Hanzo is a sniper - rebalance him into one

General Discussion
1

Hanzo is a sniper.
And before anyone comes and tries to argue that he’s not, his kit clearly speaks for being a sniper. The lack of any damage falloff, the high damage output per shot, no bloom, straight flying projectiles, an ability that makes it easy for him to predict enemy locations (Sonic arrow).

Hanzo in his current state is absolutely ludicrous right now and overshadows every DPS that has similar mechanics, the prime example being McCree.
McCree has limited range as his primary fire is being penalized with very harsh damage falloff, a reload time of 1.5 seconds, a lack of mobility.
Hanzo does not have ANY of these.
"But McCree is hitscan"
Everyone who ever played an FPS before that included projectiles will know how to play with these. Hanzo’s arrows also travel fast enough that it almost does not matter that they’re projectiles - hitting people with them is not as hard as people like to pretend it is. The hitboxes of these are also very forgiving to say the least.
Let’s also talk about the two other sniper heroes in this game for a brief moment - Widow and Ana. Both of these heroes are relatively easy to spook out of their spot as it’s easy to dive them - they may be dangerous from far away (Ana not as much, as she’s a support) but relatively easy to deal with from close distance. Ana only having a sleep dart and a a grenade to defend herself and Widow an SMG that deals measly damage.
Now, what does Hanzo have? Hanzo can not be caught with his pants down - he’s not particularly vulnerable from a close distance. As a matter of fact, it’s easier for him to kill close range targets. His high damage output is the same from near as it’s from across the other side of the map. Widow on the other hand, her SMG does poor damage especially against enemies like Winston - and if she chooses to attack her with her main primary fire, she has to zoom in which not only reduces her FOV which shrinks her awareness and is also hard to hit due to being so close to the enemy, as a result of being scoped in it also impairs her movement heavily. Again, Hanzo does not suffer from any of these.
"You can’t compare two entirely different heroes!"
The moment the playstyle of two heroes overlap or are getting atleast very similar it is entirely possibly to compare them - especially when it’s about a Hero that outclasses every other character in its category.

Now, let’s talk about Storm Arrows.
This ability is way too rewarding for basically being a high damage spam at a fire rate of 3.33 arrows per Second and, again, a high range with no damage falloff. I feel like the Developer team intended this ability to allow Hanzo to defend himself against flanking enemies - except this ability makes it far too easy to melt enemies, especially tanks, in a frontline combat. Is a Sniper really supposed to be frontlining?
Also, this ability allows Hanzo to fire fully charged arrows in no time, without suffering under movement speed decrease which exists in his normal primary fire.

"And how would you balance Hanzo?"

Personally, I’d probably change three things.

  1. Remove the unlimited clip size of Hanzo’s arrow to discourage a spammy playstyle. I would give Hanzo roughly 10-12 arrows and then give him an animation of how he reaches into his quiver to grab some more - maybe a reload time of 1.5 seconds. Reload Time should not be affected by Storm Arrows.
  2. Make Hanzo’s FOV decrease when he’s charging his bow in order to create a “Zooming In” Effect which makes it easier to see and hit targets from far, but harder to hit enemies that are close by.
  3. Make Storm Arrows have damage falloff in Order to make it more a defensive ability
    OR
    After a certain distance (say, 10-20 Meters) the Storm Arrows dissolve (which could make sense, as they’re… this dragon ghost magic apparently)

PS: There’s currently a bug with Hanzo’s bow that blocks his headshot hitbox which prevents him from being headshot - I would include proof but I apparently can’t put Links in here so just google for it.


TL;DR: Hanzo is completely overtuned and is no longer played like a sniper yet still benefits from the advantages of one without having any drawbacks. He deals tremendous amount of damage, , he has unlimited clip size, a decent rate of fire, storm arrows being broken. Also please fix that Bow preventing Headshots bug.

86 Likes
2

Hanzo is quite overtuned, I agree, he is effective at ALL ranges, personally I think that is wrong.

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Yet Hanzo mains always tend to tell Widowmaker mains she sucks at aiming…

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That’s existed since launch. Pisses me off.

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Any of those changes would throw Hanzo out of being a sniper

  1. Hanzo has to “reload” for every single arrow outside of storm arrows, failing to do so can and will lower your damage by quite a lot, I would argue that he could take a tiny bit longer to reach max draw though just not a lot, perhaps the time it takes widow to reach max dmg in scope

  2. The point of Hanzo’s character is that at long range your arrows curve down and you have to compensate for it, they might move faster now but you can easily miss a headshot if you don’t calculate arc before shooting, this makes him less reliable at really long ranges unlike widow who can headshot someone across the map as long as her cursor is on their head

  3. uh… if you hate the melee burst Hanzo has, why are you trying to tackle his long range options?

