You have killed what made Hanzo fun to play.
The season 9 changes have made Hanzo into forum Hanzo. His hero playstyle now has the depth of a puddle.
One of the reasons I mained Hanzo for so long is due to his near infinite potential to improve on him. Learning to predict an enemies movement, every player having their own biases in movement which you could punish if you predict correctly.
The smaller projectile size meant that it was crucial to learn Hanzo’s projectile speed in every charge state. A half charged arrow would require very different aim to a fully charged one.
Season 9 has stripped Hanzo of any nuance, any identity he had as a hero. Only leaving the worst (But effective) parts intact.
He is now a long-range Junkrat. In fact this would be an insult to Junkrat players if Junkrat also didn’t lose a huge part of his identity in season 9.
Your primary purpose for existing now is spamming as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible at long range. If you hear a “dink”, you switch to Storm arrow mode and spam that instead.
That is now the entire gameplay loop of Hanzo.
It is just sad. He is by no means a bad hero but his simplicity and lack of skill expression means I don’t enjoy playing him anymore. I feel quite. Lost.
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I am glad I’m not the only person feeling this way.
The wish of the forum has finally come true, Hanzo has been deleted from the game and replaced with this knock-off hero that makes even Soldier-76 gameplay look cool and original.
Heaven forefend you have to rely more on your team following up.
His skill ceiling was unquestionably lowered, I will 100% agree with that.
Find someone who mains Mercy to buddy up with you, you might find Hanzo feeling like his old self again.
He still counters tracer and widow imo.
But yes, overall I would agree with your sentiment. Hanzo is basically a totally different hero now, I feel for Hanzo mains indeed.
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Partly. Obviously 1-shotting was a huge part of Hanzo’s identity. However, for the health of the game/direction the devs want to take Overwatch in, I can except losing it.
The problem is what has superseded old Hanzo is straight up boring. The devs made zero attempt to give Hanzo a new identity, they just stripped away massive portions of his old identity making him feel incredibly bare-boned.
It is the skill expression aspect of a heroes kit, which is why I favour some heroes massively over others. I am a good Soldier-76 player but I could never main him because he would quickly become boring to me.
For the first time ever, this has now happened to me while playing Hanzo. I just don’t want to play him anymore because he is not the same hero he was and all the time I spent mastering him now means nothing. Any decent player at my level can play him just as well.
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I find that Mercy doesn’t help either.
Yes it makes him MUCH stronger but the issue is still skill expression. Any hero can get a pocket Mercy and yes it is more effective on Hanzo now but it doesn’t really help differentiate between a good Hanzo player and a bad Hanzo player due to the massive hitbox sizes.
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I always thought it was interesting that the Hanzo rework originally came out during the NA release of a game called HyperUniverse.
Wasn’t the rework basically copying Paladins. You know with the rapid fire arrows?
Never heard of Hyperuniverse before and the gameplay obviously looks very different, so don’t really understand the reference you are trying to make.
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ur right OP but these devs and the community loves no skill abilities like moira orb and ther left click. but their OK with removing abilities that takes AIM
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The thing is, I can’t imagine playing against current hanzo is any better.
I know I get way more frustrated. No 1-shots but the way you play around Hanzo is much worse. You no longer just avoid LOS, any sort of peaking and the chances are you will still be hit.
Spamming chokes/Doorways etc is massively more effective now.
Idk why the Devs have listened to these crybabies, Hanzo was fine pre S9. Before S9 my playstyle was like Arrge’s the flanker/assassin Hanzo. Now having to play Spamzo in S9 is unrewarding.
hes going to be the new mcree or hamster now, just a throwpick that needs a rework
the game has turned in to pokemon its about who can use what abilities its not about aiming anymore
Like i said before moira orb and moira left click can be in the game but they are removing 1 shots which can be annoying but at the very least that took some skill to do.
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Good. Hanzo is a horribly designed hero and if he were released today as new, people would be in an uproar. There is literally no other hero that you see more ridiculous plays from, including junkrat and Widowmaker. He’s a joke and should stay down :3c
Maybe he should get buffed to 125 damage, but add a falloff to 120 damage past 15, maybe 20 meters so it can’t oneshot out of nowhere.
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Ryzik? Wow, now there’s a name I haven’t seen in a long time 
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If dive wasn’t so good then Hanzo would lowkey be OP this patch since he would still be able to 1 shot with a much larger margin of error if he had a mercy damage boosting him.
Watch as they nerf dive and increase Mercy’s healing output, the forums will be crying about Hanzos running rampart.
I think the bigger issue would be Widows, since they do not need a mercy pocket to dome anyone short of Torbjorn and Bastion.
Yer, I quit for a year. The new patch was interesting enough to bring me back.
It didn’t take very long to remember why I quit in the first place. I try to stick to solo games now and actually completing them, seeming over half the games in my steam account I never played.
How has the Overwatch life been while I was away, more of the same?