We are currently at about the halfway point of Overwatch 2's Season 8, and with the recent Mauga nerfs, the game has really managed to open up in terms of viable strategies and heroes. A new developer blog was recently published by Overwatch 2's Game Director Aaron Keller, in which he reveals a ton of interesting changes happening to the game in the future. The biggest highlight in the blog was definitely the new passive that will be added to the Tank and DPS roles during Season 9. Here is everything you need to know about the future changes for Overwatch 2's Season 9.
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Overwatch 2 New Tank & DPS Passives For Season 9
Aaron Keller, the Game Director for Overwatch 2, released yet another blog post in which he talks about the future changes coming to the game. There was a lot of interesting information, including the potential Party Frames addition to the UI, as well as the success of the new Quickplay event. While these are fun side projects for the team, the biggest highlight of the blog is definitely the addition of a new passive for the Tank and Damage roles in Season 9. Here is what Aaron Keller had to say:
In Season 9, both Tank and Damage heroes will get a modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive. This should give non-Support players more options in terms of sustaining themselves. It should also take some of the pressure off Support players to keep everyone alive since individual players now have more control of their own health pool.
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Tanks and Damage heroes are now going to receive a new passive that will let them regenerate their health while out of combat. This is a significant change that will have great ramifications on the balance of the game, while also providing players with new playmaking opportunities. With the healer role being crucial to the success of your team in Ranked, we are quite interested to see the actual numbers and how strong this passive is going to be.
If the passive is too strong, it might continue to push the meta into more aggressive support heroes, focusing more on dealing damage than actually healing. Aaron Keller had a few more words to say about this change:
Overwatch, there is a constant tug of war between the power of a team and the power of an individual hero or player. A change like this shifts that balance a bit. This is something that we are constantly evaluating. We still want Overwatch to be defined by team strategy and mechanics, but we feel this can be pulled back a bit now and possibly more in the future.
That covers everything we currently know about the addition of a self-regenerating passive to the Tank and Damage roles. We don't know how strong this ability is going to be numerically, but it will definitely have a huge influence on the metagame of Overwatch 2. We are eager to see how all of this develops, and if any new updates surface, we will make sure to keep you up-to-date!
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