Blizzard’s latest Public Test realm update for Overwatch reveals that the developer is trying out some big changes to Lucio and is addressing draws in Competitive Play.
According to the team, Lucio “has often felt like a must-pick due to his raw healing output and the versatility of providing a speed bonus to your entire team.” As a result, Song’s area-of-effect radius has been decreased to 10 meters from 30. Here’s what Blizzard’s testing out alongside an explanation:
- Sonic Amplifier
- Projectile speed increased from 40 to 50
- Alternate fire now considers vertical orientation when knocking targets back
- Crossfade
- Song’s area-of-effect radius decreased from 30 meters to 10 meters
- A temporary in-game visual has been added to illustrate this radius (it is only visible to Lúcio and his teammates)
- Heal Song
- Healing-per-second has been increased by 50% (also applies to Lúcio’s Amp It Up ability)
- Sound Barrier
- Radius decreased from 30 meters to 20 meters
- Wall Ride
- Movement speed increased by 30% when wall riding
- Lúcio now receives a burst of speed when leaping off a wall
The goal of these changes is to keep those elements feeling strong, but making them harder to apply to everyone on your team at all times. The end result is that he should feel stronger with teams that he can stay close to but not as strong when on teams with heroes that are often spread out (such as Pharah, Widow, Genji, etc). Much of Lucio’s character power was tied up in his large passive auras, which caused other elements of his kit to be weakened over time in an attempt to balance him. Now that his auras are more focused it will allow them to be much stronger and allow Lucio to be more active in his role.
As far as draws in Competitive Play are concerned, Blizzard is implementing a system to track each team’s progress, which is similar to the one for Escort and Assault/Escort maps. “Now, even if neither team successfully captures the objective, a winner can be determined based on which team captured the largest portion,” wrote the studio.
Would our readers be happy to see these changes? Let us know.
[Source: Overwatch]
