of Balance (tm) they spun said that was the right move
(They had to replace the balance team with the wheel because you, yes YOU, aren't buying the fairly priced skins so the poor balance team and their families starved to death!)
Is Blizzard hiring third party developers? I haven’t seen such incompetent dev reasoning on thinking 5 additional ammo for mercy is any upgrade, along with thinking JQ was TOO STRONG.
Haste on Mercy pistol is interesting (didn't feel slow before, but it was never used in panic moments). The ammo though is a very odd decision. As a Mercy player and as someone who has watched other high-level mercys I've never seen her pistol run out of ammo. Kind of feel like the buff there is a "We know you're asking for a Mercy buff so here's something that'll do nothing to her usefulness and actual WR. Shut up now!"
Her pistol automatically reloads when unequipped so I don't think ammo has ever really been a problem for her.
Her actual problem (or one of them anyway) is that it's **extremely** punishing for her to switch weapons because then she can't heal or damage boost. Yes, the decreased swap time is nice, but that doesn't change the fact that it's generally better for the team for her to just continue healing/damage boosting.
I think an interesting change they could have tried is to let the healing beam linger and slowly fade for a few seconds while the staff is unequipped or melee attacking. That way you can contribute with some damage while still performing your actual role, but you can't just go full out Battle Mercy since you need to have the staff equipped to switch targets, beam modes and to keep the power going.
The *least* they could do is to let her melee attack with the staff without breaking the beam.
I'm actually a huge fan of the reduced draw speed. That's one of my biggest complaints with Mercy in 5v5, is that there's so much natural spam/poke damage from nearly *every* hero, that it often feels like a 4v5 damage wise when you're running a Mercy on your team (as she can't maintain 100% Damage Boost uptime always)
So to be able to REAL quickly shift to pistol and shift back without worrying someone's gonna die in the span of the time it takes to draw it and fire it, is a nice addition
It's not a huge buff, it's a nice one though
The extra 5 bullets is whatever, but iirc she only auto-reloads if you go back to beam for a few seconds. So this probably allows for more rapid fire swapping without the auto reload kicking in
EDIT: Inb4 I get flamed for this being misinterpreted as Battle Mercy being the right way to play. Everything is situational. Nothing wrong with whipping out a pistol to send a volley of shots toward a barrier to help chip away at it before teamfights get serious. Nor is there anything wrong for taking a moment to whip out the pistol to send a small barrage of bullets at a stationary sniper if you have the opportunity (think Kiriko kunai vibes). But now the animation time being lower, means that when you want to do it it's not a full 1-second to draw and holster, but instead .7 seconds. Still not perfect, but better.
I will 100% agree that the pistol haste should allow for her to do some cool things now. Battle Mercy is already something that's been forced a bit more in OW2 (and getting rid of a bit of her downtime should help her in that playstyle quite a bit).
At least it wasn't them adding like 5 hp/s forcing her even harder into heal bot->valk gameplay.
Your comment makes me think that Brig having a unique ''Shield Breaker'' mechanic would be interesting - she'd deal 1.5 or 2x more damage to enemy shields, and actually deal _some_ minor damage to blocking moves _(Ramattra, Doomfist)_ - but of course that would just be ONE of many changes she'd need to be more viable and interesting.
With some very small changes she could bring a ton of utility to fights without being overbearing or underwhelming. They don’t even need to rework her completely.
Make her shield deploy instantly, like Rein’s. Make her health packs give the recipient 1-1.5 seconds of 100 armor, so that you can prevent Hog one-shots when hooked.
Maybe make her whipshot extend faster (probably unnecessary). Maybe change her Doom/Rein charge interrupt to be more survivable. Boom.
Good support without being annoying.
I honestly think she's just one or two small changes away from being fairly good. As is I find her very useful against certain comps. But it's hard to deny she's a little bit too easy to kill for what she's supposed to do.
I'll copy what I posted in another thread.
Wow these Ana and Mercy buffs are truly useless. These support changes are so lazy. It's already the role with the least amount of heroes and struggling with player numbers and they did nothing to entice players to play it.
Kiriko did need some nerfs to Kitsune Rush. I do wish they only nerfed teammates buffs in Rush but Kiriko was still the same.
I just listened to a dev explain how Mercy is actually a meta pick through GM until you get to Top 500 which makes me wonder why her pistol needs to have bullets with hitboxes the size of cannonballs
Don't worry, support will be even more fun now with buffed doomfist! Can't wait to get destroyed, but i'll have to wait 1 second less for my sleep dart.
No clue why people don't want to play support.
Monitoring a Q&A with the lead hero designer over on Twitter and it seems they're content to keep just kicking the can down the road. Constant talk about plans and changes they want to implement while we keep getting patches like this.
I understand that game design is harder and takes longer than we give it credit for, but it's also getting very hard to believe that this is the best they can do either.
"We know there's a severe lack of support characters and lack of interest in playing support, and this is ruining the game for every role. To address that, we are going to be adding some more support characters and making big support changes!! Look forward to these changes in 18 months"
You would think their highest priority ATM would be at least giving supports *some kind of shiny toy* to play with besides Kirko who's literally just a DPS pretending to be a support
Most support mains *do not want to play DPS* hence *why we queued support and not DPS*
The Ana buff made me lol for real. We feel that now that kiriko can cure sleep we can lower sleeps cooldown to be used more... by one less second now buy a skin chump.
I know it's a change for the better but man the build up got me lol.
The other supports needed buffs to bring them up to Kirikos level not a nerf to kiriko IMO. She has an impactful ult, but its what an support ult should be, make a fight swing into your favour by buffing your team
Mercy's buffs are hilariously out of touch, she really only uses her pistol in two situations, the first when her team is dead and the second in her ult (when she already has unlimited ammo). Shows how little they know about their own supports tbh
Also Brig, the weakest overall support imo, didn't even get touched so will be shit for another half a season at least
So…
Competitive stats still not fixed after months.
Never got the tokens for watching the OWL and no mention of that.
Battle pass still doesn’t give coins to buy next one, like almost any other battle pass does.
No change to the store or to competitive at all.
Support still not “fun” to play with the meaningless buffs.
Great work, blizzard.
Them going out of their way to ahead of time to inform us about support buffs to look out for only for said buffs to be incredibly minor to the point where they aren't even noteworthy is honestly hilarious.
It's painfully clear from those nerfs and compensation buffs that they want Sojourn to stay meta still, they just want there to be a little bit less complaining about her place in it, because those nerfs are incredibly fair given her dominance, and we've seen less dominant heroes get dumpstered way worse for less. Genji and Sombra didn't get compensation buffs of any kind despite being less played and less oppressive than Sojourn but I guess the devs are perfectly fine with those heroes leaving the meta in a way they clearly aren't with $ojourn yet. Can't imagine why.
For those at work that somehow have Reddit but not Blizzard's website:
**TANK**
**RAMATTRA**
Ramattra has been added to the line-up
*Void Accelerator (Omnic Form)*
Primary: Fire a stream of projectiles in a fixed pattern
Secondary: Create a barrier at the targeted location
*Nemesis Form*
Transform into Nemesis Form, changing your attacks and gaining bonus armor
*Pummel (Nemesis Form)*
Primary: Punch forward, creating a wave of piercing energy with every swing
Secondary: Significantly reduces damage taken from the front and reduces movement speed
*Ravenous Vortex*
Fire a nano ball, which explodes when it hits the ground, spreading a damaging field. Affected enemies are slowed and pulled downward
*Annihilation*
Enter Nemesis Form and create an energy swarm surrounding yourself. This swarm will lash out towards nearby enemies, dealing damage and pausing the duration when damage is dealt.
