Overwatch reworks revealed by developers

Overwatch’s lead hero designer Geoff Goodman participated in an Ask Me Anything session and unveiled some information regarding potential Overwatch hero reworks. Geoff stated that Mei, Symmetra, Roadhog, and Brigitte are in the talks for a rework. While Overwatch is a role-lock multiplayer game, some of these characters did too much to be considered balanced. Because of that, developers are considering locking them up to a certain archetype. Fans do not know yet if these changes will apply for all modes or just the story mode.

Overwatch Reworks

Mei as a Tank

“Mei as a tank comes up quite a bit, it’s something we can maybe try,” said Geoff Goodman. “She would have to get nearly reworked though, for example her secondary fire is far too much damage and long range to go on a Tank, but it’s a possibility.”

The community asked for Mei’s rework to be focused on turning her into a tank. However, she currently does way too much damage to get tank abilities on top of that. She will need a complete overhaul to become a tank.

Support Symmetra

“We tried Symmetra as a Support hero where her turrets healed instead of dealt damage,” said Geoff Goodman. “This was sort of fun but was kind of frustrating as a Symmetra player because Overwatch moves so fast.”

Image credit to Blizzard.

Changing Symmetra into a support was heavily discussed at Overwatch headquarters. Changing her turret’s ability from damaging to healing was one of the few tweaks they tried without success. Even increasing the damage output and range failed as well. Developers are still thinking about Symmetra’s rework as a full healer but this change will need some heavy testing.

Roadhog and Brigitte

“Other ones that come up pretty consistently in conversations are Roadhog as a DPS, Symm as a Support, Brig as a Tank.” said Geoff Goodman.

Adding Roadhog to the DPS category was already teased in an experimental card but the news of adding tank abilities to Brigitte is quite new.

As Blizzard’s development tools are solid, they can try any changes, even the boldest, and see how it goes after a round of testing. That led to a recent community backlash after the Moira rework in the experimental mode.

Even though it comes from an official source, all these Overwatch reworks are nothing but discussions and speculations at the moment. From here to an official release of Overwatch 2, many things can change for the Overwatch community.

Written by Charles FUSTER