Cass Nade & REAPER REWORK - OW2 Dev AMA & Season 10 Hotfix Patch Breakdown 

That long hanzo question was from arrge

Bruh that's what I love about Reaper Reaper goes: Fllaanking Flanks Dies Reaper: Reespaawn

Since April Fools and Mirrorwatch both made a similar change to Bastion's primary, I feel like they want to change his rifle arm to a shotgun arm.

Hanzo's stats are padded though because he's better played as a tankbuster now since you can't oneshot, you can't double shot confirm a kill with Hanzo since he shoots slow with exception to an ability. In any case, especially with projectile changes, easier to hit the tank, does more damage with armor changes, hitting tank means higher accuracy, obvious higher damage farming.

Lol they are clueless what to do with the magnetic grenade. At least when it was a stun grenade, it was totally your fault for being too close to him. Now you can just hail mary it and get lucky

Sombra is hard to balance because of permanent invisibility? WHO WOULD HAVE EVER KNOWN!? Come on even paladins figured it out years ago when they removed perma invis.

Dude, cass dework sounds sick

That last answer was a whole bunch of a nothing sandwich

The response to the Hanzo question was the worst by far. His stats are inflated and fake cause all he does is spam the storm arrows into tank every fight. He needs more damage on his primary and less power in storm arrows so he has a reason to shoot squishes again cause currently his ttk is too long.

The flashbang was fine; the honing grenade follows you around a corner and travels far to ruin your fun. That honking nade follows you like the shadow of a falling piano in a loony tunes cartoon. 😅

I really dislike how they answered the last question about counterswapping. Yeah they mentioned why it's frustrating to play against, but not really any solutions. Even if counterswapping happened less often like they said, it'd still suck if it has such an unbalanced risk to reward ratio. In the same question they dismissed unhealthy tanks (Mauga, Orisa, Hog) as "unpopular" which I find concerning. In the beginning of the answer, the way they phrased how counterswapping is a part of the game seemed disingenuous. Like yes what they said was technically true, but in OW1 it was never as forced as it feels now. It's not a part of the game in the way it is now because "that's just how Overwatch is", they made it that way.

One thing with lifeweaver is his healing charging makes hard to dps. Ive always thought if his heal charged while you did damage it would be nice qol. And wouldn't be punished so bad for trying to contribute damage

“Make reaper stfu” had me on the floor😭😭😭

overwatch 2 hotfix 2025 on the way. added 1 more tank slot. adjusted tank stats back to ow1 stats as a percentage relative to dps and sups. more details and reworks, needed but stay tuned.

A cool reaper change could be to have him 'linger' in shadow step for a bit at the end as long as he doesn't move/act, to potentially bait some abilities designed to disrupt the animation frame one kills. It would add to his survivability whilst not buffing him too much against tanks, and help him to flank a bit more effectively.

I'm interested in a mechanic where if Hanzo hasn't shot an arrow for 2-3 seconds, the arrow has more damage and enters one-shot territory. So Hanzo can attempt an early pick at the start of every scrap. But he is not going to get that random one shot in the middle of brawling mid-range with spammed arrows

I think for wifeleaver petal, they should change it so that when the petal fully rises (reaches it's maximum height after someone steps on it) the edges fold out and extend the platform's overall size a bit. Not so much that it blocks line of site, but enough that you can actually dodge shots without accidentally falling off.

I’ve said this about cassadiy for AGES. Let it detonate the same old way, but give it the hinder and damage instead of stun. It brings back his old identity but doesn’t make it too powerful.

Love your videos, took me 10 minutes as a casual smash player to figure out what the background music was

Thank the god for the magnetic grenade change. I always thought it would've been better to just keep flashbang but with the new hinder effect.

I hope rein amp shield from mirrorwatch gets incorporated into a new character eventually, I loved that ability

Did he quit Overwashed? Anyone know the details?

Would it be a good idea to get stun backs to deal with all the insane movement heroes?