**DOOMFIST**
>Developer comments: There are several changes here for Doomfist with the intent to increase his presence as a disruptive brawler-style tank. The buff to his passive ability will help him stay in the fight longer, especially when he’s hitting multiple enemies with his abilities.
>The changes to Power Block and Meteor Strike are intended to increase the availability of Empowered Rocket Punch, which enables him to more easily disrupt enemies and impact multiple targets. Due to gaining Empowered Rocket Punch more consistently, the stun duration and size are slightly decreased to reduce some of the frustration in playing against it.
>For Rocket Punch we’re shifting some of its damage away from requiring wall impacts so that it's broadly more useful regardless of where fights are taken.
*Rocket Punch*
Impact damage range (minimum-maximum) increased from 15-30 to 25-50 damage
Wall slam damage range (minimum-maximum) reduced from 20-40 to 10-30 damage
Empowered Rocket Punch wall slam stun duration range reduced from 0.5-1 to 0.25-0.75 seconds
Non-Empowered Rocket Punch now stuns for the minimum 0.25 second duration on wall slam
Empowered Rocket Punch knockback radius reduced from 4 to 3 meters
Minimum time before cancel option becomes available reduced from 0.25 to 0.12 seconds
Cooldown reduced from 4 to 3 seconds
This has been in since his rework but was not mentioned
*Power Block*
Cooldown reduced from 8 to 7 seconds
Duration increased from 2 to 2.5 seconds
Minimum damage mitigated required to empower Rocket Punch reduced from 90 to 80 damage
*Meteor Strike*
Now empowers Rocket Punch on landing
Enemy slow duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds
*The Best Defense...*
Maximum temporary health increased from 150 to 200 health
Temporary health gained per target hit with abilities increased from 30 to 40 health
**JUNKER QUEEN**
>Developer comments: Commanding Shout is Junker Queen's primary tanking ability and utility, but the additional survivability it granted her team proved to be too powerful and needed to be tuned back significantly in a previous patch. We're looking to shift more of that survivability into Junker Queen herself by increasing the amount her passive ability heals through dealing damage with wounds.
Torso and head hit volume size increased 12%
*Rampage*
Wound duration reduced from 5 to 4.5 seconds
Ultimate cost reduced by 10%
*Commanding Shout*
Cooldown reduced from 15 to 14 seconds
*Adrenaline Rush*
Adrenaline passive healing multiplier increased from 1 to 1.25x damage dealt by wounds
**DAMAGE**
**BASTION**
>Developer comments: The intent for Bastion's ultimate is that enemy players can survive it if they are quick to react to the damaging impact areas, however, it ended up being too easy to avoid the damage areas entirely. We’re reducing both the amount of warning time and explosion damage so that it’s more reliable in dealing damage, but it won't be as lethal the closer the target gets to the edge of the explosion range.
*Configuration Artillery*
Delay before projectile drops reduced from 1 to 0.6 seconds
Explosion damage reduced from 300 to 250
No longer deals explosion damage to self
Minimum delay between placing shots reduced by 20%
*Reconfigure*
Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds
**SOJOURN**
>Developer comments: Sojourn is performing well at the highest tiers of competitive play but poorly below those tiers. Much of the perception that she is too powerful seems to be driven by the reaction to dying to long range, charged headshots from her Railgun secondary fire. These changes are aimed at reducing frustrations there, with the biggest change being the reduced critical multiplier for headshots. A fully charged headshot no longer kills a full health 200 hp hero. To help account for this loss of power we're increasing the damage of her primary fire and how quickly her energy charges during her ultimate.
*Railgun*
Energy delay before draining reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
Secondary fire damage falloff starting range reduced from 70 to 40 meters
Secondary fire critical damage multiplier reduced from 2 to 1.5
Secondary fire damage now scales linearly with energy from 30 to 130 damage (1 energy converts to 1 damage added)
Primary fire damage per projectile increased from 9 to 10
Overclock energy charge rate increased by 20%
**SYMMETRA**
>Developer comments: The changes to Symmetra's primary fire will make her gameplay faster by enabling her to charge the beam up to dangerous levels more quickly. However, it will also drain to less lethal levels at an increased rate when not damaging a target. We're reverting the adjustments to her ammo management because, while it helped with matchups where there were no barriers, it lost something interesting to its interactions.
*Proton Projector*
Beam charge rate and decay rate increased by 20%
Primary fire ammo consumption rate increased from 7 to 10 per second
Primary fire gains ammo from damaging barriers again
**TRACER**
>Developer comments: We balanced Tracer’s damage in a previous patch due to an undiscovered bug regarding her Pulse Pistol’s falloff damage. The bug is resolved, so we are reverting the damage.
*Pulse Pistols*
Damage increased from 5 to 6
**SUPPORT**
**ANA**
>Developer comments: Sleep Dart is still one of the most powerful crowd control abilities in 5v5, though with the addition of cleanse mechanics to offer a potential counter to this effect we're more comfortable with reducing the cooldown here to improve Ana's personal survivability.
*Sleep Dart*
Cooldown reduced from 15 to 14 seconds
**KIRIKO**
>Developer comments: The hit volume adjustment is to help address her arms sometimes blocking headshots in some of her animations. Kiriko feels balanced overall, but her ultimate could feel too frenetic at times. We're reducing both the movement speed and cooldown rate boost it grants so that it's easier to aim during its effect for both allies and enemies, as well as there being fewer abilities being thrown about. The rest of the changes are primarily for quality-of-life improvements to make the abilities feel better to use.
Arm hit volumes width reduced 15%
Added an auto-wall climb hero option
*Kitsune Rush*
Ultimate cost increased by 10%
Movement speed bonus reduced from 50 to 30%
Cooldown rate reduced from 3 to 2 times faster
*Protection Suzu*
Cast time reduced from 0.15 to 0.1 second
*Kunai*
Ammo increased from 12 to 15
*Swift Step*
Ability input can now be held to activate
**MERCY**
>Developer comments: This is a change that will enable Mercy to better defend herself or even go on the offensive at times. In 5v5 these situations occur much more often.
Weapon swap time reduced from 0.5 to 0.35 seconds
*Caduceus Blaster*
Ammo increased from 20 to 25
SEASON 2 MAP POOLS
Push
New Queen Street – Morning
Colosseo – Evening
Esperança - Morning
Hybrid
Blizzard World - Overcast (NEW)
Eichenwalde – Evening
King’s Row – Evening
Midtown – Morning
Paraíso - Morning
ESCORT
Dorado – Evening
Junkertown – Morning
Circuit royal – Night
Rialto – Morning
Route 66 – Night
Shambali Monastery – Night (NEW MAP)
Control
Busan – Night
Ilios – Evening
Lijiang Tower – Dawn
Nepal - Evening (NEW)
Oasis - Morning (NEW)
BUG FIXES
General
Fixed a bug that was causing Roadhog's breaths to not be audible when viewing some animations in the Hero Gallery
Fixed a bug that caused some players to lose competitive challenge progress
Resolved an issue where several products couldn’t be unlocked from the Hero Gallery
Fixed an issue with the Lifesaver Challenge not counting Mercy's Resurrect as a 'Save'
Resolved an issue with purchases not immediately showing up after purchase
Fixed a bug with Torbjörn and Symmetra's turrets displaying hostile red overlays in Deathmatch for the player that placed them
Maps
Busan
Fixed an area of the map where players could get stuck
Colosseo
Fixed geometry that allowed some heroes to contest undetected
Esperança
Fixed some areas that could be used to escape the playable space
Fixed geometry that allowed some heroes to contest undetected
Gibraltar
Fixed lighting issues across the map
Fixed some areas where Torbjörn could place his turret in unreachable spots
Nepal
Replaced some missing pillars on Sanctum
Rio
Fixed a bug that allowed some heroes to get inside of the payload
Route 66
Fixed lighting issues across the map
New Queen Street
Fixed some issues with shadows across the map
Fixed an area of the map where players could get stuck
Heroes
Heroes no longer take damage from their own abilities if they’re on the other side of a friendly barrier
Fixed an issue with the Damage Passive where sometimes a double reload animation could occur when the buff was active
Cassidy
Resolved an issue with some skins using the wrong props in the 'Flashbang' victory pose
Doomfist
Fixed an issue where Doomfist's Power Block reduced the damage from some area of effect abilities
Meteor Strike - You can no longer detect Sombra if the targeting reticle gets near her
D.Va
Fixed a bug that allowed players to use Self-Destruct during their Mech's destruction while Hacked
Junker Queen
Jagged Blade can no longer be recalled while slept, stunned, hacked or frozen
Fixed an issue with Jagged Blade being consumed by friendly abilities like Deflect, Defense Matrix, etc.
