Storm Arrow replacement idea for 5v5: Spirit Arrow

General Discussion
1

As a Hanzo player, I have never liked the addition of Storm Arrow as it feels very “un-hanzo-like” with its careless rapid-fire nature. It’s not fun to use and it’s not fun to be on the receiving end either. At least with Scatter Arrow, I was having fun, now it’s just boring for everyone. Both of these arrows originally served the purpose of dealing with shields, either by bouncing around them or by flat out destroying them. However, both ended up becoming “tank busting” abilities, which many people hate and will be even more troublesome for 5v5 in Overwatch 2. So to keep to this theme, without being a tank killer, I propose the following replacement ability:

Name: Spirit Arrow

Description: Hanzo’s next arrow becomes a spirit arrow that pierces through enemies, shields and up to 1 wall. It has a charge-up and projectile physics like any other arrow but does reduced damage and has a charge-up animation that is visible to enemies (possibly visible through walls too). Think of it as a fire strike with the speed and small hitbox of an arrow, but can also go through one wall. It is limited to piercing one wall to prevent you shooting it from spawn.

Damage: up to 75 when fully charged (or 150 for a headshot). Thus, it cannot fully one-shot anyone behind walls (except Tracer with a headshot)

Cooldown: 10 seconds

For comparison, Reinhardt’s fire strike always does 100 damage, has a much larger hitbox, a 6 second cooldown and a shorter cast time. However, fire strike is a slower projectile and cannot headshot.

Pros:

  • Removes his controversial “tank buster” ability, which is important going into 5v5 for Overwatch 2.
  • It provides a better opportunity to make skilful and unique plays, rather than pure spam
  • It ties in with his kit better and feels more “Hanzo-like” due to the charge-up time
  • Since it does less damage than a regular arrow, it is not just something can you use every time it comes off cooldown

Cons:

  • Makes him even more susceptible to being dived by heroes like Doomfist and reduces overall damage output (this could be a benefit depending on your POV)
  • It may be a bit confusing to get hit through a wall, so maybe they could add a visual or audio cue that can be seen or heard through walls

What do you think?

7 Likes
2

I thought the whole point of storm arrows was to give him something to defend himself against dive (I mean, not like his leap is very long) alongside something to help better secure kills with.
like wouldn’t taking it away basically mean hanzo becomes really (like really) easy to dive?

2 Likes
3

“Suggests an even moring boring ability.”

This can’t be from a Hanzo main.

2 Likes
4

I think Hanzo has enough power in his regular arrows.

what Hanzo need is the ability to deploy ziplines for his teammates.

I want to see Hog ride a zipline, so majestic!

5

It is, they have almost 200 hours in him in quick play alone

But I also agree spirit arrow sounds like a pretty boring and equally unfun tool to use, that also has very basic and extremely niche usage

Additionally the devs have tested something similar to this already and this is what they had to say about it, sadly it was on the old forums so I cant direct link it, but there were news articles that covered and copied the response

““This was pretty fun as a ‘snipey’ arrow that you could occasionally take a super long-ranged shot at an enemy Widow, Pharah, or just a support in their back lines,” Goodman said. “Ultimately though, it was pretty frustrating to be feeling safe behind a barrier and get headshot through it and die.””

All in all i agree both with their reasoning about how it would feel to play against and would probably even feel worse to play against since this version could also go through a wall, and i also feel like it would feel rather bad to use as the hanzo player outside of some funky situations

1 Like
6

Oh my god no… just, no… no no no…

But its way past time SA left the building, I agree.

7

Nope, I’ve heard from a lot of Hanzo players that they dislike storm arrows. As for me, I personally enoy them. I like rapid fire characters.

8

Easiest way to fix tank busting from that ability is make it 3 shots only or make it so you can’t headshot.

9

If they want to keep the fan the bow, make it work like fan the hammer. You shoot all 5 arrows as soon as you press E and can’t hold them to deal with a new target a few seconds later.

3 Likes
10

Not a fan of having an arrow that either goes though a wall or shields.

Personally I think hanzo is kinda a BS hero in overwatch, along with Widow in that they can instakill alot of the cast from range with no counterplay apart from other very long range heroes. Couple that with some badly designed areas in maps with very long sightlines and you have a recipe for no fun for anyone who’s not said snipers.

