[Update]: The experimental update has been a success, and as such the whole thing has now gone live!
Regardless of what sort of game we're talking about, as long as the developers are actively working on balancing it, there will always be power creep. The weakest heroes will get buffed up, a new meta will become established which will then create a new batch of highly underpowered heroes, so then they will get buffed up, and so the cycle goes.
While this isn't too big of a problem initially, over time it can become a massive hindrance to the game's overall balance as the increased power levels leave very little room for fine-tuning. Because of this, heroes will frequently hop between being ridiculously overpowered and pretty much unusable, something we've seen happen in Overwatch time and time again over the past year or so.
Thankfully, after a couple of halfhearted attempts, Blizzard is now looking to seriously reverse the power creep in Overwatch! In order to do this, or at least see which heroes need to be adjusted, Blizzard has now released an experimental update with a whole bunch of nerfs to damage dealers and healers, as well as a nice buff to Orisa.
Here's what you can expect to see:
Armor
- Beam-type damage reduction against Armor health pools increased from 20% to 30%
Ana
• Biotic Rifle
- Ammo reduced from 14 to 12
Ashe
• The Viper
- Max ammo reduced from 15 to 12
- Secondary Fire
-- Aim-down sights damage reduced from 85 to 80
Baptiste
• Biotic Launcher
- Secondary Fire
-- Grenade ammo reduced from 12 to 10
• Regenerative Burst
- Total healing reduced from 150 to 75
- Baptiste now receives twice as much healing from Regenerative Burst
Junkrat
• Frag Launcher
- Impact damage reduced from 50 to 40 (Total 130 to 120)
McCree
• Peacekeeper
- Recovery increased from 0.42 to 0.50
Moira
• Biotic Grasp
- Healing
-- Lingering heal reduced from 4 seconds to 2 seconds (Total healing from 65 down to 35)
-- Healing per second increased from 65 to 70
-- Healing resource consumption rate increased from 11 to 14 (27%)
- Damage
-- Attach angle reduced by 37%
-- Healing resource gain rate increased by 50%
Orisa
• Halt!
- Radius increased from 4 to 5
- Projectile speed reduced from 30 to 25
Pharah
• Rocket Launcher
- Recovery increased from 0.75 to 0.85
Symmetra
• Photon Projector
- Secondary Fire
-- Max damage reduced from 140 to 120
Widowmaker
• Widow's Kiss
- Max ammo increased from 30 to 35
- Secondary Fire
-- Scoped ammo cost increased from 3 to 5
-- Scoped shots now have up to 50% damage falloff from 60-85 meters
Zarya
• Particle Cannon
- Secondary Fire
-- Ammo cost increased from 20 to 25
While it's obvious that these nerfs alone aren't nearly enough, it is a solid step in the right direction, and hopefully the first of many similar updates. It'll certainly be a bumpy ride, especially since the nerfs aren't exactly hitting every hero in the same way, but it'll be well worth it in the end as reduced healing power and 'time-to-kill' should make a lot more characters viable in all ranks of competitive play.
Whatever the future may bring, I'd highly recommend giving the experimental update a try. Have fun, and if you need a little bit more information about this update, you should head on over to the Overwatch website.