The Overwatch League offseason hasn’t been the most exciting for the Philadelphia Fusion, they announced their entire roster in one full swoop and haven’t left much to be done before the new season starts in February. However, Overwatch and the game developers from Blizzard announced a new huge update coming soon to the game. The update changes many heroes and looks to change the meta of the game from double shield to something completely new. This obviously affects the Fusion players majorly, especially if the character they play the most has been changed, they may need to change characters completely or just adjust at how they play that certain character.
I will list the official patch notes that Blizzard released and then I’ll talk about how that affects the Fusion players going forward. I will note two things for some of you new esports followers, in the gaming world, if a character has been made stronger through a change, we call it a buff and if the character has become weaker through a change, we call it a nerf. I will also mention that this update probably won’t be the last one to come out before the new season starts, so it may not make too much of a difference as some changes may be reverted later on.
Right, onto the actual patch notes. Starting us off is a general change that applies to all characters who have armor within their total health that sees the armor damage reduction total raised for 3 to 5, this means all characters will do less damage to armor, making characters with armor in their health a lot tankier. Right now, it doesn’t seem like this change is that huge but once I’ve run through some of the changes to tanks, it’s a massive change that will certainly change the meta of the game.
Now onto the changes to specific characters, and there’s quite a lot. Starting off, we look at the changes to tank character Orisa. The first change sees her base armor value increased from 200 to 250. The second change to Orisa sees the movement speed penalty she receives when using Fusion Driver reduced from 30% down to 20%. A third change has been made to Orisa, this time to the main reason players play her, her shield’s health has been reduced massively from 900 to 600. The final change made to Orisa sees her Fortify ability reworked, reducing the cooldown from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.
All these changes are a part of a bigger picture in Overwatch. For a long time, the meta of the game has been to play two shield tanks and pretty much hope you can destroy your opponent's shields first and then kill off their players before they can destroy your shields. With this patch, every shield tank has received major nerfs. Taking Orisa’s shield health down seriously hurts her, especially with the ability recharging at the same rate as it was at 900 health, to counter this huge change, they’ve buffed her mobility during Fusion Driver, allowed her to use her Fortify ability more often to give her a better chance at surviving and then increasing the amount of armor she has makes her tankier. It’ll be interesting to see how major the changes will be once the update has gone live on all platforms soon, it’s going to be a while before we truly know how good/bad these changes will be for Orisa.
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The next hero to receive a rework in this latest update is tank character Sigma. Sigma’s first change sees his shield’s health slashed down from 1500 to 900 health, not only that but the regeneration rate of his shield has also been reduced, from 150 health per second to 120 health per second. Sigma’s second change sees his Kinetic Grasp ability changed, first of all, its cooldown has been reduced from 13 seconds to 10 seconds and the second change to this ability sees the damage-to-shield gain ratio increased from 40% to 60%.
These changes to Sigma have the same thought process behind them as the ones they have made to Orisa. Sigma’s shield has received a huge nerf and, at an early look, it may mean we see him being played a lot less, especially with other tanks being buffed even without being changed such as Winston and Zarya. His Kinetic Grasp being buffed will help a lot with how he can survive in team fights but the only negative is the health he gains using the ability is classed as shield and not armor. I really think they’ve nerfed Sigma massively and they may give him a small buff in a later patch. The third character to be changed is tank character Reinhardt. The first change Reinhardt has received is his shield’s health has been reduced from 2000 to 1600. A second change made to Reinhardt is when he’s got his shield up, his movement speed penalty has been halved. A third change Reinhardt has received is his knockback resistance has been increased from 30% to 50%.
Once again, these Reinhardt changes are similar changes to his fellow shield tanks, taking away his shields health and making sure he’s much more suited to combat without his shield. The knockback reduction buff will be huge like it first was when it was introduced a few months back. However, the biggest change, in my opinion, is his movement speed buff. This change means he can push forward much quicker whilst having his shield up, this can be a much-needed improvement in numerous situations, it means you can get to cover before your shield breaks down, it also means you and your team can push much quicker to an objective together meaning fast characters like Tracer and Soldier won’t be left on point by themselves as longer.
Moving onto the fourth character to receiver updates and it means we move to a different type of character, this time its support character Moira. She only received one change in this update and it sees her healing being cut down from 4 to 3.25, so 80 hp per second to 65 hp per second. Moira has been the cause of huge debate in the Overwatch community for some time now. Her healing is arguably the best out of all the supports and her damage is definitely the best out of all the supports, it’s a common occurrence to see Moira players leave games with the highest healing done and damage done on their team. This change just makes sense and from reading the values, it’s not going to be too damaging to her as a support character.
