More than four years since its release, and with Overwatch 2 on the horizon, we have now entered into Season 24 of Overwatch Competitive Play. And this season may yet be the most frustrating and divisive in the game’s history.
Both Role Queue and Open Queue Competitive Play for Season 24 has started, kicking off immediately as Season 23 ended. Unlike past seasons, which saw a slight 1-2 day break between seasons, Blizzard is keen for a seamless and sudden transition into the next season.
There’s a number of key changes that come along with the introduction of a new season. Firstly, a recent patch update had rather significant impact on the influence DPS has on the outcome of a match. Competitive has long been dictated by the composition of its DPS matchups, but that’s unlikely the case this season.
A patch before that nerfed most shield tanks along with Brigitte, bringing with it a shift in the meta that propels certain Support heroes, and lifts Roadhog deeply, firmly into the Competitive meta.
“In an environment with less pervasive barriers, some Damage heroes have become increasingly lethal. As such, we’re now looking to reduce damage outputs accordingly,” Blizzard said in the most recent patch notes.
“As a cascading effect, this also introduces a need to reduce healing outputs for some Support heroes, as there’s less damage being dealt overall.”
As a result of these changes, beam-type damage reduction against Armor health pools has been boosted 20%-30%. This means that, thankfully, there will be more resistance against your Symmetra’s and Winston’s, not to mention a currently incredibly-proficient Zarya.
Leading into Season 24, Overwatch players are going to have readjust their team composition. Ultimately, strong team compositions that pack a Roadhog alongside a Zarya or even a Winston are going to be very tough to counter, particularly with strong heals. Zan, Baptiste and Ana are all held in high steed this season, and if they can work well to keep the aforementioned tanks alive then there will be a lot pushed back onto DPS to do much of the damage. Therein lies the issue: Blizzard is actively working to downgrade the overall damage output of DPS heroes.
Ash, Junkrat, McCree, Pharah, Symmetra and Windowmaker — heroes that have been firmly and relatively well-placed in recent season metas — have all seen nerfs. This brings the likes of Soldier and Reaper into the fold, and they stand to be integral components of team composition with a near-invincible Roadhog.
That brings us to the current state of Roadhog: his ammo has been reduced but overall damage per projectile has been buffed from 6 to 7. So a perfectly landed hook-chain-shot combo is all the more effective.
Combined with his self-healing ability, and well-timed attacks and pushes behind a Roadhog can be incredibly hard to counter, especially if there’s an Ana nailing her heals from a distance. The prospect of a Winston causing havoc around the flanks as well makes the current meta are weird albeit well-balanced … if played right.
The Overwatch community has been somewhat critical of the current state of the game, but I like the prospect of a more focused Ana and Zenyatta. Roadhog has always had a place in the meta I thought, no matter how bad his hookshot was at any one point. His one-shot abilities now are ridiculous, and I suspect they’ll be nerfed soon, but even if they do I can’t see any major changes to the meta as it currently stands.
What are your thoughts on the current Overwatch meta? Sound off in the comments below!
