This thread includes a list of every hero and what I think of them balance-wise. Additionally, a little below, I have put suggestions for balance changes for every hero not in the “Balanced” section.
I have not included Torbjörn and Pharah, however, because I feel as though it’s too early to tell whether they’re balanced at the moment. You couldn’t even play as Torbjörn in Competitive Play for a week after his rework hit the live servers. Other than those two heroes, though, every single hero is included in this thread!
Geez, this thread took hours to make. This thread has 129% the characters (i.e., ~2.3 times the characters) that my Reaper buff idea thread, and I thought that was a long thread.
I’ve spent about four hours straight writing this post (yes, I made this one thread instead of sleeping—because priorities), so I would love some feedback and constructive criticism!
By the way, keep in mind that this is all my opinion. Of course, I haven’t been able to do any testing, but I have done a lot of research on abilities, all kinds of numbers, and what the community thinks about the state of every hero. These are ideas and suggestions, not objective facts, so please keep that in mind. Thank you!
Extremely underpowered (useless in most situations; needs major buffs or rework):
- Bastion
- Mercy
Underpowered (needs buffs):
- Orisa
- Roadhog
- Mei
- Reaper
- Symmetra
Slightly underpowered (needs minor buff or buffs):
- Reinhardt
-
Wrecking BallHammond - Zarya
- Junkrat
- McCree
- Soldier: 76
- Sombra
- Moira
- Lúcio
Balanced:
- D.Va
- Winston
- Genji
- Tracer
- Widowmaker
- Zenyatta
Slightly overpowered (needs minor nerf):
- Ana
Overpowered (needs nerfs):
- Hanzo
- Brigitte
- Doomfist
Rebalance suggestions for every unbalanced hero:
Table of contents:
Click to expand
Click on a link to go to that section of this thread, where I describe my thoughts about the current balance state of that hero and what Blizzard could to do balance them.
Orisa:
Increase her Fusion’s Driver’s projectile speed. Make her Ultimate, Supercharger, indestructable. (Why is Zenyatta invincible when using his Ultimate that makes his nearby teammates nearly invincible too, but Orisa’s Supercharger is big and easy to destroy—or even hack by Sombra?) As a compensation, the duration of the Ultimate could be reduced from 15 to 10–12 seconds.
Also, Orisa’s weapon, Fusion Driver, has the slowest reload time out of every weapon in the game, of 2.5 seconds. Reloading as Orisa is quite dangerous since you’re defenseless for an entire 2.5 seconds, which is a long time in Overwatch. Even her barrier can be destroyed in less than 2.5 seconds by a single high-burst damage hero or several enemies focusing it. Maybe her weapon’s reload speed should be reduced to 2.25 seconds instead (which would be an decrease in reload speed by 10%)—or, alternatively, to 2 seconds, which would be a decrease by 20% in reload speed.
Reinhardt:
Fix his many bugs (which would help Reinhardt a lot while technically not being balance changes). Decrease the amount of time it takes for his Barrier Field to begin to heal after putting it down to 0.5 seconds (or somewhere near that number), from 2 seconds. Two seconds is a long time in Overwatch, and in the midsts of the fray, it feels like you have no choice but to retreat just to replenish your barrier’s health as Reinhardt.
Roadhog:
Increase the amount of damage that the Chain Hook deals on impact. Make it do more damage at longer ranges and less damage at close ranges since long-range hooks are much, much more difficult to hit than close- and mid-range hooks. Make his Take a Breather ability do AoE healing so that he can heal his team for a certain amount of health for the duration of the ability, in addition to healing himself.
Hammond:
Increase his ammo to 100 (from 80). Allow him to use his Adaptive Shield ability in Roll mode.
Zarya:
Reduce the cooldown of her Particle Barrier (her personal bubble) ability from 10 seconds to 9 seconds.
