Blizzard Entertainment’s latest midseason update includes major adjustments aimed at boosting the tank role’s resilience and overall gameplay experience in Overwatch 2.
Following comments that tanks were being eliminated too fast or appeared overpowered, the developers made a number of changes to help these front-line brawlers live up to their titles.
Key changes coming to the global tank passive ability include a 25% reduction in headshot damage vulnerability and an increase in knockback resistance from 30% to 50%. These tweaks should allow tank heroes to absorb more damage and maintain positioning against displacement abilities.
Furthermore, Blizzard is reducing armor damage reduction to a maximum of 50%, necessitating greater effort from high-firing DPS heroes like Reaper and Tracer to defeat big tanks. Health regeneration is also being changed from a fixed 20 HP per second to 10 HP plus 5% of maximum health per second, which will assist tanks with larger health pools.
“These changes are designed to make tanks more resilient without being overly strong, encouraging more balanced gameplay,” stated the Overwatch 2 development team.
Alongside the global adjustments, several individual tank heroes are receiving targeted buffs when the midseason patch launches on May 14th:
- Junker Queen’s Commanding Shout cooldown reduced to 12 seconds and can be activated during other abilities
- Wrecking Ball’s Grappling Claw damage increased, longer Piledriver stun, higher Minefield explosion/knockback
- Minor buffs for Junkrat, Echo, and Hanzo
The Overwatch 2 developers anticipate that these tank-focused updates will significantly impact the meta in the back half of Season 10, as they aim to improve gameplay dynamics across all roles.
