[OW2] Balance Design Blueprint

General Discussion
1

Metro:
"The heroes are done, mostly. The new heroes that they want to add for Overwatch 2 are done. They have the single-player campaign completely done, basically. And they have the maps done for multiplayer. The thing they have not done is they did not consider reworking any heroes.”

If this leak is to believed, then OW2 is mostly ready to go. And what’s holding everything back is the copious amounts of Reworks they will need to make 5v5 work.

Here’s my best attempt at a simplified implementation of what’s needed to fast-track 5v5 release:

SUMMARY:

  • Tank 33% UltCharge feeding resistance
  • Tank 50% Headshot resistance
  • Tank 50% CC resistance passive expanded to almost all CC
  • Tank buffs
  • Hammond moved to the DPS role
  • Roadhog gets a “barrier-like” ability
  • Sniper nerfs
  • Mei/McCree lose their “StunKill” combo
  • Ranged AntiTank damage nerfs for McCree/Hanzo/Echo/Bastion
  • Bastion reworked
  • EMP/Hack interactions changed to favor Tanks more

━━━━━━━━ DAMAGE ━━━━━━━━━

Traversal (Role Passive)

  • 9% faster movement speed

WRECKING BALL

SOMBRA

MCCREE

HANZO

WIDOWMAKER

MEI

BASTION

ECHO

━━━━━━━━ TANK ━━━━━━━━━

Tanks Passive: Expanded

  • Ultimate charge given to the enemy team reduced by 33%
  • Critical damage headshot received reduced by 50%
  • Almost all CC reduced by 50% effect and duration
    • This includes Knockback, Stuns, Sleeps, Earthshatter, AntiHeal, Hack, EMP, Freeze
    • Exceptions being Grabs/Snares/Slows, i.e. Charge, Hook, Trap, Graviton, Gravitic Flux
  • Earthshatter is passively bodyblocked by Tanks
Comments: Allows tanks to hold objectives in a reduced barriers environment, where they are going to get hit by a lot of damage/abilities that barrier-spam would have otherwise blocked. Earthshatter bodyblocking is there to reduce “Rein or Lose” in the bottom 90% of ELOs.

ZARYA

D.VA

WINSTON

REINHARDT

ORISA

SIGMA

ROADHOG


20 Likes
2

Placeholder for alternative balancing, and optional balance paths (i.e. Remove AntiDive and Nerf Dive a lot)

3

Metro is not really a credible source for leaks since his source was very clearly someone working Blizzcon only and since Blizzcon went digital everything he leaks has been either wrong or obvious. For example he “leaked” OW2 would be out 4 months ago.

It is almost silly though to suggest that reworks would be the cause for a delay when most of them would be done by tuning a dial and very few would require actual asset development meaning it could be hammered out in a week and then iterated on for a month before going out into beta with frequent changes over 2-3 months.

17 Likes
4

Tanks are becoming more like Roadhog, not the other way around.

2 Likes
5

I could hunt around for the quote, but I remember them saying barrier tanks will become more like offtanks, and vice versa.

6

The plan for 5v5 is for tanks to become brawlers - less shield dependant, more capable of creating space by dealing damage.

1 Like
7

I view it as more “somewhere in-between current main-tanks and off-tanks”.

8

I sincerely hope that Amelie’s HP will not be lowered to 150. Not even for any SMG buff.
Widow is an almost stationary target with a very large head hit box.
Ashe, Mei and Genij (and possibly others) could oneshot Widow. Mei in particular would be dangerous because her icicle has no falloff damage and makes exactly 150 dmg as a headshot.
Ashe could also oneshot Widow within her range and Genij could also kill Widow with one action with all three Shuriken as headshot.

The game will be much faster and spread out due to the many flanking possibilities and the maps will be smaller than with 6v6, which means that Widow is already weakened from the start.
D.Va with Homing Rockets and Winston with the range Attack and Hammond as DPS or on it Widow would have strong Counters.
150 HP will practically delete Widow below the master level and that is definitely not the goal of the developers.

