I say this as a Hanzo main. It is a terrible, boring and toxic ability that has no place in Overwatch.
Storm arrows to Hanzo is what flash is to McCree. It is his defensive ability that allows him to deal with flankers without just being a free kill. However, by design it is also a tankbusting ability, which basically allows it to blow-up anything.
The devs keep on trying to nerf it to deal less than 70 damage. However, this just makes it feel terrible to use. They tried 60 damage and now they are trying 65 damage in the beta but in both cases it makes the ability near useless against divers/flankers and still makes tanks lives miserable.
The 70 damage threshold is so fundamentally important. Which both Ana and McCree can attest to. Requiring 4/5 shots just to kill a squishie or 3 shots including headshot makes the ability purely about spam. The other problem is that Hanzo is a very much an ability based hero. A vast portion of his damage and eliminations come from Storm arrows and the value Sonic arrow brings. So any nerf to his abilities ends up hugely effecting him and breaking such a crucial damage threshold ends up being a huge nerf.
Hanzo should be moved away from this playstyle. He already has enough spam with his primary fire. Storm arrows shouldn’t be a spam ability on steriods.
My suggestion since way back in 2018 has been:
Assassin arrow
A singular super fast arrow that deals normal damage, Requires no charge. 8 second CD. Resets on a kill using the ability. Makes a sonic boom upon use.
The problem is the devs basically stole my idea with Sojourn, well they are very similar.
However, an ability like this as many advantages over Storm. It gives him a consistent way to finish off low-health targets. It can be used as a “sniping” ability. It can be comboed incredibly well with his primary, which allows him to defend himself against flankers or make consistent picks and finally it does offer very good burst damage if you are skilled enough. You can essentially pull off a double headshot using primary + Assassin arrow.
It also mirrors his brothers ability and is 10x less spammy than current Storm.
Alternatively
We could move some power away from Storm arrows and give it to his primary. For example reverting the projectile speed nerf.
Reduce Storm arrows from 5 to 3 arrows. Change damage from 70-75.
This reduces Hanzo’s overall damage output with storm from 350 to 225. Which results in about a 36% damage nerf but makes it combo better with his primary.
25 Likes
the way no ones responded but 5 people liked
2 Likes
Storm arrow was always a braindead ability the devs clearly made up on the spot when they decided to replace scatter, instead of simply hard nerfing it. I’m surprised it was kept in the game for this long.
7 Likes
Please. The projectile speed buff was easily my favorite part of his rework, sucked so much that it was nerfed to prop up boring Storm Arrows.
1 Like
Storm has always felt like the “i give up” ability lol… mostly used when you keep missing, so you just pop it and spam.
I personally miss his faster arrow speed, because after the revert back to his old arrow speed his reliability falls hard at medium range.
Wish he was more revolved around a more consistent primary, rather than being pushed to be a shorter ranged spam hero.
3 Likes
I Full heartedly agree. Storm arrow gives way too much value for how easy it is to use.
I would like to see your changes, but then also, increase the projectile speed of his primary fire.
1 Like
It is because Geoff doesn’t like fast projectiles. He preferred original Hanzo with the much slower projectiles but much larger hitbox.
You might be able to find the comment he made about it.
Eww.
I mean, it’d be one thing (though still stupidly contrary to his marksmen fantasy) if they don’t want him to be a sniper, but as long as they’re classifying him as such and keeping the one-shot, he should be reliable at long range. And since spammy log one-shots is obviously never going to fly with the community, fast projectiles is the way.
Absolutely this. Scatter was always a cool and fitting ability, it just had 1 huge glaring issue. Instead of solving that single issue, they buffed the crap out of Hanzo and handed him a machine gun and a dash.
The solution was simple. Just make it so Scatter would ricochet off the ground, but only “scatter” on a wall/ceiling. Problem solved!
5 Likes
Only thing that should replace storm arrow is scatter arrow.
As a fellow Hanzo main please stop giving in to the forum’s opinion on Hanzo. They will not be happy until Hanzo is a throw pick.
If hanzo had the faster arrows of his primary. A brand new reworked balanced ability. No longer had tree trunk arrows. He would be in a good place.
1 Like
Heres my suggestion.
Smoke bomb arrow:
Makes a cloud of smoke that blocks visibility for everyone. This would also stop abilities that require line of sight including ults unless something like sonic arrow, infrared vision or venom mine are actively highlighting players.
It would give you or your teammates cover to get out of dodge without being obnoxious like icewall (which is probably responsible for killing more teammates than saving them) It would also pair well with sonic arrow allowing you to combo both abilities together.
It would make flankers disoriented since your teammates can just look for your friendly tag and make their way out while flankers arent likely to have solid landmarks to find their target. Plus you could easily set traps with it for whoever is brave enough to charge through it.
1 Like
Hanzo’s arrows have a projectile size of 0.2 which is one of the smallest sizes in the game. But yes please do go on and keep a dead meme alive
2 Likes
He doesn’t even have tree trunk arrows. It’s been like 5 years, yet you all keep repeating it over and over again. Most here are not objective enough to admit Hanzo could be a balanced hero in the future.
3 Likes
Exactly this!
It’s like saying, as if Lucio could wallride on the ground & get the speed buff from that, and then, they decided that he can only wallride in bursts, instead of continuous wallride.
All they needed to do was removed Scatter Arrow from scattering, if the initial collision is the floor, in order to make it a full skill shot, in order to fully utilize all the damage from it.
You’re late on this nerf train.
That nerf happened a long time back.
The current projectile-size nerf that is popular to complain about is Ana’s sleep dart.
Yes because hanzo isnt spam arrows random direction get kills.
Not like i favor hitscans because widow also needs to be removed. Snipers shouldnt exist.
Its also very funny still to be dived and spam hanzos joke of a mini gun.
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It’s not the projectiles themselves. It’s the overbloated character hit boxes in this game combined with favor the shooter and server jank that makes them seem huge
3 Likes
…and it’s also the fact that projectiles are in fact huge. You can test out in training the difference in ranges and how forgiving projectiles are as opposed to hitscan(when in comes to projectile sizes, not saying either is easier).
1 Like
Scatter was good in OW1 but I feel like it would barely function in OW2.
There is too much verticality, it feels like heroes barely touch the ground. Also you probably remember as much as I do that Scatter had its problems. Way more fun than current Storm arrows but was still an inconsistent mess of an ability.
I do wish that Scatter was replaced with a similar pick oriented ability though. Scatter was so much fun for its pick potential. Diabolical laughter after 1-shotting a tank, I even have videos still of getting double 1-shots using the ability.
Storm arrows just doesn’t fill that gap but equally I don’t really want Scatter back either.
