Blizzard released a brief teaser yesterday showcasing the Horizon Lunar Colony, which instantly gave rise to a whole bunch of fan theories. Could this teaser be for a brand new map set on the Moon's surface, or could the enigmatic Hammond be a brand new gorilla hero? Or better yet, could it be both?
Unlike the previous few teasers where the Overwatch team gave us well over a week to puzzle over the initial image, the developers this time around have just straight up released the update onto the PTR. And as you can probably guess from the title, the teaser was pointing towards a brand new Assault map set on the Moon's surface... and yes, it does have low-gravity environments! Here's the preview video for the Horizon Lunar Colony:
The update has also brought with it some much needed changes to McCree and Reaper, but also another Roadhog rework! If you're interested in all of the minute details you can find the full patch notes over at the Blizzard website, but for now allow me to show you all of the hero changes:
McCree
• Deadeye
- Targets now begin locking on after 0.2 seconds, instead of 0.8 seconds
- Damage accumulated over the first 1.0 seconds increased from 20 to 80 (damage per second after the first 1.0 seconds is unchanged)
Developer Comment: McCree’s ultimate can deal a lot of damage if it has a lot of time to build up, but it was often too difficult to get even a small amount of damage out before being stopped or killed. These changes make it more flexible and powerful.
Reaper
• The Reaping (Passive)
- Removed health orbs
- Now regains 20% of all damage done to heroes as health
Developer Comment: Reaper’s old healing passive was useful if you could kill a bunch of enemies in a row. But since enemies needed to be dead for it to work, it wasn’t very helpful unless the situation was already in your favor. His new passive lets him get immediate benefit from it, especially when fighting Tank heroes, which tend to be larger targets that deal lower damage.
Roadhog
• Head hitbox size reduced by 20%
• Scrap Gun
- Bullet damage decreased by 33%
- Fire rate increased by 30%
- Clip size increased from 4 to 5
Developer Comment: Roadhog’s head was abnormally large compared to similarly-sized characters, so we’re reducing its size to increase his survivability. The Scrap Gun changes reduce the power of his hook combo and alternate fire burst damage potential while still keeping his DPS roughly the same.
The Reaper and McCree changes are straight up great so there's not much to discuss about them, but I'm not really sure how this is going to pan out for Roadhog. His massive bulk has always been counterbalanced by his ability to instantly delete people, but now that has been heavily nerfed in favor of a slightly more brawler approach to combat.
Its not bad and it definitely doesn't make Roadhog useless, but its going to take quite a while to get used to it to since his whole playstyle has just been changed. Its no longer about staying safe and getting those hooks in, you're going to have to land those left clicks as well or you're not going anywhere. Whether this is going to end up being a nerf or just a side-step for Roadhog, that I do not know, but its certainly going to be an interesting few weeks!