Controversial topic: 222 and why I believe it really was rushed

[Kaedi-11739]

@Chadhardt-1304

So why were so many changes specifically targeted at goats still approved?

Principal Designer Josh Noh, explains a lot of details about this:

@JoshuaNoh-1358

Hey there,

Balance changes take time and there will of course be more to come. We’ve just barely entered into 2-2-2 role queue and released a new hero at the same time. It’s important to collect statistics/data, as well as feedback to make informed decisions.

Reverting all balance changes over the last year is unlikely to happen. Any hero change could potentially affect a meta to some degree, but not all changes are directly targeted at the current meta, if that makes sense.

For some transparency, we’ve known for awhile that we would be moving to a 2-2-2 format (it required a long time to implement) and not all changes over the last year were directly targeted at affecting the 3-3 GOATS meta (eg. Soldier, McCree, Junkrat buffs).

The goal of the changes that actually were aimed at GOATS was not to kill it entirely but to weaken it enough, without destroying the individual heroes, that other new comps could arise to compete with it. Though it took a long time, with the results of stage 3 I consider that at least somewhat successful. Even if solutions are hypothetically available, any meta is ultimately dictated by the players.

Aside from meta considerations, it’s important to prioritize individual hero balance which is why we’re tuning Zarya and Symmetra damage output. The recent beam bug fix was much more potent than expected, with those heroes on average seeing a 20-40% increase in damage. Their original damage values were tuned without knowledge of this bug.

Thanks for your feedback!