Next season,Overwatch 2is getting its biggest shakeupsince it introduced 5v5. For the first time ever, all heroes will have a form of passive healing, withBlizzardtrying to make it easier to play if you get grouped with a bad team.
However, given thatOverwatchhas always been a team-based game, players are apprehensive, to say the least. In fact, many in the wide gaming community are outright mocking the idea, seeing it as one of the worst balance changes Overwatch has ever made.
“In Season 9, both Tank and Damage heroes will get a modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive,” reads theannouncement. The team says it’s doing this to give Damage and Tanks heroes “more options in terms of sustaining themselves”, but also to “take some of the pressure off Support players”.
The announcement does acknowledge that such a change could have a huge impact on how Overwatch is played. “In Overwatch, there is a constant tug of war between the power of a team and the power of an individual hero or player,” it reads. “A change like this shifts that balance a bit. This is something that we are constantly evaluating. We still want Overwatch to be defined by team strategy and mechanics, but we feel this can be pulled back a bit now and possibly more in the future.”
The move was immediately met with confusion and backlash online. Many are arguing that this decision will make some characters useless, especially Supports, as they won’t need to focus on keeping their teammates alive, and will instead be expected to deal damage.
This reaction has prompted the game’s director, Aaron Keller, to shed some more light on this healing overhaul.
“It’s one part of a much larger set of changes coming to the game in [Season 9],“saysKeller. “Internally we’re talking about, and targeting some of these changes at damage spikiness in game, the role of DPS in securing kills, and the strength of healing. It was a mistake to talk about this lone change out of context, since [it is] a part of a much bigger set coming to Season 9.”
Perhaps in practice, buffing the DPS of Damage heroes will mean that Support players are still useful. Blizzard has also acknowledged that Overwatch is, indeed, a team-based game, not a typical FPS, so it’s at least aware of the need to strike the right balance here. It remains to be seen if this update can do just that or make it so everyone starts playing solo, disregarding their teams.
