OW2 Balance Team new Q&A

General Discussion
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See Prett’s link below to see for yourself on Reddit (I can’t post links).

See Baja’s posts for direct quotes free from my misinterpretation/bias :relaxed:

Some quick bullets on what the balance team said:

  • Zarya is actually seen to be too strong as opposed to weak (opposite feedback from the pros) in their internal play tests as she is always high charge.
  • Zen/Ana/Mercy seen to be very strong because of offensive capabilities and rez in 5v5
  • Supports seen to be safer without a second tank with the exception of Sombra or snipers (although good cover use can counter this)
  • Sombra suggested to be OP currently and has already been nerfed. In the hands of pros, she was far better than their internal playtests.
  • Bastion has been buffed since the play test (which they were planning to do anyway) as he is seen to be underpowered
  • Doom as a tank (still just an experiment) would likely have less damage and an extra defensive ability, keeping his cc. They are testing rocket punch knocking back multiple people into walls!
  • They targeted having less ults with the tank ultimate generation reduction and 5v5 implicitly generating less ult charge.
  • In internal play tests supports were the most impactful role by a wide margin. The in-combat healing reduction rules is just a balancing short cut for the balance team so they can just turn a single number from play test to play test to find the right amount of healing that should be in the game rather than tuning each hero individually
  • Current balancing is taking into account unreleased and reworked heroes
  • New heroes will be discussed closer to launch
  • Tanks still being tweaked to find the right power level. All changes might have a different impact when it gets to the pro level so all needs to be seen how it holds up.
  • discord and duplicate always being on a tank is being looked at
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I can try to summarize….give me a sec

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Do you foresee any heroes changing roles or would you like to keep everyone where they are?

GEOFF - This is something we’ve been experimenting with, and talking a lot about. No hero has moved roles yet though, but we’ve started testing Doomfist as a tank (as previously mentioned)

Doomfist’s kit is full of crowd control effects and mobility, which makes it difficult to tune and balance him as a DPS in OW2. As a Tank though, he can keep those key properties to his kit since those can fit nicely into a Tank role (mostly the crowd control stuff).

Of course this means he’ll be losing some damage and gaining some defenses. This is still being tested and iterated on, so I dont have a ton of details on it yet as it is still in the early stages. Some of the early feedback so far is that he’s not really feeling like a tank without having at least one active defensive button (his main defenses are passive atm), so thats something we’ll probably try next.

rip doom rollouts.im not sure how doomfist can really work as a tank especially with the game being 5v5 now.

if it was still 6v6 and he was a off tank i can kinda see it? my guess is that hes going to use his CC to push enemies into bad positons or something.

i just hope i can still do rollouts and stuff because that is what made doomfist challenging and very fun to play.

is there any hints you can give on how doom as a tank is going to work? everyone in the doom community is super anxious and curious on what doomfist is going to be in ow2.

if he doesnt work as a tank in ow2 is he going to remain as a DPS with the same kit?

if it was still 6v6 and he was a off tank i can kinda see it? my guess is that hes going to use his CC to push enemies into bad positons or something.

GEOFF - Yep, this can still be a big part of his kit. For example, one thing we’re testing is for Rocket Punch to create an area knockback around a target he impacts, creating a new ability to knock multiple enemies away (or into walls!).

i just hope i can still do rollouts and stuff because that is what made doomfist challenging and very fun to play.

Doomfist’s high mobility is a huge part of his kit and that’s not going to change. In fact, its part of what makes him potentially a good tank, being able to initiate fights for your team.

if he doesnt work as a tank in ow2 is he going to remain as a DPS with the same kit?

This is tricky tbh. In a world where almost all crowd control has been removed from non-tanks, Doomfist would be a huge outlier. Maybe there is a world where he can still exist as a DPS with less displacement and crowd control effects, but it would certainly be a challenge to make that work.

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Shocker that the active shields don’t help him stay alive lmao

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Were ultimate generation rates lower than in the live game? It felt like there were less ults in general, although this might just be due to 1 less player and the 25% less ult charge from tanks.

GEOFF - The biggest change here is the less ult gain from tanks. We haven’t actually modified and ultimate costs outside of this change (and the implicit 5v5 changes, obviously).

Having ults happen less often was something we were targeting early on, and this tank change largely accomplished this for us by itself. This is something thats super easy to iterate on though, and im sure we’ll be tweaking it throughout the game’s development/beta etc.

