In a seismic update, Overwatch 2 pulls back from "team strategy and mechanics" by giving every hero in the game built-in healing

gamesradar.com:

In one of the wildest updates I've ever seen from a competitive shooter, Overwatch 2 is giving every hero in the game their own built-in healing as part of an effort to reduce the dominance of "team strategy and mechanics." 

Director Aaron Keller outlined the upcoming change, which will arrive in Season 9, in a new blog post. This seismic update is actually just one part of "a massive set of gameplay and balance changes coming to that season," but it sounds like a huge meta shift in its own right. 

"In Season 9, both Tank and Damage heroes will get a modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive," Keller explains. "This should give non-Support players more options in terms of sustaining themselves. It should also take some of the pressure off Support players to keep everyone alive since individual players now have more control of their own health pool."

I'm not sure if healers should be worried that Overwatch 2 is about to eat their lunch, or relieved that, after enduring years of unfair demands and taunts – "I need healing," ad nauseam – they can officially tell everyone to go heal themselves and actually mean it. I suppose that'll come down to how potent this passive healing is in practice. 

The fundamental purpose of this change is to help reduce the frustrations that, as Keller puts it, can be caused by Overwatch 2's "reliance on teammates." 

"In Overwatch, there is a constant tug of war between the power of a team and the power of an individual hero or player," he says. "A change like this shifts that balance a bit. This is something that we are constantly evaluating. We still want Overwatch to be defined by team strategy and mechanics, but we feel this can be pulled back a bit now and possibly