How To Balance 6V6 According To Workshop Devs

General Discussion
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Recently Spilo interviewed the devs behind the 6v6 Adjustments workshop gamemode, 7HSKW(<-- the code of said gamemode). Interview can be found here for those curious → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcHEhMD0qA8

There are some really interesting and valuable things you can take from this interview; I think the overwatch 2 devs could stand to learn a lot from them for when it comes time for the 6v6 playtest.

Keep in mind the workshop is very limiting, and not all the changes they wanted to do are possible(still waiting on that workshop update, blizz!), for example, you can’t change weapon spread, you can’t do much against certain status conditions, fall-off damage is hard to work with, hitboxes are hard to work with, you need scripts to work around the passives, all the workshop sliders are percentage based so you can’t make exact changes, and also some things just straight up don’t work, a lot of compromises have to be made. Despite all this, they’ve managed to make a pretty competent 6v6 game mode.

Season 9 health pools reverted

It was found that with 250 HP squishies, securing kills became too difficult in 6v6 and thus the health changes from s9 were reverted. Tbf, I don’t know anyone who likes the season 9 changes in 5v5 either, you could argue it has a place in 5v5 though or that it was due to 5v5 that this change was made, it could be gutted from both formats if you ask me, it barely accomplished anything and just made things worse overall.

Role passives reduced, removed (also toggable I’m pretty sure).

Role passives are contentious even in 5v5, but in 6v6 they don’t have nearly as much reason to exist, and heroes don’t have to be balanced around them.

The tank passive was heavily nerfed, it doesn’t need to be as strong in 6v6, I wonder if it could actually be removed entirely actually.
The DPS passive was removed
The Support passive was removed
Global regen passive reduced to 10 HP/s, the least contentious of the passives and is agreed by many to be fine
Ultimate % retention removed, I’m not sure if this removed for any balance reasons, but this feature is contention, even in 5v5.

Hero Balance

Balance patch notes can be found here https://devon7925.github.io/ow2_patch_compare/index.html?before_patch=Overwatch+2%3A2024-07-21&after_patch=6v6+Adjustments%3A2024-07-28&show_calculated_properties=false&show_breakpoints=false and here https://docs.google.com/document/d/15nnv5-FbSJ302Fnxdirq2BnilNJFT2p3PrarX_j5gUA/edit
The roles are now more equal in strength and the heroes aren’t balanced around passives anymore.

Let’s look at some interesting examples of getting the heroes ready for 6v6 in the patch notes

Tankfist apparently was a bit too strong in 6v6 compared to 5v5, the best hero and apparently 2 to 3 times as strong as every other hero. This is mainly due to all the AoE tankfist, he had to be nerfed a whopping 12 times to be balanced. Honestly, I would love it if they reduced his AoE for more single target damage(I also just hate how I can end up getting hit by his punch not because I got hit, but because my teammate got hit and launched into me), they don’t have to revert him back to dpsfist or anything, though I long to play that hero once more… I know tankfist is considered more healthy for the game, and is an actually fun tank that got people to play the role(though against the will of some) and doesn’t increase the chance of someone saying a slur in game by 80% like dpsfist did, at least not to that degree I think?

Mauga Cardiac overdrive is just straight up busted in 6v6 and thus the damage reduction for allies was removed, pretty obvious that this would have been broken if they just put it in 6v6 as is.

Kiriko actually ended up underperforming in 6v6 and was buffed, this makes me wonder if kiriko was originally balanced for 6v6 and that that was the main reason she was busted in 5v5 for forever.

(not mentioned in the interview, but I noticed there were a lot of changes to the character in the patch notes) Venture ended up being extremely powerful and needed a lot tweaks, this makes sense considering when the character was released and the kit design.

AoE Healing heavily nerfed(Baptiste & brig)
AoE healing was very problematic in OW1 and was never properly addressed, ladder king baptiste ran rapid heavily sustaining the front line. It’s nice to see that these devs actually addressed this problem and didn’t leave us fend for ourselves like what happened end of OW1.

We see baptiste’s biotic launcher single target and AoE heals get flipped almost and his shift almost.
Brig inspire is slightly, nerfed, though repair packs buffed as compensation. Maybe we would have seen a sport lineup not be zen brig in owl if these changes were implemented in ow1.

Feedback they would give the overwatch devs:

The most valuable information they have gotten is from the top ranked players grinding the mode and they highly encourage the overwatch devs to listen to their top players.

4 Likes
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This one is garbage and should also be removed. The whole point of some heroes is that they have self-sustain survivability that makes them unique. They weren’t even given any compensation buffs for that unique value being devalued.

Ew… Why is Reaper weaker than he is in 5v5? He was stronger in OW1’s 6v6 before they moved to 5v5, but they just decided to nerf him even more in this version? Glad I never decided to play the 6v6 code. These people clearly have no idea how to balance.

