Balance is almost decent this season and the solution is probably nerfs to the heroes that are too strong instead of buffs to the heroes who are weaker or performing worse as numbers are already really high. Or shifting power away from lame kits.
These are the heroes/abilities I’d say could use some tuning down and how I’d do them.
Tanks:
Dva, still by a good margin, the strongest tank in the game after what, 5 patches of being op. Her survivability is obviously worse since the armour change, although the problem is 3 second matrix/ttk. Somehow Winston gets a dps nerf while dva is flying across the map killing people as quick as tracer, with 5% of the mechanical skill needed in comparison. I’d change micro missiles dmg from 5.5 to 4.5. And matrix to 2.5seconds. Increase ult cost by 8%. As surprisingly taking a 29th of her health bar away wasn’t enough.
Winston, revert dmg to 75. Decrease shield health by 50 to 575. Convert 25 armour to white health. Increase ult cost by 4%.
Rein, he is in a similar place as ball where if you have no counter he feels almost unkillable sometimes and if you do have a hard counter he is not very good. I’d convert 25armour to white health or reduce shield health by 100 or reduce shatter range by a few meters from 25 to 22. Increase firestrike to 125dps. Hopefully making him less frustrating to go against. Instead of doung just number adjustments you could also take inspiration from the creator patch again. Where I would put the shield down to 1300 health, where the lower the shield health a speed boost applies up to a 40% at 0hp. Roughly maybe 35 or 45% depending on how it feels. I’m not an avid rein played so I’m not sure, but what I do know is less shield botting and more playing the game is good. Maybe a greater reduction of armour/health pool would be necessary with a speed like this. Too much survivability with the speed could easily break him.
Ram, convert 25 nemesis form armour to white health. Increase movement speed buff on nemesis form by 5%. Once again making him slightly less of a wall to go against.
Ball, convert all shield health back into white. Reduce movement lockout on slam by 0.2seconds.
Sigma, increase ultimate cost by 8% and accretion impact reduced by 8 from 80 to 72, recent buffs to his orbs mean he is getting much more ult charge and does a little too much overall, also nerfing rein and ram he can’t go unchanged or would he far too dominant and I want to aim for a patch where all non obnoxious things are as viable as possible.
Jq, reduce shouts self-overhealth by 25 and maybe reduce rampages impact damage by 5, 75-70 I believe. She is really strong. I got gm with her as my 3rd or 2nd most played this season with a 65% win rate. I know she would become hard meta with no changes, which once again I would want to avoid.
Hog, increase chain hook CD by 1second, reduce breather Dr by 5%.
Orisa convert 25 armour to hp and reduce javelin dmg by 10.
Mauga, reduce hp pool by 25 from white health, stomp crit dmg reduced by 10 or cardiac damage reduction by 5%.
None of these tanks are particularly good or dominant currently but you also wouldn’t want them to avoid nerfs if the other tanks are taking hits. They need major change to be healthier.
Zarya, once again not currently dominant or good. Remove self damage on alternate fire and increase self knockback but decrease the damage of it back to what it was before, a couple patches ago, I tried finding it but couldn’t I believe it was 8 though. Also grav from 4 seconds to 3.75. Then whatever beam mitigation they will add.
Doom, overhealth per hit reduced from 40 to 32.5. Hack no longer cancels block.
Overall small nerf to the role as a whole. Some a little more than others.
Dps:
Widowmaker, if I could I’d just remove her but no, she needs full rework though. Screw the sniper identity make her a melee hero or something like vora in paladins with the fast paced grappling melee style, maybe keep her smg basically like in the kings row cinematic where she is literally keeping up with tracer instead of the joke that she is in the game of standing there doing nothing and 1shotting 60meters away on a hitscan primary fire. Can’t salvage that hero design in 5v5.
