Before I begin, let me remind everyone that I am just a Forum MVP and that the content of this post is of my opinion only. I have no knowledge to upcoming patch changes for Overwatch. I do NOT represent Blizzard.
While I do have full faith that Blizzard will be working to release balance updates soon, I myself decided to have a little fun with the workshop tools and try to create my own personal balance patch to address many of the issues I have seen reported on these forums, Reddit, pro community tweets and more. I myself have not been having fun playing the current metagame, though I have been enjoying the 2-2-2 ruleset. I think this comes down to a problem that is very similar to the Goats 3-3 comp, which is that individual heroes have enough defensive capabilities in the right combinations that make individual carry plays nearly impossible to execute. I also feel that the Tank and Support roles have very little carry potential due to the limited hero pool. With these observations in mind, I dove into the workshop and made some huge changes and a few small ones to over half of the hero pool. Most notably, I changed the roles of Doomfist and Mei to Tank, and Soldier: 76 and Sombra to Support. Yes really. Changing the roles of those heroes diversifies the hero pool and gives options in those roles to have a pinch bit more carry potential.
If you are interested in playing this experimental balance workshop, please import this code. Please note, the roles are restricted based on the slots each player occupies, use the Move tool in the Custom Game lobby to move each player to their desired positions.
X6ZKY
Here is the summary of balance changes:
Ashe
- Overall damage dealt increased by 12% (from 85 to 95 maximum damage from primary fire)
- Dynamite Cooldown increased by 50% (from 10 seconds to 15 seconds)
My thoughts: Ashe still remains in an awkward spot as she remains in a tough spot to compete against other straight shot hit scans like McCree and Widowmaker. This damage increase does not give her direct one-hit head-shot potential (unless she is boosted by Mercy or Orisa), but the overall damage increase will make her a lot more lethal at the medium range. Her Dynamite which counts as part of the damage increase now has an increased cooldown to compensate.
Doomfist
- Now selectable as a Tank
- Health increased to 400.
- Rocket Punch Knockback reduced by 50%
- Rocket Punch Damage reduced by 50%
- Removed the Meteor Strike Ultimate Ability.
- Added the Meteor Punch Ultimate Ability
- When the ultimate is activated, Doomfist gains 150% movement speed and begins to glow purple. All abilities except for Rocket Punch are disabled. When Rocket/Meteor Punch is fired any impact deals 1000 damage with a severe knockback to the target (assuming they survive).
http://www.mystgraphics.com/OverwatchForumImages/DoomfistMeteorPunch.mp4
My thoughts: The overall goal to this experimental rework, is to put Doomfist into the brawly off-tank role where he can engage first and still come out alive. The normal Rocket Punch damage is reduced as it always felt easy for Doomfist to get one-hit kills. However, the overall combo of his three normal abilities remains the same in order to make sure he maintains decent flow and rhythm in combat. Also, Meteor Strike makes a great escape tool and this would be extremely overpowered for Doomfist in the tank role. As such the Meteor Punch ultimate ability will better prove as a zoning or fight initiation tool
Hanzo
- Damage dealt reduced by 20% (fully charged arrows now hit for 100 damage instead of 125)
- Storm Arrows Quantity increased to 8 from 5.
My thoughts: Hanzo’s projectile never feels too good to get one-shot with especially from seemingly weird and underpowered shots at a distance. The damage reduction still gives him the chance to one-shot any hero at 200 HP or less but only if the arrow is 100% charged. To ensure Hanzo can still dealing enough consistent damage against broad targets like barriers, Storm Arrows are now increased to compensate.
Junkrat
- Ammunition clip size increased from 5 to 7.
My thoughts: This will serve as a direct increase in Junkrat’s overall DPS rate for him to handle barriers and clustered groups of enemies better.
Mei
- Now selectable as a Tank
- Health increased to 400.
- Blizzard Freeze Minimum is now increased by 35%
- Blizzard Freeze Rate increased by 50%
- Cryo-Freeze Cooldown Time increased by 60% (from 12 to 20 seconds)
- Ice-Wall Cooldown Time decreased by 25%
- Endothermic Blaster Freeze Rate decreased by 25%
My thoughts: Mei’s Ice Wall in the damage role now with the current 2-2-2 role lock gives teams a powerful and nearly impenetrable lockdown on key chokes such as Paris or Hanamura when combined with two shield tanks. By placing her in the tank role, she will better serve in the off-tank position. The cooldown on the Ice-Wall is reduced to give her more tanking capabilities, but the trade-off is that her allies cannot fire through the wall still so it shouldn’t still create long-term stalls on chokes. The primary fire freeze rate is reduced to prevent her from setting up targets too easily and quickly as she does now in the damage role, however, Blizzard now freezes any trapped targets in the radius nearly instantly to serve as a better setup ultimate. Finally, by increasing the Cryo-Freeze cooldown, she will not be able to easily stall certain objects near the end of a map and will need to depend on her healers more now with the increased HP.
