Blizzard just made your healers unnecessary with wild Overwatch 2 Season 9 update
It is safe to say that Overwatch 2 hasn’t settled into a positive place in the public opinion since it was released in October 2022.
With promises not met and controversial decisions, like changing the number of players per team, being made, it is no surprise that people haven’t taken to it in the same way they did the original game.
In a bid to improve the game’s individual and team-based gameplay, Blizzard have made another rather bizarre decision which impacts team balance even more.
Blizzard just made healers unnecessary in Overwatch 2
In a rather controversial move, Blizzard has given all of the heroes in Overwatch 2 the ability to self-heal.
In a blog post explaining changes coming to the game in Season 9, Blizzard stated that it was introducing a “modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive” to help relieve the pressure on Support heroes and give players more ways to sustain themselves.
It said: “In Overwatch, there is a constant tug of war between the power of a team and the power of an individual hero or player. A change like this shifts that balance a bit.
“This is something that we are constantly evaluating. We still want Overwatch to be defined by team strategy and mechanics, but we feel this can be pulled back a bit now and possibly more in the future.”
While Blizzard has stated that it is looking to improve teamwork mechanics in the upcoming Season, the change to healing seems to take players even further away from relying on their team.
With Support heroes not needing to focus on healing their team, it encourages them to focus on DPS, essentially meaning that the healer role will likely become almost redundant.
Players are not impressed with the change to healing
Unsurprisingly, a lot of players are not impressed with the changes coming to healing in Overwatch 2.
Both Support mains and DPS/Tanks are confused by the changes, wondering what the future of Support will look like within the game.
“Wait…relieve…supports? Like they haven’t been the most worry free role in the entire game since OW2s launch?” asked one Twitter user.
“This just makes supports even more of dps heroes, they don’t even have to urgency heal anymore because everyone self-heals now.”
Another asked: “What's my purpose then? I main three healers.”
Other players are questioning why the decision was made in the first place.
“Right so I'm not crazy thinking that they have no idea what they're doing,” stated one commenter.”
Another said: “Imagine winning game of the year as a multiplayer game then subsequently changing many core aspects of your game for the worse.”
Given the amount of backlash the decision has received it wouldn’t be entirely surprising if Blizzard decided to roll back the idea, but we may have to wait until Season 9 releases to find out.
