In the first Overwatch 2 PVP Beta developer blog, Blizzard provided an update to their first Technical Beta while addressing the concerns of players, particularly when it comes to queue times and hero balance. It would seem like the development team is very much aware of the plight of support heroes and has proposed some ideas that they could implement during this technical beta.
As for the current progress of Beta 1, the development team was happy to report that players have taken to the new 5v5 game mode with little resistance. The same goes for the new maps and game modes they have added. But as such, the team is planning to rapidly make adjustments to hero power levels, and they hope to deploy that in their first Beta balance patch in the coming days.
But there is a core problem with the heroes of Overwatch that need to be addressed. The heroes are balanced for 6v6 game, particularly the supports. In this beta, the tanks became more powerful to compensate for the removal of the other tank slot and the damage heroes have never been this free to do what they do best, get kills. But supports remain largely unchanged and no amount of number changes is going to fix that. In short, it’s just not that fun to play support at the moment.
This is most evident when you look at the queue times for all three classes. Queue times for tank and damage players are unreasonably long, and yet if you play support, you don’t have to wait a minute to find a match. So for the short term, the team will be enabling “Quick Play Classic” with an open queue to reduce wait times.
But of course, another solution is to make playing as support characters more appealing. Thankfully, the team has addressed this in the update.
The team was keenly aware that support heroes were vulnerable to diving and flanking attacks with one less tank on the team. The change to the class passive that saw an increase in the rate at which supports regen health was an attempt to hotfix the issue but more changes need to be made.
In the longer term, the team sees the addition of new support heroes as a possible way to increase the class’ power potential and encourage more players to be support. That’s part of their plan. In the near term, the team is experimenting with significant changes to support heroes which also include new and refreshed abilities for some existing heroes.
This is huge for the current beta. Not only does this address the lack of interest in the support class in general but the game can actually feel different from Overwatch 1 in every way possible.
The Overwatch did not specify any further. Only that these changes could be deployed later in this first Beta test but more likely would be in their next test instead.
Let’s hope they implement the changes sooner rather than later. Heroes like Anna and Zen really do need something more to counter flanks and attacks from across the map.
Source: Blizzard