Upcoming experimental card

later this afternoon we will be deploying changes to the experimental card (hopefully)

i wanted to give a little insight to the changes that we are trying. the term “crowd control” or “cc” is used to refer to abilities that heroes can do to other heros that cause them to lose control of their character. examples include mei’s ability to freeze you, reinhardt knocking you down with earthshatter or getting stuck in junkrat’s trap.

in overwatch, we need to walk a fine line with crowd control abilities. on the one hand, we are a highly competitive first person shooter. on the other hand, one of the defining things about overwatch is the fact that our heroes have amazing abilities and mobility. we understand that crowd control abilities can cause a lot of frustration. any time, control is taken away from you it generally doesn’t feel good.

so these experiments are targetted at certain heroes, specifically at their crowd control abilities, with the intent being that they will affect you less and have a lower overall impact on the game.

the one exception on this round of experiments is roadhog. we actually want to try to buff his ult a little bit to make it more impactful. it’s not as much of a pure buff as it might seem at first – while you will knock enemies back more, you’re also likely to push them out of damage more (unless you corner them).

internally, we have some bigger ideas about crowd control for overwatch 2 and are trying some experiments we are not able to bring to the experimental card (more fundarmental and larger changes).

we’ll see how this round goes and we’d love feedback. hopefully we can put some of these changes live if the test goes well.

HERO CHANGES (ONLY IN EXPERIMENTAL)

Roadhog

Whole Hog knockback increased 20%

Reinhardt

Earthshatter knockdown duration lowered from 3 to 2.5 seconds

Sigma

Accretion
Knockdown duration is now a fixed 0.8 second instead of scaling with distance
Cast time reduced from 0.75 to 0.65 seconds

McCree

Flashbang stun duration lowered from 0.85 to 0.7 seconds

Mei

Endothermic Blaster freeze stun duration lowered from 1.5 to 1.3 seconds
Blizzard duration lowered from 5 to 4.25 seconds

Ana

Sleep duration lowered from 6 to 5 seconds

Brigitte

Shield Bash stun duration lowered from 0.75 to 0.65 seconds

214 Likes

cool post jeff, thanks for sharing

30 Likes

still no mercy changes?
:sob:

52 Likes

So hyped!!!

3 Likes

Hey Jeff!

What’s it with not starting your posts with capital letters???

27 Likes

Mercy isn’t a CC hero tho.

100 Likes

That is the troll that he is XD

It annoys me everytime he posts

4 Likes

the distance-measured knockdown duration was what added a sense of skill to this ability and while it may be a ‘buff’ to get guaranteed downtime i’m gonna miss doing sniper-rock throws. it wasn’t optimal but boy it was fun lol

92 Likes

Sounds good, Jeff. Any word on Competitive Open Queue being permanent?

I’m both relieved and surprised to see no changes to Doomfist or Wrecking Ball’s CC.

17 Likes

Why the knockback increase on Whole Hog?

12 Likes

To send people to space of course.

14 Likes

This changes sound amazing
Thank you guys for being so open with the community as of lately

6 Likes

I’m kind of surprised Ball isn’t on the list.

50 Likes

He said it in the post, dude.

3 Likes

Mercy doesn’t have CC…

2 Likes

looks cool. i love it. only thing i wish they added was reverting that knockback patch to kill goats a while ago.

4 Likes

Nice, I like these changes.

Not cool because of brig nerfs

33 Likes

I am too. He has the most to gain of anyone from these changes.

1 Like

What CC ability does ball have? He doesn’t stun anybody.

1 Like