Thank you Mr. Karq for this great video. I did think this was an ow2 reddit questions video for a second tho because of the thumbnail

symmetra has 250hp, HUGE hitbox, slow asf orbs to charge, Alec said they "buffed" turrets and stuff but: 1) the initial nerfs took place bc she could two tap with 2 orbs, this is no longer a thing after S9. She requires 3-4 perfect charged and perfect aimed orbs to kill a squishy. 2) The HP buffs and dmg buffs affect turrets A LOT. 3) they also nerfed HP because she was "too good at poke" in S8 but this is no longer a thing. So, we lost a LOT bc of two tapping. AND now we lost or killing potential bc of hp buffs, and our turrets are destroyed in milliseconds bc of dmg buffs. What did they buff? TP and turret JUST a little bit. Almost unnoticeable. AND THEY HAVE THE AUDACITY to say they are still discussing her current situation. There is nothing to discuss here. Give her more dmg and more survivability!!!! she used to have a 1.X pickrate and 56% winrate. NOW SHE HAS 0.2% PICKRATE AND ALMOST 50% WINRATE. A hero that is ONLY played in situations she is really good at + by OTPs... So how TF she has 50% winrate???? she was not even good in OW1 and she had 61% winrate.... AND WE CAN GO ON AND ON. on top of that, its quite sad that zarya does way more dmg and has a way longer beam than sym and she is a tank with way more HP and survivability options than sym. And lets not even talk about the most huge recent patch note that took some weeks ago where sigma and hanzo got some really stupid "buffs" like if it was some kind of april fool or something. They say "we hear your feedback" but they also completely ignore the complains of Sojourn, mercy, sym, illari, LW, rein, and took a really long time to really nerf mauga, and sojourn released and we can go on and on. This dev team is more incompetent every day. I really dont know what to think anymore...

I honestly don’t like how the devs try to sprinkle in buffs when general nerfs are needed for certain characters. It’s always better to nerf THEN see what needs to be adjusted rather than what we have now. For example the amount of health hog generated wasn’t the problem, it was the instant damage reduction and heal increase on top of the burst heals which made it highly difficult to kill ON TOP of the 25% hs reduction. On first look this doesn’t sound like it’d hit hog that hard but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I have a feeling we're getting a venture dig style ability for reaper. maybe it has verticality built in

36:55 I don't onetrick tanks, like at all. I do however have tanks I prefer to play because I like their playstyle way more. These tanks feel more rewarding or playmaking potential feels better )and they dont feel dumbass boring to play like mauga hog and orisa (and the 24/7 sigma on circuit). And yet I have not played overwatch since 3 weeks after mauga came out except for a few games once in a while with friends for like 15-20 min. Why? Because it feels like everything you do can be undone with 1-2 heroes swaps depending on the map. If that doesn't work, they will swap more. I'm just sick and tired of being punished by being forced to swap even though I'm playing against my first 2 counters well enough for them to not matter. If I do well enough they simply swap more people. It's demotivating and feels extremely unrewarding. If you make good plays, or played well so far, a few moments later, you're now no longer allowed to play the game, and most likely have to swap to a tank that is great at survivability, but feels ass to play or extremely boring gameplay loop (orisa for example) For a bit of context, here is my rank , I am a diamond tank main, but play every role i played this game for 5,5+years, I'm able to stay in diamond playing every single tank for the entire duration of ow2. I'm diamond on support as well as plat on dps. With the current way of what feels like being punished for playing well, the tank no longer feels good to play at all.

What a coincidence, I did enjoy this while driving my car

It seems like Cass’s grenade is going to be changing from a flash bang (OW1) to more of a concussive grenade like in COD

I also miss the Hanzo one-shot but, being honest, how often do you HS with Hanzo at full charge and the person doesn't immediately die??

Great Vid KarQ!

