Blizzard is planning to nerf some of the most popular characters in Overwatch


Blizzard are currently in the midst of discussions about the first balancing of characters within Overwatch. The game has been incredibly well received, and although no severe criticisms of the game or the characters have become prevalent, some fans have stated a few characters could do with a little nerfing or buffing in order to better balance out play.

The main characters Blizzard are keeping their eyes on include Widowmaker, McCree and D.va. McCree’s notorious Fan The Hammer/Flashbang combo is posing some problems with its high damage output and the confusion it can generate, especially due to its effectiveness against tanks.

Source: Pax East 2015

Widowmaker’s problems are a little less obvious, and also not necessarily problematic. Due to her high single-shot power, some people view her character as being OP in one-on-one situations, and that she needs taken down a little to make her more balanced.

Source: mmoga.com
Source: mmoga.com

In a discussion on the Battle.net forums, game director Jeff Kaplan has stated that Widowmaker and her capabilities are definitely being looked into:

“Widowmaker is on our radar. We are discussing her. We have some internal experiments going to see if we can keep her viable while lowering the frustration threshold a little bit. Right now, this is just exploration. If something more comes of it, we’ll let you know.”

As for D.va, if anything she may require a buff. Complaints have appeared mentioning D.va’s extremely low health and relatively low damage output, something a character with high single hit damage capabilities like Widowmaker and McCree can take advantage of.

In response to these, Kaplan has mentioned that they are aware of the situation, and mentioned the changes they already done for her character before the game was released:

“There was a time, when she was first implemented, where she had more damage than she does now. The way that played out is that she would fly into someone’s face, destroy them, and fly away. There was little that person could do because [of] her mobility,”

Source: geeklegacy.com
Source: geeklegacy.com

Obviously, Blizzard are thinking hard on how to keep each character’s balancing correct, and are paying close attention to fan feedback in order to make that happen. So far they’ve been doing an excellent job maintaining Overwatch and responding to their fanbase.

Hopefully they’ll continue this through the future and we can expect to see many more good things to come.