I wasn’t a fan of the sniper in TF2 either, until he got the huntsman bow which I loved, it was similar to hanzo in that you could learn to easily nail lower powered headshots and kill characters, but the arrows not being as fast as hanzo made him more mid ranged and had to get in the fight more. (Was still maybe slightly broken tho) Also the TF2 sniper was fragile, didn’t have mobility like hanzo or a powerful close range ability like storm arrow. Imo a character that powerful at range should be weak up close or he has no downsides.

I would lower his fire rate and arrow speed a bit, give him a dagger he can use on a cooldown so he either dodges away or gets the target low with an arrow shot and has to commit to kill with the dagger.

11

Hanzo is more of a mid range hero. It not common to see Hanzo being way in the back in Widow territory and sniping shots from across the map.

More often than not Hanzo is within 40 meters of a fight, which does not mean you need to go Widow to counter him.

12

His jump is big enough to escape Winston range, and he can still easily 1v1 any dive heroes. If he gets group dived, then he’ll need some support, but that’s how dive is supposed to work anyway.

1 Like
13

Pretty sure Jeff said it was terribly annoying and it does sound terribly annoying lol

Although if someone played Hanzo a lot, he would know that nowadays Storm Arrows became a total trash and useless ability and needs to be replaced with something better. Remove storm arrows completely and instead add 2nd dash. Or make his minimal arrow damage 75. Or give him 2.5x headshots

It not common to see Hanzo being way in the back in Widow territory and sniping shots from across the map.

Common in bronze maybe :smiley:

I thought the whole point of storm arrows was to give him something to defend himself against dive

It was more related to ‘No Hanzo please’.
They just buffed him cause he was a meme-level throwing hero and removed tank-one-shotting ability cause it was annoying for both Hanzo cause it was a bit random and victims cause they dont like being killed :smiley:

14

It is. The people who complain about storm arrow are usually the same people who don’t understand why he has it in the first place. Hanzo’s a glass cannon. He has to play like a sniper or McCree without any of their defenses.

Hanzo has TWO escape tools and still has the worst escape tools of all the snipers. If he didn’t have Storm Arrows, he’d be useless. We know this because the original Hanzo didn’t have storm arrows and he was mostly useless unless you were a maverick at playing him.

In short, Hanzo needs storm arrows.

2 Likes
15

That’s what Leap + Wallclimb is for.

And if it’s not enough, then buff his Leap.

The only reason the old scatter arrow level anti-tanj was justifiable was because he had no horizontal escape options.

Take away his Leap, and drop him to 175hp.

Then that’s a glass cannon.

He doesn’t have nearly enough glass to justify that level of cannon.

And even if he did, it would still probably be bad for Tanks overall, because they’d be under threat pretty much at all times as long as Hanzo can see them.

If they wanna move away from barrier/lamp spam being a defining part of Overwatch metas, then they are going to need to put ranged burst damage and ranged instakill damage in check somehow.

2 Likes
16

No, a glass cannon is someone that has to kill their target, or die. All offense, poor defense. Hanzo suits this to a T. If Genji dives him and Hanzo can’t get a shot on him, he’ll die.

Why in the world would him losing any health or wallclimb factor into this?

Oh yes he does. I’d argue he’s the only character in the game that does as every other character is just juiced with no downside. Not even Tracer is as much of a glass cannon as Hanzo: tracer can leave a fight whenever she wants to while Hanzo HAS to win, or he HAS to die.

I feel like this is your biggest issue. That’s not solved by nerfing Hanzo, that’s solved by buffing tanks.

No, they want MORE characters like Hanzo in the game for OW2. The want the game to be even faster paced. Honestly, I don’t know why people think Hanzo’s the problem when everything boils down to “things die too fast when Hanzo’s there”.

Gee, I remember a time where there was a dedicated roll to stop that. I feel like its on the tip of my tounge…

2 Likes
17

Pretty sure they don’t want to have 20 DPS heroes, and the only ones that matter are Widow and Hanzo, because they can instakill at range.

18

This, basically.

Hanzo is the only character the devs actually named a “tank buster”. His whole kit makes sense when you think of him that way, whether you like the idea of him or not.

Hanzo originally was designed to be able to nuke thick targets quickly. His wonky projectile arrows, charging system and lack of speed made him really situational, turning him into one of Overwatch’s earliest “meme heroes”. If you weren’t Wraxu, then no one wanted you on the hero.

