Just about a month ago, Blizzard released the latest hero to the Overwatch lineup in the form of Baptiste, a combat medic who enjoys a versatile kit combining damage and support with an interesting mix of abilities.
One of these abilities however is the now infamous Immortality Field, a small drone thrown to the ground that allows all teammates within its radius to be immortal.
Sorry, what?
Blizzard’s latest idea to enhance the Overwatch experience has been to introduce a character that can imbue immortality on itself and teammates.
The supposed balance behind this ability comes in the fact that the drone can be destroyed, removing the effects, and that it is on a 20 second cooldown. However, there are a multitude of problems with this.
To begin with, adding a seventh target to one side in a team fight gives the Baptiste team a huge advantage, as time spent by Team A focusing down the drone is free time for Team B to damage Team A. Unlike other abilities that add a seventh target, such as Torb’s turret, Immortality Field HAS to be dealt with first or you literally cannot kill the enemy team.
Secondly, there are multiple ways to keep the drone out of the enemies reach whilst still taking advantage of it’s effects – throw it to the side of a choke and you can enjoy shooting away without the risk of dying; pop it behind an Orisa shield and you have an invincible bunker.
Regarding the cooldown, 20 seconds is admittedly one of the longest in the game – but given that this is an ability that is essentially a mini-Transcendence (and in some cases better given that it can stop burst damage ultimates such as Pulse Bomb, Self Destruct and NanoBlade where Transcendence cannot), this is far too short, as it allows him to have it at least every fight. A Zenyatta who is able to get Transcendence for every team fight would be a devastating force, but would only be able to do so through ludicrous amounts of skill. Baptiste, conversely, gets to throw out an ability.
Competitive currently has a very similar feel to the Moth meta to me now, where there’s a sense of “drop everything and kill the Baptiste first” as otherwise there’s no point even engaging in the teamfight. The fact that a single ability is able to negate team kills makes it undoubtedly the strongest ability in the game, and the cooldown ought to reflect this, instead of being something that can often be thrown out twice in a teamfight.
In case I haven’t got my point across about quite how strong this ability is yet, here is a list of Ultimates that it can either severely gimp, or make entirely impossible to get value out of:
B.O.B.
Self-Destruct
Meteor Strike
Dragonblade
Dragonstrike
Deadeye
Blizzard
Earthshatter
Molten Core
Pulse Bomb
Graviton Surge
How a group of developers sat down and thought that introducing immortality into the game would be in any way fun to play against is beyond me. But what point would criticism be if I didn’t suggest alternatives, apart from of course changing the ability.
1 - Move it to his Ultimate
We’ve seen changes like this before, whether is was moving Mercy’s Rez to an ability, or making Symmetra’s Photon Barrier a much larger area of effect and moving it to the Ultimate. It would certainly feel a lot more fair to have an ability akin to Transcendence be an Ultimate that had to be earned, and would prompt smarter usage rather than just hurling it down at the first sound of an ult voice line.
2 - Have the drone take damage as people survive
One way to make the drone more balanced would be if it took damage every time someone within the field was supposed to die. This way, if four people were saved from death, the field would be destroyed and the people inside would be low, but still alive. This would give it more of a “second chance” feel as opposed to “unkillable” and would also mean it could have clutch uses on single targets, like if a Zenyatta was being dived by multiple enemies.
3 - Increase the cooldown
While Immortality Field is already on a 20 second cooldown, another way to potentially balance out the value it can have is by increasing the cooldown further. As a comparison, Mercy’s Resurrect is on a 30 second cooldown, so while this ability is still extremely strong, Mercy players have to be smart about if and when and on who they use it as it won’t be available again for a while.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. I’m sure there are those who disagree with me, and to those I encourage to make your case so maybe I can see some good points for the current state of it, because at the moment, I’m simply astounded that this ability actually made it into the game.
