Shotguns are being tweaked in Overwatch’s next Experimental Card, offering changes to multiple heroes but significant ones to both Roadhog and Torbjörn.
Blizzard says it’s changing shotguns so that their patterns “no longer apply random rotation.” This change will affect Ashe, Doomfist, D.Va, Reaper, Roadhog, and Torbjörn.
“We’re making weapons that utilize shotgun patterns more reliable by removing the random rotation applied to each shot,” Blizzard said. “Individual pellets within the shot will still have a tiny amount of variance to their firing angle for the sake of the shotgun weapon feel, but this change will provide significantly more control over aiming these weapons.”
Roadhog and Torbjörn, however, are getting further changes. Roadhog’s Scrap Gun projectile damage is being reduced from seven to six, meaning it’ll now do 150 total damage per shot. Blizzard wants to keep his hook combo reliable, “but not overly powerful against heroes with higher health pools.”
Torbjörn, meanwhile, is having his recovery increased by 0.2 seconds and his damage increased from 10.5 to 12.5 per projectile to give his secondary fire “a stronger role at close range.”
The new card will use the 2-2-2 Role Queue “so that you can get a feel for how these balance changes might affect the live game,” according to Blizzard.
As is always the case with Experimental Mode, these changes are a test, not final, and subject to change at any time, meaning they might not make it to the full game.
The full patch notes can be found on Overwatch’s website.