40 minutes of slash bros intro... My brain is damaged 😢

37:05 in fairness if there's a really good Ana who's landing just all her antis, I might swap to Kiriko to counter that

Why has no one mentioned that blizzard should give Hanzo's one shot back, but with a falloff range, like how Widowmaker has one with her rifle. Since Hanzo shoots an arrow, it should be much closer, to eliminate random oneshots across the map, and actually allow the assassin playstyle to resurface

37:44 Give tanks more abilities to alleviate counter problems. Also makes them interesting and more fun to play. Players will learn the new complexities pretty fast.

38:36 what about trying a swap hero timer/cooldown.

22:34 Every patch they're undoing some of the health buffs from season 9 by slowly increasing hero damages one hero after another. But I guess to speed things up they will just start removing health from heroes instead. I predicted a year in which power creep would bring us back to what we're used to but I guess it's even sooner.

buffing sym damage will make her break metal ranks where they won't immediately kill her and she can easily charge her beam, and in higher ranks she will still be useless because they will just stay out of range or immediately target her, I believe an HP buff would help a lot more than a damage buff would

I thought of a fun way to buff Symmentra with a rework while watching this video. But as I'm not apart of game design, it may end up pretty weak or too powerful. Some sort of way that has her turrets surrounder her, becoming indestructable, and pile on the damage along side her primary fire.

34:02 An extra ability for tanks could make them fun. Maybe a weapon swap or deployable. Honestly, most tanks are a little simple for such a big role. Also makes counters such as dva vs zarya less of a problem.

Well CC is not the problem as long as it's not chain CC or long period CC

5:00 you know sombra exists right?

Its literally this simple for hanzo give him one shot back BUT give him either 200 hp or 175 making him especially squishy and if found out of position just dead instantly

Honestly Ive been playing Roadhog recently and its really feeling like either I get insta killed or im rolling...

Issue with Symmetra is they can't buff anything without her being some sort of overbearing threat for metal ranks. On one hand I get why they're slow on changes, but I feel they would be better if they gave buffs/reworks to her power then make her more of a threat positioning wise (so far all we have is teleporter which can work but needs coordination to be used super effectively, as well as her ult. Her wall is also quite bland as it needs to be placed super properly to get any value, and even then, a Sombra could just come in and disable her ult instantly with her own ult. If theyre going to rework her they would def need to focus a bit on how beneficial she would be, either as an individual or to a team, and since shes meh in both avenues she just can't get too much consistent value Hope they give her a chance that makes her viable in one of those avenues, I want to be able to use her a bit often rather than just leaving her on the bench (she's one of my mains but at this point only in QP)

JUST REVERT SYMS RIGHT CLICK TO HER OLD ONE!!! Make it where it’s big and slow again and two taps squishies. That’s what made her good in the past. I’ve one tricked sym no swapping to masters in ow1 and ow2. She is unplayable with the health pool increase and her right click being so trash

Hot take: Hog is lowkey broken. He is very counterable so it goes unsaid but his numbers alone allows him to be a pub stomper.

If they think that roadhog benefited too much from the headshot reduction, blizzard should give him the belly button crit back

they should just make reaper's teleporting voice lines only audible for allies

38:24 6v6 wouldn't be much different than 5v5 open. Honestly 5v5 open is significantly better of an experience than most of the role queueue games ive been in lately.

0:55 🤨🤨🤨

I just want Shadowstep to be faster, and buff his damage just a smidgen.

they are gonna slap a meter on shadow step like they did hog and call it a day

All i want is to have control maps back in arcade tbh. Its been assault only forever. I dont play ranked and im getting sick of having to constantly leave qp games due tp crappy maps that just aren't fun. I get that map selection wont be a thing but can we at least have arcade go back to having different map types?

as said people already stat crunch and run all the numbers to find outliers ie heroes that are abnormally good, and more transparency is just better, in r6 private profiles dont exist so any stat tracker worth a shit can give you your own win rates, as well as ubisoft releasing win rate and pick rate statistics every season, this alone keeps people’s confidence in ubi strong because nothing is hidden from the player in terms of comparing to others and striving to get better

being a dota player, and having access to what you have on dotabuff makes overwatches stats and player match data an embarressment. I can litteraly view my very first dota match stats from 2014 meanwhile overwatch has 10 games wiped on a patch...

