The performance of Reinhardt no longer meets what players expect from their Overwatch tank. Was there an accidental nerf?
It is possible that the Overwatch character “Reinhardt” has been hit by a secret nerf. Players have noticed since the start of the anniversary event that the popular tank has received changes to his hammer that were not mentioned in the patch notes. Fans say it now takes twice as long for a hit with the hammer to be “registered” in the game.
Did the ultimate nerf have side effects?
In the last patch, there was a change to Reinhardt’s ultimate ability. Players suspect that this change inadvertently nerfed other abilities as well.
Initially, the user Kekstarter wrote in the Overwatch forums that he noticed something odd about the swing speed of Reinhardt’s hammer. It seems that the hammer now distributes damage more at the end of the swing – previously, the damage would have been dealt in the middle of the swing. Due to this change, it is no longer possible to deal quick damage through animation canceling.
Due to the reports, many Reinhardt mains tested the character and his abilities. Players feel that all of his abilities are now slower. A possible reason for the issues currently being discussed are the netcode changes. These changes were introduced with the anniversary patch and affect how the game recognizes activated abilities.
The user Palnatoke writes in the Overwatch forums that while looking for answers, he visited several Discord servers. He found out that the Overwatch servers now apparently send a “confirmation” to players who have activated an ability. Only then is the ability actually activated. There is a short delay when you use an ability.
This is particularly noticeable for players with poor internet connection and high ping. This is because it takes longer for the server’s confirmation to go through. Accordingly, the ability is activated more slowly than for players with better internet connection and lower ping. The changes regarding ping (indicated in ms) are clearly shown in the following video:
Overwatch: Blizzard investigates issues
Reinhardt mains are not happy with these changes because they could jeopardize his place in the meta. Due to the slower abilities, Reinhardt has a lower DPS value and takes a bit longer to respond to situations in the game.
After four days of complaints on this topic, there was now a response from lead software engineer Bill Warneck in the forum. He says that Blizzard didn’t actually intend to change Reinhardt’s hammer and that the support team will take a closer look at the issue.
If there really have been accidental changes to Reinhardt’s abilities, we can probably expect a hotfix soon that addresses these issues.
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