The developers of Overwatch are consistently striving to bring balance to the game. Sometimes, well-intentioned changes backfire. Like in the last PTR patch, which buffs Reaper but makes him weaker.
In the current PTR build of Overwatch, a change has been made to Reaper. This was intended to make the DPS hero stronger by giving him more reliable damage. However, he has effectively been weakened as a result.
Why Reaper has become weaker
What has changed? The developers saw the need to make an adjustment to Reaper, enabling him to perform better in direct confrontations. Two things were changed regarding Reaper in the current PTR patch:
- The randomness of the spread of Reaper’s shotguns has been reduced by 50%.
- The passive life steal has been increased from 20% to 30% of the damage dealt.
The goal was to allow Reaper to aim more accurately and deal damage more reliably. It was intended to be a passive damage buff.
What went wrong: The effect of the “buff” was, in the end, that Reaper now deals less damage, meaning he needs more shots to eliminate an opponent.
This was discovered by some Reddit users shortly after the patch was applied. The user McManus26 tested the new shotguns at various distances and published the numbers in their Reddit thread. Every time he needed more shots on the PTR to kill the bots in training mode:
- 10 meter distance: About 4 shots on the live server, about 5 shots on the PTR.
- 13 meter distance: 5-6 shots on the live server, 7 shots on the PTR.
How could this happen? The reason this could happen is that the old “spray pattern,” meaning the distribution of shrapnel from Reaper’s shotguns allowed for more hits on the target in the old version.
While the new spread ensures that more shrapnel reliably hits the target, more shots also reliably miss it. This reduces the effective area covered by Reaper’s shots.
The user NSKuber fired 8 shots at a wall and captured the various spread patterns:
Whether this change will make it to the live servers remains to be seen. Since it was intended to be a buff for Reaper, it is unlikely that the patch will go live as it is.
Reaper’s last buff, which allowed him to act more precisely and quickly, worked significantly better.
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