[Update]: Overwatch's big Anniversary 2021 update is launching on May 18th!
I hope you're in the mood for a bit of a shake-up, because Overwatch's newest balance update has now arrived. It brings with it some minor yet still significant nerfs to Reinhardt and Baptiste, while also buffing both Orisa and Roadhog.
There's a couple of other interesting changes sprinkled throughout the update as well, so if you're curious about all of the details you'll find the full patch notes alongside developer commentary right below. Have a gander:
Baptiste
We are reducing Immortality Field's minimum health threshold and Baptiste's area-of-effect healing output as they were providing too much value overall for closely grouped teams. However, direct impacts with the healing grenade projectiles will now grant additional healing to the impacted ally to keep his single target healing effective, with a slightly higher skill requirement.
• Biotic Launcher (Secondary Fire)
- Healing projectile explosion reduced from 60 to 50 health
- Healing projectile direct impact now restores an additional 20 health• Immortality Field
- Now protects teammates to a minimum health threshold of 10% maximum health, down from 20%
D.Va
D.Va's respawn is often intentionally delayed by the enemy team if she is the last player alive from her team and without her mech. This change will make it more dangerous to be near the Call Mech arrival area for low health heroes.
• Call Mech
- Damage increased from 50 to 250
Echo
This is a change picked up from the Community Experimental card. Since Echo gains an additional health pool through using her Duplicate ultimate, it seemed reasonable that she doesn't need to be healed to full upon it ending as well. The minimum health value is there so she doesn't instantly die to a small amount of damage when it ends, as often with a long duration ultimate it can be difficult to remember her starting health.
• Duplicate
- When Duplicate ends, Echo will return to the health value she had prior to activating the ability, or to 100 health, whichever is higher
Moira
Moira has been underperforming in the support role even in team compositions and metas where we’d expect her to excel. Reducing the cooldown of Biotic Orb is a significant increase in Moira's potential to quickly adapt to many situations.
• Biotic Orb
- Cooldown reduced from 10 to 8 seconds
Orisa
We're reevaluating the cooldown for Orisa's 'Halt!' ability after previous changes have reduced its effectiveness to combo with other heroes. We'll keep a close eye on whether the increased frequency of this displacement ability ends up being too disruptive to gameplay.
• Halt!
- Cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds
Reinhardt
Reinhardt has been overperforming since his last round of changes. To help increase tank diversity we are reverting his armor to its previous value while keeping the Rocket Hammer damage increase for now as it helps to balance out the reduced crowd control duration of Earthshatter.
• General
- Armor reduced from 250 to 200 (Health/armor total reduced from 550 to 500)
Roadhog
Roadhog is a hero who has been underperforming lately with not much changing about him since late last year when he had a more dominant presence, though the balance of other heroes has indeed shifted around. We're partially reverting the reduction to his damage to help bring him back up to a more effective level.
• Scrap Gun (Primary and Secondary Fire)
- Damage per projectile increased from 6 to 6.6
Sombra
Sombra's gameplay usually involves a lot of time waiting for opportune moments to strike and using the Translocator to disengage at a safe distance. Speeding up her movement in Stealth should help get her back into the action more quickly.
• Stealth
- Fade time when entering or exiting Stealth reduced from 0.75 to 0.45 seconds
- Movement speed bonus increased from 50 to 60%
Needless to say, this is a bit of a strange update. It's hard to truly disagree with most of the changes, especially given the data we have access to, but it's still odd seeing Reinhardt go through the balancing spin cycle time and time again. That said, Overwatch has been pretty good in terms of balance and hero diversity over the past few months, so I have high hopes that this update will only make things even better.
Once the next batch of changes go live I'll make sure to let you know. For now, however, I'm afraid I have to leave you with a very sad piece of news - Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch's Game Director and a storied veteran at Blizzard, has now left both the Overwatch team and the company as a whole.