Yes, we appreciate that headline is a melange of weird and disparate pieces of Overwatch 2 news, but some of these things are a bit too fun to not bundle together into one story. Before we get to that fun stuff, though, we do need to eat our vegetables. The AMA-shaped vegetables.
The focus of the recent AMA is about Season 3 balancing, with answers discussing how the team considers player feedback and meta picks when balancing heroes, its opinion about the combination of Pharah and Mercy, discussion about SR overcorrections, and consideration of sniper character picks in certain maps and modes. There’s a lot of high-level competitive discussion on offer (obviously), so if that’s the column you fall in to, the AMA is probably worth a read.
Balance was also a point of discussion in a recent dev blog from Overwatch director Aaron Keller, who notes that there are not going to be any balance adjustments planned for the mid-season patch, while also noting how hero pick rates appear to be thumbing the greater meta presumptions among players; most people are playing characters they like. Super weird to choose joy, I guess.
Now on to the fun stuff: One Redditor has managed to break his way out of the invisible walls holding him within the Paraiso map, so naturally his first instinct was to open fire on the Christ the Redeemer statue that’s in the background… where he found that it magically reflects all projectiles away with an invisible barrier.
Finally, a random exercise by the devs to create a version of Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade that immediately seeks out and destroys Mei anywhere on the map has gotten a lot of players calling for the option to be actually implemented unironically. The tweeted video does note that the Mei-hunting grenade won’t “obviously” be implemented, but it hasn’t stopped fans from begging for it to become a reality. Maybe it’ll be a feature in a limited-time mode.
The Jesus statue on Paraiso (OoB) deflects any projectiles that are shot at it with an invisible barrier
by u/0micronGaming in Overwatch
A player suggested we rework Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade to find Mei anywhere on the map and immediately eliminate her 💀
Obviously, we won’t be implementing this suggestion… but we couldn’t help but test it out to see what it looks like 😠pic.twitter.com/uxLtvHYt1I
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) February 24, 2023
