When it came to how the playtests were run, were there any suggestions/rules on how/what players should play? It seemed like players swapped heroes a lot, and I wondered if they were just doing it to be curious or if there was a “try 3 heroes” or “swap every 5 minutes” recommendation to showcase what the different heroes were like.
ANDY-B - This is a great question! I reached out to Aimee, our T4 OWL Producer, for some insight:
We had two rounds of playtests for some players. 4/5 teams play tested with their own roster, without us providing any rules or suggestions. The players were encouraged to try any role or hero they’d like with no restriction. For the second round (when we were recording), we asked players to stick to their traditional OWL roles and rotate through heroes, so the community could see what a wide range of heroes would look like when played at the highest level. There weren’t any specific “try 3 heroes” rules, but we asked they generally switch around and try different comps.
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“Mercy’s going to be OP in OW2!” “Pocketing is going to be OP!”
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what was your thought process behind adding in the 25% healing reduction for the first four seconds (or however long it was), even if you aren’t keeping it in.
Were supports really that busted in play tests that you tried without it? If so, can you give us some reasonable insight on how you are planning to solve this issue in a way that wouldn’t be a hard nerf to all support heroes?
JOSH - What we’ve found from our internal playtesting is that generally support heroes have become the most impactful role by a wide margin with overall less incoming damage on the field and with the reduction of a tank, fewer high health pool targets to try and keep up. This led to the average time to kill becoming much higher and many fights stalling out longer than we’d like. Not only healing output but utilities like Mercy Resurrect, Ana Sleep Dart/Biotic Grenade, Zenyatta Discord, etc are even more impactful in a 5v5 world.
The general approach was to reduce healing output by some amount, but we don’t really know what that amount is on an individual level. A little peak behind the scenes for game dev: The blanket passive heal reduction with a new concept of being “in-combat” is a shortcut for us as designers to find an approximate value of what it should be changed by since to adjust the value from playtest to playtest, we only have to change that one number rather than edit every healing script value individually. The reason for the “in-combat” rule was mainly because we already know from earlier tuning in Overwatch’s history that when healing is too low (Mercy/Zen/Lucio especially), it’s annoying to try and heal large health pool tanks between fights. We’ve considered adding a bonus heal multiplier to the Tank role passive, but it also contributes to the issue of fights stalling out as mentioned above. It could still happen in some form though.
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Actually they mentioned Mercy and rez too but I omitted it - thanks for the reminder.
I added it in.
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Are you guys exhausted by all the rampant speculation based on an unfinished preview
Are you guys exhausted by all the rampant speculation based on an unfinished preview
ANDY-B - Real talk: not even a little bit.
Speculation and theorycrafting is the result of an audience that cares deeply about the game we’re making. We’re stoked to see all of you discussing the gameplay from the OWL playtests.
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Do the role passives really make sense from a balance point of view, or are they causing issues - Not just with ensuring unique hero identity but also general game balance?
e.g. 1 I have always thought that one of the things that was a balance point in the support roster was that Mercy and Zen have a passive self heal but can’t heal themselves under fire. Now the supports that are able to heal themselves while under fire are additionally getting a passive self heal. Is this something you have considered? Should Mercy and Zen also get a way to heal themselves while under fire?
e.g. 2 Does it really make sense for a hero that slows you down (Mei) to also passively move faster than you? What about heroes that already moved faster? Are they now moving too fast?
GEOFF - So far the role passives have been great, and helped quite a bit with both balance and hero design, in general.
have always thought that one of the things that was a balance point in the support roster was that Mercy and Zen have a passive self heal but can’t heal themselves under fire. Now the supports that are able to heal themselves while under fire are additionally getting a passive self heal. Is this something you have considered? Should Mercy and Zen also get a way to heal themselves while under fire?
Yep, this is something that we talked about quite a bit when working on these passives. We still want Mercy and Zen to be better at healing themselves, but we’re just raising the minimum self-healing bar from zero to “some small amount”. As we’re designing support heroes, this is a constant question we struggled with in the past and this role passive allows us more flexibility in designing future heroes.
Does it really make sense for a hero that slows you down (Mei) to also passively move faster than you? What about heroes that already moved faster? Are they now moving too fast?
Currently the movement bonus that dps heroes get is very small, but can still be impactful in these kinds of situations you mentioned. Overwatch is a game that has an insane amount of mobility, so this change is somewhat of a drop in the bucket compared to what heroes can do with their abilities (especially for a hero like Mei, who has no other significant mobility options). We’re still very much in testing on these so we’ll see what sticks and what needs to be changed or removed.
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ok…i think i caught up on all the responses…not sure if its over or not…
guess now i can actually read them… 
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Thanks yall for posting this stuff, I’m really glad they’re being more open about the things they’re testing and how certain stuffis going.
Also glad they’re addressing the whole “Support is a dead role in OW2!!!” fear mongering.
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Was this announced anywhere beforehand?
I would have really liked to ask some questions as well 
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probably on the reddit, as for why, idky
Andy B also posted some stuff - I’m sure he’ll be back here at some point.
Only on reddit as far as I know. Andy probably could’ve made a post here to let the forums know, but ah well.
“Speculation and theorycrafting is the result of an audience that cares deeply about the game we’re making. We’re stoked to see all of you discussing the gameplay from the OWL playtests.”
This is a good thumb in the eye to all the people screaming about how stupid we all are for drawing conclusions from what’s been shown.
It’s nice to get info not filtered thru a sad esport or internet personality.
But I’m pretty sure they’re wrong about everything. There’s no way supports maintain impact in a hyper-dps environment, with reduced heals and reduced utility. It just doesn’t make sense. I can only assume their play testers are awful at the game.
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Thanks for the heads up, I replied to the post, about “Ranged Tankbusters” but it looks Josh already replied to a similar question.
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i can tell you i had zero clue and i try to actually be on top of things…(but that doesnt mean they didnt)
Note - ive been looking a bit once i learned about and i cant find any announcements anywhere…oh well…here we are anyway
Well good thing most of us are awful too.
Remember that the healing reduction change was added BECAUSE of the impact of supports.
What we saw would not have been a reflection of this but a result of this.
The theory goes that tanks do more damage than they mitigate so the next impact is that there is less damage done to each hero in 5v5 and more healing done to each hero.
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Not the Devs arguing that their playtests are more valid when it comes to balance than the Pro’s playtests 
Y’all thought Moth Mercy was balanced for live servers, release Brig was balance, Sig and Bap were balanced. Y’all always are so stubborn and don’t listen to the pros until it’s been 3 months too late. I’m tired of it
If the Pros say Zarya and Mercy are trash, I’m gonna believe them.
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Yeah they say that, but I’m literally just not buying it. It doesn’t track. I’m certain that when it hits live supports are gonna feel inconsequential.
Happy to be proven wrong though. Give me a reason to play your game, blizzard.
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you can care and still have a dead wrong opinion about it…theyre not mutually exclusive 
love/passion/caring for something doesnt always make things ok
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Sorry mate - it’s not finished. Not asking you to continue… just saying…
That’s fair enough. As you can tell, I really don’t know where my ELO sits between the pros and the internal playtesters so I’m just going to sit tight.
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