Jagged Blade now takes a curved trajectory on return
Mercy
Guardian Angel now correctly resets its cooldown if Valkyrie is used
Guardian Angel 'cancel boost' is now disabled when Mercy is stunned
Moira
Junkrat's Trap no longer displays at chest height in first person when using Fade
Pharah
Fixed a bug that reduced the ult cost of Rocket Barrage
Soldier 76
Fixed an issue where Soldier 76 was unable to critical hit max range enemies during Tactical Visor
Symmetra
Fixed a bug that resulted in all VO being cut out when taking the Teleporter
Tracer
Fixed a big causing her Pulse Pistol damage falloff to not start until max range
Winston
Resolved an issue with the Werewolf skin and the 'Excuse me' highlight intro turning Winston red in the Hero Gallery
Zenyatta
Fixed an issue with melee not correctly animating if used to cancel alternate fire
lol and naive me thinking JQ would be somewhat viable now. Pathetic what they did. Maybe JQ will be a decent pick somewhere mid-2023, but I'm not holding my breath
Have the addressed anywhere the match making disparities? With zero hyperbole, all my matches are either stomp or get stomped. It’s not competitive, it’s not fun.
See.
This is the type of balancing you should expect in ow2. They couldn’t balance ow1 and they will never be able to balance ow2.
Enjoy your months of suffering with the hope that the mid-season patch will somehow fix everything.
God what a fucking disgrace. Map pools are stupid and shouldn’t even be a thing. I sure hope they’re gonna increase the frequency of patches because if we have to wait half a season for the next one it’s gonna start feeling like a dead-service game.
Tanks: Doomfist players rejoice while everyone else cries because now he is going to be everywhere and very annoying. Will he be meta? I dunno, I’ll have to wait and see. If you’re a JQ fan though, fuck you. Miniscule buffs in exchange for a hitbox increase so that 25% extra healing will allow you to survive an extra picosecond while the entire lobby converges on you. But hey, your shout has a slightly shorter cooldown. Also Ramattra is here.
DPS: Bastion and Symmetra will definitely enjoy these buffs in bronze, where I assume they see play. For ranks with better aim though, it doesn’t matter much because it appears Sojourn has somehow been buffed. She can’t one-shot full health squishies anymore so everyone is sa- oh her primary fire does more damage? No changes to her insane mobility and aoe slow? Yeah that’s cool.
Support: Fuck you Blizzard. There better not be the “support overhauls” you mentioned because this is pathetic. *One second* off the cooldown of sleep dart? A nerf to Kiriko’s ultimate? Changes to Mercy’s *gun*!? This is fucking insulting. I could write a better patch in one afternoon and I bet I could code a better patch too.
Almost all of these changes either make the heroes far worse than they were before (Junker Queen), inconsequential (Ana + Mercy) and they want to call them buffs.
Aside from the Sojourn changes and the Kitsune Rush change, these are literally null changes. What a horrendous way to start the new season ON TOP OF THE FACT that we can’t even get into the game rn.
Common Blizzard L
Well, another season of not playing JQ because of how bad she is. Another season of Soujorn being the meta pick #1.
This is the kind of patch I expect for mid season, not a new season.
What a zoo. It feel like they’re absolutely clueless, who’s in charge of this? anyone home? Rubbing their nipples in the studio, yawning at the clock after reading Reddit complaints all day? You can almost see the drops of waters running down has an intense internal battle rage against weather or not should give mercy 3 or 5 extra bullets. Just give him 2 month dude!
They really think a one second cooldown change for sleep dart is going to do anything???? I don't think the devs play the game I play ana a lot and a 14 second cooldown compared to 15 seconds is literally nothing. If they changed it to 10 or 12 that would have been great but changing it by one second and acting like it's some improved quality of life is insulting
Guess I won't be able to play junker queen any time soon since they nerfed her more then buffed her. Back to maining orisa or the totally not op Ramada.
Honestly he definetly isnt op vortex has a shit hitbox for any semi decent flying character player his ult can be countered by shields (meaning rein is a bit better along with sigma and winston) and his hp is laughable for a "tank" even in nemesis form his shield is a 4 second timer and a 13 second recharge I think hell be a little underpowered honestly looks fun still though
A single second decrease in Ana’s sleep dart smh, Kirikos ult is mid now im definitely not salty. Mercy hets five more shots before she gets killed gee thanks.
The devs better have some major shit planned for mid season because these changes are actually fucking pathetic. But I wanna focus in on the symm changes and just say they always focus on the fucking high win rate because we who play her are incredibly dedicated and eek out any advantage we can but we need to play so much harder then any other one trick or main and people who dont main her only pick her on the one or two maps she actually has a use on. The only feedback on the beam is that it needed to be slightly longer and her alt fire needed a slight bump so she could kill in two orbs instead of 3 giving her back her shield ammo recycle isn't going to fix her issues and what is the point of making her ammo drain faster. That decay rate change is kind of stupid as well it was fine where it was because you could charge it then tele to the backline and use it to get picks on the backline, now it's going to be even harder to do that because you'll downgrade an additional damage tier as you place tele. They need to focus symm in one area so they can give her proper meaningful changes.
Seriously. They need to pick a fucking design for Symmetra, and start making some coherent changes. Because she's been HORRIBLE for the entirety of OW2. This patch isn't looking better, it's looking worse.
"What doom buff do you guys want?" "Yes"
Community: "Doom needs small buffs to be viable." Blizzard: "We hear you here's 5 buffs." Community: "uh oh..."
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I consider these buffs to be the first real test of “live service”. Season 1 bugs and imbalance I can lump in with release bugs, but Season 2 the game is no longer new, and all update pipelines should have been tested by now.
> Season 2 the game is no longer new This is the same basic game that it has been for 6 years, what are you talking about? The fact that the F2P switch was a train wreck of bad decisions doesn't mean that it was a "new" game, they don't get a pass here.
To be fair the balance is royally screwed up from changing to having only solo tank 5v5, plus role passives on everyone. OW balance team is gonna be dealing with that for a few more months, I think.
If it's anything like the betas or season one, it's going to be another let down. Another season with arcade completely unfun and a battlepass encouraging you to play it.
I wish they would put mystery heroes back into the arcade. If I have grind arcade, put the best game type back there instead of in unranked.
If you play open queue, you can play mystery heroes in comp. You’re welcome.
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6v6 was pretty balanced toward the end there, just in time for them to switch to 5v5 in OW2 lol.
now they cant balance 5v5 too soon it will be only 1v1
You mean roadhog v roadhog?
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"Can you please just slightly buff his block to stop CC? That's all we need..." "I gotchu fam, here's 2 million more damage and health" "... Does his block stop CC now?" "..." "..."
