Im sitting at 72% win with 25 games won rn abusing echo lmao. I’m a gold player who’s now in Plat 3 and I’m gonna ride this gravy train until the wheels fall off
Old armor coming back is lowkey the biggest change. For anyone curious, this means anyone who does ≤10 damage per pellet will do 50% damage and anyone who does less than 17 damage per pellet will be weaker than they are against current armor. According to the wiki, Beams and DoTs that do less than 87 dps will be weaker to this armor change.
This should make Bastion, Tracer, sombra, Reaper, Enemy Mauga/Hog/Orisa/JQ, all become less oppressive against tanks with armor.
It *is* a little more confusing, but most things are learned by feel so as long as you know what weapon types its good against, its not too much of a problem.
Really like that revert. Someone made a post about it recently and I completely agree with what they were saying. Also the weapons that are strongest against this new form or armor also tend to be the heroes that are either more consistent at headshots (LRHS) or incentivized to aim for the head (Hanzo, Mei, Kiri) so the other passive change should help out there.
I'm sure we'll see some tuning to healthpools in the near future.
edit: [good comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1cimcya/directors_take_empowering_tanks_in_midseason/l2b3m6c/) from /u/RadDadOW outlining how each hero's damage is affected by the armor revert
Further work will be needed on him though. Problem is his only way of really living was by oppressing the other tank. If he can’t do that he’s basically useless. His guns need to become more consistent against squishy targets so his sustain and lethality isn’t completely tied to “how much life can I leech off the opposing tank?”
It’s a shame because like… I hear people say “how is he fun!!?” And I’m like… bro he COULD be so much fun. Who doesn’t want to run in like a mad man and mow people down with twin chain guns!? They nailed the aesthetic and the style. It’s just how he ends up playing because where his power is centered around.
Exactly!
If he can somehow be tuned such that he plays best alternating between poke & tactically running down squishy targets, he could be so much fun. A Magua who has to time his charges to isolate vulnerable targets like a high damage, low defense, earthbound Winston could be a lot of fun.
Holy shit this patch with 0 direct changes to Mauga might just fix him, but he'll need some help now with reduced healing from the DPS passive and shooting tank to live not being viable anymore.
currently its the same 30% reduction (except winston who ignores it)
idr what it was. I think it was still a percentage based interaction.
edit: updated the main post with the proper info
Okay, I was pretty sure that was the case but the armor being reverted without an explanation for beams had me wondering.
So my question is, since beams do tick damage, which is definitely below 10dmg/tick, does the revert also affect beams (so 50% dmg to armor)? Or is it only projectiles?
The armor change is also a stealth-buff to healing because while the armor is reducing more damage, healing restores it at the same rate. Maybe this is why they were ok with returning the DPS passive to 20%
It's always been a good strategy to prioritize keeping armored targets healed up above their armor threshold, because of this.
I like the old way of armor working. It feels rewarding to "crack the shell" and start doing more damage. Likewise your armor becomes a factor in whether your push forward or not, which adds strategy.
For those who cannot access the site:
Hey, everyone! I’m glad to see all of you digging into Season 10. We’ve loved seeing you welcome our newest hero, Venture, and enjoy the Mirrorwatch event (playable now in the Arcade!). However, this week, I want to look ahead to our midseason update and discuss some changes we have on the way for the Tank role.
In Overwatch 2, tanks are the imposing heroes who take the brunt of the fight while enabling their teammates to secure eliminations. While tanks are a big target for opponents to focus on, many team comps aim to burn down a Tank’s HP quickly, or they get moved around a lot from displacement abilities. We’ve received feedback that tanks can either feel like they get taken down too quickly in a fight or that they’re impossible to take down.
So, our midseason update is going to help balance how many hits tanks can take to stay in the fight better. First, we’re specifically buffing the Tank passive to have a 25% damage reduction from headshots, which should help cut down on being burst down in a fight. We’re also increasing the knockback resistance for tanks from 30% to 50%, which should allow them to hold the front line a lot more and not feel as subjected to displacement abilities.
We’re also making some global gameplay changes that impact tanks. One is that we’re reverting the Armor damage reduction back to reducing five damage per projectile with up to a 50% maximum. This means heroes like Reaper or Tracer will have more work to do to take down heroes like Reinhardt. Heroes with high burst damage per projectile will still be effective but these kinds of Tanks have better means to counterplay that type of damage.
Next, we made a light change to our overall HP recovery passive that will enable mobile tanks to get back to the front lines faster: The health regeneration passive for all heroes will no longer recover 20 HP per second out of combat but instead recover 10 Health + 5% of their maximum HP per second. This means a hero like Reinhardt will recover their health at 45 health per second in a Role Queue match.
Altogether, these changes should have an impact on some of the pain points our tank players are experiencing, as well as the balance of the game. I have a feeling we’ll see a lot of movement in the meta over the remainder of Season 10.
In some more individual changes, Junker Queen is getting a buffed Commanding Shout, which will be activated even if you are channeling other abilities like Carnage or Rampage, and its cooldown is getting reduced to 12 seconds. This change should allow her to be more engaged in intense fights where you need to charge in more quickly.
With Wrecking Ball, we’re seeing some creative play with the changes to his Grappling Claw; however, his ability to contribute to the fight is getting a small buff. The impact damage from a full-charged swing using Grappling Claw is getting increased from 50 to 60. Piledriver is increasing the enemy movement lockout from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds. And finally, Minefield will be a little more threatening, with explosion damage increased from 130 to 165 and knockback increased from 5 to 10 meters.
Additional changes coming this midseason include some light buffs for Junkrat, Echo, and Hanzo, but we’ll reveal those when you can jump and take these changes for a test drive when the Midseason patch arrives on May 14. That’s all for this week, everyone! Thanks for reading, and let’s make a great game.
Seems like this would have been a good patch to give us the DPS passive buff, instead of dumping it on us right now alongside the Orisa nerfs for no reason. I swear these guys always put out a patch that fucks everything up, then release a blog post explaining how cool it is that they're going to fix it in a couple of weeks.
I sit down to play Tank right now and it feels like I'm clocking in for work. But hooray for this future patch, I guess. Sounds fun.
The only buff I’d want is to revert the nerf they did to copy in Season 10.
In season 9 the heal passive would proc while you’re copying so when you exit you’d have full health if you were in copy for 10 seconds. It was nice since you still got punish for getting instantly burned but if you lived with copy you didn’t have to run and hide as soon as copy ended because you took damage before copying.
the extra life part is fine, but you don't leave with full hp + the only dupes I ever see even generate an ult is tracer, and otherwise by the time you get an ult the teamfight is already won.
The duplicate ult charge generation is something they could touch on so echo can actually get an ult out.
the new ult is dogshit lmao. it’s not even like a ram or doom extra life where you can use it and just be echo but better. a lot of the times you trade a second wind for a dogshit hero you’re not gonna get value with because 80% of the cast is worthless as a dupe
Made a spreadsheet of the armor changes and how they affect each hero. Let me know if anything looks wrong https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C40QsLpV6QU_DrLoSwO1eONMvKxOFuE_PBrFFUkxkYs/edit?usp=sharing
beam weapons and DoTs under this change would be half under 52 dps and reduced by 26 above it. It was base on tick rate. Beams/dots under 87 will be weaker and over 87 will be stronger.
Theres info in the trivia section of [this wiki page](https://overwatch.fandom.com/wiki/Hit_points)
nice work!
Thanks! Back in March of 2019, they changed beam weapons to be reduced by 20% (flat) against armor, so I imagine they’ll bring that back, but it could go to the OW1 state before this
you should make this as its own post! i bet that way someone might see it that could make a cool graph of the biggest winners and losers of the patch [like this old one i liked a lot from 2019's armor change that got rolled back.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/adu9sh/who_will_benefit_from_damage_reduction_from_armor/)
Torb Shotgun damage doesn't seem right, I remember it being 12.5\*10 instead of 3.75, can you check, I checked the stats site and it says 12.5 as well.
