Overwatch 2’s balance is currently in a good place. It’s not just a guess: Blizzard says Overwatch 2 Season 3 “is in a much better stable state than when Season 2 started,” and it has some tough stats to back that claim up. The free-to-play PC game has had its ups and downs since launch, but Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller said the team is very happy with the current state of the game as he discusses the balance of heroes and some recent changes to the game. pairing.
“We’re hearing from players that the balance is the best since Overwatch 2 launched, while the game feels fresh based on all the changes,” Keller says in a blog post. “It was great to see this discussion, and to encourage it, I’d like to give a little more detail and a little less commentary.” Take a look at current hero stats, including pick rate and win rate, to show how things are going and why meta isn’t everything.
“Most supports are viable at almost all skill levels,” Keller notes, saying Brigitte has the highest win rate at all skill levels except the top 500, where she was passed by Zen. in office, with a win rate close to 55% this season. . On the other hand, Kiriko and Moira have the lowest win rate right now at just 45%; however, Kiriko is still among the most picked heroes along with Ana and Mercy, and Moira’s pick rates are also high, especially at lower levels.
Keller adds, “We tend to think that high-rated players continue to choose certain heroes for good reasons, and we’re pulling additional metrics for maps, team comps, and team fights to try to understand. that.” It’s certainly true that a high pick rate doesn’t necessarily translate to a high win percentage; after all, if a hero is so strong that both teams pick him every game, his win rate will naturally stay at 50%.
“The tanks are in a good position right now,” Keller continues, “it’s almost hard to pick a bad tank.” He points out that Reinhardt buffs have put the colossal German powerhouse at the top of the leaderboards, with a 58% win rate at levels up to Platinum. Sigma rises slightly to Master rank and above, with a 55% win rate in the top 500. However, Wrecking Ball is the real top pick right now: Keller notes that the hamster’s pick rate increases as the player’s skill increases, and that “by the top 500, it’s by far the tank the more chosen.”
With a 51-55% win rate, which puts him in the top 3-4 of tanks, Ball is definitely a decent shout and as someone who spent hours learning it in his time. Overwatch, I certainly loved it, glad to know. have a chance to swing, accelerate, and smash my way through the new Overwatch 2 maps without feeling like throwing. Keller says the team “keeps an eye on him and wants to make sure the players don’t get tired of seeing the little guy too much.”
Cassidy is the big winner in the damage role: the arrogant cowboy “is the most picked hero by a wide margin in all but the top 500 ranks, where he’s tied with Tracer, and continues to climb.” About 30% of parties have a Cassidy on both sides! Keller says most damage heroes have a win rate between 47% and 53%, with Pharah, Widow, Tracer, and Symmetra at the top, though “things change almost daily.”
Symmetra and Torbjörn top the leaderboards for winrate at lower ranks, but unsurprisingly, Keller points out that this is quite common, as their turrets and relatively simple playstyle make them remarkably powerful at lower levels of the game. comments that “In fact, Symmetra generally has the highest win rate in the game for all roles at all ranks except Masters and above.” Meanwhile, Shadow still has around a 46% win rate at Diamond and above, though that’s higher than last season after his buffs.
“With the current state of the game, we’re not going to be making any balance changes until our mid-season update,” Keller says, though he goes on to talk about some of the matchmaking tweaks that the team brought during the season. 3. The key between this is a “match players to minimize MMR difference in a specific role” optimization, so there should be less difference between DPS players on each team and less “tank differences” than before, causing games to wobble a lot.
“It worked, and matches have a much tighter skill delta between players in the same role,” Keller reports. He notes that this also resulted in lower rank wait times, significantly at higher skill levels. However, he says this has resulted in increased queue times for unranked, especially with more spread out pools between skill levels, although the team has made some changes and that “queue times for the unclassified are already decreasing”.
However, it is not all good news. Keller says players report great win/loss streaks and ranked players end up with very different skill levels in the rankings. He explains, “Before Season 3, the bottom 5% of Grandmaster level matches had players separated by 7 Divisions”, but that’s increased to 12 Divisions after recent patches.
He says the team “makes changes almost daily, and now it’s at 9 divisions”, hoping it will get even better in the coming weeks and with the mid-season patch. Hopefully Blizzard can get this under control – even 9 divisions seems like a pretty big margin for ranked play, which should ideally aim to group you with people as close to your current skill level as possible.
However, I can’t deny that my overall experience with Season 3 has been fantastic, and I’m far from the only one. As an example, Overwatch 2 content creator and former Rank 1 player Sam ‘Samito’ Dawahare, often vocal in his reviews, calls the current update “Easily the best Overwatch 2 patch, and I dare say the game is just as good now as it was before.” that was in October 2020. In response, Overwatch executive producer Jared Neuss quips, “Has this account been hacked?” Samito answers“You have fixed the game so much that you have broken me. Congratulations, everyone should be very happy.
Take a look at our Overwatch 2 tier list to see who we recommend in Season 3 and make sure you have the best Overwatch 2 setup to maximize your performance. If you haven’t already, be sure to play the Overwatch 2 dating sim while it’s still available, and check out some of the best PC multiplayer games if you like the competition.