Junkrat:
Junkrat is in a pretty good place right now. The only buff I would suggest is to slightly increase the hitbox of the grenade that he launches from his Frag Launcher to make it a bit easier to hit direct hits on enemies. I don’t think that he needs any balance changes other than that, though.
Bastion:
Bastion is a tricky one. Some ideas include making Configuration: Tank a regular ability—like Blizzard did with Symmetra’s Teleporter, Mercy’s Resurrect, and Torbjörn’s Molten Core (now Overload). One idea includes a new Ultimate that would give him more armour, reload his ammo, and reduce his transformation time for eight seconds. Other ideas include changing how Ironclad works or even moving Bastion to the tank role.
I don’t play as Bastion enough to have an opinion on which idea is the best, but here’s a good thread that combined a bunch of different Bastion rework ideas by the community into a single thread.
Doomfist:
This guy has three crowd control abilities. All his regular abilities (i.e., non-Ultimate and non-passive abilities) are crowd control abilities. Seismic Slam knocks enemies towards Doomfist, Rising Uppercut knocks enemies up in the air, and Rocket Punch stuns enemies, not to mention that it can one-hit kill many of the game’s heroes if you hit them into a wall. His Rising Uppercut + Hand Cannon and/or Rocket Fist combo can also one-shot kill many of the game’s heroes without even knocking them into a wall. Not to mention that he gains shield health from doing damage with his abilities.
He has extremely high survivability, has three crowd control abilities, can one-shot kill most of the heroes in the game, and has very high vertical and horizontal mobility for such a powerful damage hero with so much survivability. Doomfist certainly takes skill to play as effectively, but he is too powerful and feels incredibly unfair and unfun to play against. You’re defenseless when fighting against him, especially if you’re playing as a tank (especially a main tank [Reinhardt and Orisa]). His one-shot kill and one-shot combos capabilities should be removed.
I don’t know exactly what they should change about him, but right now, he’s the most overpowered hero in the entire game, in my opinion.
Hanzo:
Storm Arrows is certainly a much better ability than Scatter Arrow, but this ability can also wreck anyone, even tanks. Hanzo is supposed to be a mid-range sniper hero, but instead, he works at all ranges. He can snipe people from afar, attack at mid-range, or even be devastating at close ranges. He’s a ridiculously powerful tank shredder, even though that job is reserved for heroes like Reaper, not a mid-range sniper hero with a bow and arrow. He also has much improved mobility and survivability than pre-rework with his new Lunge ability.
My suggestions are to decrease the number of arrows to 4 (from 6). This would make the ability less forgiving if he misses arrows, and it’d also lessen his tank-shredding capabilities. The cooldown could also be slightly increased (maybe to 11 or 12 seconds, from 10) along with the aforementioned change.
McCree:
Increase his Flashbang’s damage to 30 (from 25). This would allow him to do this combo: Flashbang (30 damage) → point-blank headshot (140 damage) → quick melee (30 damage) = 250 damage (instead of 245 damage like he’d do now). This would let him combo-kill heroes with 200 health, such as Genji. Sure, you can try to hit two headshots after stunning someone with your Flashbang, but that’s pretty difficult unless you’re a very good shot and have a very low ping.
Also, the range of his Peacekeeper’s damage fall-off is pretty bad, so it could be slightly increased so that he does more damage at longer ranges. I’m aware that this exact thing was nerfed back in 2016 due to McCree being the best damage hero at the time, but I’m not talking about a major change here. His fall-off range could be changed just a little bit—nothing too major—to give him a little helping hand. With these two changes, McCree would certainly not become the best damage hero in the game again, but it would certainly bump him upwards a little bit, making him a little more viable. Not to mention that it’d open a new opportunity for a combo!
Mei:
Mei has been F-tier since launch. She is one of the least picked heroes. Regardless of how annoying you think it is to play against her, Mei is easily one of the worst damage heroes. She may be viable in certain areas, such as on the first point of Hanamura, but that’s about all she’s useful for. The removal of her Icicle’s damage fall-off helps her a lot, but it’s not enough to make her viable.