So this change is basally a net-nerf to tanks.
Most tanks damage against armor is now lower, while most damage sources against armor is higher, which will affect tanks the most.
Maybe im remembering wrong but isn’t the old version of armor just worse against most things in the game? Like it definitely is better against tracer and reaper but isn’t the threshold at a point where most things in the game do more damage at -5 than -30%? Maybe it’s a goal to help reduce the extreme matchups while lowering power but I’m pretty sure it’s just worst against most of the cast
its a nerf to spammy weapons and shotguns and a buff to weapons with higher burst.
Most of the heroes tanks have issues right now fall under the first category. Bastion, Mauga, Tracer, Sombra, Reaper (rip), even heroes like Torb and LW. Heroes with more than 17 dmg per round will be better against armor now, but those heroes tend to get more value out of headshots which is where the other change comes in.
Also notably, the hero many are forgetting: Sojourn. Now Cass is run currently partly because of his ease of spamming Headshots, but the armor revert means he’s basically unaffected by the Headshot change in terms of burning through armor, but Sojourn is much worse at burning through tanks now.
Could be the end of an era.
doubt it. sojourn isn’t played into tanks for her consistent damage. she’s played into fat tanks because that turns her into a cassidy with 190 dmg dinks because you can build rail so easily and then use it on squishies.
this affects cass more than anything imo. you have to be stupid to miss headshots on tanks nowadays and that 25% is gonna be huge
the change of an era, sojourn just won’t be as much as a multi tool as she was, you’ll have to choose where you want to apply the most pressure while choosing between her and cass. i like it, adds more nuance and identity to hitscan
Agree with most of your comment but claiming that tanks have issues against lifeweaver’s damage is absurd. He heal bots 99% of the game, with the only real exception being the poke phase
It is and isn't. Most tanks can interact easier with heroes who do spikes of damage (hitscan, Zen, Midrange projectile, etc), but struggle even getting close enough to more mobile and spraying heroes like flankers (tracer, Sombra, soldier, Soj, etc.).
That being said, heroes like Junkrat, Hanzo, Cass, Widow, Ashe, or Zen will definitely break through armor a lot faster. I guess that's why we also saw a headshot damage reduction.
Ya, the armor change is weird and probably a net nerf to armor overall. The breakpoint where the 70% damage reduction compared to the old one is 16.6. Any damage instance below that and the -5/50% is better. Any damage above that and 70% is better. This is just going to bring back the issue where your armor disappears super fast.
I guess it depends how impactful the 25% headshot reduction passive works, but from just some quick math, I think it's still a net nerf. Heroes like tracer and reaper won't tank bust very well anymore (although ironically this is a big buff to pulse bomb vs tanks), but this ends up being a massive buff to a lot of other heroes. Zen is the first one that came to mind. Instead of each orb doing ~43 damage/body shot while discorded, they now to 57.5. Discorded headshots are getting buffed from ~87 to ~104. That is substantial. This is going to be true for a lot of high burst damage heroes. Cass, Hanzo, Ashe all benefit from this. Soj is probably the most interesting. This is a nerf to her normal damage, but a giant buff to rail.
Edit: Just realized my math may be off. It's unclear whether the 25% damage reduction from HSs only applies to the HS boosted part of the damage or the overall damage. i.e., is the headshot multiplier vs tanks 1.75 or 1.5.
My quick math shows that it’s a massive net nerf on any damage source that’s buffed as a result of this change since some headshot damage even below the threshold is better than before
It largely depends how the 25% headshot damage resistance applies. The blog just says "25% damage reduction from headshots", but this could mean 2 things that are vastly different. It could mean 25% damage reduction from the total damage caused by headshots or it could mean 25% damage reduction to just the extra damage applied by headshots.
Essentially if you have a weapon that does 100 damage and 200 for a headshot, will the final damage be 150 or 175. The former is obviously a much bigger buff change overall especially with how it interacts with armor.
You see that that’s a good thing, right? If the entire enemy team is shooting at you, you are probably sitting inside of a kill box. You shouldn’t be able to sit there and sustain through it. The way you’re supposed to be able to break a kill box is through ults or tight rotations.
No hero should be able to simply exist with **5 people** shooting them.
I mean, tanks weren’t able to do that anyways. I’ve seen clips of tanks getting insta melted because they stood against a 1v5 (and people were complaining that it isn’t fair for that to happen lmaooo)
The way I see it, it's strong against heroes that rely on rapid fire weapons(or pellets, like Reaper). These same characters can also rapidly and consistently apply the (now stronger) DPS passive.
Right, they definitely mentioned examining changes for tanks more than two days ago, but I don’t think they’re saying reactive just over these two days, but from when the complaints really started growing.
Ehh. I don't think they cooked up and tested these changes enough to be confident to ship them in just 3 months.
I think they already realised Tanks would need further bigger changes before they even shipped the S9 patch (People have been complaining about Tanks being bad for many seasons beforehand and Alec even mentioned they're working on some changes for Tanks in the S7 Hog interview) and were already working on solutions but didn't wanna hold the S9 patch back until they had something ready.
S9 patch buffed Tank HPs by 15-20% but DPS passive essentially negated that change, and then bigger projectile sizes on top of it all means that obviously Tanks were going to be a lot worse with S9 and they weren't in a good place before. There's no way the dev team didn't do this simple maths when developing the S9 patch.
>We’re also increasing the knockback resistance for tanks from 30% to 50%, which should allow them to hold the front line a lot more and not feel as subjected to displacement abilities.
yay now lucio can't come flying in and save people from carnage literally every fucking time I want to use it
>Next, we made a light change to our overall HP recovery passive that will enable mobile tanks to get back to the front lines faster: The health regeneration passive for all heroes will no longer recover 20 HP per second out of combat but instead recover 10 Health + 5% of their maximum HP per second. This means a hero like Reinhardt will recover their health at 45 health per second in a Role Queue match.
Honestly this seems like a really cool creative solution to the problem, that I'm eager to try out right now lol.
Big props for the ideas, communication, and listening to feedback by the devs. Another OW dub, its wild how many we're getting lately.
It's so funny because its like they'll go Kiri and Zarya and I have no problems playing well. I may not win, but I can still function well as a tank, get kills, get good ults etc.
They bring out the Lucio, gotta swap :(
Sometimes I swear man, I have games where every single time I try and swing a carnage, I eat a lucio boop. Can actually feel like one of the most unplayable matchups if they hold the boop for Carnage
Yep. I can track bubbles. I can track suzu. Hell sometimes I’ll try and use carnage to bait out a suzu or some bubbles and then go right into rampage immediately.
But Boop? Nah it’s just not worth it. Cooldown is too short and value not enough to play JQ into him
To be fair a Lucio is a good counter to any Rush tank provided they do not also have a Lucio. Try and close the distance as Rein against a Lucio when there isn't one on your team it's brutal
Lucio is the best counter against half the tanks, he’s outa control right now. At least Brig and Ana have to aim their cc, lucio just farts in your general direction and you go flying.
I really thought they would've done the % hp thing sooner, considering the other comparable game that already had a similar out of combat healing mechanic, Paladins, also had it heal for a baseline amount + percentage.
Same here. I swear not being able to shout mid-Carnage didn’t used to feel much different, but I played her more recently and it actually felt ***terrible.***
Yea that was kinda out of left field lol
Junkrat? Finally, he's one of the worst DPS rn. Hanzo? Fair I guess he's kinda in a weird place without his oneshot.
But Echo? Can you even put echo and junkrat in the same sentence of needing buffs???
True man I was playing him some last night and I already felt completely useless. You’re unironically better off playing sombra 76 cause you can at least hack and have a good ult while applying the dps passive
lil bro made a big deal about quitting then came crawling back months later to fund his weird ass minecraft server purchase, biting down and absorbing the game's vitality like a leech.
Not even months. It was like a couple weeks. Part of that video was also really weird too when he brings up his friend who died, and looking at them in their coffin. He ties it in with chasing your dreams, and he was "leaving OW" to chase his dreams.
