Overwatch Experimental Notes Target Damage, Healing Rates

Blizzard Entertainment takes its Overwatch experimental changes seriously. These updates are not part of the official patch notes on the servers, but they grant groundbreaking hero changes. For the last week of August, Blizzard released new patch notes for the August 24 experimental update with an emphasis on “damage and healing output.”

For this update, the dev team aims to get feedback from players regarding several balance updates that reduced the damage and healing output of several heroes. The game format used is the 2-2-2 Role Queue ruleset, so players can see how these experimental changes affect live games.

You can find the complete patch notes for damage and healing heroes involved below. All health heroes’ Armor received some massive experimental changes. Blizzard increased its Armors’ beam-type damage reduction against Armor health pools from 20% to 30%. Damage heroes, meanwhile, retained their default hit points.

ANA

Biotic Rifle

General

• Ammo reduced from 14 to 12

ASHE

The Viper

General

• Max ammo reduced from 15 to 12

Secondary Fire

• Aim-down sights damage reduced from 85 to 80

BAPTISTE

Biotic Launcher

Secondary Fire

• Grenade ammo reduced from 12 to 10

Regenerative Burst

• Total healing reduced from 150 to 75
• Baptiste now receives twice as much healing from Regenerative Burst

JUNKRAT

Frag Launcher

• Impact damage reduced from 50 to 40 (Total 130 to 120)

MCCREE

Peacekeeper

Primary Fire’

• Recovery increased from 0.42 to 0.50

MOIRA

Biotic Grasp

Healing

• Lingering heal reduced from 4 seconds to 2 seconds (Total healing from 65 down to 35)
• Healing per second increased from 65 to 70
• Healing resource consumption rate increased from 11 to 14 (27%)

Damage

• Attach angle reduced by 37%
• Healing resource gain rate increased by 50%

ORISA

Halt!

• Radius increased from 4 to 5
• Projectile speed reduced from 30 to 25

PHARAH

Rocket Launcher

• Recovery increased from 0.75 to 0.85

SYMMETRA

Photon Projector

Secondary Fire

• Max damage reduced from 140 to 120

WIDOWMAKER

Widow’s Kiss

General

• Max ammo increased from 30 to 35

Secondary Fire

• Scoped ammo cost increased from 3 to 5
• Scoped shots now have up to 50% damage falloff from 60-85 meters

ZARYA

Particle Cannon

Secondary Fire

• Ammo cost increased from 20 to 25

This week’s update is the latest addition to Blizzard’s experiments. The previous experimental update last August 18 focused on Moira and Reaper. Some changes were iterations on the first Moira experiment Blizzard Entertainment tested within July.