Ashe, revert her reload time change of 0.25 back to 0.2 per bullet. Dynamite, no longer gets affected by dmg boost, just like hanzo dragon change in ow1. Dynamite if burning someone now doesn’t start the cooldown again until the fire is cleansed or runs out. Regardless of what the changes are to primary fire and dynamite. Bob loses his dps and tank passive, both unnecessary and stupid overloading for an ult that has that potential of power. Reduce scoped dmg by 5 or reduce hp to 225hp but increase hip fire dmg back up to 40 from 35, as she has so much power with that small of a hit box. These nerfs are definitely necessary, as she is way too good.
Tracer, she’s really strong but honestly I wouldn’t really want a more toxic or unhealthy designed dps taking the spotlight. So very small nerfs, maximum effective range reduced by 1meter.
Sombra, don’t think she’s op or anything, just equally as obnoxious of a hero as widow. it’s just sombra, and I’ll just let the devs do whatever they will do to her for invis eventually, gut emp, I’m surprised people aren’t talking about it more. It’s literally been the most op ult in the game for a while, only kitsune rush is comparable in strength.
Reaper, let him cancel his ult. It takes so long to get and literally gets you killed half the time, it’s basically a self kill button in higher ranks without a support ult on you. Probably reduce hp by 25
Hanzo, he’s not very good. I’d reduce the charge time on the bow to about 0.82 from 0.87, let him wall climb with an arrow charged but make storm arrow only have 3 charges. Also potentially increase dragon length by 2 or 3meters. He’s the healthier sniper, because although spam or whatever you want to say is a problem. Hanzo mains spent so long using that arrow wind up time that this has just thrown off everything and doesn’t feel good at all. Storm arrow is realistically the unskillful part of his kit and Idk about other people but I’d much rather go against a projectile 1 shot with drop than a hitscan. Also, the storm arrow change means 1 less tank busting weapon in the game and these are part of the reason tanks need to be so strong. I’m not a fan of the 1shot but idk.
Pharah, give her rockets a maximum range of 25 meters or 30 if the speed was lowered a by a few Mps, we don’t need a flying junkrat with 5 movement techs/abilities which is better at spamming in every way to be so strong when ashe and widow get nerfed. Bcs pharah numbers basically didn’t change since she was op, the meta just didn’t favour her much.
Echo, although she is a flyer as well, the ashe and widow changes don’t affect her as much since she needs to be much closer range and has less obnoxious spam.
Venture, passive value lowered, but rewarded for hits like doomfist. 10 or 15 (from 30) base shield provided but every individual hit increases shield gained by 20. Still caps at 325 overall health.
Cree, revert deadeye ult charge price buff, reduce health by 25hp. He realistically only got all these buffs because ashe is so strong, deadeye can feel cheesy especially after the self applied speed boost chasing you around a corner. Hopefully this health nerf will make the hitscans -widow in line with each other. So theres no overwhelming dominance in the role.
Junk, 225 hp. Increase mine dmg by 5. I completely disagree with what they done to junk. Removing his 1 shot completely ruins his assassin and skillful playstyle, because hitting that airshot is one of the hardest things to do in the game which is basically necessary to hit every time to have any actual kill potential which isn’t rng choke shots. Also, their changes of armour is less effective vs him, doing more grenade damage and removing 1 shot, just incentives to shoot down the choke at the tank, further increasing need for dva. His hit box is huge so this could honestly do more harm than good but I feel like if you give hanzo his it only makes sense.
Bastion, remove self dmg on grenade and increase knockback. Decrease damage reduction on assault configuration by 10% and convert 25 armour to white health. Therefore, making him have more play making with less dumb stuff like DR which is boring to fight.
Torb, overload cooldown increased by 1.5seconds or decreased shots gained when overloading from 6 to 4. Don’t want him to be too strong.
Mei, each wall segment health reduced by 25hp, increase alternate fire dmg by 2.5. This will change the tracer breakpoint to a 1shot like in the past while not increasing oppressivness for others. Reducing frustrations for brawl tanks getting walled off as team can support quicker.
