Blizzard has announced that Overwatch 2 won’t be rebalanced until its Season 2 begins in December as it’s currently happy with each hero’s power level.
As reported by Eurogamer, a blog post on Blizzard’s website shared the developer’s thoughts on the current state of the game now that most of its launch issues appear to have settled down.
Outside of a targeted fix for Zarya in Total Mayhem on October 25 and (presumably) the return of Bastion and Torbjörn, who were removed from Overwatch 2 just days after it launched due to serious glitches, Blizzard said it won’t implement any changes to its heroes for roughly two months.
“While some heroes are performing better than others, and there are differences across player skill levels, we have been happy to see that no hero’s overall power level is far out of line with our goals,” it said in the blog post, as each hero currently has a win rate of between 45% and 55%.
Instead of making incremental tweaks and changes, “our team is planning to make a series of balance changes for Season 2 that are in line with our design goal of ensuring the overall game feels balanced and fair while giving each season a more distinct identity.”
While Blizzard didn’t say explicitly which heroes will be at the centre of various buffs or nerfs, it is keeping a close eye on Genji, Sombra, Symmetra, Torbjörn, and Kiriko. Blizzard is also paying close attention to how tanks work in the new five versus five format, with D.Va in particular drawing attention.
“Despite many players saying she’s one of the best tanks in the game, Reinhardt, Sigma, and Zarya actually currently lead up the competition with an average 53% unmirrored win rate,” Blizzard said.
Overwatch 2 launched on October 4 and, as is often the case with online games, it had a rocky launch that left several fans completely unable to play the game.
Blizzard’s servers were plagued with DDoS attacks that caused lengthy queue times for those trying to play early on, and further issues emerged as a result of new Blizzard policies that required players to connect a phone number to their account before playing.
Though the requirement was implemented as a security feature, Blizzard quickly backtracked and removed the feature for most of its players, only requiring those with new accounts to attach a phone number. Further controversy emerged, however, as fans using pre-paid phone packages found they were not considered viable for the service and as a result they couldn’t play Overwatch 2.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.