Overwatch 2 support buffs planned following beta feedback

pcgamesn.com:

Blizzard’s Overwatch team has posted a developer update following the first week of the current Overwatch 2 PvP beta, talking about its intent for Overwatch 2 support buffs and reiterating that the FPS game’s beta is still a work in progress. The blog notes that players in the support role currently feel very vulnerable to dives and flanking attacks as a result of the game’s shift to a 5v5 team composition featuring one fewer tank player to protect them.

The devs say that improving the passive healing ability of support characters going into this beta has seen “supports performing well in the beta, but we know that balance is only one aspect of what makes a hero fun to play.” With lots of changes and reworks to tank and damage heroes going into Overwatch 2 as well as the new DPS hero Sojourn, some support players have felt a little left out in the cold. Blizzard says that its long term play is to address this by adding new support heroes to the game, but in the meantime it is experimenting with a series of “new and refreshed abilities for some existing support heroes.”

Another side effect of this issue is that queue times for tank and damage players have increased as players tend towards playing the more exciting roles, which have seen a greater range of updates. Blizzard plans to enable quick play classic – a mode with no role restrictions – to enable a faster way for players to queue into matches. While a number of players are clamouring for a ranked mode in the beta, Blizzard says that this is still under development and not ready for large scale testing. The team also states that it wants to avoid splitting the player base due to the current beta’s limited player count.

Among the other changes discussed are