[Update]: Overwatch is changing McCree's name due to the recent sexual harassment accusations.

While the Overwatch team has been releasing frequent balance changes over the past year or so, there are still numerous heroes that struggle to be relevant in higher tier matches. So in order to sort this out, as well as hopefully make the meta a little bit more diverse, Blizzard has now released a brand new balance update.

Moira, Roadhog and Doomfist have received straight up buffs to their abilities, while Soldier 76, Genji and Wrecking Ball have gone through a bit of a rebalance. Here are the details:

Doomfist

The accelerated cooldown times will enable more fluidity with setting up Doomfist's combos when using the Meteor Strike ultimate.

• Meteor Strike

- Now speeds up the cooldown rate of his abilities by 100% while in the air

Genji

The Shuriken damage increase doesn't sound like a lot but it crosses a threshold or "breakpoint" against some enemy targets, enabling them to be eliminated with one less attack landed. To help balance out this increased power for his primary weapon we're reducing the damage of the Dragonblade ultimate, which is also a breakpoint against some targets when being damage boosted.

• Shuriken

- Damage increased from 28 to 29

• Dragonblade

- Damage reduced from 120 to 110

Moira

Moira has recently been underperforming a little bit. This increase to her self-healing with Biotic Grasp will help improve her survivability while in range to recharge her healing resources.

• Biotic Grasp

- Self-healing increased from 20 to 24 health per second

Roadhog

Roadhog tanks for his allies by being a large and threatening target with high durability which draws a lot of fire from the enemy team. We're reducing the amount of ultimate charge he provides to better enable him in this role without as much of a downside for his own team.

• General

- Enemies now generate 25% less Ultimate Charge from damage dealt to Roadhog

Soldier: 76

The damage-per-shot for the Heavy Pulse Rifle has been adjusted several times now as it's an important tuning breakpoint for Soldier: 76. It was last reduced when his weapon spread was replaced by recoil to help account for the increased accuracy potential, though with the recent reductions to his damage falloff at long range, it's reasonable to increase his damage output once again while pulling some power out of his area-of-effect healing utility.

• Heavy Pulse Rifle

- Damage increased from 19 to 20

• Biotic Field

- Healing reduced from 40 to 35 health per second

Wrecking Ball

Wrecking Ball is the fastest hero in the game which works well for his disruptive playstyle. However, to help reduce his contribution to objective stalling, his Grappling Claw ability will now start on cooldown upon respawning. Proximity mines will no longer attach to walls as it resulted in accidental bunched up placements, out of range from most enemy targets, more often than any intentional clever uses.

• Grappling Claw

- Now begins on cooldown after respawning

• Adaptive Shield

- Cast time reduced from 0.2 seconds to 0 seconds
- Duration increased from 7 to 9 seconds

• Minefield

- Proximity mines no longer stick to walls

While I do approve of the 'slow and steady' style of balancing, the one downside of this approach is that it's very difficult to tell whether the changes are enough to bring the affected heroes back into the spotlight. For example, it's easy to say that Roadhog will see a lot more play due to his sizable buff, but the same doesn't apply to heroes like Genji or Soldier 76. That one point of damage might be exactly what they need to beat their competition, or it might be entirely pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Whatever the case may be, it's certainly good to see Blizzard continue to experiment with the underplayed heroes. A couple of minor buffs every month or two might not sound like much, but these sorts of changes have a habit of stacking upon each other, so I won't be all too surprised if Genji or Soldier 76 end up being the premier DPS heroes in a few months time.

Should that happen, or if Blizzard released another balance update, I'll make sure to let you know. Until then, have fun with all of the tweaks!