Overwatch 2 has been out in the wild for a few weeks now, and the community appears to have finally come to terms with how awesome a new hero Kiriko is for the Support role. She makes her Competitive debut (finally), and she should fit in nicely to a Season 1 meta tier that she automatically slows into a high rank in.
Kiriko has been met relatively well by the Overwatch 2 community: her simple kit is fun to play and rewarding in nature, with her abilities offering a nice balance and sense of variety, namely in heavy tank compositions alongside the likes of Roadhog, Reinhardt, and Orisa.
She also has a highly effective evasive technique, making her slightly more useable and compatible with the current Genji and Reaper-heavy meta. Mercy and Zenyatta, while common picks, appear to be really struggling on the kill-to-death ration ladder unless they’re upping their individual damage output, such is in the inefficiencies of their evasive abilities. Kiriko can quickly zap herself towards a heavy tank in the distance, essentially giving her a very short but still effective sense of immortality in the time between departure and arrival at her new spot on the battlefield.
This I feel is likely to make her a very popular pick in Competitive especially at lower ranks and in solo queues where communication between teammates is minimal.
Her addition to the Competitive queue comes at a time when both Bastion and Torbjorn are still MIA. Both heroes were removed completely from the Competitive roster due to some glitches impacting their play: Torb has remained in Arcade and Unranked Quick Play, whereas Bastion has been completely wiped from the face of the earth.
Bastion saw a pretty significant rework in Overwatch 2, and this bug took that rework to all-new heights. As can be seen here, his Artillery strike ultimate could essentially be spammed infinitely, prompting players to bombard a battlefield and pretty much wipe out the opposing team with a single Ultimate.
Torbjorn on the other hand wasn’t quite as impactful and damaging: similarly his Ultimate could be extended indefinitely, granting him unlimited armor.
“Bastion and Torbjörn will be taking a quick trip to the workshop while we iron out a few bugs in their ability kits,” Blizzard said.
“Bastion will be unavailable in all modes during this time, while Torbjörn will still be playable in Quick Play.”
The addition of Kiriko might (maybe) tide of Bastion mains in the meantime (probably not), but if there’s any positive to all of this it’s that Blizzard is taking a proactive step in fixing the heroes and actually removing them from the roster, instead of just leaving them there for the community to continue exploiting.
