Overwatch 2 season 4 balance patch tweaks Moira, Brigitte, and more

Overwatch 2 season 4 kicks off April 11, bringing a new support hero to Blizzard’s free-to-play hero shooter. Balance changes are being made to the roster. Some of them will affect support heroes and tanks.

Blizzard covered previously a revision to Brigitte, which will update her ultimate capability, Rally. It gives her shield some upgrades. Her Ult will increase the shield’s strength and width, as well as giving her the ability to once again stun opponents with her Shield bash. The buff she received is balanced by a reduction in her repair pack healing abilities and changes in her movement speed.

According to Blizzard’s season 4 patch notes for Overwatch 2Moira also gets a major upgrade. Not only will her Biotic Grasp offer better healing, she will now have the option to use her Fade ability while she’s firing her ultimate, Coalescence. Moira players will find it a great benefit to be able predict the ult-disrupting Roadhog Chain Hook and Reinhardt Earthshatter. Moira DPS mains have been announced In love it.

The full hero update patch notes are below, and include important changes to Ana’s Sleep Dart (specifically when used against tanks), and less lethality for characters like Sigma and Cassidy.

Reinhardt

• The Armor Health Index has been reduced by 300 to 250
• The base health index increased by 175 to 200

Developer Comment: Reinhardt’s performance has increased after recent improvements to his offensive abilities. Those changes have been playing well, so to adjust his overall power, we’re reducing his overall health through this armor reduction.

Sigma

Accretion

• Reduced impact damage from 60 to 40% (80 total damage with an explosion).
• Knockdown time increased from 0.8% to 1.1 seconds

Developer Comment: Like Roadhog’s Chain Hook, Sigma’s Accretion and primary fire combo can be highly lethal and can feel like a guaranteed kill against 200 health targets. We’re reducing the damage slightly to require an additional volley of primary fire but are also increasing the stun duration to provide allies with more opportunity to follow up on successful impacts.

Cassidy

• Reduction in base health from 215 to 200

Magnetic Grenade

• The damage is reduced by 131-120

Developer Comment: Magnetic Grenade requires only one primary fire shot to stick to a target. This is despite the fact that it works only at close range. We’re reducing the total damage on Magnetic Grenade, evenly split between the direct target damage and explosion. The reduced falloff-damage buff his primary fire received recently enables Cassidy to play from safer engagement ranges now, so we’re reducing his health back to 200.

Sombra

• EMP can now disable Blizzard

Developer Comment: We are expanding what Sombra’s EMP turns off to keep it consistent with how it affects other device-controlled ultimates.

Ana

You can sleep better with Sleep Dart

• Max duration of Tank Heroes has decreased by 30% to 5 to 3.5 seconds

Developer Comments: We’ve been watching how effective Sleep Dart has been in 5v5 gameplay. It hasn’t been overly disruptive as a whole, but since it is significantly more reliable to land against Tank heroes due to their large hit boxes and even more valuable to do so with only one tank on the field, we’re reducing its maximum duration against those targets.

Brigitte

Rally

• Brigitte has 100 armor restorable health pools for the duration Rally
• Brigitte doesn’t gradually build temporary health as her close allies.
• Rally upgrades her Barrier Shield now, increasing its size as well as health
• In the final, barriers health rose from 300 to 755.
• Shield Bash impacts several enemies now during Rally. It briefly stuns them.
• The bonus movement speed has been reduced to between 30 and 15%

Repair Pack

• Reduced range from 30 to 25 metres

Developer comments: Rally’s power was reduced by the ability to grant allies temporary armor and health. It also took quite a while to gain its defense benefits. The rework will keep Rally as an ultimate defense ability, but it has a greater impact because of the increased armor health pool and enhanced barrier. This can be used to block teammates’ temporary health or to stun enemies.

Mercy

Caduceus staff

• The healing-per-second rate has risen from 45 to 55
• For allies below half health, healing is not increased

Guardian Angel

• The cooldown time has been reduced to 2.5 seconds from 1.5 seconds
• Jump and Crouch active ability states durations increased from 1.0 seconds to 1.5 seconds
• It is impossible to manually stop the Jump and Crouch cancel activate ability state in order to start the cooldown.

Valkyrie

• For the duration Valkyrie, the support role of passive healing will be active

Developer Comment: The recent increase to Guardian Angel’s jump-cancel mobility still needs to be kept in check in some way, but while the last iteration was simple, it also had some unintended effects, such as not being ready to use GA again after flying in and using Resurrect. Mercy can opt in to an extra 1.5 seconds cooldown for jumping/crouch canceling or waiting until the base cooldown. This allows Mercy more flexibility.

Caduceus Staff’s increased healing multiplier was added to Mercy to give Mercy players more control in saving critical-health allies. It also helps to improve the healing mechanic, without affecting the time it takes to recover to full health. Both Mercy players as well as those against the overall healing value rebalancing received a lot of negative feedback. There wasn’t a satisfying middle ground where we could reduce the potency of this effect while still having it feel impactful, so we’re reverting it.

Moira

Fade

• This can now be activated in Coalescence

Coalescence

• Speed of bonus movement reduced from 50 to 40 percent

Biotic Grasp

• Increased duration for lingering healing from 2 to 3.

Developer Comments: Moira is able use Fade while her Coalescence final gives her more playmaking abilities. She can quickly reposition and respond to threats faster, which allows her to avoid potentially dangerous situations. Due to the more spread-out playstyle of 5v5, we’re increasing the lingering heal duration from her primary fire, meaning it will heal more in total.