Also, the Heroes of the Storm skins are now in regular lootboxes
After all of the excitement withthe new lore-heavy levelcoming toOverwatchthis week by way of the PTR, you might have missed a few other key changes.
McCree got a straight buff for his ultimate, Reaper no longer sports those shiny health orbs in a rare buff (he regains 20% health now when dealing damage to heroes as a baseline), and Roadhog had his head hitbox reduced and his Scrap Gun was tweaked.
Using the word rare for a Reaper change is kind of funny, asthe melancholy stealth characterjust recently got a buff for his Wraith Form that automatically reloads your weapons after its use. But any alterations he’s gotten since launch have mostly been incremental — in fact, he’s been one of the least messed with heroes in the game.
Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, as Reaper is currently one of the least used heroes in competitive play andhas one of the worst winrates. McCree is slightly more popular in ranked, but has a worse winrate than Reaper in many cases.
PATCH HIGHLIGHTS
New Assault Map: Horizon Lunar Colony
Built as a first step towards humanity’s renewed exploration of space, the Horizon Lunar Colony’s goal was to examine the effects of prolonged extraterrestrial habitation—on human and ape alike. The scientists’ research proved incredibly promising…until, suddenly, all contact and communications with the base were lost.
CUSTOM GAMES AND GAME BROWSER
HERO UPDATES
McCree
Developer Comment:McCree’s ultimate can deal a lot of damage if it has a lot of time to build up, but it was often too difficult to get even a small amount of damage out before being stopped or killed. These changes make it more flexible and powerful.
Reaper
Developer Comment:Reaper’s old healing passive was useful if you could kill a bunch of enemies in a row. But since enemies needed to be dead for it to work, it wasn’t very helpful unless the situation was already in your favor. His new passive lets him get immediate benefit from it, especially when fighting Tank heroes, which tend to be larger targets that deal lower damage.
Roadhog
Developer Comment:Roadhog’s head was abnormally large compared to similarly-sized characters, so we’re reducing its size to increase his survivability. The Scrap Gun changes reduce the power of his hook combo and alternate fire burst damage potential while still keeping his DPS roughly the same.
USER INTERFACE UPDATES
Developer Comment:The new “Hero Damage Done” statistic is the same as the old “Damage Done” statistic, but it doesn’t include damage done to barriers, only damage against heroes and placed objects (e.g. Torbjörn’s turret). That number can be found in the new “Barrier Damage Done” or “All Damage Done” statistics. However, since “Hero Damage Done” and “Barrier Damage Done” are brand new, their averages will only be based on time played since they were added.
Also, the old statistics were calculated by taking total damage inflicted and dividing it by the number of games played. This resulted in an average that didn’t accurately reflect the underlying performance, because it didn’t take into account the length of the games. The new averages are calculated in 10-minute slices.
Custom Games and Game Browser
