Overwatch 2Jan 6, 2017 12:09 pm CT

Overwatch PTR live with Roadhog nerfs, plus changes to Ana and D.va

The next Overwatch patch is live on the PTR, and it looks set to break up powerful three or four tank teams that use Ana for healing support. The crazy AOE healing of Ana’s biotic grenade encouraged teams to stock up on high-health tanks, which Ana could keep up easily (especially when paired with Lucio) — but now the grenade’s effectiveness has been cut in half. (Lucio, however, is still safe.)

On the tank side of things, we knew that Roadhog was getting nerfed to make his Chain Hook ability more accurately gauge line of sight, preventing surprise one-shots. If you’re wondering, the nerf looks a lot like this. Cue sad Roadhog.

But the D.va changes are a surprise: her armor has been halved (while her health has been doubled), and her Fusion Cannons will do slightly less damage. Blizzard commented that D.va could feel like “she had no weaknesses,” and this will definitely make her squishier.

All in all, these changes are aimed to make certain tank compositions a little less unstoppable — and open up more opportunities to play other heroes and compositions. There’s no word on when this patch will go live, but PC players can hop online to try it out now. For all the details, the full patch notes are below.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment (Official Post)

GENERAL UPDATES

General

Emote Wheel
- Players can now equip up to 4 emotes, sprays, and voice lines from within the hero gallery
- Voice line and emote submenus can be accessed using the left and right mouse buttons from within the Communication wheel
- Players can now bind individual sprays, emotes, and voice lines to unique keys or mouse buttons

HERO BALANCE UPDATES

Ana

Biotic Grenade
- Healing boost on allies has been decreased by 50%

Developer Comments: The healing boost from Ana’s Biotic Grenade was providing too much healing, especially when used on targets with large health pools.

D.Va

Health increased from 200 to 400
Armor decreased from 400 to 200
Fusion Cannons
- Bullet damage decreased from 3 to 2
- Number of bullets per shot has been increased from 8 to 11

Developer Comments: D.Va’s armor often made her feel like she had no weaknesses, even against heroes that are often effective against bigger targets (like Reaper). The changes to her Fusion Cannons will result in a small overall decrease in damage, but they should feel more consistent now.

Roadhog

Chain Hook
- Targets are now pulled directly in front of Roadhog (rather than straight to him), except in cases where Roadhog drastically rotates
- Hooked targets are now released if they leave Roadhog’s line-of-sight before being pulled
- Line-of-sight checks (which detect if targets should be initially hit by the hook) are now done from Roadhog’s position, rather than the hook’s position

Developer Comments: The hook should now feel more consistent for Roadhog players, but it should also feel more reasonable to his enemies, as they cannot be hooked or pulled around corners anymore.

Sombra

Hack
- The time it takes to hack a target has been decreased from 1 second to 0.8 seconds

Developer Comments: Sombra often had difficulty hacking enemies, even when she surprised the target. This change should help her execute hacks more easily.

USER INTERFACE UPDATES

The “Stay as Team” button lights up when anyone on your team clicks it

Kill Feed

Hero ability icons are now displayed
Ultimate abilities are now indicated with an orange arrow
Headshot eliminations are now indicated with a red icon

BUG FIXES

General

Fixed a bug that allowed spectators to click the “Stay as Team” button after a game ended
Fixed a bug that caused the “Stay as Team” button to overlap with the “Back” button on the Social menu
Fixed a bug causing the “Mouse 4” button to execute the “Back” function during menu navigation, preventing it from being used for other features
Fixed a bug preventing the Social menu from correctly displaying World of Warcraft zones that have a single quotation mark in the name
Fixed a bug causing heroes to display a “T-pose” on the victory screen following a Mystery Heroes brawl

Fixed a bug that prevented the Roadhog bot from grabbing enemies with his Chain Hook through a friendly Reinhardt’s Barrier Field
Fixed a bug that allowed the Sombra bot to hack through barriers
Fixed a bug that made the Torbjörn bot unresponsive after placing his turret

Competitive Play

Fixed a bug preventing players from receiving experience points when playing offseason games

Heroes

Fixed a bug that would cause the cup in Ana’s “Toast” victory pose to appear blurry on the right side of the screen
Fixed a bug causing a several visual effect issues on McCree’s “Hat Trick” emote
Fixed a bug causing Mercy’s wings to be improperly placed on her Valkyrie and Sigrún skins
Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented Symmetra’s Photon Barrier from playing a sound effect when destroyed
Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented Widowmaker’s Venom Mine from attaching to walls
Fixed a bug that prevented Zenyatta’s Nutcracker skin from glowing when his Transcendence ultimate ability was activated

Maps

Fixed a bug that allowed Widowmaker to reach an unintended location on Eichenwalde
Fixed a bug that allowed Widowmaker to reach unintended locations on Ecopoint: Antarctica
Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra to reach unintended locations on Dorado
Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra to reach unintended locations on Watchpoint: Gibraltar
Fixed a bug on Oasis’s garden tier where the border around the capture point inaccurately marked the bounds of the capture point
Fixed an issue causing texture fragmentation on the Practice Range
Fixed a bug preventing some projectiles from destroying the piñatas on Dorado
Fixed an issue preventing the glass railings on Oasis from being easily broken by a melee attack