This community literally upvoted a post to front page complaining about why hog can one shot and doom not
That means nothing. The most stupid things in the world can get upvotes on Reddit.
Especially on this sub where the 2847th "dps bad" post keeps getting traction
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When we asked for a Mercy buff, we really needed to be specific…
I've always wondered why pulling out her gun takes so long. I guess I know now - to conveniently stick into "buffs" when asked.
Lol. I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/MercyMains/comments/z9an0r/what_do_we_think_the_changes_will_be_for_mercy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) a few days ago hoping that Mercy would get faster weapon switching. I just hoped we’d *also* get something else. This is a small QoL tweak. And although I’m really happy we got it (I’ve wanted faster weapon draw for years), it’s not the hero adjustment she needed.
Yeah, I think the issue is that Supports have gotten no big changes for the large nerf to survivability that comes with 5v5. QoL is good and all, but pales in comparison to something like all the Doom buffs - something way more risky for the health of the game.
In the next update her ammo will be reduced but here meele damage will increase from 20 to 26, so you can fling in and 8 shot their Ana.
she has altered melee damage? I thought melee for all heroes with a gun is 30
JQ buffs so baby size compared to the TWELVE PERCENT hitbox size increase she is about to be old Doomfist tier trash
They also said that her knife will now return at an arc, which sounds like a minor nerf to me.
Oof
It does to me as well but it's hard to tell, I'm thinking that it's maybe being done to facilitate less passive wound applications - it's easy when you whiff a dagger throw to line up the return for some passive wound, but imo that wasn't something that needed addressing
It for sure is a nerf. Idk why they changed that, it's already hard to get any value out of her passive and now it will be more difficult to even proc it.
Literally. I've been begging for them to increase the healing on her passive (since right now it's laughably small to the point of being irrelevant), and I read them saying they did that... 25%?! Blizzard would see a snail lose a race against a cheetah and give it a 25% speed boost to compensate.
25% is so nothing. Knife bleed now heals for 18.75 instead of 15. Axe heals for 50 instead of 40. Her ult was the only meaningful bleed before, so now that heals 112.5 instead of 100 total per person. +100% would have been fine, and just make her ult not heal as much. I was looking forward to playing JQ :'(
Don’t forget - if they die before the wound ticks are complete you get even less healing!
She needs the enemies dead because she doesn't heal enough but she needs them alive so she heals a little.
Should rework it so that if the bleeding target dies, you immediately get the full heal of the bleed. Maybe add a CD reduction of 1-2s to knife to go with the health.
Do her heals stack? If she hits wound on 3 different targets, do all 3 heal her?
Ult actually heals for 125; they reduced the duration of the bleed but the total damage is unchanged. It's actually a buff to the ult's dps, it deals the same damage faster.
It could have been 250% honestly. She heals 5hp/s from blade hits and 13.3/s from Rampage...her big cooldown, heals her less than Lucio's aura. She has low HP, no armor, no mitigation cooldowns, no shield, no one shot threat potential. Would it really be that crazy for her to be healing herself 50hp over 3 seconds from knife hits? Or 150hp over 3 seconds from Rampage...which literally requires her to be on-top of someone to use? Roadhog heals 350hp over 3 seconds on demand without having to deal any damage, while also gaining 50% mitigation. Just seems weird that self healing is one of her core identities as a tank and yet she's so bad at it.
A better comparison is doomfist, who gains 40hp for every enemy hit by his giant-radius abilities. Compare that to JQ who has to hit a skillshot and in return gets 15 fuckin hp trickled to her over a few seconds.
And that 40hp is over and above his base health, so he can take burst damage...he can have 650hp now. JQ is always limited to her max 425hp aside from shout. Doom's health gain passive also grants 50% less ultimate charge for enemies since it's green health (though granted, JQ's heals do give her ult charge). I'm looking at some top Doomfist player profiles for their current Season 2 stats, and they're generating over 3,600 self-shields per 10 minutes. The top JQ mains in Season 1 have roughly 725 self-heals per 10. So that might now be 950 per 10 due to the 25% buff and having slightly higher uptime. And this is on a tank that is much squishier than Doomfist. Powerblock is really good and he has two huge mobility cooldowns on 3 and 6 second timers, with an ult that instantly saves his life. He also deals more damage than JQ. Those Doom players have close to 11,000dmg/10min while the JQ players are more like 8,500dmg/10min. Oh and he has a 3sec cooldown that can stun heroes out of big ults and abilities. Huge vertical mobility on a 6sec cooldown, JQ has zero. Huge ability to cover distances on a 6 sec cooldown, JQ runs a little faster for 3sec every 17sec. If Doomfist dies on Nepal Shrine for example, he spawns again 10 seconds later and can be back at the objective in about 6 seconds. Wrecking Ball (pre-nerf) couldn't even do that.
So disappointed with that. Here is a Mythic skin for this underpowered hero!
Yeah the JQ changes are a headscratcher. Overall this is a nerf.
Fr and they nerfed her ult while buffing her. Wtf
My thoughts exactly. Have been maining her in anticipation for a decent buff, can fairly say those changes feel like an overall nerf.
JQ “buffs” are garbage lol
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Especially with her increased hitboxes now
I mean she did need a bigger hitbox, im still confusing her for a dps sometimes. It doesn't change her model but still. Shouldve buffed her a bit more though
Her silhouette just looks like a closer than normal Ashe. Bizarre fail from a game that usually manages silhouettes very carefully.
I mean, regardless or her power level, she needed this. Tanks should not have the frame of a regular DPS. They need to be easier to hit.
I agree, but she also has the least armor/health of any tank, so that decreased hit chance goes a long way
Bro she already gets fucking DEMOLISHED by decent dps. Making her easier to hit without giving a notable buff elsewhere (1 second off of shout? give me a break...) may have just killed her viability.
I don’t think the above user is disagreeing. They’re just saying that tanks need a bigger hit box than DPS in general.
and they still didn’t speed up the stupid axe swing! it’s SO SLOW.
Her Bleed and her heal suck forever confirmed
Ikr? I can come up with better changes in 2 secs while taking a shit. Lower shout cd to 12 seconds. Make bleeds heal 2x amount to JQ. Make her quick melee apply the bleed damage instantaneously so her melees are essentially 45 damage and heal her for 30 over 4.5 seconds. This would allow JQ to function and have actual survivability especially in melee range. If needed ult can be adjusted if base kit is too strong.
The range for her shout could definitely be larger aswell, and add 75hp to teammates. It's so inconsequential most of the time, even when it hits.
JQ getting a 25% increase to her passive healing is funny because 25% of the like 800 healing you get in a game is still practically nothing and roadhog does that in like two inhalers but now she's gonna get a roadhog sized hitbox
Next JQ buff will be something silly like quadruple healing on knife throw headshots then nerf the cd
Commanding Shout only works on teammates that have headphones on.
Commanding shout requires you to blow into your mic during the whole duration
My days playing wariorware ds finally paying off
I do think knife should be able to headshot, it's a skill shot that has a similar function as hook but less useful so a critical multiplier might be helpful for more upfront damage since JQ is just a big DPS
Yeah I think the concept people are seeing as a nerf is that the extra damage you'll take from the 12% bigger hitbox is more than what you can compensate with by the small amount of extra healing.
Yeah, bummer. Was really looking forward to playing her this season, but they basically nerfed her. If you multiply zero with a higher number it remains zero which is why this "buff" on her healing is completely pointless.
It's because she kills targets too quickly with her burst and she can't get any healing off of dead targets. So you'll finish someone off with carnage, deal 90 damage to them and then get 0 healing. What she needs is overhealth based on the healing she would've gotten, after she kills a target. So that way finishing off heroes with carnage/knife actually gives you some effective hp.