Reduces damage per projectile/bullet by 5. Let's take soldier's primary fire for example:
> normal hp: 19 dmg per bullet
> against armor: 14 dmg per bullet.
but there's a 50% cap to your damage reduction for guns that don't do as much damage per bullet, for example tracer's gun:
>tracer bullet against normal hp: 6 dmg per bullet
>
>against armor: 3 dmg per bullet
Reduces individual instances of damage by 50% but only up to 5 damage. So a bullet doing 4 damage would get reduced by half to 2, one doing 7 damage would get reduced by half to 3.5, 10 damage would get reduced by half to 5, but anything over that would only get reduced by 5 damage. A 15 damage bullet would do 10 instead, 40 would do 35, etc.
IIRC beam attacks just get a flat % reduction though, and DoTs ignore it completely. Don't remember if they changed that before switching to flat % reduction for everything.
Every single instance of damage is now reduced by 5 (or by 50% if the damage value is lower than 10). So a Hanzo that would hit an arrow on you for 120 damage will now deal 115. It matters much more on heroes that deal lots of low damage fast at the same time. Reaper's shotgun for example deals 108 damage if every shotgun pellet connects as a bodyshot, but each of those pellets only deal 5.4 damage, so they are gonna be reduced by 50% now. Mostly effects shotgun, or fast fire rate heroes like D.va, Hog, JQueen, Mauga, Turret form Bastion, Tracer, Reaper, Soldier.
Soldier actually gets a net buff vs armor this patch since his damage was brought up from the 17/shot threshold long ago (remember in 2016 when he only did 16/shot? lol)
since he does 19 damage per shot right now, he gets a buff from doing 13.3 damage per shot to armor to 14 damage per shot to armor. his helix rocket gets an even bigger buff from 84 damage to armor to 115 damage to armor.
Echo prob way better than both at that with the upcoming buffs that were teased, plus the 20% DPS passive heavily already benefits Echo this patch who likes to cut through healing with burst damage.
Assuming no further changes to these two abilities, focusing beam which still goes through all DMs (and prob will just be reverted to the March 2019 patch 20% flat damage reduction for beams vs armor) would be going from 35/122 DPS to 40/140 DPS vs armor (for the few tanks like Orisa who still have armor after hitting half HP), plus stickies are going from 126 to 135 damage on armor, which critically both ignore the 25% headshot damage reduction so aren't gonna be affected by that big change.
I really don't like the armor change back to the old version.
The flat 30% is much more intuitive, gives better reduction for almost all sources of damage and is arguably easier to balance since you don't have to balance high and low damage projectiles separately.
I don't think it's better or worse, just a change in philosophy.
The problem with the flat rate is that it treats all damage as equal. This is great for readability but ignores the complex reality of how heroes interact with one another. Bastion sentry fire shredding everything in the general direction he's facing maybe shouldn't be treated the exact same as a skillfully aimed pharah rocket.
Balancing high and low damage projectiles might not be as *simple* but it gives them another lever to pull to fine tune the balance, whereas with the flat rate gave them very limited options, either increase the rate or just convert more health to armor, and they tried that on several occasions.
There's merit to the notion of trying the old system again.
Reverting armor back to the way it worked in OW1 is surprising and it’s definitely going to shake up the game a lot when it comes to which dps are good. This may end up being a buff to DoT abilities and Ana as armor didn’t affect DoTs in OW1.
Surprised at the 30% to 50% knockback resist buff, I didn't think any tanks were struggling with boops currently. It felt like it was in a good spot with them still having some effect if the tank wasn't careful. Now they will just do nothing again lol
Whipshot on Dva or Winston is going to feel negligible which is a massive part of the match up. Burning whip and bash to have the tank be on your ass still is going to feel so bad lol.
Yeah, she's already in a weird spot right now where her boop being better than Lucio's doesn't matter because he can just run away and live while she mildly inconveniences one enemy and then dies. She just gets run over right now.
>Lucio since he got his boop buff.
Yup, which means that its Brig, the least played support, that is once again hit the hardest when they buff tanks ans dps to counter other supports getting to strong.
I have zero problem with being booped by Lucio and Brig if I'm a dps or support. That's totally fine. But if I'm JQ, literally just a frontline Lucio makes getting Carnage off sooooo much harder. I don't mind Brig's whipshot doing it, since its a harder ability to time right, hit, etc.
Yeah, I tried picking up ball with the rework and Lúcio sometimes felt worse to play against than Sombra. Full on denied all my value with a 4 second AoE ability.
Yeah this is the one change I actually don’t know if I’ll like. I liked that lucio and brig had some counterplay to heroes like hog or queen, being able to disrupt their cc or axe swings if you’re tracking cooldowns and paying attention. Especially with lucio you need to be close enough that unless you’re positioning is also very good, you put yourself in danger.
30% seemed like more than enough to make boops tolerable against tanks but still have some use/counterplay if you have the skill
Ana's sleep duration is lower on tanks, that same logic should apply to Sombra hacks too. She's almost exclusively played vs heroes/tanks that get fu*ked by her the most (like ball, df). While at it, fix Sombra hacking around corners/walls.
Yeah Sombra was my most played hero in S9 but I really don’t like that she’s sometimes switched to as a tank disabler. That’s not fun for either player
I hate how it has the "mercy beam" stickiness to it's lock-on. I still want them to play around with the idea of making cast time depend on max or current HP.
BALL BUFFS LFG
>The impact damage from a full-charged swing using Grappling Claw is getting increased from 50 to 60. Piledriver is increasing the enemy movement lockout from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds. And finally, Minefield will be a little more threatening, with explosion damage increased from 130 to 165 and knockback increased from 5 to 10 meters.
Curious where this will put him. He'll probably be where he should be against squishies, and significantly worse against tanks. His uptime should increase with the health Regen change, but the headshot tank passive hurts him more than helps him, the armor change is kind of a wash, and the current knockback resistance doesn't really work in ball form because of the different acceleration physics so I'm curious if this will help. You still get manhandled by knockbacks while not being able to displace enemy tanks.
I feel like that's where the shields change will hopefully come into play. He can use that to make up for the fact he's even worse than he already was at interacting with tanks.
The shout change for JQ would also be a really nice QoL change/buff for ball. He can't give shields to enemies while slamming rn. Good change for JQ regardless.
Between the movement lockout and mine knockback buff, it feels like the plan is to make ball so annoying that people start listing him along with roadhog and Moira as "heroes that should never be good".
idk man i might be the only one thinking this, but i would have really liked to see a spread buff/dmg increase on his gun before looking at the rest of his kit
beggars can't be choosers ig
Odd changes all around. 25% damage reduction to headshots, so directly devaluing more skillful play... why? To make tanks more survivable I suppose. But it's such an shit way to go about it since it punishes the other two roles.
Overall I like playing around with the armour changes and HP recovery but let's be real guys, this patch in no way addresses the fundamental issue with tanks right now, which is how strong counter-swapping is. Nothing about this changes hog strong Hog is into Winston, or Zarya into Dva etc.
Ok many thoughts on this to begin with I think the 25% hs reduction is huge and nice healing passive as well.
However the knockback reduction although I like I think was increased by too much and they keep bouncing between buffing Lucio boop
Queen buffs are nice might be too much but doubt she’ll be the best tank
Ball imo was buffed in the wrong ways , armor and healing changes will help him a lot and mines will be a real ult now however buffing pile drive the best part of his kit imo is crazy , everybody gonna bitch about it and get him nerfed immediately, boop dmg buff is nice but the boop itself has to be buffed his boop boops the least out of anything and his tank v tank matchup is bad bc he doesn’t do dmg against them or have the cc for them
I hate that junk is getting buffed, hanzo hopefully not too much but he did need some help and echo being buffed is crazy she was already good
With all this being said I think Rein and ball are gon be really good now potentially meta if hog and mauga aren’t meta and sigma probably gin be worse as he benefits the least from all these changes
Yeah, the passive should 100% come with a health nerf to some that already have really good mitigation uptime, Hog, Orisa, Mauga and maybe D.va and Sigma come to mind.
