Game Director Aaron Keller is back with another preview of how we're looking to make some hero balance changes for next season.
12 Likes
McCree health buff 
43 Likes
The Mercy damage boost change is a nice bandaid, but it kinda misses the mark on fixing the root problem. It sounds good, which helps with content creators marketing the game, but it doesn’t fundamentally change much.
The main problem with damage boost is DPS at long range, such as
- Long Range Damage Boosted, Widows
- Long Range Damage Boosted, Pharahs
- Long Range Damage Boosted, Sojourn
- Long Range Damage Boosted, Ashe, etc.
By comparison, the root cause of the problem could be solved by just blocking damage boost at longer ranges.
MERCY
Caduceus Staff (Damage Boost)
- 30% damage boost.
- Boosted portion of damage has a 100% damage drop-off at-range between 30-40m range.
Guardian Angel
- 1.5 second cooldown, with no cooldown modifiers.
- I.e. Cooldown nerfs reverted
Which then frees up room to give Mercy mains back that mobility they really love.
And for the heck of it, throw this in there.
MERCY
Valkyrie (Ultimate)
- All players within a 20m spherical radius of Mercy healed 25hp over 0.5sec
Since apparently it’s difficult to code it so that the healing beam doesn’t break during Valk cast.
Oh and because some people have difficulty understanding what I meant about that 100% damage dropoff between 30-40m range on the damage boost.
- Widow base damage, 300 damage headshot
- Currently: Widow damage boosted at 29m range: 390 damage headshot
- Currently: Widow damage boosted at 41m range: 390 damage headshot
- Nerfed: Widow damage boosted at 29m range: 390 damage headshot
- Nerfed: Widow damage boosted at 41m range: 300 damage headshot
11 Likes
Well, lot of changes coming to supports. Hoping Lucio will avoid the unnecessary nerf bat.
6 Likes
MORE buffs to lifeweaver 
when you have to continuously buff a hero it should be a sign that its not working
he needs reworking…not buffs…
26 Likes
What do you think they mean by “stuck damage”?
2 Likes
TLDR; They don’t want Lifeweaver’s underwhelming launch to be repeated and don’t intend to launch new sup as OP. Armor changes (really aimed at hurting Orisa and Ram), Cass nade shorter range and track-time health buff range tweaks, 76 Helix nerf, Torb primary buff, Kiriko Suzu loses boop and some raw healing will heal extra when a debuff is cleansed, Lifeweaver Ult does some overhealth he’s getting some shield health and more self heals on Dash, Sombra buffs her rework drops next season, Mercy Boost from 30% to 25%.
2 Likes
From what I’ve seen, the changes that were talked about seem pretty good
TLDR;
•Armor and damage reduction stacking will be less effective, ie, Fortify and Ram Block
•Orisa will get more Overhealth from Fortify and have a fall-off range buff
•McCass’s Nade will have a maximum range, and his fall-off range will be lowered, but he’ll get more HP…. Again
•Kiriko’s Suzu will do less healing and no longer have any knockback, but if it cleanses a debuff, it will do more healing than normal
•Soldier’s Helix will get a damage nerf, and his ult will cost more
•Lifeweaver will be getting Shield Health, Tree of Life will give Overhealth, and his dash will heal more
•Torb primary fire will have a slightly faster rate-of-fire
•Mercy Damage boost lowered from 30% to 25%
•Doom and Ram’s block will now reduce damage from “Stuck” abilities. ie, Cass Nade, Bastion Nade, and Tracer Ult
These changes all seem pretty good imo
4 Likes
Hopefully the Mercy nerf will satisfy those that want to ruin her.
Disappointed by the Torb change. He is a builder. Why are they leaning away from that?
I agree LW needs work and I hope they change his ult to not be a tree. So much clutter.
5 Likes
Abilities like Magnade and Echo Stickies since right now they deal full damage through blocks.
1 Like
This sounds good, but I suspect he’ll need a mid seaaon nerf to ult generation. Tree comes up a lot in a match.
4 Likes
man these changes are still garbage 
how to not listen to your community 101. Not as bad but still not that great. Only one im thankful for is a dmg boost nerf, it’s pretty much nothing anyways
2 Likes
We’re continuing to focus on Lifeweaver: we think he’s in a much better state now than at his launch but would like to focus on two aspects of his kit - giving his Ult more impact and giving Lifeweaver himself more survivability. Part of Tree of Life’s healing will now be converted into Overhealth, up to a maximum of 100 health per player. He will also get added survivability by converting some of his health to shields and upping the amount of healing done by Rejuvenating Dash.
Please just reduce his hitbox and model size already he’s still gonna die easily if you keep him so massive
2 Likes
So Tanks get weaker, Roadhog remains trash and Ana and Zen also remain oppressive.
That surely will help the balance of the game.
21 Likes
Echo’s sticky bombs, Cassidy’s nade and Tracer’s pulse bomb currently do full damage if they stick it right on the fist.
This change should apply damage reduction to all three now.
3 Likes
I’m really excited to see what the Bastion changes will be
2 Likes
Quite happy with this mercy change (as a support main myself)
it brings her down without gutting her.
1 Like
So torb gets buffed but no sym buff? Her turrets are niche and her passive is so situational… can never get above 100 healing per game
3 Likes
"We’ve talked about the new Story Missions, the Event Mission, our new game mode Flashpoint, the new Hero Progression System, as well as Hero Mastery Missions… and we’ll be talking about our newest Support Hero soon. "
“Ok. On to balance.”
Ah yes, another balance patch. The thing I look forward to the most because it’s not meaningless to discuss unless you’re a CC going to blizz HQ.
Steam reviews are going to be more than enough content for me next week anyway.
2 Likes
Torb’s primary fire and weapon switch to hammer is getting buffed, his turret isn’t changing but his primary fire’s going to be hitting faster which it kinda needs.
Symm’s always been strong if you can point and click and track especially at level 3 she melts things.
You have a projectile with travel time vs a beam you point and click. If you can get charge she’s still worse than torb at melting people