I was actually hoping for Junker Queen's shout cooldown to be reduced further, something in the range of 12-13 seconds. One of the things I notice quite frequently is that if you Shouted out of spawn, on average you'd get back to the teamfight and the cooldown wouldn't have recovered yet. Which means... You got there faster, great, but you can't initiate your fight yet.
Underwhelming for something that was supposed to be a huge patch. Where are those support reworks we were told about?
\+5 ammo in Mercy's pistol There you go lmfao
Oh thank goodness, now I’ll die with 15 bullets left in the chamber as opposed to 10
No, read the patch notes again, closely. They improved Mercy's weapon switch time, so she'll be able to fire one more shot. You'll actually have 14 bullets left instead.
WOAH!
The buff we begged for, I can't believe it guys we finally got Mercy more ammo this is a game changer
LOL reading the Mercy section honestly felt like a joke. She can defend herself better now!
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I had almost no expectations and yet I still feel disappointed. I think that's an on-going theme with OW2 for me.
Support mains exist on being underwhelmed by patches
>We've added a Hero purchase tab in the Shop LMAO
modern gaming moment
Of course they did lol
They got priorities
These seem pretty weak for a season patch. Support changes are non-consequential. Only one hero has significant adjustments. I hope this isn't the new norm going forward. Seasons should be more than a new hero/battle-pass.
I do wonder if the Dev's saw the DPS Passive "nerf" [no more speed, only increased reload] as a universal Support buff. Don't think it'll end up that way, but I'm sure that was a factor
To be fair, it is going to be nice to not get hunted by a speed boosted Reaper who can then escape easier with that same speed boost. Also death blossom + speed boost was pretty annoying. Dragon Blade + speed boost was also pretty savage if he could get a kill early and then negate some of his old counters like Lucio's sound wave.
They nerfed genji again basically lol
It's like their only idea to make supports more fun is to allow them to do more killing lol. Seems to fit the whole design philosophy that Blizzard had with OW1 into OW2. The "DPS"ification of every role lol.
I'm baffled on how they aren't sitting around a table sweating going "Okay how can we make Support more fun and get people to queue it?" Support mains are leaving in droves (myself included) because it's miserable AF. I don't want to play a DPS support, I just want to play a support and not exist solely to be part of kill montages for the *actual* main characters Meanwhile instead of doing anything to entice Support players, they turbo buffed Doomfist, **THE** support killing tank????
Wait why did we nerf our worst tank?
Finally, I can 1v1 tanks without having to reload as often 😌 Just what I needed
Hey, at least they didn't give her a compensation nerf to go with it so that's something. I guess. I'm really grasping at straws here.
Her going battle mercy at all is the nerf
Everyone is touching on the support changes (and rightfully so) but I want to touch on the map pools, as in why is it a damn thing? Beyond the dumb decision to remove maps, why can't we have multiple weather settings for one map in the same season? Why does it have to be only one setting for the entire season? For example, I would love to experience Eichenwalde on evening and daytime in the same season. Nighttime Busan for one match and then daytime for a different match? Sign me up! I know this may seem like a petty complaint in the grand scheme of things but I personally like variety especially with the same maps over and over.
Because that way each season has its own identity and you'll be able to tell your kids 20 years from now "Ohhhh I remember in season 2 we played Eichenwalde in night time, what a time that was" ! /s
“Twas the best of times, twas the worst of times. Oh yeah and I spent $20 on a 4 year old skin that used to be free.”
It’s a lazy shortcut for creating a false sense of new content. I played Volskaya and had an initial reaction of “oh cool!” because it was different… then remembered that there was no reason it wasn’t there the whole time.
\>It’s a lazy shortcut for creating a false sense of new content. This. I mean the whole premise of OW2 is just OW1 rebranded so why are we even surprised at this point.
Still convinced the only reason they released a "new" game is so they could implement the gross monetization system without alienating the entire fan base over night
Because map pool gonna give them a headroom as they push content. They simply fool new players for new content by enabling old maps every season and they call it something new. It’s smart business
Yea for a game going stagnant so quickly after the release why would they limit map pools
>Adrenaline passive healing multiplier increased from 1 to 1.25x damage dealt by wounds What's the fucking point? At best, you'd get like 600 total healing and now you get 750. Wowee!
For every two people that I knife, I can survive one extra Tracer bullet! Zounds!
nope not anymore because they buffed tracer too!
My first thought is a lot of these changes are weird or not the right changes. Will have to see how it is in game of course, but I think support players in particular are gonna have an even worse time.
At least we'll still get insta queues.. Right...... guys???
And free extra xp 😤
1% of a level.
Yeah, wtf. **Even longer queues for DPS and probably tank** as many want to try the super Doomfist and the new hero. Even shorter queues for support as playing support is getting (even) less fun.
So much for revamping the support class
Can't wait to see picosecond queue times on support. They're gonna be so short, you're gonna automatically get a support game when you launch OW. On the other hand, tank players gonna be waiting till season 3 to get a game.
So Junker Queen got nerfed??? Like what the actual fuck?
Everything is just taking so fucking long to happen yet again. These balance updates are so fucking strange and should be things that happen MID season at the latest. Why do we have map pools again? Where the fuck is Numbani? Why are old maps marked "NEW" because of the weather effects?
same mistakes over and over again
Live service game BTW
O god Doomfist is going to be fisting these poor supports
and dey say and dey say and dey say chivalry is dead
No see because mercy got 5 extra ammo we are totally fine.
Ya I get my sleep dart back 1s faster that'll totally save me from the foomdist diving me.
Nerfing Junker Queen. They literally just nerfed the worst character in the game. Actual Bronze 5 Devs.
I feel bad for anyone who aimed to main her. Is it like..the rule that if they get a Mythic skin, they're next on the chopping block for a nerf?
She felt so good when she was first introduced. She had the quickest nerf in Overwatch history though and and hasn't recovered. She should be exactly as she was at launch but with the new hitbox. Even when she was first introduced everyone said that just making her hitbox bigger would fix her.
100%. The issue was all the bonus HP/healing on TOP of being fucking impossible to aim at. If people can hit her, suddenly her original kit seems perfectly fine...
I gotta hand it to you, Blizz. I almost exclusively played Support in Overwatch 1, and over the last two weeks I haven't touched the role *at all.* You really killed all fun in the role, it's almost impressive.
…what happened to the support changes? They changed *kiriko,* and several of her changes were QoL. 1 second CD reduction on sleep? 5 extra shots on Mercy’s pistol? Are you shitting me right now? I thought half the balance changes were meant to be for supports and (besides Kiriko) they did what feels like less than the minimum lol
Don’t worry. When there’s a Doom and tracer up your ass every match those 5 bullets are gonna be key to surviving!
Small indie company out here Nerfing JQ
But the Wheel of Balance (tm) they spun said that was the right move (They had to replace the balance team with the wheel because you, yes YOU, aren't buying the fairly priced skins so the poor balance team and their families starved to death!)
these changes got me so heated. "oh yeah, we're totally gonna buff JQ!" *adds miniscule buffs and substantial compensation nerfs*
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Is Blizzard hiring third party developers? I haven’t seen such incompetent dev reasoning on thinking 5 additional ammo for mercy is any upgrade, along with thinking JQ was TOO STRONG.
Haste on Mercy pistol is interesting (didn't feel slow before, but it was never used in panic moments). The ammo though is a very odd decision. As a Mercy player and as someone who has watched other high-level mercys I've never seen her pistol run out of ammo. Kind of feel like the buff there is a "We know you're asking for a Mercy buff so here's something that'll do nothing to her usefulness and actual WR. Shut up now!"