No! I thought I could enjoy Sigma's goofy change for longer than this!!!

Coming soon: Overwtch 3

The fact i go 40-5 as a tank at gold 1 and win and go up 20% doesnt make sense

The Sigma changes just proved devs don't play or even test the update before releasing

Ever time i listen to these blog posts they sound more and more like beta test feedback posts

That's spooky that the devs dont even understand sombras issue... Say we fix permanent invis and put it back onna cool down, we than need to shift power elsewhere and what's left? An auto aim ability that takes your abilities away, a movement ability, and a burst dmg ability with dots... if you put it into the auto aim hack than everyone's gonna hate her even more, than as for movement, idek how youd do that but regardless it's not gonna up her power much unless you literally add 2 charges which would be busted, and as for the burst option, they wanna lower ttk and instances of burst which is why we had the s9 changes. So how is that the issue? Maybe the reason shes so difficult is because they dont even know the true issue, and considering most ability based fps games have invis and many are perma invis abilities like d2 or the new finals game and I'm sure theres invis in apex or spy from tf2, my point is it's a very common thing in fps games same as dash heros and teleport heros, ie, tracer and genji. So in my opinion, the invis is fine, I mean how is it even that different from tracer appearing outta butt fk nowhere? It really isnt but the difference is tracer appears and than needs to execute incredible skillful actions to get value or it's all for nothing, making her incredibly busted ability to appear anywhere balanced by being super high risk, but sombra, even if she doesn't kill you, can simply just auto aim hack you and steal your abilities away meaning she can appear anywhere and than also get value for free, and even if it's not doomfist or ball being hacked, it's still massive value if simply timed well, which all abilities need to be timed well and aimed, or at least need you to position which sombra doesnt have an issue positioning, aiming or escaping so like this entire engagement is automated which is why it sucks so badly so just make hack a skill shot, boom its solved and now she can actually miss their value after appearing outta no where making it really high risk like tracer

Wow and this mf responds with “blah blah blah all these numbers” shid is crazy

karq buddy, it's pronounced 'ah-nah' not 'ann-ah'. the voice-lines even back it up.

The counter-swapping issue could be less frustrating if they limit the number of times player can swap in a game. You start the match with 1 swap, then everyone gain 1swap every time a point is captured. Something like that.

So they wanted to nerf tank busters, nerfed 2 purpose made tank busters and shoved hanzo into the tankbuster role? Seems pretty dumb

I think the “tank buster” design for DPS is a big problem… with only one tank why would you need a DPS committed to destroying it when, like you said, a lot of times the whole team swaps to counter the tank

Mercy being a top pick in low ranks doesn't mean she is good she feels terrible in high ranks. :(

I want Symmetra's 6 turrets back :-) I miss my car wash beams.😁

I quit Hanzo after 1 game of S9, his assasin playstyle was his most interesting way to play him. He wasn't fun as a sniper before S9, and now he is even less fun as a spammy tankbuster. He doesn't feel like he takes skill to play as, Hanzo's identity has been completaly erased in my eyes.

Soooo, youre Hanzo take is because of skill diff, Karq? Sorry to break it to you, but if you were dying to a Hanzo headshot, you'd also die to a Widow headshot. How would you feel if all your Support heroes could do was heal with zero opportunity for damage? Look at things from the other side for once. DPS players do not want to be spamming a tank all day. The game has lost Hanzo players these past 2 seasons over the loss of his identity.

13:58 Because Blizzard makes money from smurfs. Money is more important than you having good games. THIS WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN WHEN GOING FREE TO PLAY.

I guarantee you the Sigma change this patch was only to satisfy the extremely loud and whiny 1% who thought it was the worst thing to ever happen. A friendly reminder is that if you flux someone around a wall, you can't kill them because they're out of your line of sight.

