Who needs support when your health bar takes care of itself?
Blizzard is about to take a sledgehammer to the way Overwatch 2 is played. The change will take effect when season 9 launches later this month.
For the first time in the hero shooter’s history, every tank and DPS hero will heal themselves, loosening their reliance on support in a match. Through a new passive ability, tanks and DPS will gradually regain their health outside of active combat. It will be a «tuned-down version of the support self-healing passive,» game director Aaron Keller wrote in a blog post today. In addition to this, more changes to reduce «damage spikes in combat» will be detailed in another blog post closer to the season’s launch.
If I had to describe the current state of Overwatch 2’s balance in one word it would be turbulent. The most recent season introduced a new tank hero, Mauga, who inexplicably had the killing power of a Bastion, the robot who turns into a literal machine gun. Mauga single-handedly ruined games for matches of all skill levels because of how quickly he oscillated between the world’s most fragile tank and the world’s most lethal tank. Counter play was near impossible. The only answer was to buy him yourself and shoot back until someone won. Season 8 of Overwatch was a nightmare until Blizzard dropped a bucket of nerfs onto him this week that lead hero designer Alec Dawson said «may be harsher than what’s necessary.»
Mauga actually has an ability to heal himself already when he deals damage. In fact, most tanks have ways to buffer their health with shields or healing. While I realize it’s necessary in a world where teams no longer have a second tank to protect them, a self-healing passive for all three roles is a band-aid fix that will teach players to be more independent than they already are.
Overwatch used to celebrate teamwork and now it’s a nasty little burden that every balance change and hero release seems targeted to alleviate.