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Many pros involved in the matches described Zarya as particularly weak in the tank lineup. Some even suggested it felt like she was nerfed with the bubble cooldowns.

Do you have plans to adjust/rework her based on that feedback?

JOSH - This is an interesting one we’re keeping an eye on since internally the resounding feedback has been that Zarya is far in the other direction and many think she is too strong and constantly high energy with being able to bubble herself twice.

There’s a couple details that get overlooked with this new shared cooldown set-up in that the duration of the barriers have been extended slightly (we started at 3 seconds and its gone down to 2.5) and the cooldown timer starts ticking immediately, unlike on live where the barrier has to be destroyed or time out first. So if the barrier isn’t broken your cooldown is coming up quicker than on live by some amount. The current internal cooldown is 9 seconds and it’s easy to tune that lower if she isn’t performing well, but at some point it breaks down and too many of those barriers quickly gets annoying to try play against.

The flexibility to barrier yourself twice in succession or an ally twice is also powerful utility in itself. Using both barriers at exactly the same time is the worst case scenario for cooldown management but sometimes necessary. Part of the interesting gameplay can be making that choice.

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What is your philosophy on how “tank-buster” heroes (such as Reaper, Echo, Hanzo, and more) should be approached in OW2? Is the role of tankbuster obsolete when there is only one tank?

JOSH - I think it’s important to have a concept of these high damage output heroes, which each have their own limitations and tradeoffs, though not necessarily to fulfill the role of specifically taking out tanks and barriers. This is especially true with the format change to one tank per team in 5v5, because it can give players more options to respond to a variety of challenges they may be trying to overcome in game (more depth of team comps can lead to deeper gameplay). We have taken some tuning steps to make abilities like Storm Arrows and Echo’s beam less lethal against tanks but still keep them powerful in other situations.

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I don’t think we can compare Doom as a DPS in 6v6 to Doom in 5v5 as a solo tank. He will definitely need more low risk survivability.

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So far, broadly speaking, we’ve found that supports are often more safe in a 5v5 environment because there is one less tank trying to dive and take them out. There are instances where this isn’t true, like Sombra and her rework trying to assassinate them, or being sniped easier without a lot of barriers to hide behind, etc. In those situations sometimes its a matter of just trying to position more carefully

So yeah, on that new push map with the long sightlines and little cover, just don’t stand where the snipers can see you :stuck_out_tongue:

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The change to 5v5 will of course require hero changes across the board, but I’m primarily interested as to how you’re going to be looking at supports. With them having both one less tank to heal, and one less tank to protect them, how are you tweaking the supports for the new game, in broad strokes?

GEOFF - So far, broadly speaking, we’ve found that supports are often more safe in a 5v5 environment because there is one less tank trying to dive and take them out. There are instances where this isn’t true, like Sombra and her rework trying to assassinate them, or being sniped easier without a lot of barriers to hide behind, etc. In those situations sometimes its a matter of just trying to position more carefully or maybe Sombra just being bit too OP right now :stuck_out_tongue:

Initially we were worried that supports without mobility to escape might be weak in this environment, but so far we’ve actually seen Zen/Ana being very strong instead of weak, because of the nature of their offensive capabilities in a 5v5 environment.

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It’s weird cause they obviously don’t know what they want him to be able to do.
Talking about taking away damage yet mentioning how doom literally can’t keep himself alive as a tank is just weird. Either give him loads of survivability or let him keep his damage.

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How did the Bastion rework perform in these play tests compared to your expectations?

GEOFF - Its funny, I actually tried to throw him some buffs right before the build went out but I missed the deadline slightly.

He has been pretty tricky to tune with his rework, but it was great to see him playtested by these great players. I feel like his new design is solid, its really just a matter of getting his numbers into a good place now. Since this playtest, we’ve buffed him in a number of ways: He moves faster in sentry mode, his ult starts dropping faster (though the projectile moves slower so you can see it a bit more), his recon fire rate has been increase, and other buffs.

The tricky thing though, is when playing him it can feel like you still get thrashed pretty hard because he is such a large hero, he is very easy to target and hit with everything (especially when he gets discorded, etc). There is a lot we can tweak with that as well though, such as increasing his passive (Ironclad) to offer more protection while transformed. We also have new tuning knobs to help control his Sentry mode, since it now has a cooldown and duration associated with it.

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I read it as they know what they want tanks to do and if he is going to be a tank, he needs to fit that.

They can’t let him keep his damage and stay the same survivability because he would die instantly every time.

