Healing for everyone in Overwatch 2. This is one of the biggest changes ever – but will it really make the game better?
There are few games that have received as much criticism as Overwatch 2. Many people didn’t like the change from “6vs6” to “5vs5” and the cancellation of the long-announced PvE campaign also caused a (quite justified) uproar. Significantly increased prices in the shop, bugs at launch and other problems even ensured that Overwatch 2 became the worst-rated game on Steam.
But the developers are still trying to turn things around and significantly improve Overwatch 2 in 2024. One of the biggest changes of all time for the game is now coming: All characters will automatically fully heal.
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What kind of healing is this? Currently only support characters in Overwatch have passive self-healing. If they do not take damage for a brief moment, they heal for 15 health per second until they are fully healed or take damage and the effect cancels.
A “weakened” version of this will be available for all characters in the future, including tanks and damage dealers. This means that if heroes retreat from combat and take cover, they will be back to full strength after a few moments.
What does that change about the game? While the change may seem small at first glance, it is likely to have a drastic impact on how individual battles play out in Overwatch 2.
In the future, it will be much more attractive to flank with characters who have no independent healing or permanent support behind their necks.
At the same time, this change takes a lot of pressure off the support characters. Instead of frantically trying to save a far-away DPS character and putting yourself in the line of fire, you hand over a bit of life responsibility to the DPS player, who could simply take cover.
Last but not least, the adjustment should ensure that the somewhat monotonous game of “I wait at the medipack until the opponent comes” will no longer decide the outcome of a battle so often in the future.
What is Blizzard’s goal? In the blog post, game director Aaron Keller writes that Overwatch 2 is “really good when the team works together,” but “frustrating when it doesn’t work.”
Dependence on team members can be one of the best and worst features of our game. (…)
We want to improve that. We want to improve this by looking at the game through a teamplay lens, making it easier for players to be part of a team while easing the pain when that doesn’t work out.
Game director Aaron Keller in the Blizzard blog post
Therefore, you want to improve the game in both directions.
On the one hand, this means that you should be able to have a greater influence on the game, even if the team doesn’t work well together. For example, a Junkrat who skillfully flanks and takes cover again and again and thus heals completely over a long period of time and divides the attention of the opposing team.
At the same time, support characters are no longer in the dilemma of following individual flanking DPS players and putting themselves in unnecessary danger in the process, and even tanks can survive more often by taking short breaks until their team is with them again.
Further changes are intended to improve the feel of the game: Apparently a lot of discussions have broken out at Blizzard about how the game can be further improved. According to Keller, features such as a mini-map or a group interface in which you can see the life points of the entire team are currently being discussed internally. The game director says that the mini-map idea will probably be scrapped – but that the team’s life bar will “probably” be implemented.
Apart from that, they want to make massive changes to the balance next season in order to reduce particularly high damage peaks – this affects almost all tanks and DPS characters. “Oneshots” or combos that lead to death in a split second are therefore likely to occur much less frequently.
This is what the community says: The changes have been received with mixed feelings by Overwatch 2 players. Many are skeptical because in the past, planned changes with good intentions often had negative effects. Therefore, the feedback in the Overwach 2 subreddit has so far been rather cautious and only in a few cases optimistic, although the advantages are certainly seen.
It remains to be seen whether the changes will have the desired effect. But the introduction of a “heal for all” alone may be the biggest change to Overwatch since the launch of Overwatch 2.