The Overwatch beta received another patch today, after receiving a previously undocumented patch on Tuesday.
Today's patch, while including minor adjustments and bug fixes, focuses on more balance changes. Two heroes that were the target of frequent criticism, Bastion and Torbjörn, have received general nerfs. D.Va, Mei, and Mercy received slight adjustments.
The full patch notes are reproduced below:
GENERAL:
Miscellaneous
- Completed a tuning pass for end-of-match commendations
- Increased the cooldown on using Voice Lines
HERO BALANCE CHANGES:
Bastion
- Configuration: Recon
- Maximum weapon spread decreased by 25%
- Configuration: Sentry
- No longer gains any armor bonus
- All changes to bullet damage made in our February 9 beta patch have been reverted
Developer comments: We’ve given Configuration: Recon a bit of a boost to allow Bastion to “run-and-gun” more efficiently when needed. We’ve also made a significant change to Bastion’s survivability when in Configuration: Sentry; by removing the 300 additional armor, Bastion is now more vulnerable to attack, but loses none of its offensive power. We’re very eager to see how both of these updates play out in the beta.
D.Va
- D.Va’s mech is no longer move- or aim-locked after being called down
- Self-Destruct
- Ultimate charge now generates passively even when D.Va is dead or her mech is destroyed
- Call Mech
- Ultimate cost decreased by 20%
Developer comments: The changes we made to how heroes gain Ultimate charge in the February 9 beta patch had some unintended side effects for D.Va, making it much harder for her to generate Ultimate than before. These changes should help correct this pain point, as well as provide a nice quality-of-life change to the process of summoning her mech.
Mei
- Endothermic Blaster
- Alternate Fire
- Ammo cost decreased from 50 to 40
Developer comments: The goal of this small change is make it so that using Mei’s alternate fire doesn’t feel like it’s compromising her primary fire.
Mercy
- Guardian Angel
- Can no longer target the souls of dead allies
Developer comments: The change we made to Guardian Angel in the February 9 beta patch (allowing the ability to target the souls of dead allies) was intended to help Mercy get to where her Resurrect may be the most needed. In practice, this change caused problems. We saw a lot of feedback from players noting that they’d accidentally target a dead ally when they meant to target a living ally, or that they’d target a dead ally thinking it was a living ally initially. As a result, we’ve reverted the original change.
Torbjörn
- Turret bullet damage decreased from 16 to 14
- Turret repair amount decreased from 100 to 50 health per swing
- Rivet Gun
- Maximum ammo decreased from 20 to 18
- Alternate Fire
- Cost decreased from 5 to 3
Developer comments: Torbjörn’s turrets currently feel a little too powerful, so (to start) we’re taking away some of their power as well as removing Torbjörn’s ability to out-repair reasonable incoming damage. Torbjörn’s Rivet gun is also getting a small boost to allow for more liberal use of his Alternate Fire when needed.
BUG FIXES:
General
- Fixed several in-game locations in which it was possible to use Tracer’s Blink ability to exit intended play space
- Fixed an issue when blue-colored effects would sometimes get “stuck” on screen
- Fixed a crash that could happen when opening Loot Boxes
- Fixed several client- and sever-side crashes
Heroes
- Fixed an issue that caused Zenyatta to receive more credit than intended for kill assists when determining Play of the Game
Spectating
- Projectiles will now appear to line up more correctly with targets when viewing a player in Spectator Mode
In addition to the patch released today, Blizzard released patch notes for the patch released this Tuesday, which exclusively featured bug fixes. The patch notes are reproduced below:
BUG FIXES:
General
- Highlight Intros will now correctly randomize for all heroes (instead of just Tracer) whenever the “Random” option is selected in the Hero Gallery
- Fixed an issue that would cause the game to crash when playing randomized Highlight Intros for Tracer
- Fixed an issue with stats wrapping on the end-of-round progression screen
- Fixed several client- and server-side crashes
Maps
- Updated several in-game locations and objects on Nepal and Lijiang Tower to prevent players from being able to reach, stand, and/or get stuck on them
- Fixed several lighting issues on Lijiang Tower
Spectating
- Spectators will now automatically move on to the next part of the map at the end of each round when spectating Control games
- Fixed several issues with inconsistent or incorrect team coloring while spectating
- Fixed an issue that caused projectiles to appear too far in front of the weapon that fired them while spectating