They are taking the obvious choice in buffing his survivability.

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Honestly… the 5v1 with 1 tank is stupid

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What’s he gonna do though as a tank? He needs to be an actual threat instead of some occasional fisting cc. I’m very worried about the rework for him, if it’s bad I probably won’t be playing the game.

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Well let’s see lol. I don’t know and they won’t tell us yet. It’s not even clear he will be a tank yet.

Let’s calm down until we know more.

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Oh well, here’s hoping they still buff Zarya in some way and give us tank Mei.

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What is your planned direction for the design/balance of support heroes for making sure they are still impactful? I’m sure you already know, but there’s been a lot of people worried, myself included about the direction based on the balance changes we see in the videos.

It seems like you want to move away from healing considering the 25% healing reduction, but you also nerfed the utility with the removal of brig’s stun and cooldown increase on Ana’s sleep dart. Some people have brought up that you maybe want supports to frag more but why play a support over a dps at that point? It’s just very confusing what you are trying to so.

Also, is Brig’s shield bash just a place holder for now or is the increased damage with no other effect the final product?

What is your planned direction for the design/balance of support heroes for making sure they are still impactful?*

GEOFF - Even in this 5v5 environment, Supports are still feeling very impactful. In many ways, they are actually more impactful than in OW1 currently. In 5v5, there is less damage going around to both teams, coupled with the ability to focus heavily onto your single tank it becomes actually easier for both teams to sustain longer fights.

Which leads directly into the next question

It seems like you want to move away from healing considering the 25% healing reduction, but you also nerfed the utility with the removal of brig’s stun and cooldown increase on Ana’s sleep dart. Some people have brought up that you maybe want supports to frag more but why play a support over a dps at that point? It’s just very confusing what you are trying to so.

Theres 2 parts to this question so let me break it down.

  • The healing reduction was an attempt at combating the first question/answer here, where sometimes fights can sustain for too long and it felt like it was too hard to confirm kills with 1 less player per team dealing damage. That, and we were trying to make “poke” damage be more meaningful. Right now, even in OW1, sometimes it can feel like shooting an enemy is doing nothing but feeding your enemy supports ultimate charge. That said we already backed out of this specific change internally, but we still have similar goals and we’re looking at other iterations.

  • The utility nerfs to Brig’s stun and Ana’s sleep dart are more a response to trying to chill out crowd control effects from the game, and less about having them frag more. Ana’s sleep dart is extremely strong but its also a great playmaking tool and leads to some sweet highlights and counterplay opportunities (I’ve seen more videos of clutch sleeps on a flying Pharah or Genji ult online than maybe any other support highlight). So its not likely that we’ll remove Ana’s sleep dart, but other non-tank CC’s we’ve been taking a hard look at and trying to change them to remove the CC component and buff it in other ways, which leads to the next question:

Also, is Brig’s shield bash just a place holder for now or is the increased damage with no other effect the final product?

I think it wasn’t super clear all the changes that Brig’s shield bash has gone through from just the video. Some notes on how it has changed

  • It lost it’s Stun (that much was clear)

  • It can go through barriers once again (this was removed a while ago in a balance patch to try to address concerns with Brig vs. Rein/Orisa etc)

  • It deals more damage, once again. This damage was all but removed in a previous balance patch to try to reduce her stun combos, but now it can retain this damage.

  • It’s damage now triggers Inspire. Initially I actually thought this might feel like a minor change but upon playtesting I found this to be extremely helpful. You can shield bash enemies to trigger inspire and move to safety without ever lowering your shield.

  • It travels much further, almost twice as far. It is much more useful as a mobility tool in this version.

  • It has a much reduced cooldown. Its not really important how much of a cooldown reduction it has right now, as it is likely to change as we iterate on the balance of the game, but what is important is that having a reduced cooldown combined with the ability to travel much further makes her generally a lot more mobile so she can escape or be aggressive a lot more easily as needed.

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Thanks for doing this again!

I’m not a very competitive player, but I’m curious to know if the playtests included any changes that were directly made in consideration of OW2’s new heroes and how they might affect PVP? For instance, altering one of the current heroes in a way that compensates for a new counter they might have, etc. (no details of course, more of a yes or no question!)

JOSH - I can’t give out any specific details, but the answer is yes! There aren’t too many instances of this but also in some cases, there are important balancing factors which haven’t been changed yet in those playtests builds because of new mechanics and interactions with unreleased or reworked heroes.

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