[Fake] Patch Notes to Fix Hitscan Damage Creep

General Discussion
1

Hitscan damage has been creeped to unhealthy levels, and the hitscan heroes are currently pushing anything and everything not-hitscan out of viability unless they get broken in some other way. For example, Junkrat was buffed to deal 130 damage per shot on direct hits, and it did next to nothing. This is wrong.

The following are fake patch notes that I would use to re-balance hitscans.

Patch Notes - This patch focuses primarily on the hitscan heroes. Though there are some minor changes to other heroes as well.

Hitscan Damage Dealers

Ashe:

  • The Viper (non-ADS) rate of fire reduced from 0.25 to 0.3 seconds per shot (DPS reduced from 160 to ~130)
  • The Viper (ADS) damage reduced from 85 to 75.
  • Dynamite cooldown reduced from 10 seconds to 8.
  • Coach Gun cooldown reduced from 10 seconds to 8.

Bastion:

  • Sentry Mode now has a 15-second maximum duration.
  • Sentry Mode now has a scaling cooldown equal to however long bastion was in Sentry Mode (minimum cooldown 5 seconds)
  • Ironclad damage reduction increased from 20% to 35%
  • Configuration: Recon’s gun gets the following changes
    • Configuration: Recon is now a projectile weapon (Honestly, I just want more projectile heroes in the game and recon would step on soldier’s toes if bastion didn’t suck)
    • 40 damage - No spread
    • 4 rounds per second
    • Rounds travel at 45 meters per second in a slight arc
    • 2.5 second reload time
  • Additional balance changes forthcoming after the impact of these changes are assessed.

McCree:

  • Peacekeeper damage reduced from 70 to 60.
  • Fan the Hammer damage reduced from 50 to 40.
  • Combat Roll cooldown reduced from 6 seconds to 4.
  • Combat Roll duration increased from 0.4 to 0.5 seconds.
  • McCree is now invulnerable to damage during Combat Roll.
  • Flashbang maximum range increased from 7 to 9 meters.
  • Deadeye movement speed penalty reduced from 70% to 40%.

Reaper:

  • Hellfire Shotgun damage reduced from 140 to 100.
  • Hellfire Shotgun spread increased by 10%.
  • Shadow Step’s casting time removed. Replaced with an activation time during which Reaper is locked out of Wraith Form and Death Blossom, but can move and fire his Hellfire Shotguns normally.
  • Shadow Step activation time increased from 1.5 to 2.5 seconds.

Soldier:76:

  • Heavy Pulse Rifle damage reduced from 20 to 16.
  • Biotic Field cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 10.
  • Sprint reloads Heavy Pulse Rifle if used for more than 3 seconds.

Sombra:

  • Buffs. Multiple buffs because she’s terrible.

Tracer:

  • Pulse Pistols damage reduced from 240 to 200.

Widowmaker:

  • Widow’s Kiss now operates off of a limited ammunition system.
    • Widow’s Kiss no longer consumes SMG ammo.
    • Widow’s Kiss has 6 shots per reload, and 12 shots maximum.
  • Widowmaker gains a new passive: Support Pack
    • Support packs replace med-packs for Widowmaker on all maps.
    • A small support pack will heal Widowmaker for 75 (or whatever small med packs heal for) and grant 6 shots to widow’s kiss.
    • A large support pack will heal Widowmaker for 250 and grant 12 shots to Widow’s Kiss.
    • A support pack that only restores ammo will respawn in half the normal time.
  • Venom Mine now has 3 charges and targets will grant vision to Widowmaker’s entire team (not just Widowmaker).
  • Widowmaker can now have up to 3 venom mines out at once.
  • A venom mine deployed within 3 meters of an already deployed venom mine will destroy the previously deployed venom mine.

Projectile Damage Dealers

Genji:

  • Ridiculous shuriken buffs rolled back.

Hanzo:

  • Recent Storm Arrow buff rolled back.

Junkrat:

  • Grenade damage reduced from 130 to 120.

Echo:

  • Sticky Bombs explosion damage reduced from 25 to 20.
  • Focusing Beam damage reduced from 200 to 150 on low targets.
  • Focusing Beam cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds.
  • Duplicate no limited to copying an enemy ultimate one time.
  • Duplicate vocal activation callout for enemy team removed. She now has the element of surprise.

Symmetra:

  • Orb charge mechanic changed. Instead of charging over time orbs gain power as they move achieving maximum damage at 10 meters.
  • Orb maximum damage reduced from 140 to 120.
  • Photon Projector beam damage increased from 60/120/180 to 90/135/180.

