Notes on stream taken from https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2068555109
Strongest heroes for each role
Tanks Mobility doing very well. Winston and Ball for example. Winston mostly at higher ranks but also lower some. Dva doing very well on all ranks. Sigma doing well at higher ranks and Junkerqueen at lower ranks.
DPS Genji, Tracer, Pharah, Echo are the ones doing the best in this patch according to data. Higher play Tracer is REALLY doing well. Genji blade changes they are happy with. Didnât expect Pharah changes to work so well at first b/c people would have to adapt to her new kit.
Supports Lucio and Zen are doing very well. Moira is doing the third best of supports even at higher ranks.
People they expected to do better with the changes
Beam heroes like Zarya, Sym, Mei. They didnât really benefit from projectile changes as much and with higher HP are running out of ammo a lot etc.
Projectile effects on accuracy
Everyoneâs accuracy is up, obviously. Depends on kind of hero. Ashe and Cassidy up about 7% (raw increase not percentage increase, i.e. if their accuracy was 50% now it is 57%). Included Soldier in those benefiting the most.
Widowmaker accuracy up in some places 9% - 10%. Rank matters for how big the increase is. Plat, Diamond, Masters sees the most increase in accuracy with Widowmaker. Then it falls off a little bit at bronze and at GM. This difference is 1%-2% worse in gain. Then said she scales even more at the higher end like 3% more? They are looking at her since sheâs such an outlier and will lower her bullet size a bit.
Shotgun heroes up 2-4%. High spread hitscan up 3% to 5%. ex Wrecking Ball, Mauga
Beam character 2-3%
Surprise of the Patch
Moira. She had like a 35% increase in dmg but heroes have 25% more hp so she actually kills faster this patch than in season 8.
Some heroes are very volatile and fell off. Junkrat and Hog struggling.
They didnât think Ball would rise as far as he did.
Buffs? Next Patch?
Hotfix tomorrow hopefully. Looking to take some projectile sizes down and not looking to buff anything. Nerfing some chars health, Zen in particular. Dva pilot and mercy blaster too big of bullets.
Junkrat performing really bad, bring up a little bit
Tracer over performing
Illari needs help
Hanzo mentioned but nothing said on what he needs
DPS passive needs more data but they like it because it lets DPS feel their role as instigators. Needs visibility of passive applied. Looking first to add it to person affected by it. They tried indicators in testing but it became too cluttered and came on and off constantly. So they are thinking through it and applying it one layer at a time based on who needs to know the most.
Zen too survivable, reducing kick knockback too.
Who are the hardest heroes to balance
ones who were reworked because of being hard to balance like roadhog
Sombras, Doomfist, where ppl get up in arms about them quickly
Doomfist, Wrecking ball are hard to coordinate with
Widowmaker is hard to balance but they think sheâs in a pretty good spot right now (is it just me or did his face get dour saying this D: Maybe itâs frequently argued at the offices as it is here)
Reaper is hard and considering changes for at least shadowstep
Popularity
Support was the most popular at higher ranks but DPS is becoming more popular.
DPS is always popular at lower ranks.
Throughout OW2 there was a point where support and DPS would make an X on the graph. Support would increase and DPS would decrease in popularity.
In game stats for heroes?
Thatâs something they definitely want to do but donât know when theyâre going to do it. But seems to interpret it mostly as in game info on abilities. Ex F1 screen and just being a wiki like breakdown of abilities and damage fall offs and things like that if you hit another key to see more info.
Iâm surprised more people arenât talking about Echo because sheâs been destroying my matches. But Iâm also surprised Sojourn wasnât a talking point. Iâve been wrecking with her lately, so I figured she was the biggest DPS winner this patch. Interesting.
No surprise that beam heroes arenât great. They gained little from these changes since beams were already generous in size.
I think itâs wild Zen is on the chopping block, not for his healing output or any support he brings to the team, but because people are mad they canât solo him with 275hp. Thatâs pretty much the interest for Lucio as well.
Nothing is a surprise here in my experience. Well, Ball doing well is definitely not happening on console. I thought a Creeper was cheating because they somehow got death blossom every 30 seconds. I assume they just fed off our illiterate Ball player.
Pharah and Echo in this hitscan paradise is a MASSIVE surprise. They have been doing well in my lobbies, but I play Reaper. So⊠Like, obviously. I did not realize they were creaming everyone else too.