What do the current 150Hp heroes have:

  • Tracer is extremely agile, has a small hitbox and a recall.
  • D.Va is usually in her 'Mech and if not, she tries to get it back as soon as possible.

Widow would be an easier target than Baby D.Va due to the much larger hitbox.
D.Vas hand gun is probably as strong as Widow’s SMG.
7 shots per second with 14 dmg and projectile hitbox vs 10 shots per second 2 ° RNG spread with 15 dmg as a hit scan.

9

While not sure if it’s true, I really like the Orisa changes. But still hate Mei’s freeze removal (Even tho ult no longer getting countered by DM/Deflect/grasp is a good change).

10

Majority of this is stuff we already knew apart from the hero number changes

kinda sus

11

-The ball changes would 100% make him a broken DPS. He’s too tanky for a hyper-mobile DPS, and making him smaller makes him much more dangerous, in addition to having a lot more damage and still the same CC and disruption.

I still have no idea why you think Ball would suck as a tank–he’s the only tank who was actually pretty hard meta in OQ as a solo-tank. He offers a different playstyle, removing that because lower-level players will struggle with it is unfair to tank players.

Lower-level players will struggle with other tanks too, regardless of if you give Hog a deflect.

-Hog. A deflect + a heal will make him an unkillable ball of uselessness. His hook is still a threat, but so much of his defense is just straight “i’m defending myself” and not doing anything else for his team. He will play very, very boring, just a damage sponge that occaisonally makes picks. Canceling his ult is nice QOL, but as the only tank with no one else to protect him, his ult is always going to be cancelled / a total liability.

-Zarya: Change was a bit funky, but having a 250 hp barrier on a 9s cooldown isn’t going to somehow make her great at defending the team. You can blow through that barrier in no time flat. I think the real trick is lowering CD on barriers, and making more of them.

-D.va: Will be broken with these changes, DM all over the place. better everything… yeah.

-Winston: Nerfing his shield is going to make him weaker at diving when he’s already super reliant on a second dive tank to protect him. Sorry, but ranged damage isn’t going to help. Don’t nerf the shield.

-Orisa: Actually fine, as far as I can tell.

-Sig: Also fine, maybe he’ll need more HP to actually survive, and possibly removing ult-cancel from him, but we’ll see.

That’s my thoughts.

12

Great work! Love a lot of these new abilities. Especially the Bastion changes. I couldn’t think how to rework him for the life of me.

13

With some of the things other tanks are getting, I think Sigma is going to need a bigger buff than a modest +150 to his barrier. He’ll need his rock combo back to feel “brawly” and project threat and take space, otherwise the enemy tank will just walk all over him.

1 Like
14

Honestly with 1 tank I’m far more concerned about maps and how they exacerbate imbalance than hero balance/design.

4 Likes
15

It would be cool if you combined it with Hook. After he’s finished he’ll throw his hook.

16

He’d be great, for the top 2-5% of players.

But that’s not worth making him a “I’m throwing the game and reporting you because you picked Hammond” for +90% of the other ELOs.

Think of how bad most ELOs are at coordinating on EMPs.

Now think of something similar, without a large obvious visual, that needs to be reacted to by a majority of the team in less than 1.0sec.

That’s the kind of performance level needed by Hammond’s team to qualify as “main tanking”.

That basically does not exist outside the top 5% of teams.

Take Winston/D.va comps, a relatively lower teamplay comp, for example, here was Jeff’s opinion on that:

17

Please tell me they changed how to get “Simple Geometry”?

18

I like the bastion dash. Could leave everything else. It’s laughable that you think sigma can function as a solo tank as he is.

Also they metro thing isn’t leak at all, it’s just wishful thinking.

4 Likes
19

or hear me out let OW2 stay 6v6 so the game gets out early . they don’t have to do this much work and balance will be less of a problem as currently balance for 6v6 is really good.

6 Likes
20

^ This.

Easy, new retcon. Hanzo never passed Geometry and the achievement is now unobtainable.

A lot of achievements are gonna need rebalancing otherwise lol good luck hitting 6 players with Meteor Strike or Primal Rage.