With the Overwatch World Cup behind us, we thought it was time to look at some of the heroes that didn’t see much – if any – play. While this title does sport an impressive roster, many characters were left in the dust due to them either not working with the current meta or just not offering enough to be viable choices. Many teams ran the standard two supports, two tanks, and two DPS for their compositions with rare choices like Bastion and Junkrat making the odd appearance.
Now with a future update of nerfs, buffs, and even a new character it’s fully possible that the meta shifts on its axis once more. However, nothing is final yet, so there is still room for changes and alterations that may or may not take place. At the end of it all, these are the characters that could use some serious readjustments.
Torbjorn in Overwatch
The turret building hero has always been in an odd place in Overwatch as he is an incredibly powerful character, but his kit just doesn’t allow him to be as effective on the battlefield. Even though he is currently gaining the ability to generate scrap overtime, his armor output wasn’t the main problem when it comes to this hero. Torbjorn’s damage and utility just didn’t message up to say a Reaper or McCree, who can fit into multiplets. Given how frail his turret can be, especially if you aren’t standing right beside it, this device is nothing more than a nuisance to a well-coordinated team.
What he could use is a slight increase on health points for his turret, which would offset the damage reduction it suffered (especially on consoles) giving it more survivability. Then there is the problem with Molten Core which can be useful for wiping a team if you have a level two turret already up and running. However, if you don’t, it takes precious time to construct before it turns into the ultimate form. If Blizzard increased his hammer swing during his ultimate this would decrease the problem of needing to build a turret when using it and allow him to not go into fights at half power.
Symmetra in Overwatch
This one is a fairly obvious choice thanks to her inability to heal and the fact that she takes up a Support Class spot. Symmetra’s kit itself is just not that powerful, mainly because her turrets are easily obliterated even when they are hidden. Since they have such a low damage output to begin with, their only real utility is slowing players down who enter them.
Again, it’s annoying, but not enough to suffice removing a healer from your team. Instead, what would be interesting is having the slowing stack per turret beam that connects with an opponent. Doing this would both encourage Symmetra players to utilize chokepoints as intended and allow her turrets to act as defensive options for flankers such as Tracer, Genji, and Sombra.
Secondly, her actual main weapon should only get the smallest of buffs, mainly to the actual charge time of the weapon. Keep the damage and actual projectile speed the same, but allow for her to contribute more to holding key chokepoints. Given her entire design is based around this, allowing her to assist a friendly Reinhardt would be a potent combination.
Zenyatta in Overwatch
Zenyatta is a hero that is towing a very, very fine line between balanced and broken given his kit can be so potent in the right hands. Currently, he is being outclassed by Ana and sometimes even Mercy as a default secondary healer because Zenyatta’s utility and pushing power is not nearly as effective. Now, this is no fault of the character’s gear, as the current competitive scene just favors Ana charging up Reaper for his Death Blossom to wipe a team. Zenyatta cannot compare to that, even with his own ultimate’s healing rate increased.
So the only real thing to play with are his Orbs of Harmony and Dischord, which could use very small buffs to their effectiveness. Again, we don’t want to restore his Discord back up to 50% damage increase, but we feel bumping it up from 30% to 35% would make enough of a difference. Of course, we’d need to offset his damage output slightly to reflect that as his own DPS is in a perfect spot.
For the Orb of Harmony, we would like to see either a small increase to its duration on a target (which is currently three seconds without line of sight) or a light healing rate increase. The former, if we go that route, should be moved from three to five seconds, since it would allow him to work nicely with flankers which is what his healing is for. If we go the healing increase, it should be somewhere between a 5% to 7% increase, so he can effectively heal tanks from a distance like Ana can. These two buff should not both happen, only one or the other as it would make him too powerful.
Overwatch is always a constant stream of changes and adjustments as balancing 23 individual heroes is an incredibly tricky task. Thankfully, it feels like we are getting closer to that point with each successive patch. We can’t wait to see what is going to make it through the Overwatch PTR, but we would love to see some of these heroes get the buffs they deserve.
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