[Update #2]: Blizzard is finally taking a serious look at reversing the rampant power creep in Overwatch!

[Update]: Overwatch devs are attempting to rework and rebalance Moira yet again, though this time around it looks like it might stick!

Ever since Sigma arrived, the relative power balance between the various tanks has been a little bit off. This is primarily because heroes like Reinhardt and Zarya need to physically walk up to the enemy in order to deal any sort of damage, whereas the Orisa and Sigma combo can offer both considerable shielding and ranged damage at the same time.

So in order to bring the different tank playstyles closer together, as well as change how powerful Brigitte is in the hands of high-tier players, Blizzard has now unleashed a whole bunch of nerfs. Here's the full list, including some rather juicy Roadhog buffs:

Brigitte

• General

- Base health lowered from 200 to 150

• Inspire

- Total healing decreased from 130 to 90 (Healing reduced from 21 to 15 health per second)

- Self-healing is no longer reduced by half

Developer Comments: After gaining multiple Repair Pack charges, Brigitte was enabled to play at safer distances while still having a powerful impact on her team. Combined with her personal barrier, she ended up not needing as much survivability in terms of raw health.
Inspire has also had a powerful team impact despite being hard to feel due to its passive nature, so we are lowering its team-wide healing output while making it more useful for Brigitte herself.

Orisa

• General

- Base armor reduced from 250 to 200

• Halt!

- Radius reduced from 7 to 4 meters

- Projectile speed increased from 20 to 30

Developer Comments: The large radius of Orisa’s Halt! ability made it too effective in setting up combos against large groups of enemies on a relatively short cooldown. The changes to the projectile speed and radius are aimed at shifting its use to be more effective at catching single targets.

Pharah

• Hover Jets

- Movement speed increased 20%

- Regeneration rate reduced from 50 to 35 per second

• Barrage

- Duration reduced from 3 to 2.5 seconds

Developer Comments: We’re making some adjustments to Hover Jets that should increase her flight speed and make her more agile. To compensate for this change, we’re also lowering her hover uptime. Rocket Barrage has such immense damage output that the tail end of the duration was often more of a liability than a benefit, especially with fewer barriers around to blast through.

Roadhog

• Scrap Gun

- (General) Ammo reduced from 6 to 5

- (General) Damage per projectile increased from 6 to 7

- (General) Recovery increased from 0.7 to 0.85 seconds

Developer Comments: These weapon changes are intended to make Roadhog’s Chain Hook combo more consistent and bring back some of the heavyweight feeling it had in the past.

Sigma

• Experimental Barrier

- Health reduced from 900 to 700

- Regeneration rate reduced from 120 to 80 per second

• Kinetic Grasp

- Cooldown increased from 10 to 12 seconds

Developer Comments: Given Sigma’s offensive strength with Hyperspheres and Accretion, we have reduced some of his defensive tools to bring him more in line with other Tank heroes.

Symmetra

• Teleporter

- Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds

Developer Comments: We’re reducing the cooldown of the Teleporter to help lower the friction between needing to use it as both a personal and team-focused mobility tool.

Zenyatta

• Orb of Destruction

- (Secondary Fire) Charge rate increased 15% (0.6 down to 0.52 seconds per orb)

- (Secondary Fire) Rate of fire increased from 8.5 to 9 shots per second

Developer Comments: Zenyatta has low healing and mobility outside of his ultimate but makes up for it with high potential damage output. With the recently lowered barrier uptime resulting in an overall faster pace of the game, we want to make sure Zenyatta still excels at his strengths. This change will make his charged attack flow a bit better in combat.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure what to think about these balance changes. I can understand where Blizzard is coming from, and I can definitely see the argument that Orisa and Sigma are overpowered, but what really worries me is if they might end up only being viable as a pairing because of this. Needless to say, that would be quite unfortunate given that the tank role already suffers from a lack of diversity once a meta has settled, especially in the higher ranks.

Whatever the future may bring for tanks, it's also worth mentioning that the Summer Games 2020 event has arrived a little while ago with some notable tweaks to Lucioball. So if the above-mentioned changes seem exciting, this would be the perfect time to jump into Overwatch and see just how the meta has changes. Have fun!