So, did we learn anything useful from yesterday’s Overwatch 2 stream from the newly minted team leads at Blizzard? We did indeed, though whether it makes you happy or not will depend on what you think of the current meta, as the devs just can’t stop messing with things like tank roles and team size.
“The core Overwatch PvP experience will shift from six players per team to five players per team,” Blizzard explained in its follow-up post. “In the standard PvP game modes of Overwatch 2, each team will contain one Tank, two Damage, and two Support heroes. This evolution introduces a major shift in the way that the team approaches all aspects of the game, from map design to the dynamics between roles and how they interact as a team.”
The goal, the studio says, is to shift the tank away from team protection and toward brawling (a trend, we note, echoed across the MMORPG industry over the last many years – to its detriment, some gamers would argue). There’s a range of tweaks for other roles too, including damage toons picking up a speed boost support toons regenerating health out of combat. In other words, it’s still Blizzard, and constantly trying to reinvent characters we loved the way they were is just what this studio does.
Definitely check out the whole piece, as there’s a look at the new Push game mode and some of the new city maps.