This is exactly the type of stuff I was expecting to see, though, so it’s not really a surprise. This is also why I say leave the balancing to the actual dev team and don’t just port over whatever that is supposed to be.

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If it were up to me all the role passives and global passives would be gone and only hero specific passives would remain.

About reaper, he was apparently way too good in the 6v6 code and had to be nerfed. He’s still better in 6v6 than in 5v5 currently though.

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So like, this doesn’t kick in combat or as reliable on any role that isn’t support do to tanks/dps taking the brunt of the damage outside of flank/dive specific plays.

It really doesn’t make them “more survivable” as the enemy basically needs to be dead for it to just kick in let alone heal enough to get around a break point. It’s mostly their so supports don’t have to do healing clean up, and teams can just reposition and let their supports catch up latter if their dead.

Also most supports had ways to self sustain themselves any way, be it self healing, shield health, or cooldowns. If not just mobility to play around health packs.

So it really isn’t new or taking away from the uniqueness of anyone.

These patch notes mostly balance around casual play, more so comp. This is basically what happens if you let gold/plat be the gold standard for balancing.

Got a dive comp group not to long ago and just stomped for 12 games straight. its’ really easy to exploit.

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It’s actually top-down balance from what I gathered, but they do make sure the changes don’t ruin low ranks somehow

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They say that, but it really doesn’t play out like that.

Tank meta combo’s like dive, still have all the advantage they had prior without the CC/bonus health to keep them in check. Even without the role passives brig is kind of a joke to play around. winton, and Ms.dorito still cover all their normal counter pick weaknesses to beams/shotguners/cross fire.

EMP bomb nukes most groups, and the other dps can be genji/tracer/widow/venture to counter pick anything else.

Zen/ana/mercy/kiriko on support, be it ye old zen/mercy still seems to be the best combo for the double damage boost. And well I haven’t seen any actually compete with any of that.

Because we can just ignore most tank match ups compeltly kill your dps/supports right off the back. And then have multiple ult combo’s to throw at you with the tanks/dps. Every other fight.

It’s not remotely balanced around how tanks actually played like they did in 6v6, and just how people are playing casually. Even with the higher end players I’m not seeing people attempt to cycle cooldowns or set-up tank combo’s that really cover each others weaknesses.

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this is stupid. This is a great feature that only needed to be nerfed so heavily because it was a direct buff to the already broken counterswapping. In 6v6 where swapping is a healthy part of the gameplay they could up it back up to 30% and have no problem

The knockback passive could probably be removed outright, the ult passive needs to stay as is or even be buffed. There were way too many ults in 6v6

This one is questionable because heroes like kiriko and lifeweaver are very clearly designed around having passive healing like mercy was. It absolutely needs to be axed for heroes like ana and bap where needing to use abilities on self-healing is one of their intended weaknesses

not surprising. CC spam machine was an idiotic character design from the beginning and was only kept remotely balanced by being vulnerable. Having a 2nd tank to cover for him seems broken. I wouldn’t be surprised in JQ was too strong for similar reasons

Doesn’t surprise me, suzu is only a broken ability when overall sustainability is too high, and it wouldn’t be in 6v6

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So they don’t remove Orisa’s lack of damage falloff but revert Hog’s ult to be channeled again? Really?..

Also not surprised 76 got a slight buff to damage, since he rarely gets nerfed.

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They butchered tf out of doom oh my god LMFAO

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  • Base health reduced from 125 to 100.
  • Shield health reduced from 150 to 100.

Photon Projector

  • Shield regen per beam level reduced from 10 to 0 health per second.

Sentry Turret

  • Health reduced from 40 to 30.

Teleporter

  • Base Health reduced from 100 to 75.
  • Shield Health reduced from 200 to 150.

Photon Barrier

  • Ultimate cost reduced from 2025 to 1680.
  • Barrier health reduced from 4000 to 3000.

I’m not sure how i feel about this. On one hand the turret nerfs and the shield regen removal are a nothing change. The health reduction is huge, but that ult cost revert is tempting. I miss being able to build wall nearly every fight

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This is definitely cap. He was doing 6 damage per pellet in 6v6 which was nerfed to 5.4 in 5v5 alongside spread nerfs down to 8 degrees. He got his spread buffed back up to where it was in OW1, but he’s still weaker in terms of damage.

Plus, he can’t even leave hard CC with Wraith anymore, so there’s no way he’s good in community 6v6 when he wasn’t even mediocre in OW1’s 6v6.

This is just objectively not true. It gave every DPS the ability to flank, seeing as they can now just hide in the backline of the enemy team instead of being tethered to health packs and Supports.