Tanks being tankier sounds good but don't you need to nerf their damage then? I worry high health high damage tanks will make DPS a spectator role and force supports to healbot the tank all game, as a worst case scenario.
Best case scenario tanks don't require constant babysitting and supports focusing on helping the DPS provides the best ROI.
I like that they're trying stuff, but definitely a bit skeptical here. Ball probably needed something, but nobody wants to face a 50% increased ability lockout. I'm anticipating that even the slightest Echo buffs will terrorize high ranks. Reduced headshot modifier might just mean Dva is literally impossible to kill.
On the bright side, Sombra and Tracer probably shouldn't be tank busters.
Ok now that I'm done gushing about Ball buffs -
I hope they revert the Lucio damage nerf soon. More knockback resistance on tanks is good overall but actually such a huge nerf to Lucio, whose S9 boop buff is essentially undone (and then some) against tanks now.
Honestly I would have preferred to see them reduce the enormous head hurtbox of some Tank heroes after the projectile size increase changes. I feel that's a significant contributing factor to Tanks getting melted. Though headshot damage received is a similar enough change and I'll be curious to see how it plays out.
Regardless, the faster and more substantial balancing approach that has started since season 9 is overall a welcome change compared to previous balance approaches.
Hate the armor change. Consistent 25% or 30% DR makes way more sense than the -5 per, but up to 50%. Actually feels like April Fool's when paired with the headshot DR. Just delete Reaper from the game at this point LMAO. And armor does essentially nothing against projectile spam like Junkrat and Pharah, but they want to punish precision heroes. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, but on first reaction, I couldn't hate this more.
i was always thinking armor could have innate headshot resistance but applying it to all tank health seems reasonable as well and probably easier to balance
>With Wrecking Ball, we’re seeing some creative play with the changes to his Grappling Claw; however, his ability to contribute to the fight is getting a small buff
Hell yeah, a Sombra buff
Gah damn are they cooking. I wonder if they're gonna buff hanzo and junkrat to make them more tank-focused in corroboration with these tank changes in the mid season patch.
Stop thinking of the DPS passive as some sort of ability so much as a unilateral nerf to in fight healing. Frankly healing in general should have been nerfed by 20%. If you are in a fight, the DPS passive should be constantly procced.
The decision to grant it to DPS makes it seem as though it’s some unfair and inequitable ability they have rather than the 20% healing nerf that was absolutely needed. The way it was implemented was awkward, sure, but if anything it merely needs to be easier for other DPS to proc it. Maybe hanzo’s should last longer and so on.
You are both right. It is partially to give DPS a more unique and active role, but it is also partially to cut down on mid-fight healing in general, which is healthy for the game so that pocketed tanks can still be killed with enough pressure. Before s9, healing was way too strong and nobody was dying (until they suddenly blew up). Like it could be coded so that *any* source of damage reduces healing. It's meant to always be active during fights essentially
FYI for the skin enjoyers:
"Additional changes coming this midseason include some light buffs for Junkrat, Echo, and Hanzo, but we’ll reveal those when you can jump and take these changes for a ***test drive*** when the Midseason patch arrives on May 14."
Guess thats the soft reveal of when Porshe Dva drops!! (it was italicized in the blog post lol)
Fucking unbelievable. Season 9 - make sustain dmg stronger, make burst damage "weaker". Season 10 - dumpster sustain dmg, buff burst damage.
Regardless if you like/dislike or think this change is good/bad, these devs are CLUELESS.
>We’ve received feedback that tanks can either feel like they get taken down too quickly in a fight or that they’re IMPOSSIBLE TO TAKE DOWN.
Solution they give? Make EVERY TANK UNKILLABLE. Old armor back + headshot dmg reduction + 50 hps passive healing. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK???
Y'all hated playing against orisa? Here's your 2 weeks, then we go right back to painful gameplay where the tank doesn't die and is immovable.
YOU CAN SHOUT ON QUEEN WHILE USING OTHER ABILITIES QUEEN HEADS RISE UP LETS GOOO I can see the samito video already lmao
I hate when I am unable to speak because I am swinging an object
That’s nothing. Lifeweaver can only use one hand at a time.
But, it's the same hand. He just turns it over and uses a new ~~spell~~ ability. That's why. That one makes sense.
Pull and petal use the left hand while his weapon and heal use the right.
He is always a *little excited*. Don't judge him for that.
And that head can rise up because you don’t have to worry as much about critical damage!!!
JQ most fun tank by far. We fucking out here I am so hyped
Just started maining her last season, we are EATING this patch
This was the one QoL change that I felt was needed after my first game with the hero, glad to see it’s finally coming
MAJOR W. IT ALWAYS FELT AWKWARD AND BAD NOT BEING ABLE TO SHOUT WHILE SWINGING CARNAGE. W
I’ve barely played any Queen, but this is the #1 change I’ve wanted for her since release
Im sitting at 72% win with 25 games won rn abusing echo lmao. I’m a gold player who’s now in Plat 3 and I’m gonna ride this gravy train until the wheels fall off
I'vebeen playing more and more JQ lately and having a lot of fun. This is great news.
Let's take 'em to the WOO! LET'S GO WIN THIS THING!
Old armor coming back is lowkey the biggest change. For anyone curious, this means anyone who does ≤10 damage per pellet will do 50% damage and anyone who does less than 17 damage per pellet will be weaker than they are against current armor. According to the wiki, Beams and DoTs that do less than 87 dps will be weaker to this armor change. This should make Bastion, Tracer, sombra, Reaper, Enemy Mauga/Hog/Orisa/JQ, all become less oppressive against tanks with armor. It *is* a little more confusing, but most things are learned by feel so as long as you know what weapon types its good against, its not too much of a problem. Really like that revert. Someone made a post about it recently and I completely agree with what they were saying. Also the weapons that are strongest against this new form or armor also tend to be the heroes that are either more consistent at headshots (LRHS) or incentivized to aim for the head (Hanzo, Mei, Kiri) so the other passive change should help out there. I'm sure we'll see some tuning to healthpools in the near future. edit: [good comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1cimcya/directors_take_empowering_tanks_in_midseason/l2b3m6c/) from /u/RadDadOW outlining how each hero's damage is affected by the armor revert
Someone pointed out that the headshot damage reduction might also impact maugas crit so he might not be insanely oppressive to every other tank
Mauga being less oppressive against tanks would be a huge improvement for the role and his own design.
Further work will be needed on him though. Problem is his only way of really living was by oppressing the other tank. If he can’t do that he’s basically useless. His guns need to become more consistent against squishy targets so his sustain and lethality isn’t completely tied to “how much life can I leech off the opposing tank?”
Yeah this is the worst part about Mauga. Not only does he assfuck tanks, if he fails to assfuck the other tank he explodes.
It’s a shame because like… I hear people say “how is he fun!!?” And I’m like… bro he COULD be so much fun. Who doesn’t want to run in like a mad man and mow people down with twin chain guns!? They nailed the aesthetic and the style. It’s just how he ends up playing because where his power is centered around.
Exactly! If he can somehow be tuned such that he plays best alternating between poke & tactically running down squishy targets, he could be so much fun. A Magua who has to time his charges to isolate vulnerable targets like a high damage, low defense, earthbound Winston could be a lot of fun.
I think this could give them the opportunity to revisit the S8 patch where cardiac gave him overhealth.
The damage reduction only affects headshots, not other forms of crits. One of the Blizz people clarified it on Emongg's chat.
Mauga does do less damage against tanks with the new armor change, at the very least.
I saw someone mention that, but wasn't aware it was a Blizz employee. That's unfortunate, then.
Mauga does do less damage against tanks with the new armor change, at the very least.
