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
