Overwatch artwork for Casual Hanzo

[Update #2]: Overwatch's Year of the Tiger event has now arrived, though sadly with even less content than usual.

[Update]: Microsoft has acquired Activision Blizzard for nearly 69 billion dollars.

As a part of December's highly experimental balance test, Blizzard toyed around with a variety of new mechanics and concepts. Some of those tweaks seem to have gone over incredibly well with both the community and Blizzard's own testers, because the freshly released update has just added a bunch of them to the live version of Overwatch!

Cassidy (formerly McCree) can now roll in the air, Hanzo's Storm Arrows ricochet once upon impact, while Moira's fade allows her to super-jump! Here's a quick rundown of all the new changes and additions:

Moira

Fade

- Can now jump much higher while using this ability

Reinhardt

 Earthshatter

- Now deals an additional 200 damage within 1.75m of the impact area

Hanzo

 Storm Arrows

- Arrows ricochet once upon impact

Cassidy

 Combat Roll

- Can now roll while in the air

Torbjörn

 Rivet Gun – ALT Fire

- Ammo cost decreased from 3 to 2

Wrecking Ball

 Grappling Claw

- Now has a maximum grapple time of 6 seconds

To be perfectly honest, I don't know what to think about this update. The Moira, Reinhardt and Wrecking Ball changes are all completely fine, but I just don't feel like any of these DPS heroes actually needed a buff. This goes doubly so for Hanzo as he was specifically reworked because Blizzard hated him randomly killing people with bouncing arrows, and now they've added them back again. Admittedly Storm Arrows are not quite as obnoxious as Scatter Arrows, but it's still a strange inclusion.

So much like some of the previous updates, I think this one is going to require a fair bit of in-game testing before anyone can really say whether it was a good idea or not. Who knows, maybe the bouncing Storm Arrows will enable some highly creative Hanzo plays and practically reinvent the hero!

Whatever the case may be, I'll make sure to let you know once the next big update arrives. Until then, have fun rolling through the air and randomly killing Tracers!