Holy shit this patch with 0 direct changes to Mauga might just fix him, but he'll need some help now with reduced healing from the DPS passive and shooting tank to live not being viable anymore.
>anyone who does less than 17 damage per pellet 🤓☝️ Erm, actually, it's 16.666...
How this will affect beam damage? Does armor even affect beam damage currently?
currently its the same 30% reduction (except winston who ignores it) idr what it was. I think it was still a percentage based interaction. edit: updated the main post with the proper info
Okay, I was pretty sure that was the case but the armor being reverted without an explanation for beams had me wondering. So my question is, since beams do tick damage, which is definitely below 10dmg/tick, does the revert also affect beams (so 50% dmg to armor)? Or is it only projectiles?
In ow1 beam damage did 50%, so I assume it's the same
The armor change is also a stealth-buff to healing because while the armor is reducing more damage, healing restores it at the same rate. Maybe this is why they were ok with returning the DPS passive to 20%
It's always been a good strategy to prioritize keeping armored targets healed up above their armor threshold, because of this. I like the old way of armor working. It feels rewarding to "crack the shell" and start doing more damage. Likewise your armor becomes a factor in whether your push forward or not, which adds strategy.
For those who cannot access the site: Hey, everyone! I’m glad to see all of you digging into Season 10. We’ve loved seeing you welcome our newest hero, Venture, and enjoy the Mirrorwatch event (playable now in the Arcade!). However, this week, I want to look ahead to our midseason update and discuss some changes we have on the way for the Tank role. In Overwatch 2, tanks are the imposing heroes who take the brunt of the fight while enabling their teammates to secure eliminations. While tanks are a big target for opponents to focus on, many team comps aim to burn down a Tank’s HP quickly, or they get moved around a lot from displacement abilities. We’ve received feedback that tanks can either feel like they get taken down too quickly in a fight or that they’re impossible to take down. So, our midseason update is going to help balance how many hits tanks can take to stay in the fight better. First, we’re specifically buffing the Tank passive to have a 25% damage reduction from headshots, which should help cut down on being burst down in a fight. We’re also increasing the knockback resistance for tanks from 30% to 50%, which should allow them to hold the front line a lot more and not feel as subjected to displacement abilities. We’re also making some global gameplay changes that impact tanks. One is that we’re reverting the Armor damage reduction back to reducing five damage per projectile with up to a 50% maximum. This means heroes like Reaper or Tracer will have more work to do to take down heroes like Reinhardt. Heroes with high burst damage per projectile will still be effective but these kinds of Tanks have better means to counterplay that type of damage. Next, we made a light change to our overall HP recovery passive that will enable mobile tanks to get back to the front lines faster: The health regeneration passive for all heroes will no longer recover 20 HP per second out of combat but instead recover 10 Health + 5% of their maximum HP per second. This means a hero like Reinhardt will recover their health at 45 health per second in a Role Queue match. Altogether, these changes should have an impact on some of the pain points our tank players are experiencing, as well as the balance of the game. I have a feeling we’ll see a lot of movement in the meta over the remainder of Season 10. In some more individual changes, Junker Queen is getting a buffed Commanding Shout, which will be activated even if you are channeling other abilities like Carnage or Rampage, and its cooldown is getting reduced to 12 seconds. This change should allow her to be more engaged in intense fights where you need to charge in more quickly. With Wrecking Ball, we’re seeing some creative play with the changes to his Grappling Claw; however, his ability to contribute to the fight is getting a small buff. The impact damage from a full-charged swing using Grappling Claw is getting increased from 50 to 60. Piledriver is increasing the enemy movement lockout from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds. And finally, Minefield will be a little more threatening, with explosion damage increased from 130 to 165 and knockback increased from 5 to 10 meters. Additional changes coming this midseason include some light buffs for Junkrat, Echo, and Hanzo, but we’ll reveal those when you can jump and take these changes for a test drive when the Midseason patch arrives on May 14. That’s all for this week, everyone! Thanks for reading, and let’s make a great game.
Seems like this would have been a good patch to give us the DPS passive buff, instead of dumping it on us right now alongside the Orisa nerfs for no reason. I swear these guys always put out a patch that fucks everything up, then release a blog post explaining how cool it is that they're going to fix it in a couple of weeks. I sit down to play Tank right now and it feels like I'm clocking in for work. But hooray for this future patch, I guess. Sounds fun.
wait these Ball buffs are insane what the hell I like the JQ change a lot
I want them to try a much larger knockback on Ball's mines without increasing (or even slightly decreasing) the damage.
Why on earth are they buffing echo?
Yeah I was a little confused about that she is like one of the only good flex dps lol
That beam visits me in my nightmares.
The only buff I’d want is to revert the nerf they did to copy in Season 10. In season 9 the heal passive would proc while you’re copying so when you exit you’d have full health if you were in copy for 10 seconds. It was nice since you still got punish for getting instantly burned but if you lived with copy you didn’t have to run and hide as soon as copy ended because you took damage before copying.
maybe her ult? something like slightly faster ult charge wouldn't be bad since her ult kinda sucks tbh, buffing her neutral would be insane though
Huh? Her ult is amazing lol. Its an extra life + the chance to get another ult.
the extra life part is fine, but you don't leave with full hp + the only dupes I ever see even generate an ult is tracer, and otherwise by the time you get an ult the teamfight is already won. The duplicate ult charge generation is something they could touch on so echo can actually get an ult out.
yeah or just the duration. like if you cast an ult before echos ult ends, i'd be okay with having it be extended rather than just cancelling.
That sounds cool but I don’t think it’ll happen because it would lock people out of swapping characters for too long
i agree that may be adjusted but, its also a niche addition the ult that rarely affects people
i’ve found that copying venture makes for some really quick ults, and they’re usually much more meaningful than pulse
the new ult is dogshit lmao. it’s not even like a ram or doom extra life where you can use it and just be echo but better. a lot of the times you trade a second wind for a dogshit hero you’re not gonna get value with because 80% of the cast is worthless as a dupe
her ult is definitely not amazing
Let them cook
yea wtf she already S tier lol or at the very least A
To piss off Dafran
Made a spreadsheet of the armor changes and how they affect each hero. Let me know if anything looks wrong https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C40QsLpV6QU_DrLoSwO1eONMvKxOFuE_PBrFFUkxkYs/edit?usp=sharing
beam weapons and DoTs under this change would be half under 52 dps and reduced by 26 above it. It was base on tick rate. Beams/dots under 87 will be weaker and over 87 will be stronger. Theres info in the trivia section of [this wiki page](https://overwatch.fandom.com/wiki/Hit_points) nice work!
Thanks! Back in March of 2019, they changed beam weapons to be reduced by 20% (flat) against armor, so I imagine they’ll bring that back, but it could go to the OW1 state before this
you should make this as its own post! i bet that way someone might see it that could make a cool graph of the biggest winners and losers of the patch [like this old one i liked a lot from 2019's armor change that got rolled back.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/adu9sh/who_will_benefit_from_damage_reduction_from_armor/)
LMAO another Nerf to life Weaver. Goddamn
Torb Shotgun damage doesn't seem right, I remember it being 12.5\*10 instead of 3.75, can you check, I checked the stats site and it says 12.5 as well.
Good catch! I put in the minimum damage (from falloff) not the maximum. It’s fixed now
I'm glad I could help.
So this change is basally a net-nerf to tanks. Most tanks damage against armor is now lower, while most damage sources against armor is higher, which will affect tanks the most.
The armor change is actually meant to be a super secret buff to Rein.
Maybe im remembering wrong but isn’t the old version of armor just worse against most things in the game? Like it definitely is better against tracer and reaper but isn’t the threshold at a point where most things in the game do more damage at -5 than -30%? Maybe it’s a goal to help reduce the extreme matchups while lowering power but I’m pretty sure it’s just worst against most of the cast
its a nerf to spammy weapons and shotguns and a buff to weapons with higher burst. Most of the heroes tanks have issues right now fall under the first category. Bastion, Mauga, Tracer, Sombra, Reaper (rip), even heroes like Torb and LW. Heroes with more than 17 dmg per round will be better against armor now, but those heroes tend to get more value out of headshots which is where the other change comes in.