Mercy
- Caduceus Staff Healing increased from 50 HPS to 55 HPS.
My thoughts: Because you all keep asking for it. That and Mercy does struggle to be viable for the main healer role in most team comps that don’t have a Pharah.
Moira
- Biotic Energy Maximum increased by 20%
- Biotic Energy Recharge Rate increased by 20%
- Biotic Orb Max Healing increased by 15%
- Damage Dealt from both Biotic Grasp and Biotic Orb reduced by 15%
- Fade Cooldown Time increased by 1 second.
My Thoughts: This is an overall balance change to reduce Moira’s dependency to constantly deal damage and make her a more effective healer.
Orisa
- Protective Barrier cooldown time increased from 9 seconds to 10 seconds
- Ultimate regeneration rate decreased by 5%
My thoughts: This small increase to the cooldown will help prevent Orisa and Sigma from stacking their barriers more effectively together to create a nearly effective protective front-line in many bunker lineups and make it more rewarding to focus down the shields. Also, the development team increased the Ultimate regeneration rate for Supercharger a few patches ago, despite the overall ultimate regeneration rate reduction in a recent patch, that ultimate does come up frequently in many bunker comps, so this workshop is reducing that charge rate a slight bit.
Pharah
- Concussive Blast Knockback increased by 50%
My thoughts: Pharah defends herself well against natural counters like Widow through the power of her own Concussive Blast, however, since the change to knockback momentum in a previous patch, her ability to punish heroes in vulnerable positions has diminished. This increase in her concussive blast knockback should help make her defend herself better.
Sigma
- After the Experimental Barrier is deployed, a 5-second cooldown starts to prevent the barrier from being immediately redeployed.
My thoughts: I think this is the key change needed to stop the double-barrier meta we are struggling with. This makes Sigma more of a main tank to compete with Orisa instead of complimenting her. While the option of combining the two will be possible for hard bunkers, Sigma will no longer just be able to simply replace the shield whenever he likes making it more possible to either burn the barrier down or work around it more easily.
Soldier: 76
- Now selectable as a Support
- Damage reduced by 5% (primary fire from 20 to 19)
- Ammunition clip size reduced by 20%
- Biotic Field cooldown time reduced by 35% (now 10 seconds)
- Biotic Field healing output increased by 10% (now 45 HPS)
- Helix Rockets cooldown time increased by 50% (now 12 seconds)
My thoughts: While Soldier: 76 has always been the reliable “jack-of-all-trades” damage hero, by increasing his Biotic field cooldown and output. He now serves as a reasonable off-support with some carry potential when the team needs a little more damage beyond the two standard damage roles.
Sombra
- Now selectable as a Support
- Hack cooldown time reduced by from 8 to 7 seconds.
- Ultimate regeneration rate decreased by 15%
- New Passive: Healing Torrent
- Any healing that Sombra receives will also heal all other allies by 10% of her healing received.
- This does not replace the Opportunist passive
My thoughts: Sombra is more of a utilitarian hero rather than direct damage, by having her serve in an off-support role, the overall team damage will less likely suffer, by decreasing her hack cooldowns, there will be more reason to hack health packs more. The healing passive also enables more team resistance when she is engaged in the team fight itself.
Symmetra
- Sentry Turret cooldown time reduced from 10 seconds to 7 seconds
My Thoughts: Symmetra’s primary fire is now back to where the developers want it, however, I feel her overall ability to attack from various fronts is Symmetra’s strong point and reducing her sentry turret cooldown will strengthen this part of her kit without being too broken.
I might be way off on some of these ideas but working on this was really fun and I have a better idea of understanding the struggles of finding good balance with this game. Again, we need a new balance patch to Overwatch really soon. While I don’t see this experimental workshop that I have created to be anything that the development team has planned, I do hope this gives insight on what I perceive the current balance of the game is and how I would do something about it. Cheers!