The changes to Hanzo's breakpoint in the health buff patch were good for the health of the game. Hanzo was so cheesy and it felt so miserable to be on the receiving end of the 5 mile logs. Widow not so much, because it at least requires flick-shot or good aim, but Hanzo just spamming arrows down choke and players being unlucky enough to walk into one was so boring. That being said, I think there could've been a case for the one shot remaining if they added damage drop off and projectile slow to the arrows. Arrows IRL slow down rapidly after firing due to drag, so why not make arrows in OW slow down, do less damage, and require aiming higher to get those long shots. Then you can keep the one shot component of the bow within a certain range, like 20 meters, transition Hanzo into a bit more of stealthy flanker than a sniper. The rest of his kit would fall pretty well into that kind of playstyle with his verticality and leap. It would also be consistent with his lore and what we've seen of him in cinematics as the stealthy bow marksman.

reworkwatch

2 tanks - 1 DPS - 2 Supports This is the 5v5 it should have been Flex tank is basically DPS, that is what it should have been Dps gets value all on its own, tank is the role that NEEDS another

Hanzo needs desperate help…the fall of hanzo needs a 30 minute video

I actually think Mirrorwatch would be a great direction to take Widowmaker so long as they take priority away from her one-shot. Maybe she gets a very thin shield and new, stronger ult but she has to stand completely still to charge up to one-shot levels, with a laser sight that gets more intense at high charge. Or maybe one-shot levels of charge get locked behind a cooldown.

Anyone know when he starts talking about Cass? Not really interested in spending 30 minutes of my life listening to yapping.

The last answer is a whole lot of nothing. The truth is that they have no idea how to fix the tank issue in the 5v5 format because it is impossible. He brought up the fact that every role is pressured to counter, which is technically true, but it isn't anywhere nearly as bad on any other role as it is on the tank role. And even if you do get countered on another role, you have another support/dps player to help carry that slack. Tank doesn't have the luxury. Buffing raw numbers doesn't make tank any less miserable to play. It doesn't change the fact that every resource gets dumped into you. It doesn't solve the rampant counter swapping issue. The recent tank buffs have proved that. You can't just say "I don't know how to fix the tank role in 5v5 but it isn''t 6v6." That is the solution and I don't know why Team4 and creators are blatantly ignoring that fact.

I think they should let Reaper have a secondary fire where he fires a slug instead of a spread that does the same damage. The recent armor change removing him from being a tank buster is problematic. Having a higher than pellet damage ability could help him retain that identity as a tank buster.

If balancing Sombra is hard because of infinite invis, and the community at large hates infinite invis, how about they remove the infinite invis? Also, tank busting isn't quite so dead with the armor changes. With Winston for example, Bastion's ttk only changed by a fraction of a second. Same with Reaper's. It hurt them a bit, maybe enough that they aren't viable in high ranks, but in the average ranks Reaper and Bastion still run rampant when the other team has the better tank.

they ignored it yet again by pushing the hero swap narrative. the question needs to be heard "if we do away with hero swapping can we start balancing the game properly?" this could pave the way to a more balanced and more tactical game in the long run. please start considering this everyone.

Am i the only one who's pissed off about the changes of Cass's Grenade? Like I'm pretty sure it's gonna be annoying to use

Karque

Here's a thought: maybe don't have Sombra be able to just stay invisible FOREVER. then it wouldn't be hard to balance in a game based around SEEING and SHOOTING the opponent. Braindead dev moment

For petal platform. Add a tiny bit of hitbox to the edges of it so that players can't immediately fall off of it. If they want to get off it. They'd need to jump or crouch. I've had really good petals be thrown on me, but because there's not really a way to recognize it without watching it fly through the air. I realize too late that it was for me and just barely fell off it. Admittedly, if you did this, the petal wouldn't be able to be moved around on nearly as much since player hitboxes would collide. It would be more difficult to aim downwards. I feel like alot of times when i see a teamate or enemy jump off of one. Maybe even more than half of the time it was unintentional. Some sort of directional audio que would be nice. I have a hearing disability so it probably wouldn't help me, but as a tank player, that sounds really good

21:30 It blows my mind that they say stuff like this... Who was frustrated by Hanzo burst damage? I main support, and my favorite part of the game was how fast it was, low TTK, it felt like every moment mattered and had impact. Stepping around a corner mattered, you'd better know what DPS they have and anticipate what they're doing before you do. Now everything is very, very slow. They spent 8 years balancing the game around the 200HP benchmark then unbalanced thousands of interactions in one update by changing that benchmark which changes the value of nearly everything in the game that deals damage.

