A Monthly OverWatch OverView: May to June Updates and More

Hey folks, I will be trying out something new on the site for my new bread and butter OverWatch.  Each month’ish”, I will do a run down of the events, the news, any leaks, and so on and my baby shall be titled “A Monthly OverWatch OverView”.  This post will start off right after the UpRising, which I thought was a pretty solid outing for OverWatch when it came down to the PVE.  I wasn’t around for the Junkenstein’s Revenge PVE event, but UpRising was a decent change of scenery.  Since then, the ranked Season 4 came to end where I came very close to hitting Platinum, but I’ll take Gold for the first season I’ve ever played the game.  There was about a 2 week down period in between ranked Season 4 and Season 5, there was a Free to Play weekend in China a few cross promotional things with other Blizzard games and some leaks and Patch changes.

I’ll start off with the cross promo thing that I just refused to participate in.  OverWatch and Heroes of the Strom (The League for Blizzard) combined for the month of May.  OverWatch players who participated in 10 games of HoTS every week in May would obtain the Officer D.Va skin, the Oni Genji skin, and 20 loot boxes.  With my incredibly addictive personality, I refuse to try out Heroes of The Storm in fear of falling into its grasp like League of Legends and OverWatch currently have me in.  I felt like this was a little bullshit, giving some pretty amazing skins to people with more free time on their hands, but recently however, Blizzard announced the two skins to be put in the regular loot box rotation which was the right decision in my opinion.

Ranked Season 5 launched 2 weeks back and the usual grind has begun, and I have found myself in mid Platinum (finally), currently making my push to Diamond.  There is still a lack of Report System for Blizzard on console which makes the throwers and leaver that much harder to deal with and the climb that much more difficult.  Last week the PTR patch changes hit with a few leaks of the new champion and a look at the new map Horizon Lunar Colony.  I’ll start with the hero changes with McCree’s being the most subtle.  Dead Eye now locks onto enemies in 0.2 seconds compared to 0.8 before, and damage ramps up from 20 to 90 i the first second and continues to go up normally following.  It’s a decent buff that can definitely help with finishing off some flankers trying to escape, or the dreaded Lightning Cowboy combo with Ana’s Nano Boost could really do some damage in teamfights.  I just think to really utilize a good Lightning Cowboy, you need to exhaust a tank ult like an EarthShatter or Graviton, to get the most out of it.  I think McCree may see a small increase in play, but in the lower tiers he is too skill reliant of a hero to see any increase in play time.

Next up is the gutting of Roadhog, one of my favorites in OverWatch.  Roadhog’s ScrapGun damage is being reduced by 33%……..sigh.  In attempts to compensate or this nerf his attack speed is increased by 30% and has one additional shot totaling 5.  Thematically, this makes no sense to me.  Roadhog is a fat slow lumbering one shot monster who needs to make up for slow speed and huge hit box with the ability to DELETE heroes in under 2 seconds.  It has been getting increasingly more difficult to actually 1 shot heroes recently with weird hook glitches and hit box changes, and I feel like this nerf is going to really throw him out of a viable tier list.  His overall DPS is relatively the same, but his actual One Shot worth is pretty much gone.  I anticipate this being changed, if not before the Patch release, then soon after.

The biggest buff this patch is to my Go-To in ranked, currently with over a 75% win rate, Reaper.  One small change to his kit could really affect his gameplay and viability in extended team fights.  Currently, upon the death of an enemy hero, a soul globe is dropped that Reaper can obtain 50 hp from.  This is a decent passive ability that allows for him to have a little more sustain when skirmishing with more than one enemy, or just staying alive a little longer in teamfights.  The PTR changes to his passive now gives Reaper 20% damage lifesteal, replacing his soul globes.  To simplify this, every 100 points of damage Reaper dishes out to an enemy, he heals back 20.  This has its pros and cons.  Pros: Reaper can now battle tanks WAY EASIER.  Reaper heals through the damage the Winston can put out making him completely ineffective.  Those 1v1 battles against Reinhardts now go in your favor if you get the first shot off.  Before, the Rein could 3 swing you and if you weren’t hitting head shots you’d lose that battle. Cons: You heal 20-30 hp less when fighting DPS heroes, which in my opinion isn’t bad because your purpose is to kill them before they can even do anything, and with Lucio in the Meta, his passive healing can compensate for that 20-30 hp loss.  I think Reaper will make a decent surge in popularity, which I don;t mind because I play him enough as it is to great success.

The new hero, Hammond has been teased several times which I really don’t care for.  He is teased to be the smallest hero with stun support abilities and so on.  OverWatch needs more healers, not more supports.  The Horizon Lunar Colony looks pretty amazing actually.  The map looks to be pretty large for a 2 capture point map and I think mobility will dominate this map, so a Lucio and dive might be a must.  There is also currently a Double XP weekend going on so sorry I got this out late, but YA BOIS BEEN BUSY BEING LET DOWN BY LOOTBOXES, thanks Papa Jeff.  In all seriousness, I think this Double XP weekend was a, damage control moment, for the horrendous legendary drop rate for this Anniversary event.