Storm Arrow was designed to outperform Scatter arrow. They literally doubled the damage he could do and said they wanted him to have more power. Doing big chunks of damage is Hanzo’s whole character design (Hello, Assassin) They opted to spread out the damage over multiple arrows with an easy to recognize audio cue so that even the most basic of players can know “Hanzo is lit, counter/hide/block”.

The devs brought his arrow speed back down a bit to make him less consistent and reduced his storm arrows but it is clear that they still want him to be the prime burst hero in the game.

Now, I totally think Barriers should have counters outside of breaking them. They tested “spirit arrows” and said it feels bad – I think barrier piercing should be on something slower, almost like Symmetra’s old orbs. If Hanzo were to get a new ability to replace Storm arrows, I think it would have to come with another major rework/redirection for his character.

  • Hanzo becomes even more consistent as a damage hero with less base damage, with far less restrictions (slowed movement, slow arrow nocking, projectile speed) and has an E ability that delivers solid damage.
  • Hanzo keeps his current mechanics but his arrow provides some significant (and annoying) ability to justify him not simply clicking the enemy’s head with his basic attack.

Anyway, I don’t know what OW2’s goal is for the Damage category – they aren’t sharing nearly enough info… but I think if people want Hanzo changed then they need to ask themselves “who is Hanzo supposed to fight? What is his role? Who would I rather him counter?”. Some people see him as a Sniper, others a tank buster, a generalist, a flanker designed for tanks, barrier buster, etc.

I personally like him as a tank buster (which is why I want there to be a support that counters burst damage…) but if the devs have a new goal for him then I am down to try. I just think every Damage hero needs to stop being turned into generalists and instead become stronger in their own roles.

I think the devs still want tank busting to be his niche haha – who knows what they will do in OW2. I think there are clever ways to solve a lot of these things but it’s up to the devs to be creative.

Not a fan of it but this could weaken Hanzo in an interesting way.

The whole point of letting Hanzo choose when to shoot was to raise his skill ceiling over what Scatter allowed. Basic Hanzos could dump them all out for damage but the best Hanzos would fire a couple, whip over to the side and click a few squishies’ heads during the duration. Making it like fan the hammer at least makes it easier to block, but it would also weaken him against most flankers like Genji/Tracer who would easily bait it out/reflect it.

I don’t mind Storm Arrows but in the spirit of offering Storm arrow replacements… something like “Blazing Arrow”.

  • Hanzo equips the arrow like how he equips his Sonic arrow. When it hits the floor/wall/object, it emits a long and thin streak of flames on the ground that zones out enemies.
  • Hanzo would still be able to fire his blaze arrow in front of Bastion and then follow it up with a shot to hopefully burn him down.
  • The damage is more avoidable for tanks (but still strong enough to make them reposition. Same for Flankers that may dive him. Since it comes out at once, it will be less effective against dive flanks.
  • The streak passes obstacles like barriers meaning he could zone the tank away without shattering the barrier – this makes him less of a barrier breaker while still providing some threat to their positioning.
  • If the arrow hits a wall or enemy, it is coded to go straight down and away from where it hit. So hit the wall to Hanzo’s right and then the spirit energy will go down and streak to the left (cut off a path?). It has a fixed distance so it will stop at some point, depending on where Hanzo shot the arrow.
1 Like
19

I mean… dive heroes isn’t a set of heroes that only includes winston…

I disagree that it is easyh for him to 1v1 dive heroes without storm arrows.

umm wall climb is defs a positioning tool so he can get high ground. not an escape.

you can which’d likely end up making hanzo be more like widow, which brings in more the question of “when or why would you pick hanzo over widow?” considering hanzo would basically be nearly as susceptible to divers as widow is + all the downsides of projectiles compared to hitscan at range + how widow can actually 2~3HKO most tanks unlike hanzo without storm arrows.

imo they could just give him an equiv of genji’s fan but with arrows (lower damage per arrow) and on a cd (and maybe consider a slight knock back to them).
is it too much like ashe i.e. too boring and homogenizing? kinda but what else do you want? io’s ult (paladins)?

1 Like
20

The way I see it, fixing Tanks and Tanking is more important than if 1 out of 20 or so DPS in OW2 is in the top 5 most used DPS in GM.

It’s an escape against a Winston or D.va that just used their mobility skill.