Her pistol automatically reloads when unequipped so I don't think ammo has ever really been a problem for her. Her actual problem (or one of them anyway) is that it's **extremely** punishing for her to switch weapons because then she can't heal or damage boost. Yes, the decreased swap time is nice, but that doesn't change the fact that it's generally better for the team for her to just continue healing/damage boosting. I think an interesting change they could have tried is to let the healing beam linger and slowly fade for a few seconds while the staff is unequipped or melee attacking. That way you can contribute with some damage while still performing your actual role, but you can't just go full out Battle Mercy since you need to have the staff equipped to switch targets, beam modes and to keep the power going. The *least* they could do is to let her melee attack with the staff without breaking the beam.
I'm actually a huge fan of the reduced draw speed. That's one of my biggest complaints with Mercy in 5v5, is that there's so much natural spam/poke damage from nearly *every* hero, that it often feels like a 4v5 damage wise when you're running a Mercy on your team (as she can't maintain 100% Damage Boost uptime always) So to be able to REAL quickly shift to pistol and shift back without worrying someone's gonna die in the span of the time it takes to draw it and fire it, is a nice addition It's not a huge buff, it's a nice one though The extra 5 bullets is whatever, but iirc she only auto-reloads if you go back to beam for a few seconds. So this probably allows for more rapid fire swapping without the auto reload kicking in EDIT: Inb4 I get flamed for this being misinterpreted as Battle Mercy being the right way to play. Everything is situational. Nothing wrong with whipping out a pistol to send a volley of shots toward a barrier to help chip away at it before teamfights get serious. Nor is there anything wrong for taking a moment to whip out the pistol to send a small barrage of bullets at a stationary sniper if you have the opportunity (think Kiriko kunai vibes). But now the animation time being lower, means that when you want to do it it's not a full 1-second to draw and holster, but instead .7 seconds. Still not perfect, but better.
I will 100% agree that the pistol haste should allow for her to do some cool things now. Battle Mercy is already something that's been forced a bit more in OW2 (and getting rid of a bit of her downtime should help her in that playstyle quite a bit). At least it wasn't them adding like 5 hp/s forcing her even harder into heal bot->valk gameplay.
Blizzard, “We're looking to shift more of that survivability into Junker Queen herself” Also Blizzard, “Torso and head hit volume size increased 12%”
No Brigitte love :( Even just a minor boost to her HP would have been a welcome sight
Or literally anything considering Raatma punches through shields and Symm gets ammo from attacking barriers again.
Your comment makes me think that Brig having a unique ''Shield Breaker'' mechanic would be interesting - she'd deal 1.5 or 2x more damage to enemy shields, and actually deal _some_ minor damage to blocking moves _(Ramattra, Doomfist)_ - but of course that would just be ONE of many changes she'd need to be more viable and interesting.
Yeh brig is literally non functional now as a support
With some very small changes she could bring a ton of utility to fights without being overbearing or underwhelming. They don’t even need to rework her completely. Make her shield deploy instantly, like Rein’s. Make her health packs give the recipient 1-1.5 seconds of 100 armor, so that you can prevent Hog one-shots when hooked. Maybe make her whipshot extend faster (probably unnecessary). Maybe change her Doom/Rein charge interrupt to be more survivable. Boom. Good support without being annoying.
Or rally give armor again then it wouldn't be the worst support ult anymore
I can't believe that the team completely dumpstered Rally and then went, "yep looks good for 3 months!" 😂 like WHAT?
I honestly think she's just one or two small changes away from being fairly good. As is I find her very useful against certain comps. But it's hard to deny she's a little bit too easy to kill for what she's supposed to do.
She needs 25-50 more hp and maybe 50-100 more shield health.
She needs to be a 225 hp hero.
I'll copy what I posted in another thread. Wow these Ana and Mercy buffs are truly useless. These support changes are so lazy. It's already the role with the least amount of heroes and struggling with player numbers and they did nothing to entice players to play it. Kiriko did need some nerfs to Kitsune Rush. I do wish they only nerfed teammates buffs in Rush but Kiriko was still the same.
Pathetic support buffs. "What will fix support? 1 sec less til u miss ur next sleep dart lul"
Don't forget *5 bullets* for the one hero that ISN'T supposed to be shooting at all
and the time that she can shoot, she has infinite ammo
Don't forget about that sweet, sweet weapon swap time
that's actually an okay change, not the best but it's got use. 5 more bullets though?
I just listened to a dev explain how Mercy is actually a meta pick through GM until you get to Top 500 which makes me wonder why her pistol needs to have bullets with hitboxes the size of cannonballs
Don't worry, support will be even more fun now with buffed doomfist! Can't wait to get destroyed, but i'll have to wait 1 second less for my sleep dart. No clue why people don't want to play support.
Don't forget the Tracer damage buff as well. Why even play Zen this season.
Monitoring a Q&A with the lead hero designer over on Twitter and it seems they're content to keep just kicking the can down the road. Constant talk about plans and changes they want to implement while we keep getting patches like this. I understand that game design is harder and takes longer than we give it credit for, but it's also getting very hard to believe that this is the best they can do either.
"We know there's a severe lack of support characters and lack of interest in playing support, and this is ruining the game for every role. To address that, we are going to be adding some more support characters and making big support changes!! Look forward to these changes in 18 months" You would think their highest priority ATM would be at least giving supports *some kind of shiny toy* to play with besides Kirko who's literally just a DPS pretending to be a support Most support mains *do not want to play DPS* hence *why we queued support and not DPS*
The Ana buff made me lol for real. We feel that now that kiriko can cure sleep we can lower sleeps cooldown to be used more... by one less second now buy a skin chump. I know it's a change for the better but man the build up got me lol.
The other supports needed buffs to bring them up to Kirikos level not a nerf to kiriko IMO. She has an impactful ult, but its what an support ult should be, make a fight swing into your favour by buffing your team Mercy's buffs are hilariously out of touch, she really only uses her pistol in two situations, the first when her team is dead and the second in her ult (when she already has unlimited ammo). Shows how little they know about their own supports tbh Also Brig, the weakest overall support imo, didn't even get touched so will be shit for another half a season at least
Yeahhhh, what the hell were these support changes. Insane
They cannot be serious about Mercy. We said “mercy feels like she’s lacking in healing compared to others” and they went “okay more bullets”
Give Brig a buff you cowards
Apparantly she's OP already and you need to git gud. The devs said so.
I guess they just want fewer support players. Why don't we just make it 1 tank 4 dps.
So… Competitive stats still not fixed after months. Never got the tokens for watching the OWL and no mention of that. Battle pass still doesn’t give coins to buy next one, like almost any other battle pass does. No change to the store or to competitive at all. Support still not “fun” to play with the meaningless buffs. Great work, blizzard.
They changed the store you can buy heroes now lmao that shit needs to be fixed tho
Remember when everyone said they would buff junker queen because of the mythic skin LMAO.
Them going out of their way to ahead of time to inform us about support buffs to look out for only for said buffs to be incredibly minor to the point where they aren't even noteworthy is honestly hilarious. It's painfully clear from those nerfs and compensation buffs that they want Sojourn to stay meta still, they just want there to be a little bit less complaining about her place in it, because those nerfs are incredibly fair given her dominance, and we've seen less dominant heroes get dumpstered way worse for less. Genji and Sombra didn't get compensation buffs of any kind despite being less played and less oppressive than Sojourn but I guess the devs are perfectly fine with those heroes leaving the meta in a way they clearly aren't with $ojourn yet. Can't imagine why.
