The Plat Player's Perspective

A couple days ago, Big Daddy Jeff made a post on the Blizzard forums, saying that the new, Barrier-Killing Patch would be brought onto the live servers some time this coming week (which begins today), and that the Winter Wonderland event of this year would be dropping on the same day as well. These came as glad tidings to the Overwatch community, which is waiting eagerly for Double Barrier to be nerfed, but Jeff's post on the forums also sparked some more discussion about developer transparency. Welcome to The OverThinker, or if you've been here before, welcome back! I, Proilios , am glad you're here, because we've got an important, albeit slightly shorter post than usual today. A few days before Jeff's post announcing the arrival of Winter Wonderland and the new patch, Trill (if I remember correctly), from the Dallas Fuel, shared a screenshot of a Contenders notice on Twitter, which mentioned that the new patch would hit the live servers in mid-January. This ca...

It's been a couple of weeks since Blizzard deployed the aforementioned 'Barrier-Killing Patch' (let's just call it BKP, for short) onto the PTR, and a lot of people have voiced their opinions on how it buffs and nerfs some heroes and whether it will be big enough to change the meta. We've also had some pretty interesting PUGs happening in the EU region, hosted by former Dallas Fuel coach, Peak , which have been focused on a lot by analysts and content creators alike. However, I'm a simple guy. I don't have an idea of what the BKP meta will be like per se, at least at the top tier of play, but what I have formed some opinions on in the past few weeks are the changes in the power levels of all our 31 heroes, which is why I've decided to share how I think each hero will be affected by this patch, and whether they're ultimately winners, or losers, because of it. Do keep in mind that the opinions I'm about to share are solely my own, and are based...

If you are someone who even mildly studies Overwatch, you know that every meta in the game is shaped primarily by its tanks. For example, Dive was really popular back in the day, since Winston's mobility and D.Va's high-range Defence Matrix were quite powerful. Right now, we've got Double Barrier, since Orisa and Sigma can fight together at midrange and provide multiple layers of protection to their teammates. Before this we had Bunker, since Orisa and Roadhog's Halt-Hook combos were easy to land and were also highly rewarding; I'm sure you get the gist. Last week, I wrote an article about my thoughts on the latest PTR patch, which nerfs barriers to a significant extent. This week, I thought I should look deeper into the upcoming tank meta, and see what the Overwatch community thinks will happen to our tank pool when the PTR patch is moved to the live servers. For that purpose, I created and posted a survey on Reddit and a few Discords I'm part of, and have ...

A great someone once said, "Too much of anything is a bad thing", and that's a saying we can apply to all aspects of our lives. As Overwatch players, especially, we understand this statement far too well. Too much sustain leads to a Goats Meta, too many barriers lead to a Double Barrier Meta, and so on and so forth. All things considered though, it is very tricky to balance games. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of factors to consider when you make even the slightest tweak to even a single hero's abilities, and even when you make the necessary changes, things may not always turn out as you expect. Because of this risk factor, developers first upload seemingly-positive balance changes and feature updates to the Public Test Region, also known as the PTR, where players can try these upcoming changes out and share their feedback. I'm one of these patch-testing players, and I love trying out new balance changes and trying to predict what the meta w...