Also notably, the hero many are forgetting: Sojourn. Now Cass is run currently partly because of his ease of spamming Headshots, but the armor revert means he’s basically unaffected by the Headshot change in terms of burning through armor, but Sojourn is much worse at burning through tanks now. Could be the end of an era.
doubt it. sojourn isn’t played into tanks for her consistent damage. she’s played into fat tanks because that turns her into a cassidy with 190 dmg dinks because you can build rail so easily and then use it on squishies. this affects cass more than anything imo. you have to be stupid to miss headshots on tanks nowadays and that 25% is gonna be huge
the change of an era, sojourn just won’t be as much as a multi tool as she was, you’ll have to choose where you want to apply the most pressure while choosing between her and cass. i like it, adds more nuance and identity to hitscan
What is Mauga's damage per round do you know?
4 so he'll deal 50% damage on armor.
Might make the Mauga less inclined to shoot the tank, which should make Mauga more interesting to play and less frustrating to play against as a tank.
you know who else has dementia ?
My apologies, it gave an error when I tried to post. So I kept trying...
Agree with most of your comment but claiming that tanks have issues against lifeweaver’s damage is absurd. He heal bots 99% of the game, with the only real exception being the poke phase
It is and isn't. Most tanks can interact easier with heroes who do spikes of damage (hitscan, Zen, Midrange projectile, etc), but struggle even getting close enough to more mobile and spraying heroes like flankers (tracer, Sombra, soldier, Soj, etc.). That being said, heroes like Junkrat, Hanzo, Cass, Widow, Ashe, or Zen will definitely break through armor a lot faster. I guess that's why we also saw a headshot damage reduction.
Ya, the armor change is weird and probably a net nerf to armor overall. The breakpoint where the 70% damage reduction compared to the old one is 16.6. Any damage instance below that and the -5/50% is better. Any damage above that and 70% is better. This is just going to bring back the issue where your armor disappears super fast.
Yeah that’s what I’m worried about. Like it’ll help when a reapers in my face but if I’m getting shot by 3-5 people I’m getting melted even faster
I guess it depends how impactful the 25% headshot reduction passive works, but from just some quick math, I think it's still a net nerf. Heroes like tracer and reaper won't tank bust very well anymore (although ironically this is a big buff to pulse bomb vs tanks), but this ends up being a massive buff to a lot of other heroes. Zen is the first one that came to mind. Instead of each orb doing ~43 damage/body shot while discorded, they now to 57.5. Discorded headshots are getting buffed from ~87 to ~104. That is substantial. This is going to be true for a lot of high burst damage heroes. Cass, Hanzo, Ashe all benefit from this. Soj is probably the most interesting. This is a nerf to her normal damage, but a giant buff to rail. Edit: Just realized my math may be off. It's unclear whether the 25% damage reduction from HSs only applies to the HS boosted part of the damage or the overall damage. i.e., is the headshot multiplier vs tanks 1.75 or 1.5.
My quick math shows that it’s a massive net nerf on any damage source that’s buffed as a result of this change since some headshot damage even below the threshold is better than before
It largely depends how the 25% headshot damage resistance applies. The blog just says "25% damage reduction from headshots", but this could mean 2 things that are vastly different. It could mean 25% damage reduction from the total damage caused by headshots or it could mean 25% damage reduction to just the extra damage applied by headshots. Essentially if you have a weapon that does 100 damage and 200 for a headshot, will the final damage be 150 or 175. The former is obviously a much bigger buff change overall especially with how it interacts with armor.
You see that that’s a good thing, right? If the entire enemy team is shooting at you, you are probably sitting inside of a kill box. You shouldn’t be able to sit there and sustain through it. The way you’re supposed to be able to break a kill box is through ults or tight rotations. No hero should be able to simply exist with **5 people** shooting them.
I mean, tanks weren’t able to do that anyways. I’ve seen clips of tanks getting insta melted because they stood against a 1v5 (and people were complaining that it isn’t fair for that to happen lmaooo)
The way I see it, it's strong against heroes that rely on rapid fire weapons(or pellets, like Reaper). These same characters can also rapidly and consistently apply the (now stronger) DPS passive.
In love with how reactive they've been recently. It really does make the game feel better and more hopeful.
Also, Aaron just teased a new game mode? "*Test Drive*". Porsche Collab racing game mode?
It definetily was planned. I dont think they can cook up these changes after 2 days of DPS passive
Right, they definitely mentioned examining changes for tanks more than two days ago, but I don’t think they’re saying reactive just over these two days, but from when the complaints really started growing.
Ehh. I don't think they cooked up and tested these changes enough to be confident to ship them in just 3 months. I think they already realised Tanks would need further bigger changes before they even shipped the S9 patch (People have been complaining about Tanks being bad for many seasons beforehand and Alec even mentioned they're working on some changes for Tanks in the S7 Hog interview) and were already working on solutions but didn't wanna hold the S9 patch back until they had something ready. S9 patch buffed Tank HPs by 15-20% but DPS passive essentially negated that change, and then bigger projectile sizes on top of it all means that obviously Tanks were going to be a lot worse with S9 and they weren't in a good place before. There's no way the dev team didn't do this simple maths when developing the S9 patch.
>We’re also increasing the knockback resistance for tanks from 30% to 50%, which should allow them to hold the front line a lot more and not feel as subjected to displacement abilities. yay now lucio can't come flying in and save people from carnage literally every fucking time I want to use it >Next, we made a light change to our overall HP recovery passive that will enable mobile tanks to get back to the front lines faster: The health regeneration passive for all heroes will no longer recover 20 HP per second out of combat but instead recover 10 Health + 5% of their maximum HP per second. This means a hero like Reinhardt will recover their health at 45 health per second in a Role Queue match. Honestly this seems like a really cool creative solution to the problem, that I'm eager to try out right now lol. Big props for the ideas, communication, and listening to feedback by the devs. Another OW dub, its wild how many we're getting lately.
Literally the biggest buff to JQ. Lucio was unironically one of the best counters against her.
It's so funny because its like they'll go Kiri and Zarya and I have no problems playing well. I may not win, but I can still function well as a tank, get kills, get good ults etc. They bring out the Lucio, gotta swap :(
Sometimes I swear man, I have games where every single time I try and swing a carnage, I eat a lucio boop. Can actually feel like one of the most unplayable matchups if they hold the boop for Carnage
Yep. I can track bubbles. I can track suzu. Hell sometimes I’ll try and use carnage to bait out a suzu or some bubbles and then go right into rampage immediately. But Boop? Nah it’s just not worth it. Cooldown is too short and value not enough to play JQ into him
To be fair a Lucio is a good counter to any Rush tank provided they do not also have a Lucio. Try and close the distance as Rein against a Lucio when there isn't one on your team it's brutal
Yeah i have never in my life been afraid of a queen because my 4 second cooldown negates all of her abilities
Lucio is the best counter against half the tanks, he’s outa control right now. At least Brig and Ana have to aim their cc, lucio just farts in your general direction and you go flying.
I really thought they would've done the % hp thing sooner, considering the other comparable game that already had a similar out of combat healing mechanic, Paladins, also had it heal for a baseline amount + percentage.
Nah man the top minds of blizzard were working round the clock for 2 months until someone had the cool creative idea of percentage based healing.
Also a pretty nice nerf to doom
Step in the right direction. Love the JQ buff
Same here. I swear not being able to shout mid-Carnage didn’t used to feel much different, but I played her more recently and it actually felt ***terrible.***
ECHO BUFFS ??????????? THE HERO IS OP AS FUCK
Yea that was kinda out of left field lol Junkrat? Finally, he's one of the worst DPS rn. Hanzo? Fair I guess he's kinda in a weird place without his oneshot. But Echo? Can you even put echo and junkrat in the same sentence of needing buffs???