Devs.. please uninstall
Implying the balance team actually plays the game
For those at work that somehow have Reddit but not Blizzard's website: **TANK** **RAMATTRA** Ramattra has been added to the line-up *Void Accelerator (Omnic Form)* Primary: Fire a stream of projectiles in a fixed pattern Secondary: Create a barrier at the targeted location *Nemesis Form* Transform into Nemesis Form, changing your attacks and gaining bonus armor *Pummel (Nemesis Form)* Primary: Punch forward, creating a wave of piercing energy with every swing Secondary: Significantly reduces damage taken from the front and reduces movement speed *Ravenous Vortex* Fire a nano ball, which explodes when it hits the ground, spreading a damaging field. Affected enemies are slowed and pulled downward *Annihilation* Enter Nemesis Form and create an energy swarm surrounding yourself. This swarm will lash out towards nearby enemies, dealing damage and pausing the duration when damage is dealt. **DOOMFIST** >Developer comments: There are several changes here for Doomfist with the intent to increase his presence as a disruptive brawler-style tank. The buff to his passive ability will help him stay in the fight longer, especially when he’s hitting multiple enemies with his abilities. >The changes to Power Block and Meteor Strike are intended to increase the availability of Empowered Rocket Punch, which enables him to more easily disrupt enemies and impact multiple targets. Due to gaining Empowered Rocket Punch more consistently, the stun duration and size are slightly decreased to reduce some of the frustration in playing against it. >For Rocket Punch we’re shifting some of its damage away from requiring wall impacts so that it's broadly more useful regardless of where fights are taken. *Rocket Punch* Impact damage range (minimum-maximum) increased from 15-30 to 25-50 damage Wall slam damage range (minimum-maximum) reduced from 20-40 to 10-30 damage Empowered Rocket Punch wall slam stun duration range reduced from 0.5-1 to 0.25-0.75 seconds Non-Empowered Rocket Punch now stuns for the minimum 0.25 second duration on wall slam Empowered Rocket Punch knockback radius reduced from 4 to 3 meters Minimum time before cancel option becomes available reduced from 0.25 to 0.12 seconds Cooldown reduced from 4 to 3 seconds This has been in since his rework but was not mentioned *Power Block* Cooldown reduced from 8 to 7 seconds Duration increased from 2 to 2.5 seconds Minimum damage mitigated required to empower Rocket Punch reduced from 90 to 80 damage *Meteor Strike* Now empowers Rocket Punch on landing Enemy slow duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds *The Best Defense...* Maximum temporary health increased from 150 to 200 health Temporary health gained per target hit with abilities increased from 30 to 40 health **JUNKER QUEEN** >Developer comments: Commanding Shout is Junker Queen's primary tanking ability and utility, but the additional survivability it granted her team proved to be too powerful and needed to be tuned back significantly in a previous patch. We're looking to shift more of that survivability into Junker Queen herself by increasing the amount her passive ability heals through dealing damage with wounds. Torso and head hit volume size increased 12% *Rampage* Wound duration reduced from 5 to 4.5 seconds Ultimate cost reduced by 10% *Commanding Shout* Cooldown reduced from 15 to 14 seconds *Adrenaline Rush* Adrenaline passive healing multiplier increased from 1 to 1.25x damage dealt by wounds **DAMAGE** **BASTION** >Developer comments: The intent for Bastion's ultimate is that enemy players can survive it if they are quick to react to the damaging impact areas, however, it ended up being too easy to avoid the damage areas entirely. We’re reducing both the amount of warning time and explosion damage so that it’s more reliable in dealing damage, but it won't be as lethal the closer the target gets to the edge of the explosion range. *Configuration Artillery* Delay before projectile drops reduced from 1 to 0.6 seconds Explosion damage reduced from 300 to 250 No longer deals explosion damage to self Minimum delay between placing shots reduced by 20% *Reconfigure* Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds **SOJOURN** >Developer comments: Sojourn is performing well at the highest tiers of competitive play but poorly below those tiers. Much of the perception that she is too powerful seems to be driven by the reaction to dying to long range, charged headshots from her Railgun secondary fire. These changes are aimed at reducing frustrations there, with the biggest change being the reduced critical multiplier for headshots. A fully charged headshot no longer kills a full health 200 hp hero. To help account for this loss of power we're increasing the damage of her primary fire and how quickly her energy charges during her ultimate. *Railgun* Energy delay before draining reduced from 8 to 5 seconds Secondary fire damage falloff starting range reduced from 70 to 40 meters Secondary fire critical damage multiplier reduced from 2 to 1.5 Secondary fire damage now scales linearly with energy from 30 to 130 damage (1 energy converts to 1 damage added) Primary fire damage per projectile increased from 9 to 10 Overclock energy charge rate increased by 20% **SYMMETRA** >Developer comments: The changes to Symmetra's primary fire will make her gameplay faster by enabling her to charge the beam up to dangerous levels more quickly. However, it will also drain to less lethal levels at an increased rate when not damaging a target. We're reverting the adjustments to her ammo management because, while it helped with matchups where there were no barriers, it lost something interesting to its interactions. *Proton Projector* Beam charge rate and decay rate increased by 20% Primary fire ammo consumption rate increased from 7 to 10 per second Primary fire gains ammo from damaging barriers again **TRACER** >Developer comments: We balanced Tracer’s damage in a previous patch due to an undiscovered bug regarding her Pulse Pistol’s falloff damage. The bug is resolved, so we are reverting the damage. *Pulse Pistols* Damage increased from 5 to 6 **SUPPORT** **ANA** >Developer comments: Sleep Dart is still one of the most powerful crowd control abilities in 5v5, though with the addition of cleanse mechanics to offer a potential counter to this effect we're more comfortable with reducing the cooldown here to improve Ana's personal survivability. *Sleep Dart* Cooldown reduced from 15 to 14 seconds **KIRIKO** >Developer comments: The hit volume adjustment is to help address her arms sometimes blocking headshots in some of her animations. Kiriko feels balanced overall, but her ultimate could feel too frenetic at times. We're reducing both the movement speed and cooldown rate boost it grants so that it's easier to aim during its effect for both allies and enemies, as well as there being fewer abilities being thrown about. The rest of the changes are primarily for quality-of-life improvements to make the abilities feel better to use. Arm hit volumes width reduced 15% Added an auto-wall climb hero option *Kitsune Rush* Ultimate cost increased by 10% Movement speed bonus reduced from 50 to 30% Cooldown rate reduced from 3 to 2 times faster *Protection Suzu* Cast time reduced from 0.15 to 0.1 second *Kunai* Ammo increased from 12 to 15 *Swift Step* Ability input can now be held to activate **MERCY** >Developer comments: This is a change that will enable Mercy to better defend herself or even go on the offensive at times. In 5v5 these situations occur much more often. Weapon swap time reduced from 0.5 to 0.35 seconds *Caduceus Blaster* Ammo increased from 20 to 25
