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Haatreacties

Ana has been a hot topic recently, with this being only amplified by Mauga. Ana is currently needed to keep some of the current tanks in check. How are you planning to curb Ana's complaints and incredibky high pick rate while making sure some of the tanks currently being held back by anti dont profit too much from ana nerfs?

Or are currently no Ana changes on the horizon? Or are you planning to nerf some tanks in the same patch as the patch with the Ana changes?

Anti-Heal is a useful mechanic for the overall health of the game as it helps to ensure that healing never gets too far out of control. The complaints around it feeling oppressive are understandable (as debuffs are never something players enjoy being affected by) and we'll be looking for ways to soften its impact while keeping Ana a viable hero.

The simplest solution here is just decreasing the duration of the effect though there is certainly a point where it swings from feeling OP to not useful enough if the time is too low to really capitalize on.

The reaction around it does also suggest that healing is probably too impactful overall so we'll be looking to address that in the near future as well, whether that is handled in the case of individual heroes like Roadhog Take a Breather or more systemically.

Lichtboys

How is Mauga performing in each rank? Higher or lower then expected? Granted it is very early, but I’m just curious

Throwing this on here late, but is it intended that health packs don’t stop maugas burn? Considering it stops other damage over time effects it kind of throws me off

Very well at all rank thresholds, one of the reasons we are putting out some initial changes today to lower his damage output (which also affects his sustain).

During the BlizzCon trial Mauga was actually performing much better than community perception, but there were some issues with his survivability and things like his head hitbox size. We pushed him a bit further with the understanding that we would act quick if things weren't in line with our overall balance goals. Today's nerfs should give us a better look at where he will end up once he enters Competitive.

ParanoidDrone

Mauga seems very feast or famine at the moment -- when he works, he works really well, but when he doesn't work, he's basically useless. He also demands a lot of attention from his support line, to the point that it feels like you have to healbot him or else he'll evaporate the instant you look away. Has the team noticed similar patterns in their data?

The way Mauga was designed invites players to get up into the thick of the fight all together with his team. Overrun encourages players to land directly on top of their opponents and his dual-fire mode is more effective at close ranges. Cardiac Overdrive and Cage Fight invite his teammates to stay close to him to take advantage of their defensive benefits. This can cause Mauga's to go into a lot of situations that are more precarious and will result in him struggling if his team isn't on the same page. Mauga's abilities are versatile and have uses in situations where they don't get full value. Overrun, for example, lets players run away from a fight with damage resistance, so they can poke from farther away with alternating his single-fire chain guns. As time goes on and players explore Mauga's kit more, more nuanced uses of his abilities should hopefully make playing as him less polarizing. His abilities also have a lot of tuning points in regards to both how he helps himself and how...

starfieldnovember

What hero has the most amount of final blows on Mauga?

Two Maugas enter a Cage Fight, one leaves? both leave? There's a lot of Mauga right now, more than any other hero. He's responsible for many deaths, even his own.

Icedmanta

There's a lot of discussion right now around the way that Mauga was buffed coming into the live game, specifically how he became more oppressive against his good matchups, and still gets shut down with relative ease by certain heroes in the cast. I personally find this balance philosophy dangerous, as it sidelines possible adaptation against bad matchups in favor of enabling the "hard counterswap" mindset. I don't think there should be no counters, having varying matchups is what makes a balanced game fun, but it feels a little extreme right now.

I'm really unsure what changes could alleviate this issue - what tools does the balance team use to evaluate matchups between heroes, and which knobs do you twist to change the way a game feels from each hero's perspective?

An important aspect of our hero design philosophy is that heroes should have clear strengths and weaknesses to create more varied and interesting gameplay. When we look to buff a hero for example, we want to keep this in mind and typically try to focus on a heroes intended strengths rather than clearing away their weaknesses.

We do want to avoid counters being too easy and effective without adequate counterplay options. There is a broad goal of making sure every hero choice is viable in some capacity and feels good to play, while hopefully not feeling too unfair to play against.

Some direct matchups are not reasonably close, like Winston vs Roadhog, but we don't strictly balance off of 1v1 matchups as Overwatch is a team game (Winston has a good chance to win by going after everyone that is not Roadhog for example).

Generally we've found that when the heroes are balanced closely enough, individual player performance and teamwork has significantly more impact on the outcome of a m...