While most of Overwatch's heroes are currently well balanced, there are a couple that are an absolute terror to deal with, both in casual and competitive matches. If you've played even a bit of Overwatch in the past few months, chances are you're fully aware of which heroes I'm talking about: Brigitte and Doomfist.
Given how dominant they can be, as well as how infuriating it can be to play against them, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to hear that Blizzard will soon be issuing nerfs to both heroes. What might come as a quite a surprise is that unlike the small nerfs that happened in the previous couple of patches, the upcoming changes will be a lot more drastic, especially for Brigitte. Here's what you can expect to see:
Brigitte
• Shield Bash
- Damage reduced from 50 to 5
- No longer can travel or stun targets through barriers
• Inspire Passive
- Cooldown reduced from 1.5s to 1.0s
- Duration increased from 5s to 6s
- Total healing increased from 80 to 100
Dev Notes: Reduces Shield Bash’s damage reduces her total stun combo damage potential while still allowing Whip Shot and her basic melee attacks to retain their full strength. Brigitte is a hybrid tank/healer, and lately we’ve been reducing her effectiveness by reducing the power of her non-healing functionality, but we want to make sure she is still a viable pick so we’re increasing the uptime of her Inspire passive to help increase her overall healing output.
Doomfist
• Rising Uppercut
- Loss of air control duration lowered to 0.6 seconds from 3 seconds
• Seismic Slam
- Maximum range reduced from 20 meters to 15 meters
- Victims no longer lose air control while being pulled in.
• Meteor Strike
- Inner ring damage radius increased from 1.5m to 2.0m. This is the ring where Meteor Strike deals its full 300 damage.
- Max damage outside of inner ring decreased from 300 to 200. This is the ring where damage falloff happens, which still reduces the damage down to 15 at max range.
Dev Notes: The PTR Doomfist changes are all about trying to give his enemies more opportunities to effectively fight back, and these changes are no exception. The Meteor Strike changes will make it harder to secure a “free” kill on heroes without mobility such as Zenyatta or Ana, while still preserving its max potential damage when aimed well or when combined with other abilities such as Graviton Surge or Sleep Dart.
Overall we’re looking carefully at the amount of crowd control abilities (such as stuns and knockbacks that remove air control) and seeing if we can remove or reduce some of the effectiveness of some of these.
When it comes to Doomfist, I'm actually pretty positive about these changes. They're going to make it slightly harder to get kills on people, but otherwise his strengths have not been reduced in any significant way. There's probably going to be a week-long period where people will complain about how the hero is ruined, but once everyone adjusts to a slightly different style of aiming I think he's going to be in a pretty good spot.
As for Brigitte, I'm not exactly sure about these nerfs. She's currently obnoxious because of how well she combines with other tanks and supports to create the nearly unkilllable GOATs composition (Rein, Zarya, D.Va, Brig, Lucio, Moira), but it's only the second shield bash change that addresses that problem. Everything else just feels a bit random, for the lack of a better word. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see for all these changes to hit the PTR in order to see what's what, because right now I must admit I'm a bit confused.
To end all of this on a very positive note, however, allow me to say that McCree, Bastion, Soldier and Torbjorn are all getting some rather impactful buffs. You can read all about them over at the official forums, or just check them out yourself by visiting the PTR. Enjoy!