My suggestions are to reduce the cast time of her Ultimate ability, Blizzard, so that it doesn’t take so long for it to hit the ground and start doing its thing. Also, slightly increase the time it takes for enemies to be frozen while caught in Blizzard so that it’s harder for them to escape using movement abilities or just regular movement. Additionally, make Blizzard not disappear if Mei dies after she’s thrown Snowball towards the ground. If she dies before she’s thrown the robot, she should still waste her entire Ultimate, but not if she’s already thrown it before she dies.
An idea for her Cryo-Freeze ability that I have is to allow her to slide during it. Cryo-Freeze usually leads to instant death. It’s not difficult for enemies to group around you and kill you immediately once you exit the ice block state, and the healing is so slow that you have to wait out the whole four seconds just to heal 60% of your maximum health! (Cryo-Freeze heals for a maxaimum 150 health.)
My idea is to make Cryo-Freeze a mobility ability, allowing her to slide in the direction that she’s moving when using the ability. So, if she’s standing completely still, she wouldn’t be able to move during the ability, but if she’s moving in a certain direction, activating Cryo-Freeze would move her in that direction. The speed at which she moves and the length that she reaches when using Cryo-Freeze would depend on her momentum upon activating the ability. If she’s running away from her enemies at full speed, she would be able to slide a fair bit in that specific direction by activating Cryo-Freeze, as well as healing herself in the process.
She wouldn’t be able to choose the direction in which she moves whilst in the ice block; it’d entirely depend on the direction she’s walking or running in upon activating the ability. Additionally, the maximum amount of healing that she can get from using Cryo-Freeze could be increased to 200 (from 150), which would heal her for 80% of her maximum health, instead of just 60%, if she waits out the entire duration. This would, of course, also increase the healing per second during the ability since the overall duration of the ability would not be increased.
Lastly, increase the size of Mei’s Ice Wall from five pillars to six pillars. Mei’s Ice Wall is rarely useful outside of blocking choke points for a few seconds or walling an enemy in with you and your teammates for a few seconds in a chokepoint. It’s too small to be effective anywhere else most of time. Adding another pillar to the wall would make it a lot more useful outside of blocking choke points. The wall would still be able to fit in choke points since it already excludes pillars if it doesn’t fit somewhere.
Reaper:
Give him a new passive ability that would increase the damage that he does to physical barriers, such as Reinhardt’s Barrier Field or Orisa’s Protective Barrier. Increase the amount of healing from his existing passive ability, The Reaping, to 25% (from 20%). Reduce his spread angle by anywhere from 10 to 25%. Reduce his random spread pattern by 50% (like they did with Torbjörn’s Rivet Gun). Reduce Wraith Form’s cooldown to 6 seconds (from 8 seconds).
Reduce Shadow Step’s cast time (e.g., to 2.05 seconds, from 2.5 seconds) and shift the duration so that the animation at the starting point of the teleporation sequence takes longer than the animation at the target location, making the starting animation take the same amount of time as it does now (1.25 seconds) but the animation at the target location take much less time (e.g., 0.8 seconds). Currently, it takes 1.25 seconds for both animations to complete.
Here’s an entire long and in-depth thread that I wrote about these suggested Reaper changes. I’d love some extra feedback on this, since I care about Reaper a lot.
Soldier: 76:
The recent buff to Soldier: 76, which increased the number of shots it takes to reach the maximum spread by three, increases Soldier: 76’s potential damage, but the change was so minor that it barely makes a difference, and it was especially unimpactful for players who burst-fire as Soldier: 76 (meaning holding the primary fire button down for a few seconds, letting go, holding it down again, and repeat), which is the ideal method to use when playing as Soldier: 76. Sure, it gives them a bigger time window, but that’s about it, and it makes no difference to players already familiar with burst-firing.
