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...

DreamPolice2235

Thoughts on potentially swapping his miniguns from ammo to a heat system like Orisa?

Right now, there's not a strong desire to potentially make such a swap. Heat systems give significantly more damage uptime compared to traditional ammo systems. They're functionally just a constant reload you can cancel at anytime, unless you hit 0 ammo. The reload time gives players a window of opportunity to avoid his fire.

KrustiBread

What are the team’s thoughts on Mauga’s Cardiac Overdrive currently? It often feels like he is too tanky when the ability’s active but too fragile when it’s inactive/countered, along with the visual effects being hard to discern at times.

We are reducing his damage, and those changes went live in this morning's hotfix patch (https://overwatch.blizzard.com/news/patch-notes/). This change will inadvertently affect how much life steal he receives during Cardiac Overdrive, making him a little less tanky.

RobManfredsFixer

What is your philosophy around using healthpools to balance non-tank heroes? More specifically, do you forsee any other heroes (existing or future) being balanced using healthpools <200 HP?

Varying health amounts is a great tool to utilize when designing or balancing a hero. Characters like Reaper and Mei, who thrive in close-range combat, can utilize their larger amounts of Health to help mitigate the risk of approaching close-range fights. Varying health amounts can also help provide flavor to a character. Tracer has a low amount of health because she's quick and nimble, yet Torbjörn has more Health because he's heavily armored. The last balance patch lowered Widowmaker's health to 175, which shows we're considering health amounts when it comes to balancing the heroes overall.

Diogodinis00

What does the team think about heroes passives, and are you open to change them in the future?

Hero passives are super interesting because they often can define heroes and actively change the way the kit is played. Since many passives have fewer restrictions than active abilities (due to the lack of cooldowns), certain passives become the defining feature of the kit. Lucio's Wall Ride is a great example of a passive that completely changes how a character would play. If he lacked wall riding, his style of supporting via harassment and displacement would be significantly hindered, and he would likely focus a lot more on getting value from Crossfade. It's also just super fun to have unrestricted strong movement. Other characters's passives might be less defining compared to Lucio's, but they still can push the player towards playing in specific ways. Sombra's Opportunist pushes players towards eliminating critically injured enemies, but it doesn't define her gameplay loop like Lucio's Wall Ride does.

When it comes to changing hero passives, I think everyone's open towards anyt...

Jellycar15

Why are Orisa and Junkrat so easy to play and yet get so much value out of their kits? And yet Reinhart and Wrecking Ball are hard to play with much less value...

Every character in the game is going to get varying amounts of value at varying time investments. Some characters, like Wrecking Ball, require a lot more investment in to start getting large amounts of value from. A player gets less value at the start because they're being constantly exposed to new situations and aren't going to confidently deal with them. As the player experiences more and learns from their mistakes, they start getting more and more value. Other characters get a lot of value at the start, but time investment doesn't necessarily reward as much value increase as others. Not every character's value increases over time is linear. Mercy gets a lot of value from new players because of the ease of using her Caduceus Staff, but the value for time investment will fall off fast unless players dedicate themselves to mastering her movement and positioning.

We think it's important to have characters that have varying value curves for difficulty to serve different players. So ma...