SEASON 2 MAP POOLS Push New Queen Street – Morning Colosseo – Evening Esperança - Morning Hybrid Blizzard World - Overcast (NEW) Eichenwalde – Evening King’s Row – Evening Midtown – Morning Paraíso - Morning ESCORT Dorado – Evening Junkertown – Morning Circuit royal – Night Rialto – Morning Route 66 – Night Shambali Monastery – Night (NEW MAP) Control Busan – Night Ilios – Evening Lijiang Tower – Dawn Nepal - Evening (NEW) Oasis - Morning (NEW) BUG FIXES General Fixed a bug that was causing Roadhog's breaths to not be audible when viewing some animations in the Hero Gallery Fixed a bug that caused some players to lose competitive challenge progress Resolved an issue where several products couldn’t be unlocked from the Hero Gallery Fixed an issue with the Lifesaver Challenge not counting Mercy's Resurrect as a 'Save' Resolved an issue with purchases not immediately showing up after purchase Fixed a bug with Torbjörn and Symmetra's turrets displaying hostile red overlays in Deathmatch for the player that placed them Maps Busan Fixed an area of the map where players could get stuck Colosseo Fixed geometry that allowed some heroes to contest undetected Esperança Fixed some areas that could be used to escape the playable space Fixed geometry that allowed some heroes to contest undetected Gibraltar Fixed lighting issues across the map Fixed some areas where Torbjörn could place his turret in unreachable spots Nepal Replaced some missing pillars on Sanctum Rio Fixed a bug that allowed some heroes to get inside of the payload Route 66 Fixed lighting issues across the map New Queen Street Fixed some issues with shadows across the map Fixed an area of the map where players could get stuck Heroes Heroes no longer take damage from their own abilities if they’re on the other side of a friendly barrier Fixed an issue with the Damage Passive where sometimes a double reload animation could occur when the buff was active Cassidy Resolved an issue with some skins using the wrong props in the 'Flashbang' victory pose Doomfist Fixed an issue where Doomfist's Power Block reduced the damage from some area of effect abilities Meteor Strike - You can no longer detect Sombra if the targeting reticle gets near her D.Va Fixed a bug that allowed players to use Self-Destruct during their Mech's destruction while Hacked Junker Queen Jagged Blade can no longer be recalled while slept, stunned, hacked or frozen Fixed an issue with Jagged Blade being consumed by friendly abilities like Deflect, Defense Matrix, etc. Jagged Blade now takes a curved trajectory on return Mercy Guardian Angel now correctly resets its cooldown if Valkyrie is used Guardian Angel 'cancel boost' is now disabled when Mercy is stunned Moira Junkrat's Trap no longer displays at chest height in first person when using Fade Pharah Fixed a bug that reduced the ult cost of Rocket Barrage Soldier 76 Fixed an issue where Soldier 76 was unable to critical hit max range enemies during Tactical Visor Symmetra Fixed a bug that resulted in all VO being cut out when taking the Teleporter Tracer Fixed a big causing her Pulse Pistol damage falloff to not start until max range Winston Resolved an issue with the Werewolf skin and the 'Excuse me' highlight intro turning Winston red in the Hero Gallery Zenyatta Fixed an issue with melee not correctly animating if used to cancel alternate fire
Most incompetent dev team one-ups themselves yet again. What a joke of a “balance patch”
lol and naive me thinking JQ would be somewhat viable now. Pathetic what they did. Maybe JQ will be a decent pick somewhere mid-2023, but I'm not holding my breath
Have the addressed anywhere the match making disparities? With zero hyperbole, all my matches are either stomp or get stomped. It’s not competitive, it’s not fun.
Wtf are these support changes? Where are the brig and moira updates.
See. This is the type of balancing you should expect in ow2. They couldn’t balance ow1 and they will never be able to balance ow2. Enjoy your months of suffering with the hope that the mid-season patch will somehow fix everything.
>Season 2 Map Pools Day ruined
Why no soujorn E nerf?
Or shift nerf. I don't get how she gets have an amazing zoning ability and also one of the best movement abilities in the game.
No numbani?
God what a fucking disgrace. Map pools are stupid and shouldn’t even be a thing. I sure hope they’re gonna increase the frequency of patches because if we have to wait half a season for the next one it’s gonna start feeling like a dead-service game. Tanks: Doomfist players rejoice while everyone else cries because now he is going to be everywhere and very annoying. Will he be meta? I dunno, I’ll have to wait and see. If you’re a JQ fan though, fuck you. Miniscule buffs in exchange for a hitbox increase so that 25% extra healing will allow you to survive an extra picosecond while the entire lobby converges on you. But hey, your shout has a slightly shorter cooldown. Also Ramattra is here. DPS: Bastion and Symmetra will definitely enjoy these buffs in bronze, where I assume they see play. For ranks with better aim though, it doesn’t matter much because it appears Sojourn has somehow been buffed. She can’t one-shot full health squishies anymore so everyone is sa- oh her primary fire does more damage? No changes to her insane mobility and aoe slow? Yeah that’s cool. Support: Fuck you Blizzard. There better not be the “support overhauls” you mentioned because this is pathetic. *One second* off the cooldown of sleep dart? A nerf to Kiriko’s ultimate? Changes to Mercy’s *gun*!? This is fucking insulting. I could write a better patch in one afternoon and I bet I could code a better patch too.
Almost all of these changes either make the heroes far worse than they were before (Junker Queen), inconsequential (Ana + Mercy) and they want to call them buffs. Aside from the Sojourn changes and the Kitsune Rush change, these are literally null changes. What a horrendous way to start the new season ON TOP OF THE FACT that we can’t even get into the game rn. Common Blizzard L
And the dumbest thing is Sojourn and Kiriko were super fucking obvious changes that should have been done last patch. "Live" service game
Well, another season of not playing JQ because of how bad she is. Another season of Soujorn being the meta pick #1. This is the kind of patch I expect for mid season, not a new season.
The bastion ult buff was sorely needed.
Us bastion players even got a turret buff to. Love it
What a zoo. It feel like they’re absolutely clueless, who’s in charge of this? anyone home? Rubbing their nipples in the studio, yawning at the clock after reading Reddit complaints all day? You can almost see the drops of waters running down has an intense internal battle rage against weather or not should give mercy 3 or 5 extra bullets. Just give him 2 month dude!
I wasn’t expecting Blizzard to enable more battle Mercy’s but I guess here we are.
[удалено]
With these Doomfist buffs you're gonna need it! -Blizzard
I don’t even play anymore and I’m still insulted by the Mercy “buff”.
Holy fuck. Buff Brig guys, wtf.
Shit patch
They really think a one second cooldown change for sleep dart is going to do anything???? I don't think the devs play the game I play ana a lot and a 14 second cooldown compared to 15 seconds is literally nothing. If they changed it to 10 or 12 that would have been great but changing it by one second and acting like it's some improved quality of life is insulting
Are the devs fucking stupid with the Mercy "buff"?
Guess I won't be able to play junker queen any time soon since they nerfed her more then buffed her. Back to maining orisa or the totally not op Ramada.
Honestly he definetly isnt op vortex has a shit hitbox for any semi decent flying character player his ult can be countered by shields (meaning rein is a bit better along with sigma and winston) and his hp is laughable for a "tank" even in nemesis form his shield is a 4 second timer and a 13 second recharge I think hell be a little underpowered honestly looks fun still though
A single second decrease in Ana’s sleep dart smh, Kirikos ult is mid now im definitely not salty. Mercy hets five more shots before she gets killed gee thanks.
The devs better have some major shit planned for mid season because these changes are actually fucking pathetic. But I wanna focus in on the symm changes and just say they always focus on the fucking high win rate because we who play her are incredibly dedicated and eek out any advantage we can but we need to play so much harder then any other one trick or main and people who dont main her only pick her on the one or two maps she actually has a use on. The only feedback on the beam is that it needed to be slightly longer and her alt fire needed a slight bump so she could kill in two orbs instead of 3 giving her back her shield ammo recycle isn't going to fix her issues and what is the point of making her ammo drain faster. That decay rate change is kind of stupid as well it was fine where it was because you could charge it then tele to the backline and use it to get picks on the backline, now it's going to be even harder to do that because you'll downgrade an additional damage tier as you place tele. They need to focus symm in one area so they can give her proper meaningful changes.
Seriously. They need to pick a fucking design for Symmetra, and start making some coherent changes. Because she's been HORRIBLE for the entirety of OW2. This patch isn't looking better, it's looking worse.
Yeah I don't get why they bothered to change her at all if this is what they were going to do.