A good way of increasing the damage potential of Soldier: 76 without outright increasing his damage per second could be to increase his Pulse Rifle’s ammo count to 30 (from 25). Soldier: 76 currently has the same amount of ammo as Bastion does in its Configuration: Recon mode, and you have to reload often. Increasing his ammo would go along way in making Soldier: 76 more viable.
Biotic Field, Soldier: 76’s area of effect healing ability, has a cooldown of 15 seconds. It is certainly a useful ability, but it is immovable. Decreasing the cooldown to, say, 12 seconds would also help a lot. It would also make most Soldier: 76 players more likely to use the Biotic Field to heal their teammates instead of themselves due to the cooldown not being as long as before; however, a decrease of just three seconds wouldn’t mark the end of healers in Overwatch since the length of the cooldown is already really long. For comparison, reducing its cooldown to 12 seconds would make the cooldown the same as that of Hanzo’s Sonic Arrow ability.
Sombra:
First of all, the visuals of hacked enemies are just awful. (Here’s a thread about it.)
When an enemy has been hit with Ana’s Biotic Grenade or has an Orb of Discord on them, the effect is purple, but hacked enemies have a red effect, which is inconsistent. Not to mention that it’s even inconsistent within Sombra’s own kit since hacked health packs have a purple effect too. Enemies should have the purple skull above them, just like enemies with the Orb of Discord on them. Yes, it’d make them slightly easier to notice, but so does Orb of Discord. Sombra players feel as though their teammates very rarely take advantage of hacked enemies unless the Sombra player communicates over voice chat, which not everyone does. This wouldn’t be a balance change but rather a quality-of-life change; however, it would help quite a bit.
As for actual buffs, here are some ideas: Reduce the cooldown of Hack when the ability is broken to 1 second (or somewhere around that number), from 2 seconds, so that she can hack sooner after taking damage. A Sombra is pretty likely to take damage during Hack if she’s spotted, and since any amount of damage cancels Hack, I think that the cooldown that the ability gets when it’s broken should be slightly reduced.
Also, here’s another idea: Let Sombra use Hack while invisible with Stealth. If she activates Hack whilst invisible, the 0.7-second unstealthing animation would still occur, but she would hack during that animation, as soon as it begins. The hacking animation would last for another 0.3 seconds after Sombra has been fully unstealthed. This would make the process of simultaneously unstealthing and hacking take a total of 1 second (or, alternatively, somewhere around that number; it’s not like I can test any of this). Right now, you have to unstealth, which takes 0.7 seconds, before you can initiate Hack, whose animation takes 0.65 seconds. This means that it takes a total of 1.35 seconds to hack an enemy when stealthed; you have to begin unstealthing, wait 0.7 seconds, and then initiate the hack. This buff would allow Sombra to do this process in one second instead of 1.35 seconds, saving her 0.35 seconds, but unstealthing would still take the same amount of time. This would only work if there’s a target to hack.
Additionally, the cast time of Stealth could be decreased to 0.6 seconds (from 0.7 seconds). That would change the math in the above paragraph, but you get the point. Unstealthing as Sombra feels pretty slow since you can’t use any abilities or your Machine Pistol for a whole 0.7 seconds. A reduction of 0.1 seconds (a reduction by ~16.6%) wouldn’t be the biggest thing in the world, but it would certainly make a difference.
Also, an idea for a minor buff I have is to make Sombra’s Ultimate ability, EMP, hack health packs that have been hacked by an enemy Sombra. I don’t think that Sombra’s Hack ability should be able to override an enemy Sombra’s hack since that’d just result in annoying hack battles between two Sombras; however, since EMP is an Ultimate, it would make sense for it to override a health pack hacked by an enemy Sombra, especially since health packs are usually hacked with the Hack ability as opposed to Sombra’s Ultimate.
