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And reworks Roadhog’s Whole Hog ult significantly
Overwatch 2 is in its beta stages. Blizzard was obviously keen to get players in on what it’s developed so far for the PvP portion of the game, but it’s been far from balanced. The game is basically in freefall at this point, with the Overwatch team trying to rework and reimagine character abilities, damage, and more as quickly as possible. So after acknowledging that Overwatch’s support heroes were a bit lacklustre, Blizzard have updated the game with a bunch of new changes once again, including a super kick for Zenyatta.
The patch notes are pretty extensive. Support heroes have the most changes as a whole, but not all of them buffs. Zenyatta gets an entirely new ability, a Snap Kick passive, which makes his melee more powerful. It shoots enemy players backwards dealing 50% more damage than normal melee, thereby allowing the monk to stay alive a little longer in skirmishes.
Brigitte also gets buffs to her knockback abilities, with her Shield Bash doing double the knockback that it did before. Ana’s Rifle ammo is increased from 12 to 15, and her biotic grenade effect duration is decreased from four to three seconds, putting more of a focus on her shots. Baptiste has had his healing ammo increased from 10 to 13, nothing too exciting, while Lucio has been nerfed to make his self-healing ability less effective on himself as his survivability was ridiculous.
Elsewhere Zarya’s ult Graviton Surge is slightly nerfed, only lasting 3.5 seconds. Wrecking Ball has been buffed again just by increasing his knockback when rolling. Winston’s new secondary fire’s ammo has been decreased from 20 to 12 and Sombra’s speed boost when in stealth mode has been decreased from 65% to 50%.
Soldier has been nerfed too, making his movement slower when spiriting and decreasing the damage done by his pulse rifle. But on the other hand his ult will now allow for critical hits if your shot would have been a crit outside of his ult. As a consequence his rifle will also have the damage fallout the rifle has outside of the ult. Newbie Sojourn’s railgun is now a little more accurate, doubling the size of the projectile. Also her Powerslide cooldown has been reduced be a second from seven to six seconds.
Roadhog’s ultimate, Whole Hog, has been completely reworked too—changing it from a channelled ability into a transformation one, ala Soldier 76, Genji and Winston. It means you can also use your regular abilities during its duration without cancelling out of the ult. That’s a big difference from the way it performed before. Whole Hog previously left Roadhog vulnerable as it was the only time he reliably wouldn’t be able to self heal, and focusing him would be much easier. This update changes that significantly.
Other updates are patches for bugs and UI. Also Quick Play Classic is now enabled, eliminating the need for players to role queue. But as someone who loves QPC in the original Overwatch, this is a lot tougher to manage—the two tank, two attack, one heal meta seems to have been the average in that mode, and has felt ridiculously OP.
There is a lot still missing from Overwatch 2 though. As someone who loved the first game and still plays in 2022, there is a lot to be done to make this feel as cohesive and coordinated as the original. Downsizing the team size has shifted the dynamic of maps, of abilities, of tactics and it’s yet to feel as though the 5v5 has all the pieces it needs to work. Helping healers feel more powerful may only just make the hugely chaotic scrims longer rather than clearer. Hopefully these changes can help bond teams together stronger but, like others, I need more to feel as though Overwatch 2 isn’t just Overwatch 1.5.
Imogen has been playing games for as long as she can remember but finally decided games were her passion when she got her hands on Portal 2. Ever since then she’s bounced between hero shooters, RPGs, and indies looking for her next fixation, searching for great puzzles or a sniper build to master. When she’s not working for PC Gamer, she’s entertaining her community live on Twitch, hosting an event like GDC, or in a field shooting her Olympic recurve bow.
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