I haven’t seen too much about Hanzo, but they’ve always been a pretty quiet bunch. I will endeavor to help you get into the head of a Hanzo player with over 7000 hours on the hero and tell you what the Hanzo experience has been like this season.
With the advent of season 9 we were hit with a bunch of changes, including HP and HP Regen changes, as well as projectile size increases.
I don’t know if all players are aware of how much damage Hanzo did and does, so I’ll just clarify that he does 120 damage (240 damage with a 2x multiplier on crits). He also does 75 damage with Storm Arrows (150 with 2x). All heroes, other than Tracer and Widowmaker and demeched D.Va, have 250 HP or more. This means that Hanzo has lost his ability to one-shot all but 2 of the cast (and one tank gimmick).
What does this mean for Hanzo in practice? Why does he feel so bad to play? That’s what I’ll cover today.
Hanzo was not a long-range character, he was a mid-range sniper with solid close range and very poor long range capabilities. For this to mean anything, I’ll really have to let you into how we play this character and how he operates, and how the changes have affected him.
Hanzo was characterized by a slow draw speed and inconsistent but high damage. He made up for his lack of consistency with potential and versatility, with his one-shot and his limited, but serviceable mobility. This is also what kept him in line with Widowmaker who, as a hitscan, is a way more consistent hero.
Strengths (pre-S9):
One-shots, high potential, decent mobility, neutral matchups against some DPS.
Weaknesses (Pre-S9):
Lack of consistency, very diveable (high rank experience), rage-inducing (prone to getting hard focused if performing too well). Anything with good mobility, flying targets.
What the season 9 projectile size increases did was to make him a little bit more consistent, with the trade-off being his loss of one-shots. They also buffed his Storm Arrow damage and cooldown to help make up for his loss of one-shots. This seems like it could be a good change for him, but in practice, simply is not.
How does this play in practical application? What changes have high-rank Hanzo players had to make to their play styles?
Having a one-shot and decent mobility gave Hanzo players a lot of flexibility in being able to take flanks and play an assassin style of gameplay. He also could fall back into the classic back-line poke hero, usually to help burst down a tank. Most commonly, he was played on wide off angles. With the loss of one-shot, his flexibility has been all but eliminated. Since he can’t OHK and because his mobility is limited, it is way too risky to be taking flanks, or even many off-angles, on the hero. Many have defaulted back to being a spammer from the back-line because it’s the most effective way to find any real value, while other heroes such as Ashe, Soldier, Sojourn do it much better. It’s either that, or they find themselves a Mercy pocket.
Solo Hanzo (No Pocket):
You might say, “he has 240 damage with a headshot, leaving an enemy with only 10 HP! Chances are, they’ll have taken 10 damage already anyway!”
The problem with this is, hitting headshots and getting rewarded with a kill is almost completely down to luck based on your team or a massive positional mistake from the target.
Now, why do so many shots from Hanzo not get kills? The answer to this question: target priority.
This is based almost completely on his lack of consistency because of projectile travel time.
It is difficult to land shots, let alone headshots, on targets that know you are aiming at them, so you will miss a majority of shots. This means target priority for high rank Hanzo players has been, for a long time, unaware targets, i.e. targets that feel safe. These targets will move much less, so they are easier targets to hit. Why is this bad for Hanzo? Typically to get an LOS on said targets, this means taking a flank, an off-angle, or natural high ground cover to hide yourself. You are the only one that can hit those targets. This means no follow-up from your team. Either you miss or they will take a hit, then they wriggle toward cover or get healed. This makes them difficult if not impossible to kill, even with Storm Arrows. This will usually net some free ult charge for enemy supports, and leave Hanzo in an exposed position. This gives Hanzo ult charge as well, but Dragon is one of the weakest ultimates in the game. It’s not worth the trade-off.
Many Hanzo players may have found they have been hitting consistent higher damage games before yet still feeling like they are not getting anywhere near as much value as before. That’s simply because higher damage does not equal more value, at least in the case of Hanzo. Not having one-shots means the targets he crits will have a good chance to get into cover before they take any follow-up damage, due to his slower rate of fire. Your damage may have gone up, while your eliminations and final blows have either stayed the same or gone down. This is an indication of poorer damage efficiency, i.e. more damage dealt per elimination. There is a lot of damage dealt that does not net an elimination.