Supports

Baptiste:

  • Biotic Launcher primary fire damage reduced from 25 per round to 20 per round.
  • Regenerative Burst cooldown reduced from 13 to 10 seconds.

Tanks

Reinhardt:

  • Barrier regen reduced from 200 to 90.

Sigma:

  • Barrier regen reduced from 90 to 70.
  • Kinetic Grasp duration increased from 2 seconds to 4.
  • Kinetic Grasp can now be canceled by pressing shift while the ability is active.

Orisa:

  • Halt area of effect increased from 7.5 to 9-meter radius.
  • Fortify cooldown reduced from 10 seconds to 8.

Effects

The idea is to chill out hitscan damage because it’s all out of hand. All hitscan have had their damage moved back behind the next lower breakpoint, in most cases requiring an additional shot to score a kill. However, this rollback allows barriers to get chilled out a bit as well with Sigma and Reinhardt getting their regeneration slashed so that their barriers take approximately 50% longer to fully recharge (15 seconds instead of 10) if broken or nearly broken.

To compensate, all hitscan have had other parts of their kits buffed (probably too much in many cases) and barrier tanks not named “Reinhardt” have had other parts of their kits buffed to keep them competitive.

1 Like
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Well, in a similar direction.

Can you imagine what would happen if Armor provided a flat 20% damage reduction, like it does with Beam weapons.

Reaper shotgun bodyshot would go from 80 damage, to 120 damage.

But a Widow headshot would go from 295 damage, to 240 damage.

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Dva: TAKE THIS NUCLEAR BOMB!

Mccree: imma just roll

7 Likes
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You really didn’t need to nerf Bastion like that.

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Symmetras pretty bad right now but the way you nerfed and buffed her isn’t what she needs. Her orbs need to be faster (I’m fine with orb damage being nerfed if it means they’re faster). Her beam should 15m and teleporter needs a lower cooldown so it’s not so restricting and isn’t just an ability to get out of spawn faster.

Also this could just be me with having bad aim but I want her beam width to be reverted back to .3

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8 Likes
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McCree rolling through a Dva bomb would be the dumbest thing in this game

Literally why it’s not even that good of a hitscan wep.

8

Go back to fortnite. Stop ruining my game

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Precise timing required.
Insta-death if you fail.
Stylish if you succeed.

I’ll allow it.

Honestly, I’m just against useless mechanics and her charge mechanic doesn’t actually buy her anything except for the slowest fire rate M2 in the entire game.

The only reason it even exists is so that you don’t microwave someone to below 140 health and then insta-kill them with a quick point-blank M2.

The problem is that the only things I can think of to make charging up shots actually do something are so complicated they’re not worth the keystrokes it would take to write down.

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Hits like a wet noodle and just as slippery as one.

This is similar to McCree’s…

Nerf DMG, buff mobility.

It’s one way to do it, but I don’t think it’s the right way. Works on paper, but in game it would have one of two possible outcomes.

Either it would dumpster both heroes or they’d still be around but more similar to Genji (Current Live pre-buff)

I’m unsure what “activation time” means (example would be nice) & increasing Reapers spread literally does nothing. Majority of Reaper players focus tanks, increasing his spread does very little when his targets are 2 - 3x bigger then him.

Reducing DMG on the other hand…

I don’t like CoD players as much as the next player, but that DMG nerf for 76 is unnecessary. He’s :poop: as it is, even with “hit-scan powercreep” that’d pretty much dumpster 76.

Also just allow 76 to reload while sprinting, why tie it to the ability? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

AGREED (Needs more than that, but still…)

Just revert his nerfs… :man_shrugging: They unnecessary in the first place.

I get that Rein is not the most beloved character right now… but cut him a little slack, this may seem like nothing but it would take forever for his barrier to regen at that rate. [REDACTED]

Thinking about it the nerfs to the hitscans DMG would be his compensation buff. So, nevermind. :sweat_smile: Still it wouldn’t be fun…

I agree and disagree with the idea of hitscan powercreep, I can see where one might say that. But the reason Blizzard hasn’t nerfed them is because of something like this.

If you nerf DMG directly, you need some sort of compensation. For your patch notes you went with mobility buffs of some sort. It’d work, but I feel it may cause another issue.

Nice post, regardless. :slightly_smiling_face:

11

Like it.

Limited Sentry mode sounds good, but projectile Recon mode sounds kinda unnecessary.

Don’t buff Flashbang or Deadeye, everything else sounds okay.

Like it.

Probably don’t need to nerf Soldier, he just needs QoL adjustments, like being able to sprint and reload at the same time.

Please no. For the love of god no. Buffing Sombra would be terrible for everyone but the Sombra player. She needs a full on rework because straight up buffing her would just make the game super unfun to play if she ever became meta.

