It looks like Reinhardt's dominance as Overwatch's main tank of choice may be about to change—Blizzard is testing a small change to his Earthshatter ultimate ability on the latest Public Test Realm that makes it less effective against targets on the ground. The effective height of the ability, as well as the threshold of objects that Earthshatter can "climb," has been reduced from three to two meters.
"Earthshatter tended to climb unexpectedly high, frequently hitting targets that were significantly above the ground," read the developer comments. "These changes help the ability stay more grounded."
The other hero seeing a slight nerf this time around is Soldier: 76—the bullet damage of his Heavy Pulse Rifle is being reduced from 20 to 19 per shot.
"Soldier: 76 is in a much better place lately, but his damage output was making him a must pick, compared to similar roles," Blizzard said.
Speaking of main tanks, the new kid on the block Orisa continues to be tinkered with. The damage on her Fusion Driver is being reduced by 15 percent, while her Protective Barrier cooldown is dropping from 12 to eight seconds.
"To help Orisa maintain the front line for her team, we're reducing the cooldown of her Protective Barrier," Blizzard said. "This change also helps her reposition the barrier more easily when needed. To compensate for this new defensive strength, we're reducing her Fusion Driver's damage, as it felt too high."
The brothers Shimada—Hanzo and Genji—have had their wall climbing ability tweaked slightly so that there's no attack cooldown after climbing, allowing them to engage with enemies immediately after completing a climb. Blizzard says this is a quality-of-life change that will make wall climbing feel better. Hanzo is also getting a small DPS buff: the charge speed (draw time) of his arrows has been increased by 10 percent, and charged arrows now maintain their charge after climbing a wall.
"Decreasing Hanzo's draw time gives him more overall DPS, while also letting him fully charge an arrow and more quickly return to full movement speed when needed," Blizzard said.
Rounding out the hero updates is a small tweak to Reaper: his ammo is now entirely refilled when Wraith Form is used.
In addition to these hero balance tweaks, the PTR includes a welcome change to Custom Games and the Game Browser: players can now disable secondary fire and secondary weapons in Custom Games. You can also now disable one Symmetra ultimate while leaving the other active.
The Overwatch PTR is available for testing now. As always, the updates and content being tested is subject to change before it hits the live servers.
