Overwatch has been testing out upcoming changes to the game via a seperate client dubbed the PTR (Public Test Region) on PC. Sometimes these are small balance changes, like the current Widowmaker buff and Ana’s rebalance, while sometimes it has a slew of changes that may not make it to the live game, like the time D.Va got a reworked ability while Mercy’s buff to healing never emerged to the live game.
In a recent Blizzard forum post by Principal Designer Geoff Goodman, he states that the upcoming PTR patch will be running longer and “significant hero changes” will happen. Not all the patch notes in the next PTR will hit the live game this time, as the development team at Blizzard are looking to feedback and try different kinds of changes throughout the next PTR testing phase.
Goodman also mentioned that the much talked about changes to Symmetra will not hit the upcoming PTR yet, so that means other heroes will be affected by this.
It could possibly due to the addition of a new hero (¿Quién es Sombra?) that requires multiple heroes in the cast right now to be balanced around them. There was no mention of a new hero being dropped soon, but the next PTR is expected to drop “later this week”.
Console players will not get to see the changes being tested here, but from the sound of it, the next PTR will be the most experimental it has ever been. We will see how the hero changes turns out soon enough.