With the announcement of Ana the support sniper, Overwatch will see a huge update, patch 1.1, that will affect hero balance, as well as a major rule change to Competitive mode.
Many heroes had undergone a buff. D.Va’s long mentioned buff is a total rework of her Defence Matrix ability. It cancels out all bullets coming toward her, including ults like Soldier 76’s Tactical Visor and Roadhog’s Whole Hog, but the long cooldown and short activation point makes it less practical. Now it has been completely reworked as D.Va’s alt fire, using a gauge resource like Pharah’s jet packs so it is more flexible and useful as ever. Her self-destruct ultimate also gets a buff, with a shorter time to activate and it won’t kill D.Va if she is also in range of the blast.
Zenyatta, the glass cannon, damage dealing monk gets an additional 50 shields, now resulting to 200 HP (with 150 shields), to the disdain of any Widowmaker player who can easily one-shot him before. His orbs travel quicker and his Transcendence orb now gives more healing per second and moves him faster.
Mercy has some changes too, with her ultimate, Resurrect, can be done while moving, a boost of her damage..err..boost from 30% to 50% and is now cannot be stacked with any other Mercy’s damage boost. Her ult charge rate has been slowed too.
McCree gets a slight boost to his long-range damage output, and several heroes with healing abilities now has an altered ult charge rate due to heroes can now gain charge by using healing abilities.
Another major change is that Competitive mode will have a one-hero limit. This might be a response to what happened in the pro scene weeks ago, and Blizzard is certainly looking into how hero stacking should be balanced. That Mercy change that won’t stack damage boosts of multiple Mercys (Mercies?) is definitely a step in the right direction. The Overtime mechanic is getting some tweaks as well to prevent long periods of Overtime scumming, with long respawn times and the timer ticking quicker as Overtime goes on.
PC players can test all of these new changes, including the new hero Ana in the latest PTR (Public Test Region) build. No word on when will the update hits the main PC build and consoles, but expect it to come in a few weeks from now.