Update 1.1 for Overwatch will launch tomorrow on the live servers after a few weeks on the PTR, bringing with it a number of significant hero and gameplay changes.
Overwatch players can expect important — and potentially controversial — changes to Roadhog, Reaper, and McCree, so if you main any of those three heroes, prepare yourself for the info drop. Reinhardt players should also hope to see fixes for latency and lag issues on his hammer drop.
The Horizon Lunar Colony map will also be added after a long string in the PTR.
Roadhog has gone through some rather interesting changes. He’s received a hitbox decrease, similar to what Winston received earlier this year. That brings down the hitbox at his head by 20 percent, making it harder to land that all-important headshot bonus.
His scrap gun has been nerfed, with a damage reduction by 33 percent. The fire rate has seen a buff, however, increased by 30 percent, with a boosted clip size to five, up from four.
“Roadhog’s head was abnormally large compared to similarly-sized characters, so we’re reducing its size to increase his survivability. The Scrap Gun changes reduce the power of his hook combo and alternate fire burst damage potential while still keeping his DPS roughly the same,” Blizzard said.
With Reaper, health orbs are now obsolete, with the hero gaining 20% of damage dealt as health (so, deal 100% damage, receive 20% health).
Blizzard explains Reaper’s changes: “Reaper’s old healing passive was useful if you could kill a bunch of enemies in a row. But since enemies needed to be dead for it to work, it wasn’t very helpful unless the situation was already in your favor. His new passive lets him get immediate benefit from it, especially when fighting Tank heroes, which tend to be larger targets that deal lower damage.”
Onto McCree, and his deadeye ultimate has received a fairly significant buff, allowing him to lock onto targets in 0.2 seconds flat, down from 0.8 second. His damage also gets a major boost over the first second of the ultimate, increased to 80 from 20.
McCree’s ultimate can deal a lot of damage if it has a lot of time to build up, but it was often too difficult to get even a small amount of damage out before being stopped or killed. These changes make it more flexible and powerful,” Blizzard said.
Here are the patch notes for bugs and fixes expected to be part of update 1.12 when it hits the live servers tomorrow.
Bug Fixes
General
- Fixed an issue causing players to lose progress on their On Fire meter, after the meter had been completely filled.
Arcade
- Fixed a bug that could cause the announcer’s “select your hero” voice line to play during the end-of-match screen after Elimination games.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Z’s from appearing above a sleeping enemy during Elimination games.
Competitive Play
- Fixed a bug that caused your first win to appear as a loss in your Career Profile.
Custom Games and Game Browser
- Fixed a bug that prevented some settings from being properly displayed in the summary when viewing 3v3 Elimination presets.
- Clarified an error message that appears when a player attempts to exit the Settings page with an invalid combination of settings.
- Fixed a bug that caused the lighting from health packs to appear on Capture the Flag and Elimination maps even after health packs had been disabled.
- Fixed a bug that allowed Torbjörn’s Armor Pack ability to function even after being disabled in custom settings.
Heroes
- Fixed a bug that prevented players from hearing the voice line that typically accompanies their ultimate if they executed the ultimate after being stunned.
- Fixed a bug that could cause D.Va to become stuck if her mech was killed just as she summoned it.
- Fixed a bug preventing Genji’s sound effects from playing if he used his primary attack immediately after a Swift Strike.
- Fixed a typo in Orisa’s “Satisfied with Protection” voice line.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Orisa’s Supercharger from being destroyed if run over by the payload.
- Fixed a typo in the description on Roadhog’s Junkenstein skin.
- Fixed a bug that allowed enemy players to detect Sombra (while Stealth was active) if they were within a certain distance.
- Fixed a bug causing Symmetra’s hair to take on an unnatural appearance when her Vishkar or Architech skins were equipped.
- Fixed a bug with how Widowmaker’s Grappling Hook interacts with the flying drones on Oasis.
Maps
- Fixed a bug on Volskaya Industries that prevented the ice from appearing broken when players fell off a ledge to their death.
User Interface
- Fixed a bug that caused the Heroes of the Storm promotional portraits to appear locked, even after being unlocked.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an error message in chat if you attempted to spectate a new player while already spectating another player.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the chat window to be placed too high on the main menu, blocking menu options.
- Fixed a bug that prevented text from wrapping in the Report Player text box.
