Blizzard Lead Hero Designer Provides Retrospective On Overwatch 2 Hero Balancing

Here’s some insight on Overwatch 2’s hero balancing.

In a Director's Take, Blizzard’s Lead Hero Designer Alec provided a retrospective on the hero balance in Season 6 of Overwatch 2. This season started with the launch of Illari, a hero aimed to be on the "safe side of strong," meaning impactful but not overpowered. The goal was to create shifts in the shooter's meta and encourage players to explore new team compositions. Illari's initial power was focused on her Healing Pylon and lethality, but the Healing Pylon's passive and somewhat invisible healing led to early adjustments. The team plans to continue balancing Illari while preserving her impact, with upcoming changes to her secondary fire healing in Season 7.

He also emphasized that changes should improve the overall game experience and keep each season fresh. They aim to make meaningful changes that impact the gameplay and interactions, avoiding arbitrary number adjustments. For non-reactive changes, the team set specific goals, such as incentivizing Zarya to bubble allies more. Layering multiple changes onto a hero helps achieve these goals without extreme individual changes. For instance, Zarya's changes involved reducing bubble cooldown, increasing bubble size, and boosting bubble health.

There’s adjustments coming with Season 7 as well, including changes to Bastion's armor repair when transforming into Configuration Assault, reverting Orisa's Fortify damage reduction, Torbjorn's Primary Fire recovery time, and Mei's Season 5 changes. Additionally, Alec teased upcoming reworks for Sombra and Roadhog, such as making Sombra more committal when engaging and increasing Roadhog's ability to protect his team.

Note: Activision Blizzard has been sued by California’s Civil Rights Department, alleging violations of California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act and Equal Pay Act.  CEO Bobby Kotick is alleged to have known about the alleged violations within his company. These allegations have all been denied by Activision Blizzard and the company points to additional diversity and inclusion training as past examples of taking the accusations seriously at the time they were made.