Look, as a Hanzo main who wants his hero to be nerfed I would suggest these two options:

  • Remove the ability to lunge forward but keep sideways and backwards, lunge is supposed to be a defensive skill yet currently you can jump into people’s faces and melt them down at point blank which goes against the idea of an sniper, you can also reach the point faster for no reason whatsoever (Hanzo should not be touching the point/payload, just like Widow)

  • Reduce Storm arrow duration to 2 or maybe 3 seconds, time in Hanzo’s case equals aim, the more you wait with an arrow the more accurate you can be because you read your enemy’s movements, if you were to be forced to react quickly you would need to commit to the skill and trust burst damage instead of holding your breath every 2 shots, kind of like McCree does

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Hed just be popular picked garbage again tho

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Some Hanzo mains may be sad, but that’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make.

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I mean, the in-game character select might refer to him as a sniper but is he really? hes always felt like a medium range skirmisher than a sniper. Sure, he can land those insta-kill headshots, has a charge up (like widow) but after the changes made to him, I feel it only emphasized that hes actually a skirmisher.

The game has a lot of umbrella terms but they don’t always describe a character accurately.

6 Likes
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Honestly I hate that he became this hero people is tired off, I love his new kit but I can understand people being incredibly tired of seeing him in every game so I refrain from doing so too often which is kind of sad, he’s my first and only golden weapon :confused:

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I didn’t read all of you post fyi. But they did buff both widow and hazno to increase their rate of fire at which they shoot at full damage to deal with flankers, which should be a weakness for snipers. Now they gave hanzo this new ability that completely owns flankers. I mean widow has a the auto matic rifle so i don’t quite understand why they made such a buff in the first place. They should just revert it back to normal. Each shot should be selective and strategic anyway.

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Nope, Hanzo is an archer, and is played like one. You made this entire thread for nothing.

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https://imgbb.com/http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/856/141/197.gif(image larger than 4 MB)

That’s what I’ve been saying. He is more like a spam hero right now.
So I was thinking ether they keep him as he is but remove his ability to one-shot. Or to do what you said.

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Not sure how that was before since I started playing a year ago but it sounds very restrictive, currently you gotta wait 0.5 seconds for hanzo and 0.75 for widow

Widow particularly feels long af, specially when you line the shot quickly, you need to be patient and let it reach max charge or you’ll miss the kill

That’s why I think Hanzo having a longer draw time could theoretically work, maybe widow’s 0.75 or just 0.6… just so people stop this nonsense of him being able to spam 250 dmg arrows which is completely not true

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Okay I didn’t read everything but I have only one thing to say.
For the love of whatever you believe in stop saying Hanzo has to reload every time he has to draw arrow. With this logic Widow has to reload evertime too, and then she even has to reload every 15 shots.

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Can you imagine if hanzo had reverse damage falloff? I’m playing with the idea in my mind, but can help but feel it would make him incredibly underpicked.

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Only bads think Hanzo is a sniper in terms of ACTUAL GAMEPLAY.

DUDE CANNOT EVEN ZOOM IN! Hipshot shot sniper LOL

7 Likes
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They just need to add damage ramp up to storm. So you can’t W+M1 up to 840 damage into people.

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They made changes because people complained that scatter arrow was op, at the same time bringing in even more op version of skill that is way more versatile and can kill more then just 1 player.Not only that but they also increased his arrow speed that now with his bow speed makes him widow with auto sniper + he has good ult and basically the same vision ability as widow that can be used as offensive ability too, on top of that having better mobility outside the firing as well as when shooting, as well as having no zoom drawback as widow when having to deal with enemy in close range.

1 Like
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Honestly, man. You do you. Noone can even have a legit complaint about him anymore cause hes very strong. And I honestly think people complain about this new hanzo and blaim him for there own bad gameplay. I dont have anymore trouble with him than I used to usually cause I see the red bow and get the hell out. And that’s from a tracer main someone he supposedly counters

2 Likes
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Well, that’s just character design that wasn’t entirely thought through. The lack of any damage falloff speaks for a sniper. He shouldn’t be taking up that medium range skirmisher role as that is something McCree or Soldier are made for - and both are being outclassed by Hanzo as of now