First DPS passive was the faster base walking speed, which I thought was much more comparable to the tank and support passives, in that it’s something that impacted regular gameplay in a noticeable way. Second DPS passive was the ability to keep up to 30% ult charge when swapping heroes.
On the one hand, the new passive seems very useful, especially given that ult generation is overall slower in OW2. More flexibility to switch to a speedy hero to come back quickly without sacrificing so much ult economy. Easier to pick different heroes for different sections of the map.
But, it also seems much weaker to me than the tank and support passives. Those actually change how the gameplay feels and changes how everyone on the field interacts with those heroes. It’s no longer rewarding to spam at a tank who is being pocketed because you don’t get much ult charge from that (unless you’re Sojourn looking to charge up your rail shot). You have to now act quickly to convert on a support kill, or they’ll heal up passively. As a support, you don’t have to babysit your pair as much and have more freedom to use your resources aggressively.
By comparison, the hero-switch ult charge thing might not affect your gameplay at all during a match, if you don’t switch heroes. If you do, maybe you switch 2 or 3 times in a round max? I have seen players in Contenders making good use of the passive already, but I certainly couldn’t feel the impact of it in pubs.
Dunno, to me the small amount of preserved ult charge feels more like a QoL improvement and less like a powerful passive that helps to define the role. Like, what makes preserved ult charge a particularly DPS-y benefit? Is it just because there are a lot of DPS to choose from? Do DPS players actually swap heroes that much more than the tank and support players?
I’m not really sure what to give the DPS role instead, but to me it feels weird both that support and tank players are punished harder for swapping and that DPS don’t get a more impactful role passive.
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I think DPS having a relatively boring but useful passive is probably a good thing from a role popularity and queue times perspective.
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They could’ve done something more creative but given how dps already are the most open role in terms of gameplay and hero selection, they dont need much else
The dps passive is lame but honestly dps dont really need passives to begin with. Their strenght comes from their lethality
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I think it should have been a global passive that every character gets. Retaining some ult % when you switch in response to a counter should have been in the game for years now.
Personally I also didn’t notice it much either. I wasn’t forced to change heroes more than once per match. And it was usually just “get off gimmicky hero x, go generalist hero y”.
In its place, it should be something that is always ready to be useful rather than something that’s only situationally useful if you’re being “forced” to switch. Not because I think they need it, but because conceptually it’s just awkward to have a passive that’s just a catchup mechanic when you’re getting rolled. I don’t really share the viewpoint that they should have worse passives “because they’re a better role” either.
And while on the topic, I don’t think it’s smart to give every character within a role the same passive. It creates problems and restricts design choices. For example, mercy’s conflicts with her existing passive. Lucio’s gives him sustain issues that force them to further widen the disparity between outward and self healing. Characters like soldier, tracer, genji became problematic with the movespeed buff. But moreso, to me, the passives just feel bland on those characters as a result. The cast is too diverse for one-size-fits-all passives, don’t ya think?
I think it’s smarter to come up with a small handful of passives (perhaps 2 per role, or 3 if the role grows really big) to choose between, and then give those to the characters. Use them as ways to alleviate weaknesses that a given character in a role faces, but without completely fixing it in the way that an ability does. For example, “movement speed outside of combat.” I’ll let you imagine what subset of characters within what role might be best suited to that. 
3 Likes
I think the 30% ult charge should be a global passive and The DPS should get a passive more suited to their role.
~20% boost in damage when below 25% health would be good, but not too overpowered.
I prefer the ult swap to the speed.
Dont get me wrong the speed was impressive, but it made chasing supports down too easy.
The ult charge change is so benificial. I was rrally bad about being like “well I have 49% of Pharahs ult do I really wanna swap?” while being hard countered.
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That’s a cool idea, but given that healing usually comes from allies, I could imagine it being rather frustrating. What if you get just a smidge of Inspire healing that ends up killing you because it pushes you over that 25% boundary and you lose the damage boost you needed to win your duel?
Also seems like it could have a pretty degenerate interaction with Immortality Field.
The passive is really interesting and great, but could have the number tweaked a bit.
The idea of swapping to adapt in matches like Competitive ruleset is really appealing because some matches can be a back and fourth the counter emphasis. Even more that counters are more impactful.
While every hero already has passives, role passives should define the role itself. Having several heroes in there with diverse set of tools for killing I think is a adequate passive for the role. You have a role like swiss knife you pick the best pick for the right situation and not get too much punished for swapping on the fly.
Increases the odds of swapping heroes and overall creates diversity on gameplay. Conservative players would stick with mirror matches but the ones like Contenders and flex players would use it really well.
I would say up 40 or even 50% could be useful but that metric should be considered on value basis not exactly 50%, because 50% from one hero could represent like 30-40% of another and so on. That would create a bit of depth on player’s choice and how to use the resource properly. The 30% is cool, but to force folks to swap more up 40 or 50% could be more attractive.
I think it’s awful. Always found switching mid game to be the dumbest part of OW. There are no hard counters and the only hero that really forces swaps is Pharah.
People will usually start the match on characters that they enjoy, but as soon as things don’t go their way, they will just switch to low-effort high-reward meta picks like Soldier, Hog, Hanzo etc because they want the win so badly. This change will only make it worse.
They already removed one tank and most of the shields in OW2, that alone might as well be DPS’ passive. As it cranked up their ability to hit shots, do damage and be way more lethal in general.
I get that the devs wanted every role to get something so IMO the current one is fine. DPS is already the most popular role in game with the most hero choices. So at least now you’re not punished as much for needing to swap, even if as we all know most players don’t swap anyways. It’s still a decent enough passive for the team first players who counter pick.
Needs to be changed. This one is good, but if you get a DPS one trick? Its pointless.
I like it. It’s strong without being just some straight up throughput buff. The speed boost was always a horrible balance nightmare of an idea, but the new one makes the role as a whole a lot more flexible and let’s you not be punished for adapting to the shifting battlefield, which is really nice with the dps roster being as huge as it is.
It feels like the devs just felt the need to give the dps role passives and this is what they ended up with, I see no reason why tanks or supports shouldn’t have something like this too
Just FYI, the retained ultimate charge is actually ultimate charge points, not percentage, but then it’s capped at 30% for the hero you swap to. So, if you had 600 ult charge points and swap to Cass (ult cost 1680), it’ll be reduced to 504, which is 30% of Cass’s ult cost. However, if you swap to Tracer instead (ult cost 1260), it’ll be reduced to 378, which is 30% of Tracer’s ult cost. If you then change your mind and swap to Cass, you would keep the full 378 ult charge points, which would only be 22.5% of Cass’s ult.
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im in agreement that i think the dps passive at the moment is fine. i mean i didnt mind it if i played flanker type heroes like sombra or tracer but i didnt like it either as widowmaker lol since it was hard trying to track fast moving targets and snipe their heads
i would love the suggestion of more damage if the target is 25 percent health or less but i think thats a bit too strong especially burst heroes?
I like the speed buff better.
My wish list:
When using ultimate, hero will have damage reduce of 30% for 6 sec. (Then remove Cassidy ultimate damage reduction)
Okay, now let’s put that through the Nano Sojourn test.
:: Would you want that 30% DR added to any Ulting Damage hero on an enemy Nano’ed Sojourn?
If not, maybe it’s not a good idea.
Cass at least has a unique reason for wanting that DR on High Noon. But Genji? Hanzo getting Ironclad for so long as his Dragon is running? Or imagine Tracer having all of 1.5s of awkward DR as she throws her Pulse. Those… do not fit.
How about straightly reduce headshot damage by 10%?