This wouldn’t make much of a difference since Sombra players usually use EMP in open areas to catch many enemies in the blast, not in closed areas with health packs. Not to mention that team fights rarely take place near health packs since health packs are usually out of the way from objectives, in closed and relatively remote areas. This would be a tiny buff and wouldn’t change Sombra’s position in the meta, but hey, there’s no harm in a little quality-of-life change.
Symmetra:
After Symmetra’s second rework, released last year, she’s become better in some ways while worse in others. Symmetra now heavily relies on her teammates due to her Teleporter ability and, to some extent, her Photon Barrier Ultimate. Without proper Master/Grand Master-level voice chat communication and teamwork, Symmetra is borderline useless. The changes to Symmetra’s Sentry Turrets was great, but she does have other issues.
First of all, how about we increase her Photon Projector’s primary fire attack (the beam) feels way too weak compared to her Energy Balls (her secondary fire). I don’t often see Symmetra players use the primary fire anymore; they just keep spamming the Energy Ball into choke points and any area where her enemies are. At a damage level of 1, her primary fire only does 60 damage per second, and it’s pretty hard to actually hit enemies now that her primary fire’s lock-on mechanic is gone. That was a good change, but she’s not a great damage-dealer anymore (and she wasn’t much of a damaging goddess even with the lock-on aspect either). Reaching level 2 and 3 (especially level 3) of her primary fire is pretty difficult, so that rarely happens unless it’s against a barrier like Reinhardt’s or Orisa’s.
My suggestion is to increase the damage of Symmetra’s primary fire or reduce the time it takes to reach a damage level of 2 and 3. One idea that I have is to increase the time it takes to reach the next level to 1.5–1.7 seconds (from 2 seconds).
As for her Teleporter, its cast time is 3 whole seconds. It takes 1 second to create it and 2 seconds for it to fully deploy and start to function. I would recommend to reduce the time it takes for the Teleporter to deploy. The length of the cast animation could remain at 1 second, but the deployment time could be reduced to 0.5–1 seconds (from 2 seconds).
As for her Sentry Turret, I think that the cooldown needs to be reduced a little bit. It’s currently 10 seconds. I don’t think it should be reduced by a lot, but making the cooldown, say, 8 or 9 seconds instead would help a lot.
And finally, her Ultimate, Photon Barrier. This is arguably the worst Ultimate in the game. One could argue that even Orisa’s Supercharger is better than this Ultimate, and that Ultimate is really bad. It’s a shield with a lot of health (5,000, to be specific) and a duration of 15 seconds. 15 seconds is a lot, but don’t forget that the barrier is not only immovable but enemies also can just pass through it like any other barrier. I’ve never seen Symmetra’s Ultimate win a team fight. The best it can do is stop a Widowmaker from getting any picks from afar for a short while.
In my opinion, Photon Barrier should just be replaced entirely. I highly doubt that they would rework Symmetra again so soon, but I don’t think that this is a good Ultimate at all, even though it charges relatively quickly. I don’t have any ideas for replacements, and I’m glad that the Shield Generator is gone since health stacking feels unfair since it prevents combos and such, but they need to come up with something. I’m sorry that I don’t have any ideas for a new Ultimate. Symmetra has had three different Ultimates since launch, so it seems like Blizzard is having as hard of a time coming up with a good Ultimate for her as I am.
If they don’t want to replace Photon Barrier, the best they could do is to at least buff it. My idea is to increase the duration to 20 seconds (from 15 seconds) and make it slow down enemies when they pass the barrier. This would only slow them down for less than a second upon passing the barrier, but it would at least help a little bit.
