Season 5 of Overwatch 2 began with a slew of hero balance modifications, some of which reflected philosophical leaps for Blizzard’s hero design team. And the game’s mid-cycle patch, which will be released in July, is expected to significantly shake up the game’s meta.
Blizzard’s Aaron Keller revealed a number of changes on the horizon for the game in a Director’s Take blog post at the end of June, including hero balancing improvements slated for the mid-cycle patch. While Blizzard hasn’t formally set a date, the company has been very consistent in releasing it one month after the start of each season.
Because seasons last two months, the month-long wait for a mid-cycle patch falls exactly in the middle. Given that Season 5 begins on June 13, players could anticipate seeing the mid-cycle patch next week, most likely on Tuesday, July 11.
So far, the only information we have about hero balancing changes in the mid-cycle patch comes from Keller’s blog post, although some of them are pretty big and have the potential to shake up the meta.
Changes To The Way The Heroes Are Balanced In The Middle Of Season 5
Keller said that the mid-cycle patch will make changes to the kits of seven different heroes. He also said that “several” other changes will be made, which will make the mid-cycle balance patch stronger than usual, especially since Mei, Cassidy, and Lifeweaver have already been changed in the middle of the season.
Torbjorn and Symmetra
Blizzard wants these two heroes to pay less attention to their defences. Both have been pretty niche choices in the past and because their kits have been so focused on the things they build, they have never been true mainstays in any meta.
Keller said that Blizzard is moving their power “away from their turrets and into the rest of their kit.” This could probably make them more useful in more cases, but I’m a little worried that it might not be as good as we’d hoped. He didn’t say that Blizzard would get rid of these skills. He just said that they would get less power. But, outside of a few specific situations, these turret skills weren’t very strong to begin with.
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Sojourn
It looks like Blizzard wants to make it easier to control how far Sojourn’s Railgun can shoot. This makes me think that players will probably be able to reduce her spread by tapping the trigger instead of holding it down, like how Soldier: 76’s main fireworks.
Reinhardt and Orisa
Keller said that the team is “increasing the front-line capability” of both Reinhardt and Orisa with this change. This makes me think that the shields on the tanks will get a little bit stronger. Reinhardt already has a shield that is pretty strong. He can’t do anything while shielding, but the developers might be planning to give his shield more health to make him more useful than other shielding tanks like Sigma and Ramattra, who can do more.
Zenyatta
Last but not least, Zenyatta’s Orb of Discord will be reduced in power. Keller didn’t go into specifics, but he did say the developers will make a “slight adjustment to weaken” the ability. The ability is the bane of every tank’s existence in Overwatch 2, and most players dislike Zenyatta for it. Whether they believe he is powerful or adequately adjusted, he has been a frequent topic of discussion in the community.
This little modification might be as easy as changing the numerical % from the damage taken debuff, or it could be something more complex, such as changing how long the orb lingers on targets outside of the line of sight. Either way, it would be a nerf, but any numerical adjustment to the percentages involved in the debuff would almost surely reduce the healer’s viability.
As a Zenyatta main, I’m not looking forward to this adjustment, but I’d be perfectly ok if the devs changed anything other than the 25% extra damage received debuff. For example, outside of line-of-sight, reducing the time to one second might be understandable. But that could simply be my melancholy Zenyatta main’s opium frame of thought in action.
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