Probably not necessary, Tracer is only strong right now because Brig is broken and can give her armour packs.

I hate Widow but this just sounds unnecessarily clunky.

I don’t know of any ridiculous shuriken buffs, sorry.

Yes.

Probably not necessary, Junkrat is already pretty niche already.

Like this, but still allow the voice line, there needs to be some warning that an ultimate is being used, like every ultimate in the game.

Sounds alright.

Probably not necessary, he’s pretty balanced.

Sounds good, Rein is too dominant atm.

4 seconds sounds a bit too long, maybe 3 would be better.

Yes.

12

Not really since you increased its duration to 0.5

Plus since the cooldown would be 4 sec he wouldn’t even have to save it in anticipation for dva bomb. It would recharge just in time.

That’s not even getting into how idiotic it would look like rolling through a rein charge, sigma rock, rocket punch, BOB…, etc.

All of these changes would dumpster echo hard.

Audio cues are a necessity for every hero. Removing it just to compensate for the stack of unnecessary nerfs is bad design.

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It means that you hit E and get the targeting reticle for Shadow Step, then press M1 to start the activation, and then for the next 2.5 seconds you can move around, shoot people, and get kills before suddenly disappearing and teleporting to your target. For the 2.5 seconds you would be unable to use wraith form or your ultimate.

It would make him less likely to insta-gib non-tanks. Reaper’s primary problem right now is that when he gets used heavily, he’s a total pub-stomper because of how high his base DPS is.

It would definitely require testing, but I think he’s just as guilty of doing too much damage as the rest of the hitscan roster.

And the buff to biotic field is gigantic to compensate. I’m not unaware that getting a straight 20% damage nerf is huge.

Well, the problem is hitscan power creep, and Baptiste is just as guilty as everyone else.

15 seconds. As stated elsewhere in the OP. And I specifically did NOT reduce his max barrier health (even though I really, really want to).

Yeah. That’s basically my thinking. It’s also why I rolled back junkrat’s grenade damage buff.

Most of the mobility buffs are minor, IMO. By far the biggest one is to McCree who got invulnerability frames to compensate for a massive hit to his overall damage (he goes from 3 body-shots or 1 headshot + 1 body-shot to kill a squishy, to 4 body-shots or 1 headshot + 2 body-shots or 2 headshots to kill a squishy).

I didn’t buff Widowmaker’s grapple for example or make soldier run faster.

A half-second is both longer than you think, and nowhere near as long as you need. And a D.Va bomb is just a single corner-case. With a 4 second cooldown it’s going to be seeing a lot more use against things like Widowmaker sniping and Orisa spam.

I didn’t go into detail about its interactions with other effects. If total immunity were found to be too much, exceptions like what you list can be used as a logical balance.

Though, rolling under a rocket punch or Bob makes perfect sense to me. But, I have watched a lot of Kung fu movies.

Counter-balanced by all of the hitscan nerfs. Echo is currently far from a bad pick, but her primary counter is hitscan DPS which I’m also nerfing substantially because I think they’re too powerful. If you don’t nerf her a bit, she’ll run out of control. And these are fake patchnotes. Real ones would need balance testing first which I cannot perform by myself on the forums.

My goal isn’t to dumpster anyone. It’s to rebalance hitscan because they’ve all been obviously power-crept to significant degrees.

And if you don’t do something to make her ult useful, limiting the number of ults she can get makes it mathematically the worst ultimate in the game because of how much warning she gives before she has an opportunity to get any value.

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I mean McCree is a cowboy, not a ninja

Then don’t limit her ults.

15

Potato; Orange.

Close enough!

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I do not want to be dynamited for 63% of the game. I really hope this is a joke… and halt to 9m radius, like what?

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Then kill her more.

She can’t dynamite you if she’s dead.

18

yes… 4head

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“top down balance is bad”

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I’m sorry but I can’t really get behind most of these changes.

Ashe becomes dynamite spam

Bastion loses his identity

McCree becomes useless

Reaper loses skill ceiling on aim and his power as a tank buster

Soldier76 becomes some weird support and you also gut his dps even though its weak

Sombra you didn’t elaborate. I agree she needs buffs but please elaborate.

Tracer I can semi agree with but that’s only because I play Doomfist

Widowmaker I’m not going into. Too many changes and it doesn’t sound good.

Genji’s shuriken buffs were needed because he was a blade bot. Rather see dragonblade lose 10 damage.

Hanzo’s fine.

Junkrat’s already weak.

As much as I hate Echo, this kills her.

Symmetra I can get behind

Reinhardt… fine. He’s OP

Sigma makes him for tanky which promotes double barrier.

Orisa is decent.