Overwatch screenshot of Brigitte on Watchpoint Gibraltar

It has only been a couple of days since Brigitte became available in Overwatch's competitive mode, and already Blizzard is looking to bring her power level down. On the newly launched PTR patch the maximum armor her ultimate ability Rally can give to each player has been reduced from 150 to 100, though the Overwatch team is also considering slowing down her Shield Charge cooldown from 5 to 6 seconds. The latter change has not yet been implemented, however, so don't be surprised if Blizzard decides to go in some other direction with Brigitte.

On a slightly different note, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that everyone's favorite sniper-grandma Ana is getting some much needed love! First and foremost, on the PTR patch she has the ability to shoot through teammates with full HP, which means the amount of reliable healing she can put out in hectic teamfights is going to go up considerably. In order to further improve this aspect of Ana, the upcoming patch will also increase her magazine size from 10 to 14, which again, should go a long way towards making her more reliable.

Overwatch screenshot of the sniper granny Ana

While these changes will definitely help Ana, I'm sure many of you are wondering why they haven't given her any sort of mobility or self-sustain. After all, both Brigitte and Moira have some sort of easy way to prevent their untimely demise, while Ana has to rely almost entirely on her sleep dart aiming skills in order to pull through. As expected, the situation really isn't that black and white.

"When we want to buff a hero, sometimes it can be the right call reduce [their] weaknesses," explained Geoff Goodman over at the official forums. "For example, if a weakness is just too overbearing or a hero just has too many weaknesses compared to their strengths. But more often we would rather amplify a heroes strengths and make the hero just better at what they do, which leaves their weaknesses still around for enemies to exploit and for allies to try to manage."

"If you have an Ana on your team, this gives you certain advantages such as being able to be healed from very long range, having a more offensive-favored ultimate, and having the ability to disable healing on enemies (which can be especially vital against heroes that really rely on healing such as Roadhog). That said, she also brings her own weaknesses that must be managed, such as low mobility and lower self-healing. A team may opt to run Brigitte or Lucio with Ana to help peel attackers off of her, for example."

If you ask me, Geoff Goodman is completely correct. From a design perspective Ana is pretty darn great since she requires real skill and finesse in order to make her skillset work, but the problem right now is that skill and finesse isn't actually being rewarded in any major way. So here's to hoping the upcoming buffs, or the ones that might follow after, will help her with just that.

Once more details get revealed I'll make sure to cover it, but until then you should visit the PTR and see how the new Ana feels. Oh, and you can now also Nano Boost yourself in free-for-all Death Match. Have fun!