S76, reduce effective area of splash on rockets by 15%.
Supports:
Ana, make anti nade a 85% healing reduction, not stacking with dps passive so it caps at 85, still disabling health packs from being picked up though. This ability has been outrageously strong in a good Ana’s hands forever and literally required for fighting mauga and hog when they are meta. Also revert sleep dart size to pre season 9 as its actually crazy how big it is. Although to compensate sleep darts nerfs vs tank give her a 10% movement increase when you hit sleep for 3.5 seconds.
Baptiste, revert immortality back to the old way it was where it kept you at 10% health minimum, instead of 25%. reduce his dmg by 2 per shot. Remove bonus burst healing on regenerative burst for people on low hp. 2 of these 3 changes. We don’t need supports that are better dps than most dps.
Brig, way under the radar for too many players. Reduce armour pack overall healing by 10. Increase rally cost by 6%. decrease inspire status effect duration by a 1.5seconds. Remove stun on rally bash and increase the damage of rally bash by 25. Increase whip CD by 0.5seconds. Decrease whip knockback vs tanks by 15%. 3 of these 6 changes implemented. She gets way too much done with so little effort, her hero design is to pocket hitscans and supports which is boring and cheesy to against and make areas undiveable due to her insane knockback and busted numbers. She’s in every single match in high elo and the tank knockback change means she easily playable vs Rush which was her weakness because you can literally make rein or ram for example usually your strongest counters/weakest matchups almost never able to reach you or your backline, nevermind Winston or doom.
Illari, revert the previous damage changes which I believe was an increase of 5 in the minimum and maximum damage threshold. Reduce healing pylons ally healing from 40-35 and self healing from 30-25. You could dabble with pylon uptime changes but that’s alot of thinking that would need to go into but still a possibility. Reduce captive sun explosion range by a meter or two. Pylon Is a stupid, (beyond simple geometry and map knowledge) skill less design that shouldn’t be powerful.
Juno, take 10 dmg and healing off rockets or 5 off each if you increase her fly CD by 1second. She’s decently balanced. A bit strong but not ridiculous.
Lucio, reduce boop effectiveness vs tanks by 10%. Decrease damage on boop by 5.
Lifeweaver. Reduce maximun heal charge by 5. Increase fire rate by 2.
Mercy, rez and damage boost need to go. Easy, scummy and cheesy abilities that are awful to go against as well as her 100%uptime, no reload or aim pocket heal beam. Make dmg boost the mirror watch rockets and rez how it was in the creator patch with temporary revival. Standing behind a wall and making ashe for example do 200dmg a shot while reviving her if she dies isn’t fun for anyone. Pocketing has just always been extremely boring to go against. And brainrot tierlists on YouTube have indoctrinated a whole generation of overwatch players into believing she is useless 24 7. When in reality she is under utilised. Her whole kit is to make whatever op dps is in the game more op and it’s just not good for anyone but the dps player.
Kiriko, cleanse needs to lose a function. It makes you intangible, immortal, cleansed and heals. The one that makes sense the most to remove is healing. Although the immortality is the majority of the frustration, it would probably be too big a nerf. Cleanse healing to 0. Healing per status effect cleansed 25. Kunai damage reduced from 60 to 55.
Moira, reduce ultimates damage by 5 from 85-80. Reduce self healing by 3 from 24-21.
Zenyatta, revert the discord cooldown back to 7 from 6. Increase healing orb hps by 3. 30-33. Lower length of time a teammate cannot be in Los and keep orb by 1 second.
Alot of heroes numbers are currently at breaking point and some are already over it. Nerfing almost everyone’s numbers and increasing ttk slightly while reducing healing will probably make the game less frustrating for the majority of the playerbase, especially at the high ranks and specific interactions. Ideally no dominant meta. Some more balance and design changes would be good.