The fifth character to receive changes is tank character D.Va. The change D.Va has received is the cooldown on her Defense Matrix has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
This change to D.Va is hopefully going to make her viable again, they previously increased the cooldown of her Defense Matrix to 2 seconds and it made her pretty much irrelevant in most of the metas that have been created since then. However, when I was at the previous, much lower total, D.Va was pretty much unkillable, hopefully putting the cooldown at a middle point between the two extremes will make her more viable, along with the fact that the armor damage reduction buff will make a huge impact to her as well.
The sixth character to receive an update is DPS character Widowmaker. The only change she’s received is the cooldown on her grappling hook has been increased from 10 seconds to 12 seconds.
This change to Widowmaker isn’t a huge change but it just means with barriers going down quicker, she’ll be able to hit more shots earlier on in games and team fights, they are countering this buff by nerfing her mobility a little, so players can still hunt her down.
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The seventh character to receive changes is DPS character Torbjorn. The only change that the developers have made to him is the cooldown on his Overload ability has been reduced from 12 seconds to 10 seconds. This change to Torbjorn isn’t the biggest but it’s a nice change to help with the fact that he struggles in the latter stages of a team fight when his turret has died and Overload has finished. This just allows him to use this ability more than once in lengthy team fights, allowing him to survive longer whilst still putting out damage.
The eighth character to receive an update is DPS character Genji. Genji has only received one change this update and it sees his Shuriken ammo increased from 24 to 30.
This little buff for Genji can go a far way in this new low health shield meta that will start to form. It helps him counter the armor damage resistance buff and allows him to have a bit more of a finishing touch on his targets, it also helps him spam shields more and keeps some ammo for when the shield goes down so he can inflict damage.
The ninth and final character to receive a change is tank hero Zarya. Zarya has received two changes to her secondary fire. The explosion radius has been increased from 2 to 2.25 meters and the other change sees the cost of using this secondary fire go down from 25 to 20.
These changes to Zarya make her secondary fire more viable as before her primary fire needed all the ammo you could get because of having a superior damage value so players didn’t want to waste ammo and then time reloading her weapon. Now you can fire the secondary fire at a distance when closing the gap on your opponents to then switch to your primary fire when up close.
How these changes will affect the Fusion roster? I mentioned in my previous piece breaking down the Fusion roster that the tank situation for Philly will be very interesting and now it’s just become box office stuff with these major changes to tanks. The changes to tanks will change the entire league due to the meta changing but Philly will probably benefit from these changes and here’s why.
Poko is known for how good he is on D.Va and with D.Va becoming much more viable now with this update you’ll probably see Poko revert to maining the character he made his name in the league with. This will be huge for Fusion this year as Poko on D.Va in season 1 was a major part of getting them to the final so having Poko on the character he was so successful with should put the Fusion ahead of the competition heading into the season.
It’ll be interesting to see where Fury and SADO will fit into the new meta if Poko does go back onto D.Va. Obviously, the meta will probably still include shield tanks but we could also see a comeback for previous metas like dive and see either SADO or Fury pickup Winston, it’s a really interesting thing to think about and theorize about, because there are so many ways it could go.
Shield heroes being majorly nerfed instantly buffs the entire DPS class and guys like Carpe, Eqo, and Ivy will benefit from this. Carpe will love this update as a Widowmaker main, even though he will lose some mobility it still doesn’t hurt at all with shields going down quicker which means he can pick off the opponent’s healers and DPS a lot easier. Eqo can play Genji quite well so the ammo buff for Genji will be a nice bonus for him from this update and Ivy can play Genji too so all three DPS players have benefitted from this huge update.
With Moira being the only support hero touched, the Fusion’s support players are pretty much in the same position as they were before the update was announced. Moira’s healing nerf definitely affects the league as a whole but there are so many different support combo’s pro teams do in the league, it doesn’t really change much.
Personally, I have mixed emotions surrounding this update. Something needed to change with the double shield meta, it was seriously boring to play, however, I feel they may have overshot the nerfs on Orisa and Sigma so the only playable tank duo will be Reinhardt and Zarya. It will be different in the league because the players are obviously much better and are basically gods at some of the characters regular players believe to be bad. I have a feeling they’ll tweak the Orisa and Sigma nerfs in a later update before the league kicks off in February, but it’s nice to know that the developers realize the current meta is boring and needs to change.
