Buffs and Nerfs in Overwatch
On January 12, 2021, Overwatch players were handed a significant patch, the latest since last December. The patch involved a new map accompanied by a challenge and a handful of bug fixes. The patch also brings some changes to our favorite heroes.
The New Map - Kanezaka
The team at Overwatch has handed us a new Free-For-All map named Kanezaka, situated beside Hanamura. Get fighting in the Tora no Sumika nightclub, pottery shop, or bring havoc in the tower. With the new map, a new challenge has arrived. Until January 25, earn rewards that include the Kyōgisha Hanzo skin and others by winning games and watching Overwatch on Twitch.
The Heroes got Updates, Too
Ashe got some significant changes to her abilities and traits. Ashe could take out enemies with 200 health with a single headshot while assisted by the 30% damage boost made her overpowered, especially with the multiple upgrades to her weapons. Blizzard Entertainment's developers decided to lower the max damage to keep her overall damage output familiar. The Viper aim-down-sights damage was lowered, too, down to 75. Ashe’s recovery time is also lower, from 0.7 to 0.65 seconds.
Hanzos' rate of fire changes improves the effectiveness of his Storm Arrows ability and adds up for shooting five arrows. His shot recovery time was reduced from 0.3 to 0.25 seconds, making him a more accurate and productive hero.
Sigma was handed an increase to his redeploy cooldown from 1 to 2.5 seconds to his barrier. The increase was done to the barrier requiring a higher commitment to its placement and additional counterplay opportunities for counterplay.
Wrecking Ball is known for his great level of mobility and for the enormous shield health, but this has brought big changes. The developers have reduced the number of additional shields he creates per target, but the base 100 shields from the ability remain unchanged. Wrecking Ball's shield per target is reduced from 100 to 75.
The "One Punch" highlight for Doomfist's intro had a problem where it would cause it to clip into the surface on certain maps. Now players can see Genji Contenders skin correctly, and lastly, the bug with Junkrat's "Unwrap" emote not displaying properly when rotating the camera around. Lastly, the game received two updates, the first being a feature update where the replay viewer Custom Spectator Options has a detached timecode Ui option.
The patch handed gives us heroes with some unfortunate nerfs but gave us a fair chance when facing those heroes. The buffs given to Hanzo and Sigma were also disappointing as it was small adjustments and leaving fans wanting more. In the end, Overwatch fans can be extremely excited to play in the new Kanezaka map and challenge. Bug fixes in the game give players a more pleasant experience. This was a long-awaited patch giving gamers a better start into the new year with the entire pandemic. In conclusion, the patch was not enormous, but it did bring a fair chance for all players with all the nerfs and buffs.