Ana:
Ana I think is pretty balanced at the moment. The only change I suggest is to reduce the healing that Nano Boost gives to the target (e.g., to 250 or 200 health). Currently, Nano Boost instantly heals for 300 health upon use (after the miniscule cast time of the Ultimate), and Ana already had a tonne of burst healing potential before she got this buff to her Nano Boost. She’s easily the best support hero in the game right now. Again, I don’t think that she needs any major nerfs—instead, Mercy needs buffs or, preferably, a rework, since she’s completely outshadowed by every single hero at the moment, after all her nerfs after her rework—but a little reduction in Nano Boost’s instantaneous healing would help make Mercy viable after her hypothetical buffs or rework (of course, a tiny nerf to Ana wouldn’t make Mercy more viable on its own, but it would work alongside changes to Mercy herself).
Alternatively, instead of reducing Nano Boost’s healing, it could be a healing-over-time effect (just like the healing from Ana’s Biotic Rifle), in addition to an instanteous healing. For instance, Nano Boost could instantly heal the target for 100 health and then further heal them for 200 health over a period of 1, 1.5, or 2 seconds (or somewhere around that). This would heal the target for the same amount as it does now but would make it slightly less easy to instantly save a teammate from death. It wouldn’t be that big of a nerf, but it’d make Ana players need to pay just a little more attention to healing their Nano Boosted target.
Brigitte:
Brigitte takes extremely little skill to play as while still being amazing at every role in the game. Due to her armour, self-healing, personal barrier, and Rally (her Ultimate), she is an amazing tank with high survivability. Due to her good damage output, her long-range knockback attack, and her infamous Shield Bash stun, she’s a great damage hero. And finally, due to her area of effect healing when dealing damage, as well as her Repair Pack ability, which not only heals allies for a significant amount with the click of a button but also overheals by giving allies armour, she’s a great support hero.
Here are my ideas: Reduce the armour that a teammate gets from Brigitte’s Repair Pack ability to 55, 60, or 65 (from 75). Increase the cooldown that Barrier Shield gets after being broken to 5–7 seconds (from 3 seconds) and increase the barrier’s health to 550 or 600 (from 500) as a compensation. Reduce the damage that Shield Bash deals upon impact to 30 or 35 (from 50), reduce its max range to 5 meters (from 6 meters), and reduce the stun duration to 0.7 seconds (same as McCree’s Flashbang) or 0.8 seconds (from 1 second). Lastly, reduce Brigitte’s self-healing from Inspire to 13 health per second (from 16). This would make the ability more similar to Lúcio’s Crossfade, which heals his teammates for 16.25 health per second but only self-heals for 12.5 health per second.
Now, that’s a lot of nerfs, but it would help a lot. Reducing the armour that she gives her teammates with Repair Pack would leave the healing that she gives with that ability (which is 150 health) the same. Increasing her Barrier Shield’s cooldown after it’s been broken—which, currently, is really low—would punish Brigitte players who keep breaking their barrier. It would force them to be more concervative with their barrier instead of constantly letting it break. As I stated, the barrier’s health would be increased to compensate for this cooldown nerf.
Reducing Shield’s Bash impact damage, reducing its range, and reducing the stun duration would make playing against a Brigitte who keeps stunning you and your teammates a lot less annoying. It’d force Brigitte to be slightly closer to an enemy she wants to stun, and it’d remove the insta-kill Shield Bash, Rocket Flail, Whip Shot combo. It’d also lower the window that Brigitte and her teammates have to take advantage of a stunned enemy. With the change to the stun duration, it would either be the same as McCree’s Flashbang (0.7 seconds) or slightly higher (0.8 seconds).
Also, Brigitte’s passive ability, Inspire, heals herself and teammates for 16 health per second in a 20-meter radius when she’s hitting enemies with her Rocket Flail. The healing that her teammates get from this passive is fine, but the self-healing allows her to stay alive in any fight much more easily, making her hard to kill. Reducing her self-healing from Inspire to 13 health per second (a reduction by 3 health per second) wouldn’t make a huge difference, but with all the other nerfs that I suggested, it would make Brigitte have much less survivability and actually punish her for being out of position and not taking any care into playing relatively safely.