He can’t effectively follow up on his own damage without an ability — an issue other DPS don’t have, as their primary fire has a rate of fire much faster than Hanzo’s. To be equal to another DPS’ primary fire, he needs Storm Arrow, and it will still be way less consistent. You are always waiting on Storm Arrow to be off cooldown to be effective. Otherwise, he has the slowest DPS TTK in the game. What this means in duels: 99% of the time, don’t take them. Cass can 2-tap you before you’ve even finished charging an arrow, Soldier can laser you down before you can kill him. That’s just 2 heroes, but most of them, not just in the DPS role, have an advantage over him. Just spam from range and wait to run from the inevitable dive or flank coming your way.
Has Hanzo gained any new strengths from these changes? Tank Spam. Not because of damage increases to Storm Arrow, but because of larger projectiles, making them easier to hit.
How about weaknesses? Absolutely. He has maintained all of the same weaknesses, and some have become much worse.
Pharah/Echo: These already countered him, as they were already difficult to hit with a projectile, but if you were good enough, you could OHK them. Now he needs 2-4 shots to kill them. Forget it if they have a Mercy pocket.
Soldier/Cass/Ashe/Sojourn: much better consistency, faster TTK. These also happen to be the heroes he was in direct competition with in their range category. He completely loses to them now.
Sombra: Hanzo does not counter her, even with Sonic. She knows when she’s spotted and can easily avoid it. She can wait out Storm Arrow and get a free kill with Virus with minimal effort.
Genji: Has always countered Hanzo. It’s even worse since Hanzo can’t one-shot him. Storm won’t always help him either as Genji has deflect. A good Genji can typically kill a Hanzo pretty easily.
There is very little reason to play Hanzo over DPS like Cass, Ashe, Soldier, or Sojourn, as they do the same job better and faster. He can one-shot Widow, but why play Hanzo into Widow when you can just mirror and be effective against the other enemy teammates as well?
Mercy pocketed Hanzo:
Mercy completes Hanzo, or rather, breaks him. Hanzo gets his one-shot back, but is scarier since he has a shorter cooldown on Storm and he has larger projectiles. However, most players do not recognize the trade-offs to a Hanzo taking a Support slot all to himself.
This will leave a single support for the rest of the team. Oftentimes, this amount of pressure is unwanted.
Having a Mercy pocket necessitates the Hanzo+Mercy duo to hard carry the game to an incredible degree. If you get a 24/7 Mercy pocket, it had better be worth it. It’s also very boring for the Mercy lol
This also makes you a beacon for everyone to look at and hard focus. You will get dived several times a fight. If you are playing with a less selfish Mercy main, or your team needs the extra help, you can never take wide angles as your Mercy needs to be within range of your teammates. This pair will not win you every game, and is pretty overrated unless you’re at least soft smurfing.
The fix:
Let’s face it — Hanzo (along with Junkrat) has fallen behind the rest of the DPS role. There are only two ways that Hanzo can be fixed. Either a rework or a rebalancing.
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Give him his one-shot back, and revert the Storm Arrow cooldown. They would also have to further decrease his projectile size, maybe even to pre-S9 sizes. This would eliminate his need for a Mercy pocket.
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Rework him into a duelist. Faster ROF, more mobility, replaced Storm Arrow. Sonic may need to be replaced as well, since it may not suit this archetype.
The first option is easier to implement, and would be my pick for a fix. Honestly, Hanzo was never a problem at higher ranks. Most complaints about him were from low rank players who can neither aim, nor move or position properly, or even path correctly through or around a choke. I can understand that they want a hero to be more fun to play against at lower ranks, but dumpstering a hero at high ranks to achieve that is criminal. Let us, the skilled players, educate the less-skilled players on how to play. Stop dumbing the game down for them.
TL;DR
Hanzo has become a Storm Arrow Spammer. He relies too much on luck and massive player mistakes to get kills. He has no strengths other than bursting tanks (terrible strategy which plenty of heroes can do better), and no niche. He has zero favorable matchups other than against Bastion, and only if he has Storm Arrow. He has the weaknesses (slow fire rate, reduced movement speed with arrow drawn) of a sniper with none of the strength.
Overall, He feels awful to play in S9 and needs help.
