Overwatch 2 game director responds to criticism on self-healing in Season 9

The initial announcement of the Overwatch 2 game Season 9 changes spread like wildfire. Many players were unhappy about the tanks and DP receiving a toned-down self-healing passive.

As a result, the game and the devs started receiving backlash for their decision. However, game director Aaron Keller later on clarified the situation regarding the self-healing passive and changes to the game.

Part of a bigger change

The way his earlier statement was written, only focused on self-healing. In reality, a lot of factors are at work here. There are a multitude of changes coming to the game, and self-healing is only a small part of it.

“It’s one part of a much larger set of changes coming to the game in S9. Internally we’re talking about, and targeting some of these changes at damage spikiness in game, the role of DPS in securing kills, and the strength of healing,” Keller said.

There will reportedly be a tank rework in the upcoming patch. While Keller did not reveal much in his post, he did say an overall discussion will be done with S9 balance changes.

Last chance to make things correct?

Regardless of what the developers say, the criticism did not only feel for the upcoming update, but for the constant wrong decisions made for the game. Overwatch suffered from the issue of meta, where all matches were played the same way and same characters.

A critical decision to make the game 5v5 in Overwatch 2 instead of 6v6 also did not work. The PvP mode was also cancelled. While the upcoming S9 patch is shaping up to be the big change, only time will tell if it can revive its esports scene.