If you thought that good Lucio players were already nightmarishly hard to track down and kill, I'm afraid you might not like what's coming up next. During a PTR update last week Overwatch devs shortened the range of Lucio's auras, but in return increased his healing, movement speed, and projectile speed. As you can imagine this made Lucio absolutely ridiculous, so much so that he was kept on the PTR even though most of the other changes went through.

In order to correct some of these issues, but also make Lucio much more enjoyable to play, the developers have just unleashed another PTR update, and this is where things get really interesting. Lucio's self-healing is being decreased by 33%, his wall ride bonus speed is being decreased from 30% to 20%, but in order to compensate his damage is going up by a rather sizable 25%!

Right now every Lucio attack launches four projectiles that deal 16 damage each, and each of those is then doubled if hits the opponent in the head. All in all, Lucio is currently capable of dishing out 64 damage if shooting at bodies, and 128 when shooting at heads. With the new update, however, these numbers will increase to 80 bodyshot damage and 160 headshot damage. This might sound like a small increase, but add to this 30 melee damage and 25 boop damage and you might just find yourself getting instagibbed by a sneaky Lucio!

Whether this is actually balanced or not, that is something that will require a fair bit of testing, but I am very glad the developers are making Lucio an actual hero! He's no longer just going to be a walking aura, only good for pressing E every once in a while, he will be able to dish out a decent amount of damage fairly reliably. Personally I think the current PTR changes might make him a bit too powerful, but the numbers can always be adjusted. What really matters is that Lucio will finally be someone players will want to play, and not just someone they have to play!