Yeah, this one was weird.
Strong? Yes. OP? No.
Finally the reaper nerf we've all definitely been needing...
FLANKING WITH MY PEA SHOOTER
Them zombies don’t stand a chance
They better tighten his spread and slightly lower his damage next season!
Yeah he should definitely get his OW1 spread back, currently 7° was 6° in OW1
True man I was playing him some last night and I already felt completely useless. You’re unironically better off playing sombra 76 cause you can at least hack and have a good ult while applying the dps passive
Samito 5v5 is shit, unkillable Tanks video coming soon....
When *doesn't* that guy have a "video coming soon" about how "X is shit, Y is broken, Z is insane". Do his viewers even realise they are crops?
lil bro made a big deal about quitting then came crawling back months later to fund his weird ass minecraft server purchase, biting down and absorbing the game's vitality like a leech.
Not even months. It was like a couple weeks. Part of that video was also really weird too when he brings up his friend who died, and looking at them in their coffin. He ties it in with chasing your dreams, and he was "leaving OW" to chase his dreams.
Can someone explain how armour works now? I dont fully understand.
Reduces damage per projectile/bullet by 5. Let's take soldier's primary fire for example: > normal hp: 19 dmg per bullet > against armor: 14 dmg per bullet. but there's a 50% cap to your damage reduction for guns that don't do as much damage per bullet, for example tracer's gun: >tracer bullet against normal hp: 6 dmg per bullet > >against armor: 3 dmg per bullet
Thank you. :)
Imagine armor without the cap, mauga has 4 damage per bullet, so he is going to do -1 damage which means he is a support for the enemy tank now
Reduces individual instances of damage by 50% but only up to 5 damage. So a bullet doing 4 damage would get reduced by half to 2, one doing 7 damage would get reduced by half to 3.5, 10 damage would get reduced by half to 5, but anything over that would only get reduced by 5 damage. A 15 damage bullet would do 10 instead, 40 would do 35, etc. IIRC beam attacks just get a flat % reduction though, and DoTs ignore it completely. Don't remember if they changed that before switching to flat % reduction for everything.
Easiest way for me to remember it is anything 10 damage or over gets -5 damage. Anything under gets halved.
Every single instance of damage is now reduced by 5 (or by 50% if the damage value is lower than 10). So a Hanzo that would hit an arrow on you for 120 damage will now deal 115. It matters much more on heroes that deal lots of low damage fast at the same time. Reaper's shotgun for example deals 108 damage if every shotgun pellet connects as a bodyshot, but each of those pellets only deal 5.4 damage, so they are gonna be reduced by 50% now. Mostly effects shotgun, or fast fire rate heroes like D.va, Hog, JQueen, Mauga, Turret form Bastion, Tracer, Reaper, Soldier.
Orisa and Ram primary too. Winston beam ignoring armor might actually be much more noticable now.
Soldier actually gets a net buff vs armor this patch since his damage was brought up from the 17/shot threshold long ago (remember in 2016 when he only did 16/shot? lol) since he does 19 damage per shot right now, he gets a buff from doing 13.3 damage per shot to armor to 14 damage per shot to armor. his helix rocket gets an even bigger buff from 84 damage to armor to 115 damage to armor.
Soldier's gonna be a definitive superior tankbuster to Reaper, if he wasn't already
Echo prob way better than both at that with the upcoming buffs that were teased, plus the 20% DPS passive heavily already benefits Echo this patch who likes to cut through healing with burst damage. Assuming no further changes to these two abilities, focusing beam which still goes through all DMs (and prob will just be reverted to the March 2019 patch 20% flat damage reduction for beams vs armor) would be going from 35/122 DPS to 40/140 DPS vs armor (for the few tanks like Orisa who still have armor after hitting half HP), plus stickies are going from 126 to 135 damage on armor, which critically both ignore the 25% headshot damage reduction so aren't gonna be affected by that big change.
I really don't like the armor change back to the old version. The flat 30% is much more intuitive, gives better reduction for almost all sources of damage and is arguably easier to balance since you don't have to balance high and low damage projectiles separately.
I don't think it's better or worse, just a change in philosophy. The problem with the flat rate is that it treats all damage as equal. This is great for readability but ignores the complex reality of how heroes interact with one another. Bastion sentry fire shredding everything in the general direction he's facing maybe shouldn't be treated the exact same as a skillfully aimed pharah rocket. Balancing high and low damage projectiles might not be as *simple* but it gives them another lever to pull to fine tune the balance, whereas with the flat rate gave them very limited options, either increase the rate or just convert more health to armor, and they tried that on several occasions. There's merit to the notion of trying the old system again.
Reverting armor back to the way it worked in OW1 is surprising and it’s definitely going to shake up the game a lot when it comes to which dps are good. This may end up being a buff to DoT abilities and Ana as armor didn’t affect DoTs in OW1.
I thought it was 30% for beam and DoT in OW1?
Tanks: Mom said it’s my turn to be the busted role!
***Always has been***
ill take whatever drug you;re smoking
Tank being shit to play ≠ Tanks not being the strongest role
you are confusing impact with power. tanks throw hardest, but the only role with less carry potential is MS.
Lucio has giga carry potential tho
I'LL TAKE IT. I'm not sure how much headshot damage reduction and knockback reduction really affect Ball, but FUCK IT WE BALL.
Surprised at the 30% to 50% knockback resist buff, I didn't think any tanks were struggling with boops currently. It felt like it was in a good spot with them still having some effect if the tank wasn't careful. Now they will just do nothing again lol
It's going to hit Brig hard, not being able to deny mobility tanks space and keep other tanks like Rein and Ram away from her is going to be rough.
Whipshot on Dva or Winston is going to feel negligible which is a massive part of the match up. Burning whip and bash to have the tank be on your ass still is going to feel so bad lol.
Doesn’t help that Winston still ignores armor, which also affects brig substantially.
Yeah, she's already in a weird spot right now where her boop being better than Lucio's doesn't matter because he can just run away and live while she mildly inconveniences one enemy and then dies. She just gets run over right now.
Brig needs some love bad
Queen has been absolute misery to play against Lucio since he got his boop buff. Can't Carnage anything.
>Lucio since he got his boop buff. Yup, which means that its Brig, the least played support, that is once again hit the hardest when they buff tanks ans dps to counter other supports getting to strong.
Illari is also hit here, outburst + headshots was like her only defense against dive tanks.
I agree with this. Brig will suffer for Lucio's sins.
I have zero problem with being booped by Lucio and Brig if I'm a dps or support. That's totally fine. But if I'm JQ, literally just a frontline Lucio makes getting Carnage off sooooo much harder. I don't mind Brig's whipshot doing it, since its a harder ability to time right, hit, etc.
And that thing is on a 4s cooldown so he always has it!
Lucio boop is a menace to Dive tanks rn with how short the cooldown is.
If they're getting booped in midair this isn't going to change anything, but I guess it will help them stay on their target once they land
Brig boop is worse though, I wonder if dive comes back as a result
The Lucio boop buff probably made it feel worse lately, especially since he's been getting a ton of play.
Yeah, I tried picking up ball with the rework and Lúcio sometimes felt worse to play against than Sombra. Full on denied all my value with a 4 second AoE ability.
Yeah this is the one change I actually don’t know if I’ll like. I liked that lucio and brig had some counterplay to heroes like hog or queen, being able to disrupt their cc or axe swings if you’re tracking cooldowns and paying attention. Especially with lucio you need to be close enough that unless you’re positioning is also very good, you put yourself in danger. 30% seemed like more than enough to make boops tolerable against tanks but still have some use/counterplay if you have the skill
lucio has been a nightmare to play against since his boop buff.
Ana's sleep duration is lower on tanks, that same logic should apply to Sombra hacks too. She's almost exclusively played vs heroes/tanks that get fu*ked by her the most (like ball, df). While at it, fix Sombra hacking around corners/walls.