Hanzo fucking sucks right now

“Reaper won’t get any better at tank busting” So he will remain trash I see

There are some counter swaps that are too strong. Playing dva into Zarya is fine but dva has more than one counter swap. If they go to Zarya and a symm Mei Moira mercy then you went from a 40-60 to like a 20-80.

One shot is a misnomer. Yes Hanzo had an arrow that could do it. But many other Heroes have an unavoidable insta-kill. The only way Hanzo can do that now is to hog the mercy boost which makes playing him a toxic experience. We need to drop the conversation on random across the map headshots because they were so bloody rare. We all die to random junkrat bounces as well are they going to fix that? Moira orbs wandering around? Skillshots should remain in the game with something other than a lazy 5 HP nerf. Nobody asked for 0 fall-off at 90 yards for Hanzo either.

So does that mean reaper is finally getting the grenade launcher secondary fire that was in the OW1 cinematic?

I'm so glad I quit this game. I just follow the content. Enjoy guys.

As a Hanzo one trick my take is that while sure, he's statistically performing fine, the specific playstyle that I have put time and effort into practicing has been devalued and nerfed into the ground. I don't play Hanzo to stand at midrange and shoot a hog in the face all game, i play Hanzo because i love the "assassin" playstyle, i.e. a flanking playstyle that relies on sonic arrow and wall climb to take my opponents off guard. That playstyle rewards patience and precision with my first arrow, with the balance coming from how easily a miss can be punished leading to the long walk back from spawn. The point of describing the playstyle is to try and contrast with what we have now AND the choke spammer playstyle that people complained about in the first place. How is it fair that my playing experience should be sacrificed because of an issue that has nothing to do with me? Also how is it fair that it's basically just Hanzo and Junkrat players that have suffered this sort of treatment? Overwatch is filled with characters with the capabilities to be extremely frustrating. Off the top of my head, Sombra, Ball, Widow, Cass, Phara/Echo, Sojourn, Kiri, Bap, Hog, Mauga, Orisa, all have parts of their kit that can be just as frustrating as Hanzo's one shot was, so why him? And sure you could say "oh there's counter play to every hero so those frustrating points aren't as bad", to which i say that Hanzo has more counterplay than some of the heroes i listed, Positioning, being grouped up, using cover or shields, having decent enough game sense to not walk into the choke without cover. On a separate note to that rant, what even is the balance team's goal with Hanzo? He's still built like a sniper with relatively low mobility and an extremely low fire rate, and the "better" parts of his kit are the bigger arrows, the better storm arrows, and... dragon? maybe? He currently specialises in nothing, he can't snipe anymore, if he plays midrange and gets rushed or dived he can't really defend himself or escape without help, and with the close range playstyle you basically get the same punishment you used to get for missing just for every shot you hit, including headshots. The buffs they've given him were not really wanted as far as i can tell, dragon was fine as a zoning tool, easier shots to hit takes the skill expression out of it, and storm arrows have always been whatever anyway. I just wrote way more than i expected to but those are my general feelings about the balancing of Hanzo right now.

Hanzo it's not bad, but it's zero fun now. And you force your teammates pick mercy like pharah or you become a useless character. Everybody can do better than you. Besides the hotbox change is stupid

I’m going be honest these devs are clueless

19:30 I understand KarQ's perspective here, but there is another thing that isn't really considered. When players have access to all the numbers, this can lead to them making decisions purely off of numbers while not understanding why they are doing something. Players ignorantly supporting believes based on numbers without knowing the significance of the numbers would likely be more frustrating than helpful for both the community and the dev team.

i think reaper should get overhealth instead of healing