[2021] What will supports look like in Overwatch 2?

I’ve been seeing this question pop up quite a bit since our post last week, so I grabbed some time with Geoff and Josh from the Hero design and balance team this afternoon. Here’s what they had to say;

So far, we’ve not made a ton of changes to how the Support role works in OW2. There are some meaningful changes, such as removing the stun from Brigitte (more on her specific rebalancing efforts in the future), however for the most part the playstyle of your favorite support heroes should feel familiar and similar to retail.

As of now, we have no plans to remove self-healing from these heroes. Abilities like Regenerative Burst and Biotic Grenade remain a powerful part of their respective hero’s identities, and will be tuned to account for the passive self-healing abilities also available.

In our playtests, having one less tank made it clear to us that tanks generally contribute much more damage than they mitigate, even on retail. Because of the drop in overall damage being dealt out, Supports were actually too effective at keeping the entire team alive, so we’re testing a tuned down healing output across the board to ensure that teamfights still resolve in a way that doesn’t feel drawn out or frustrating to play against.

In my head that played as that tiktok sound.

You know which one I mean.

In all seriousness, it’s understandable if folks have strong feelings about this direction. I’ll be sure to account for all of the sentiment we hear.

Not today, sorry!

3ch

Doh! (I always make this mistake…)

Fixed thank you.

Don’t read too much into the examples I gave. They’re just “for example…”

Rumors thrive and take root in the absence of information. My goal in being here is to cut down on the rumor mill and to provide you all with as much insight as I can as to what’s happening.

I said this in the thread last week, but it bears repeating here: none of our hero design and balance changes for OW2 are being made in a vacuum. A change as fundamental as going from 6v6 to 5v5 has far reaching implications and requires us to examine every part of hero balance and design.

I’m not prepared to talk about DPS today.

Apologies!

It is something we’re considering

On paper, Discord is theoretically weaker with 1 fewer person per team benefiting from the debuff. Thus far in our playtests, Mercy’s Damage Boost hasn’t shown any major issues. That said, there’s still a chance we end up tuning both Discord and Damage Boost down, if we see they’re causing issues in further testing.