I tried to tell them. Nobody believes in Moira, but I did.
They have to be stupid. What? They thought beam heroes would do better? I mean⊠Maybe with all the Genji and Dva, but still. What?
They better. Or else.
My Reaper accuracy is up 4%.
This surprised them? I am sorry, they are ******* dumb *************!
And they are still going to rework him, undoubtedlyâŠ
Understatement of the century.
Okay, nevermind. The Lucio Mafia is real.
I swearâŠ
Okay, Blizzardâs âcommunicationâ is starting to piss me off.
Just⊠Why?
I hate them. Unless they just mean buffs. In which case, I love them.
Iâm feeling very vindicated by Moira doing well. Increasing the HP that everyone has makes burst less appealing which makes Moira do better from both halves of her kits, as she is no longer being bursted and can put her giant throughput to hit with the increase incoming damage as well as the DPS healing reduction ensuring she overheals less.
Thanks for writing all this out, itâs quite comprehensive.
It makes sense that Moiraâs damage went up that high after they raised it by 30%. She can live longer and deal more damage before needing to fade out. Maybe they should cut that back a bit rather than a full revert if itâs a problem. So far sheâs been solid in my games
I remember many opinions on Wrecking Ball were pessimistic leading up to the patch. I guess we underestimate the survivability and the effect that larger pellets would have for his guns.
I like Zenyattaâs health and think damage should come down instead but oh well. I guess they want him to be able to fight back or get kills or something instead rather than tanking hits.
No mention of a couple heroes. Iâm curious how theyâre performing.
Iâm guessing beam heroes like Symmetra will get an increase ammo count or reduced ammo consumption, or a slight damage increase? They gave one to Moiraâs beam, I could see one for her beam too. Maybe also to the alt attack to 120.
ok it makes sense now! i was wondering why healing with moira didnt feel any different then say ana where im like, dam feels like my healing is down or i really felt it on her. not a lot but i did notice a little
Yeah like think of it this way. Imagine the necessary throughput to keep someone alive is 50 HPS.
Any HPS youâre doing above 50 HPS is functionally wasted because you canât heal above 100%, which means the best healer for the job is one who can do at LEAST 50 HPS and brings the best non-healing utility outside of that.
Prior to S9, most healers could pretty easily meet that threshold so a healer that was doing 100 HPS would largely be useless because theyâve got double the healing that they actually need and that doesnât positively benefit their team nearly as much because burst damage is higher, so people are dying less to ânot enough healingâ and more to âthe healer could not react in time to save themâ (if at all it was possible to).
Now imagine they raise the throughput necessary to keep people alive to 70 HPS and functionally nerfed healing by 15%. To keep someone alive in S9 would require 80HPS in S8 numbers and the healers that can actually bring that are much, much more rarified which means that having healing be a large part of your power budget is significantly better.
And because everyoneâs HP is increased, burst damage has gone down which means that âdying because you didnât get enough healingâ is a much realer threat which benefits characters with that big sustained healing.
To put this into perspective, precision hitscan heroes like Cassidy and Ashe would tend to have around 40% accuracy. That would make it around a 17.5% increase in accuracy.
Widowmaker is a bit higher, closer to 45%. A 10% increase would be roughly a +22.2% increase.
Shotgun heroes are a special case, but Iâd say theyâre closer to 30% of pellets hitting. That would be an increase of roughly 6-13%.
Finally beam heroes averaged about 45% accuracy. So they would have recieved about a 4% increase.
Whatâs not mentioned here is increase to headshot accuracy, which I imagine is even more significant. Beam heroes really got the short end of the stick on this patch.
Moira actually has reduced survivability against hitscan (and current Zenyatta). One of her best tricks was to throw a heal orb 90 degrees to the left or right to bounce it off a wall while right clicking during a duel. 89 hp/s was hard to kill. Now, not so much, especially if her opponent is a dps.
I had to change my playstyle because people started hitting me. Now I have to fade quicker than before and take a more passive role to survive. Compared to a lot or other supports, though, she lost les survivability than they.
Also Moiraâs damage orb is fundamentally worse now. Right click + orb now has a higher ttk than season 8.
But Iâm also surprised Sojourn wasnât a talking point. Iâve been wrecking with her lately, so I figured she was the biggest DPS winner this patch. Interesting.
