Overwatch April Sixth Patch Notes
Overwatch received a chunky update on April 6th that brought with it a few buffs and nerfs that were seen the week prior in the experimental mode patch.
Ash players should be delighted, as she got a pretty significant buff this time around, with the ammo capacity of her sniper rifle being increased from 12 to 15 rounds, along with the maximum possible spread from non-ADS shots going from four to six.
The time buffer between dropping your sights and firing has also been reduced, meaning you can pop shots off much quicker after you stop looking down your sights. You’re also going to be able to reload much quicker after a focused shot, all together speeding up the potential play of Ash.
Pharah has also seen a buff, which is actually the developers backtracking to a previous iteration of the character.
Her rockets have seen the direct impact damage that each one deal decreased from 55 to 40, but to offset this, the AoE, or area of effect, damage has been buffed massively from 65 to 80. This sees a return to the less precision-based Pharah, with a focus now being on splash damage, and raining explosive death.
Genji’s secondary fire, the one where he slings out three shurikens at once, has also received a slight buff. The cooldown of the ability has gone from 0.75 to 0.65, allowing you to spam click them out a little bit faster.
Reinhardt received a slight nerf; his passive abilities effectiveness has been reduced from 50% to 30%, meaning that he is susceptible to a bit more knockback than before.
Unfortunately, Mei has been hit the hardest by this patch. We hear your weeping and share in it, too. Her ammo has been reduced from 200 to a meager 120, nearly cutting it in half.
Blizzard has tried to balance this out by changing the ammo cost of her icicle fire from 20 to 10, but it doesn’t make that much of a difference, the damage has been done.
This one change is a tragic turn of events for Mei players around the world, as it renders her much less usable than she was prior to this patch. Being able to shoot 12 icicles instead of 10 means that you can do more damage, but the number of enemies that can be frozen in one mag has been drastically reduced.
What This Means
The question of what this means for Overwatch is hanging over the head of every player at the moment.
The last few days have seen an unprecedented exodus of pros from the Overwatch competitive scene. The combination of Blizzard’s management of the league and community and the release of Valorant has gutted the upper level of pro teams, leaving a question mark in their place.
This patch does little to address this growing problem, but perhaps Blizzard doesn’t need to. Overwatch 2 is just around the corner, and there is little doubt that when that comes out, a flood of players is going to come back through the Overwatch doors.