Overwatch has a special place in my personal and professional life. It was the competitive game that pushed me into the esports business through collegiate management while I was in grad school. Overwatch is what made me feel that I can work in esports and not need to be a pro gamer. Overwatch is also one of the most mismanaged games I have ever played. I loved the game. I hated the game. I want the game to do well, but that had felt like a pointless endeavor after the last few years.
Fast forward to April 2022. I was lucky enough to be in the first wave of Overwatch 2 (OW2). After seeing all of the proposed changes I had cautious optimism. Or maybe I was grasping at straws in hopes that Blizzard could correct the things that killed my favorite competitive game. That cautious optimism quickly bloomed into actual optimism after playing a few matches. Cutting the team down to 5v5 with one tank makes positioning much more important. No longer do the games feel like shooting at two meat shields until someone lands a good ultimate. Also only having one tank means that there isn’t a tank dedicated to guarding the healers. Now you need to decide if you are going to play further back or dive into their backline. In my games, I have experienced both. A Winston jumping onto your healers is a terrifying sight, just like an Orisa sitting beside her team pelting you with a relentless spray of bullets is hard to beat. Who you play as a tank now depends more on what you want to play as opposed to “we need shields” or “dive tank only”.
Taking every stun out of the game feels like a knee-jerk reaction after years of the player base being upset about stun chains. This has caused healers to not have many options to get away from a dive DPS, other than just killing them. I am not suggesting the game needs to have stuns or be balanced around them. It is however obvious that the healer role has not yet been buffed enough to justify the lack of stuns and related peel from their team.
Keeping in mind that this is the first beta build the public has seen, one glaring balance problem is that of healers. I mentioned this in the previous paragraph but it deserves a deeper look. With the change to stuns and the passive on DPS (10% increased move speed), healers are having a really tough time. Lucio and Moira are the current top picks due to their mobility and defensive mechanics. If you are an Ana or Baptiste main, good luck. It is likely that Blizzard buffs healer’s health or gives them some other utility prior to launch; that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t point out this glaring need now. If the game were to ship in relatively close to the current balance it would likely fall onto one of the DPS players to stick with an immobile healer. For example, an unchecked Genji will destroy a backline. Whereas a Genji who is being targeted by Cassidy can die from a grenade and one headshot.
The beta has been getting a mixed response. The whole point of a beta is for feedback, but a lot of the feedback goes to the level of pointless banter. Saying the game is doomed after less than half of the changes are in is asinine at best. I do not know for sure whether Overwatch 2 is going to change the game or revitalize OWL. I do know that most of what I have seen in this first beta is positive. Blizzard is willing to listen to the community but also put their own changes that guide the game. I plan to write again after each beta. No one knows if Blizzard will keep the current trajectory by implementing changes I see as healthy for the game or if they will do an about-face. I’m along for the ride either way.