Lúcio:
Just like Ana, Lúcio is pretty well balanced. I have only one buff to suggest: Prevent enemies from getting Ultimate charge from damaging temporary shield health given by Lúcio’s Ultimate, Sound Barrier. This would make it consistent with Hammond’s Adaptive Shield ability (which gives Hammond temporary shield health that don’t grant Ultimate charge to enemies when damaged). Shields given by Lúcio’s Sound Barrier only last for six seconds, so I don’t think that enemies not getting Ultimate charge from damaging that shield health would make much of a difference. However, it’d still give Lúcio and his team a slight edge in Ultimate economy when Lúcio uses his Ultimate.
Doomfist is the only other hero in the game who gets or grants temporary shield health; however, Doomfist is different in that he gets temporary shields from doing any damage with any of his abilities thanks to his “The Best Defense…” passive ability, which is unlike Lúcio and Hammond, since Lúcio gets and grants temporary shields with an Ultimate and Hammond’s Adaptive Shield doesn’t grant his teammates any shield health, plus, its cooldown is long, being 15 seconds; therefore, that’s justified. Not to mention that Doomfist is already overpowered.
Mercy:
First of all, replace Resurrect with a different ability. I get that it’s an iconic ability and all, but it’s impossible to properly balance since it’s the only ability in the game that affects players who have died. This is why Mercy has never been balanced; she’s always been either underpowered (pre-rework and currently) or overpowered (right now, after all the nerfs to her). And need I mention the nerf to her healing? Her healing is so slow that she can’t even outheal Winston’s Tesla Cannon (AKA Tickle Gun); Mercy heals for 50 health per second now, while Winston’s Tesla Cannon’s damage is 60 damage per second.
I highly disagree with people who say that Resurrect as an Ultimate should come back. Instead, here is my idea:
Replace Resurrect with an ability called Miracle Worker.
Description of Miracle Worker:
Type: Single target buff
Range: 30 meters (same as that of both Guardian Angel and Zarya’s Projected Barrier)
Duration: 3 seconds (1 second longer than Zarya’s Projected Barrier) or until lethal damage is taken
Cooldown: 15 seconds (5 seconds longer than Zarya’s Projected Barrier)Effect 1: Buff duration expires, and the target is healed for 100 HP.
Effect 2: Prevent death when target takes damage that would normally kill them and sets the target’s health to 50 HP.Mercy places a spell on a targeted ally. This buff will trigger an effect after 3 seconds or when the target takes lethal damage.
If the buff expires with no lethal damage taken, the target is healed for 100 HP.
If the target takes lethal damage, death is prevented, and the target’s HP is set to 50 HP.
This idea is not mine. It’s by YouTuber Blame The Controller. (Source video.)
This is an ability that could save someone from death, regardless of the amount of damage taken, just like Zarya’s Projected Barrier. However, Mercy wouldn’t directly benefit from this like Zarya does, the cooldown would be longer, and the buff would also last a little longer as well. The target would also be healed. If the target takes damage that would normally kill them, they don’t die and is instead immediately healed for 50 HP. If they don’t take any damage that would kill them during the three-second period, their health is instead set to 50 HP. Keep in mind that this wording is intentional: Ana’s Biotic Grenade would be able to stop the healing of 100 health if the target takes no lethal damage, but it wouldn’t be able to stop the second effect where the target’s health is set to 50 HP (otherwise, they would immediately die).
Due to the long cooldown, Mercy players would have to prioritize when to use this ability, even more than Zarya players and Projected Barrier. She couldn’t just use it willy-nilly. If a target is saved from death, they are healed, but the amount that they are healed for is so low that they would need to be healed by Mercy or another healer afterwards; otherwise, they’d likely die right after the buff is over if the enemy is focusing them.
Replacing Resurrect would not be enough, however. Her healing output should be reverted to 60 healing per second, and Valkyrie should be updated to work with this hypothetical new ability. For example, during Valkyrie, Miracle Worker could heal for 200 health, instead of 100, when no lethal damage is taken, and the target’s health could be set to 100, instead of 50, if lethal damage is taken.