Surviving isn’t just about living in combat. Genji and Tracer can now live in the backline, which is what was supposed to be their greatest weakness for their lethality and hyper mobility.

As for the Supports, it completely removed the risk of using utility to heal yourself instead of the team. This means more healing, aka more stalling around and shooting things that don’t ever die.

This is exactly why the game should never be balanced around the low end of player skill.

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Ngl I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say or point you’re trying to make. :confused:

He’s apparently still very good despite all the nerfs

That’s the s9 health pool reversion btw

It’s the s9 bullet increase that’s letting him 1 shot the pre s9 healthpool squishies efficiently that got him nerfed. It would probably go back to ow1 damage if the workshop would let them tweak bullet sizes.

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it doesn’t fix the old issues that plagued 6v6, you can still RPG build your way into a optimal comp that is just better then everything else.

With that dive comp my little crew went undefeated for about 12 games.

And I’m sure their is other busted combo’s and the like. But it’s not something that will work in the main game like people will think.

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Almost everything you’ve outlined here is just reverting features introduced in OW2. It makes sense, they’ve slowly been dismantling the game and it hasn’t gotten better as a result.

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Almost every single person I know likes most if not all of the s9 changes and everyone I know loves the health changes as it removed several of the one shot spikiness that were complained about a LOT.

The reason those passives were removed though is that the mode they made might as well be called “nostalgia monthly” so making it feel as nostalgic as possible is the goal and removing anything that was not in OW1 therefore is the ideal.

The specific balance changes made me laugh though. Its not a bad attempt but the idea that they “balanced” 6v6 is just cute. Also while I enjoy listening to feedback from good players we have seen balance attempts from them and to be honest they are not great.

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What exactly is the issue here? You managed to get a group together to run an optimal comp, that sounds like a lot of fun. Not exactly a 6v6 issue.

A lot of the changes were made to accommodate 5v5 too so it makes sense that they wouldn’t work out as well in 6v6.

Complete opposite from what I’ve seen, I guess we talked to different people. I think the only one shots that really got gutted were junko combo and hanzo headshot though. Widow headshot and everything else is still in the game, they didn’t fully commit to removing one shots and just dumpstered those two heroes.

That’s not entirely true though, some of the 5v5 changes are genuinely problematic in 6v6, the s9 health pools made everything live too long, the tank passive being on two tanks was too much, the dps passive and support passive threw balance for a loop. If they were truly trying to make it as close to ow1 as possible they would have added back dpsfist, not included global health regen, etc.

It’s an honest attempt that a lot of thought was put into, a lot of the glaring balance problems were fixed and they’re continuing to try to make it as balanced as possible difficult as that may be, they’ve done a pretty good job all things considered.

Tbf, a lot of the community made balance patches we’ve seen in game are mostly just for fun with 3-4 of the changes in the game being genuine balance ideas, even with the most recent creator patch they admitted the changes were all just for fun.

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They also slam Ram’s barrier by chopping off 450 HP off of it - it has 1,000 HP in the real game, so that’s cutting its HP almost in half - and compensating it by reducing its cooldown from 13s to 12s. Damn. Then they go ahead and take out the movespeed bonus to Nemesis form, which was an excellent buff that made Ram less dependant on Lucio while still retaining synergy. Before that, Ram was considered a blockbot.

If this sort of stuff is the price of going back to duo tanking, then I don’t want to go back to duo tanking.

3 Likes
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Sure, tank kits have to be debloated to work in 6v6, but the benefits of having a 2nd tank to help is great. You don’t have to worry about getting hard countered nearly as much, you don’t have to play rock paper scissors nearly as much, you don’t have all the pressure that comes with solo tanking, you have more options than being forced to front line. You also have the option of having a junker queen to shout for you or another tank to enable you to engage and not have to hold block all the time, and so on.

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I’m unhappy with rock-paper-scissors tanking, but at the same time, I feel like this patch would be trading in one problem for another. I’m looking at the likes of Mauga, JQ, Hog, Ram, and thinking to myself, “Who would I pick in order to reliably have a good time?” And the answer is: Sigma, and Sigma alone. I don’t personally feel like going back to Sigma jail is any better than the current state of things.

I’d say that Ram wouldn’t be able to fill in for Sigma a lot of the time. A shout every 12s or so isn’t going to make up for these bruising nerfs. He’s going to be put in the same spot as OW1 Orisa was: nerfed to the point where they’re dependant on Sigma for the most part.

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I’m not quite sure why you think you’d be restricted to only playing sigma, could you elaborate on that? Mauga, Jq, Hog, and Ram are all playable, Mauga and Hog don’t have to be nerfed with extreme prejudice because they ruin everyone else’s fun like in 5v5.

You’re overblowing the nerfs a bit, they’ve just been brought back down to ow1 levels.

1 Like