What's Changing With Overwatch's New Update

Blizzard Entertainment has been keeping Overwatch updated and rolling out new content on a regular basis. A lot of it comes down to balancing and re-balancing the way certain players handle things in order to ensure that the game stays fresh and invigorating. It's a hard thing to do, as new players come and go and old players get stuck after settling into a certain playing style. The latest update for Overwatch will likely have some fans raging and others cheering, since a ton of balancing tweaks have been made to a number of characters, including fan-favorites such as Widowmaker and Ana, along with the most recent newcomer to the group, Brigitte.

Oftentimes, Blizzard catches a lot of flak by doing even the tiniest of tweaks to characters like Mercy, while some other changes go completely ignored. Don't expect this to get swept under the rug, though. Gamespot rolled out a lot of the changes that have been made to the game, which include Ana getting a buff in precision for determining the sensitivity of her rifle's movements during the process of zooming in. That's pretty detailed.

The team also debuffed Brigitte slightly, making it so that she now falls down during charge attacks against another charging player. Previously, when characters like Doomfist or Reinhardt would charge at each other, both characters would fall down and suffer the debilitating state of being stunned for a few seconds. Brigitte didn't have such a drawback...until now. When she charges against another player who is also charging, both characters will now become stunned, leveling that part of the playing field.

And speaking of Reinhardt, the team overhauled his Earthshatter skill so that it's more "predictable" and "effective." It can hit enemies even while they're near walls, but it can no longer hit enemies that enter the damage cone after the wave has already passed that area. If you're behind a barrier of some sort, you also won't be affected.

The damage falloff rate for Roadhog's scrap gun has been modified as well, since the alternate fire didn't originally have damage falloff. The developers felt it was too powerful against enemies who were in the distance, so the alternate fire mode now has damage falloff consistently between 15 and 30 meters out.

One of Overwatch's most popular characters, Widowmaker, has also gotten some slight modifications, including retained momentum when utilizing a grappling hook throughout the environment, as well as an increased precision while adjusting the aim sensitivity while zoomed in.

Some other minor changes have also been made with the Ranked play, including Grand Masters being able to team up with players with a 350-or-higher skill rating. And the game's respawn time scaler was adjusted for custom games to prevent respawn times from being longer than the default. A minor change to Mercy was made in the form of her Caduceus Blaster automatically being equipped at the start of a free-for-all match, which also applies to the 1-vs-1 Mystery Heroes mode as well. Beyond all that, the Overwatch team also made some very minor adjustments to the Rialto map, where the payload travel speed was increased ever-so-slightly, and the amount of time a payload pauses at a checkpoint has been reduced.

The patch for Overwatch is currently live right now for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC. So be sure to update to get familiar with all the new changes.