In case you’re not aware, in season 9 of overwatch 2 they made lots of core changes to the game to try and make it feel better and fix issues that had been plaguing the game of too much sustain making burst damage too strong. They attempted this by:
Buffing healthpools by 50/25 for dps and support depending on the type of hero and usually around 75 for tanks
Buffing projectile sizes globally so shots are easier to hit
Adding the dps passive (30% healing reduction, now made global as of the recent season)
Additional tweaks like the global passive healing and other role passives (now exclusive to subroles)
Whilst I think these changes seemed good on paper they ruined a lot of breakpoints making certain heroes feel a lot worse even now - lots of heroes did get buffs to address these changes like rein and winston for example but others didn’t or only got it for part of their kit
For example doom got his punch damage buffed to fit the new healthpools but his primary fire and slam remained at the same damage which has made him feel a lot worse as all his power is in punch
These changes also lowered the skill floor and ceiling of lots of characters, as shots are easier to hit but do less damage, taking away the reward of people who had good aim. There’s been a lot of hate around hitscans and I think this is mostly because they get so much value from these changes, further helped by the fact they usually have 250 health (cass, soldier, ashe) whilst other heroes have 225 whilst before they were all at a flat 200. Reverting s9 changes would let the higher skilled players get more value and the lower skilled players less
None of these changes were reverted for the 6v6 mode either which makes it feel a lot worse than ow1 6v6
Overall, I think these changes whilst they had a good idea in mind were pretty poorly executed and lowered skill expression and certain heroes whilst also lowering skill floor. I like the heal reduction passive (and now the fact it’s been made global) as well as passive healing but other than those I think the game would be much better balance wise if these changes were reverted, keeping the global healing and healing reduction passives (but maybe toning down the latter just a bit). Let me know what you all think as I feel most people kinda forgot about them
I am personally indifferent to keeping it or not. But I do think they accomplished what they wanted. Shots being more consistent in a game without movement acceleration, and making burst dmg less effective. Sure, it’s still king, but changing breakpoints with the bigger health pools made it a bit less impactful, while also toning down the insane amount of healing the game has prior to the dps passive.
The point was to change the breakpoints, to increase the ttk. Had they just buffed all the values to be the same as before the health increase; then there was no point in increasing it in the first place. The higher ttk worked for some heroes and not others. Like Mei taking 4 shots to kill was too much, so they made her 3 again. Heroes like Ashe and cree being 4 shots was fine.
S9 the player base was bifurcated into those who are given a good experience and those who are used as cannon fodder. If the post-layoff devs are looking for malicious code, they should narrow it down to the changes that happened S9.
I’d like to point to the most horrible designs in OW are any characters which feel incredibly feast or famine.
Roadhog being a threat with hook to not being a threat without hook.
Pharah being heavily countered by hitscan, but heavily countering projectile heroes.
Ana destroying brawly tanks due to bionade and there being nothing (until kiriko) to counter it.
Widowmaker hitting headshots vs not hitting anything. A dominating or worthless hero.
Hammond being impossible to chase due to highest mobility in the game versus feeling extremely exploitable with or without CC.
Season 9 narrowed the feast or famine situations.
Increased global damage output by increased size resulting in lest feast or famine situations where players are hitting a higher portion of their shots as a baseline across the entire playerbase.
Increased global health to smooth out burst kills in the game requiring more follow-up to get a deserved kill.
Cutting healing output as a percentage to thwart high healing burst situations making a character go from unkillable to killable.
The HP increase in particular was very devastating to lower skill players because oneshot disappeared just about overnight including most two-tap combos.
What separates good and bad players is consistency. Prior to S9 there were a LOT of ways to play the ‘cheap’ heroes for easy kills. One of them is Junkrat where if you get any direct hit, you pretty much had an easy kill confirm off mine directly afterwards.
Now, Mine + direct hit equals only 245hp, not enough to kill any 250hp hero without follow-up. The bad players will not land that follow-up 3rd shot while the better players will. Bad players are no longer rewarded with easy burst kills as much compared to before S9.
Instead what lower tier players are rewarded for is simply more consistent damage without the immediate kills. The best players will still be better because they have the consistency to follow-thru.
The other thing. The moment Kiriko goes from a 2HKO (with headshots) to a mandatory 3HKO with headshots AND bodyshot, Kiriko complaining evaporated pretty quickly. Including Illari when she could no longer 2HKO on headshots anymore.
The game feels better when players are not feeling like they are instantly deleted and instead ground down a little more consistently. They were given a chance to recover or counter and failed by having a little more time to survive.
I’ll say this again and again, the entirety of season 9 was the 2nd biggest mistake they ever made. The 1st was dumpstering OW1’s pristine game engine for this bug-ridden slop that gets worse every patch.