Alternatively, the healing numbers could remain the same, but the cooldown for Miracle Worker could be reset, or she could get another charge, just like what used to happen with Resurrect when she used Valkyrie.
Moira:
Moira is a fun support hero. She was the first healer in the game who could actually deal with Genji (a flanker who’s often a pain to healers) and Lúcio due to her long-range lock-on primary fire (with Brigitte being the second hero who can deal with Genji and Lúcio, primarily due to her stun ability, Shield Bash). Moira’s Fade is very useful and is unique because she actually disappears, causing confusion to enemies since they don’t know where she went.
Moira isn’t nearly as poorly balanced as Brigitte or Mercy is, but she could use a few buffs. Before we get into the balance changes, one major thing that I’ve wanted for Moira ever since she was released is better visuals for her healing. It’s difficult to see how far you can actually heal with Moira’s Biotic Grasp, and there’s no indicator as to whom you are healing at all. It’s hard to tell if your healing is actually working, despite the sound effect (which is hard to hear in the midst of battle due to its low volume, especially since it’s overshadowed by the sound of Moira’s healing that occurs regardless of whether your healing energy is actually hitting anyone). There’s also a tiny visual effect, but that is also hard to notice in the midst of battle; I never even knew it existed until someone pointed it out on the forums.
Reddit user okteej made a mock-up of what Moira’s healing visuals could look like. Here’s a link to a comparison of the game and the mock-up that I put together: https://i.imgur.com/tPNLXfh.png
(I wish I could show the image itself, or even just put a clickable link to it, but my trust level isn’t 3 yet, so I can’t do that. You’ll just have to copy and paste it.)
As you can see, the training bot that is being healed has a yellow outline around it. This isn’t a bad mock-up, but ideally, it should just have the yellow plus symbols floating around on the target’s body when they’re being healed that every other main healer has. Here’s what that looks like when playing as Mercy: https://i.imgur.com/QhIb4PN.png I don’t see a reason not to have that as Moira too. That just seems like an oversight on Blizzard’s part to me.
Visual change ideas aside, Moira definitely needs some actual buffs. First of all, let Moira heal through barriers again. That aspect of Moira was removed and classified as a bug fix. Since Moira is a close-range healer with the shortest healing range out of all the healers in the game, barriers can often be in the way. Letting her heal through barriers again wouldn’t change much, but it would help.
Lastly, I think that the healing output of her Ultimate, Coalescence, should be increased a bit—maybe to 150 or 155 healing per second (from 140).
I don’t think that Moira needs any major changes. Giving her healing more apparent visuals, letting her heal through barriers, and increasing the healing output of her Ultimate by a little bit would be perfect. She already has the best healing output in the entire game, so she doesn’t need any major buffs. Her damage output is the lowest in the game, at 50 damage per second, but that’s made up with her life-steal, mobility and escape ability (Fade), and her amazing Biotic Orb.
If you want my thoughts on Torbjörn and Pharah, who were both excluded from this thread since their balance changes are so drastic and so recent, I think that the newly reworked Torbjörn is a tonne of fun to play as, and despite the complaints about his Ultimate being “underpowered,” I think that it’s amazing. It can be used offensively or defensively, as opposed to the old Molten Core (and his old Turret).
I think that Overload will be nerfed in the near future, but other than that, I don’t think that the new Torbjörn is overpowered.
As for Pharah, there’s been a lot of debate as to whether her recent balance changes were a net nerf or a net buff. In my opinion, they were a net nerf since your average and overall damage as Pharah will be much lower now, unless 90% of your hits are direct hits, which is borderline impossible to pull off. I think that Pharah needs to be buffed, but I don’t know how or how much she needs to be buffed.
I’ll give it some time until we’re all familiar with the new Pharah and Torbjörn before we start asking for nerfs or buffs.