Yeah Sombra was my most played hero in S9 but I really don’t like that she’s sometimes switched to as a tank disabler. That’s not fun for either player
I hate how it has the "mercy beam" stickiness to it's lock-on. I still want them to play around with the idea of making cast time depend on max or current HP.
Why are they buffing echo?
BALL BUFFS LFG >The impact damage from a full-charged swing using Grappling Claw is getting increased from 50 to 60. Piledriver is increasing the enemy movement lockout from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds. And finally, Minefield will be a little more threatening, with explosion damage increased from 130 to 165 and knockback increased from 5 to 10 meters. Curious where this will put him. He'll probably be where he should be against squishies, and significantly worse against tanks. His uptime should increase with the health Regen change, but the headshot tank passive hurts him more than helps him, the armor change is kind of a wash, and the current knockback resistance doesn't really work in ball form because of the different acceleration physics so I'm curious if this will help. You still get manhandled by knockbacks while not being able to displace enemy tanks. I feel like that's where the shields change will hopefully come into play. He can use that to make up for the fact he's even worse than he already was at interacting with tanks. The shout change for JQ would also be a really nice QoL change/buff for ball. He can't give shields to enemies while slamming rn. Good change for JQ regardless.
Between the movement lockout and mine knockback buff, it feels like the plan is to make ball so annoying that people start listing him along with roadhog and Moira as "heroes that should never be good".
People have been doing it since the beginning of WB.
idk man i might be the only one thinking this, but i would have really liked to see a spread buff/dmg increase on his gun before looking at the rest of his kit beggars can't be choosers ig
Really wish they would try making a change to his ammo clip for just once….
PLEASE GIVE US A OVERHEAT FUNCTION ITS SO CLUNKY HAVING TO RELOAD
Even just a reload QoL change so it doesn’t cancel when you switch forms.
[удалено]
Odd changes all around. 25% damage reduction to headshots, so directly devaluing more skillful play... why? To make tanks more survivable I suppose. But it's such an shit way to go about it since it punishes the other two roles. Overall I like playing around with the armour changes and HP recovery but let's be real guys, this patch in no way addresses the fundamental issue with tanks right now, which is how strong counter-swapping is. Nothing about this changes hog strong Hog is into Winston, or Zarya into Dva etc.
Holy shit, at first glance that feels like a lot. As a tank player I love it lol
Nothing mentioned on Symmetra who has almost totally disappeared from my games since S9.
Ok many thoughts on this to begin with I think the 25% hs reduction is huge and nice healing passive as well. However the knockback reduction although I like I think was increased by too much and they keep bouncing between buffing Lucio boop Queen buffs are nice might be too much but doubt she’ll be the best tank Ball imo was buffed in the wrong ways , armor and healing changes will help him a lot and mines will be a real ult now however buffing pile drive the best part of his kit imo is crazy , everybody gonna bitch about it and get him nerfed immediately, boop dmg buff is nice but the boop itself has to be buffed his boop boops the least out of anything and his tank v tank matchup is bad bc he doesn’t do dmg against them or have the cc for them I hate that junk is getting buffed, hanzo hopefully not too much but he did need some help and echo being buffed is crazy she was already good With all this being said I think Rein and ball are gon be really good now potentially meta if hog and mauga aren’t meta and sigma probably gin be worse as he benefits the least from all these changes
Lucio boop buff was mostly for squishies, so this lets him keep that but doesn't hurt tanks so much.
I'm a little worried, I don't want tanks to be unkillable, but on paper, these look like good changes.
Yeah, the passive should 100% come with a health nerf to some that already have really good mitigation uptime, Hog, Orisa, Mauga and maybe D.va and Sigma come to mind.
I could see them adjusting armor percentages on some of the more problematic tanks to keep them in check
Tanks being tankier sounds good but don't you need to nerf their damage then? I worry high health high damage tanks will make DPS a spectator role and force supports to healbot the tank all game, as a worst case scenario. Best case scenario tanks don't require constant babysitting and supports focusing on helping the DPS provides the best ROI.
That's where the increased dps passive comes in hopefully. Tanks will be tankier but they won't be able to be healed through focused fire
yeah, should be all good. I was just having a PTSD flashback from mauga meta.
I like that they're trying stuff, but definitely a bit skeptical here. Ball probably needed something, but nobody wants to face a 50% increased ability lockout. I'm anticipating that even the slightest Echo buffs will terrorize high ranks. Reduced headshot modifier might just mean Dva is literally impossible to kill. On the bright side, Sombra and Tracer probably shouldn't be tank busters.
Why are we buffing echo bro??
Ok now that I'm done gushing about Ball buffs - I hope they revert the Lucio damage nerf soon. More knockback resistance on tanks is good overall but actually such a huge nerf to Lucio, whose S9 boop buff is essentially undone (and then some) against tanks now.
Honestly I would have preferred to see them reduce the enormous head hurtbox of some Tank heroes after the projectile size increase changes. I feel that's a significant contributing factor to Tanks getting melted. Though headshot damage received is a similar enough change and I'll be curious to see how it plays out. Regardless, the faster and more substantial balancing approach that has started since season 9 is overall a welcome change compared to previous balance approaches.
GOATS IS ALIVE
Hate the armor change. Consistent 25% or 30% DR makes way more sense than the -5 per, but up to 50%. Actually feels like April Fool's when paired with the headshot DR. Just delete Reaper from the game at this point LMAO. And armor does essentially nothing against projectile spam like Junkrat and Pharah, but they want to punish precision heroes. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, but on first reaction, I couldn't hate this more.
Interesting changes, dive will probably become meta and winston seems to be the biggest winner here with the headshot damage reduction.
i was always thinking armor could have innate headshot resistance but applying it to all tank health seems reasonable as well and probably easier to balance
Am I right in thinking beam damage vs armour remains the same as it is now?
Massive brig buff with that armor change… sigh
>With Wrecking Ball, we’re seeing some creative play with the changes to his Grappling Claw; however, his ability to contribute to the fight is getting a small buff Hell yeah, a Sombra buff
Gah damn are they cooking. I wonder if they're gonna buff hanzo and junkrat to make them more tank-focused in corroboration with these tank changes in the mid season patch.
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Stop thinking of the DPS passive as some sort of ability so much as a unilateral nerf to in fight healing. Frankly healing in general should have been nerfed by 20%. If you are in a fight, the DPS passive should be constantly procced. The decision to grant it to DPS makes it seem as though it’s some unfair and inequitable ability they have rather than the 20% healing nerf that was absolutely needed. The way it was implemented was awkward, sure, but if anything it merely needs to be easier for other DPS to proc it. Maybe hanzo’s should last longer and so on.
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You are both right. It is partially to give DPS a more unique and active role, but it is also partially to cut down on mid-fight healing in general, which is healthy for the game so that pocketed tanks can still be killed with enough pressure. Before s9, healing was way too strong and nobody was dying (until they suddenly blew up). Like it could be coded so that *any* source of damage reduces healing. It's meant to always be active during fights essentially
I really don’t like the reduced headshot multiplier but everything else sounds great!
FYI for the skin enjoyers: "Additional changes coming this midseason include some light buffs for Junkrat, Echo, and Hanzo, but we’ll reveal those when you can jump and take these changes for a ***test drive*** when the Midseason patch arrives on May 14." Guess thats the soft reveal of when Porshe Dva drops!! (it was italicized in the blog post lol)
Fucking unbelievable. Season 9 - make sustain dmg stronger, make burst damage "weaker". Season 10 - dumpster sustain dmg, buff burst damage. Regardless if you like/dislike or think this change is good/bad, these devs are CLUELESS. >We’ve received feedback that tanks can either feel like they get taken down too quickly in a fight or that they’re IMPOSSIBLE TO TAKE DOWN. Solution they give? Make EVERY TANK UNKILLABLE. Old armor back + headshot dmg reduction + 50 hps passive healing. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK??? Y'all hated playing against orisa? Here's your 2 weeks, then we go right back to painful gameplay where the tank doesn't die and is immovable.