The Lunar New Year: General Updates and Character Changes

Hey, and welcome back to Wooly Plays! I’ve been using this past week to really dig into the Lunar New Year event and get some Loot Boxes, and yesterday I hit level 1000!

Don’t look at me like that, Mercy; I already know I have a problem.

With the Lunar New Year patch came a bunch of fun changes to the game, so let’s jump right in!

Requiescat in Pace

First things first: R.I.P. crouch spam. You will be missed by all of the Mercy mains who like to kill Widowmakers. (If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, go check out Animetic on Youtube! There’s a link to their most recent video here!)

General Updates

As usual, there were all of the normal bug fixes (“fixed a bug allowing Widowmaker to perch on an unintended location in _____,” “fixed a graphic issue with [X,Y, or Z]”). With this new patch, they changed the kill feed to a) be more pronounced, and b) show how you died. Personally I really enjoyed this change! I think it looks much nicer and cleaner than it did before, plus it’s extremely useful as a Mercy main. Since it shows you how you or someone on your team died, it shows you which abilities have been used and what you should be expecting. They also added a “Join Team Chat” button which I probably won’t be using, but I think is a nice addition to the game—especially for people who aren’t grouped up yet.

They also added the ability to use up to 4 emotes, sprays, and voice lines at a time!!! This was honestly a HUGE deal for me, because I wanted to be able to sit, laugh, and do other emotes before the games started (once the game starts, I don’t normally emote because I’m too busy healing/damage boosting/trying to stay alive). I think that was something a lot of players wanted, and I, for one, am so glad to see it implemented in-game.

THESE UNLOCKABLES THOUGH

Okay so I’m just going to quickly do a shout-out to Blizzard and the Overwatch team for making such awesome outfits, highlight intros, victory poses, sprays, and voice lines. I was mystified as to what this update would include and I, for one, have not been disappointed! Most of the skins are great—with the huge exception of spooky Tal Ana (my god she’s terrifying). The highlight intros and emotes are great, as well, and I’m super thankful to Blizzard and the Overwatch team for making more and more ways to keep me engaged and interested in the game.

Hero Balance Updates

I think that the Hero Balance updates are one of the most important parts–if not the most important parts—of any update to Overwatch, as anything they change about the heroes affects the player in a more direct way. Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Ana’s Bionic Grenade

Grandma, pls no.

• Grenade healing boost decreased by 50%
• Grenade lasts 4 seconds instead of 5

I think that this was a good decision for Ana. Frankly her heals were a little over the top; now she’s pretty well-balanced in that department. Now if only her damage was nerfed slightly… I personally don’t think doing 80 damage per shot as a support should be a thing. Thoughts?

D.Va’s Mech

Nerf THIS! Oh wait, you did…

• Health/Armor ratio changed to 400/200 respectively
• Bullet damage decreased to 2; Number of bullets shot increased to 11

This change is really strange, honestly, but—contrary to what I’ve heard a lot of people saying—I don’t think these changes have decreased D.Va’s effectiveness. I was a D.Va main before I fell in love with Mercy (I currently have 136 hours on D.Va), and I love to play her whenever I get the chance. While her new HP status has changed my gameplay slightly, I haven’t noticed a huge difference in the way I play her; go in, shoot, kill a ton of people, get out.

Lúcio’s.. Feet?

Brazilian angel drops some sick beats–More at 10.

• Backwards wall-ride!

I’ve been waiting for this! Lucio is my third-most played hero at 76 hours, and while I’m not great at wall-riding, I love to do it and have been hoping for a backwards wall-ride since it seemed like it’d make sense with Lúcio’s character. You have to enable it from the controls menu.

Roadhog’s Hook

He’s in a coma from the loss of BS hooks, not the food. Don’t let him fool you.

• Hook victims are taken right in front of Roadhog to be more easily sacrificed.
• Line of sight for the hook is now determined from Roadhog’s position rather than the hook.
• Hook victims may escape the hook if they break line of sight before he pulls.

I think this has probably been the most talked about change in this patch. Roadhog’s hook has had some pretty interesting plays, but with this new model, the “bullshit hooks” should be a thing of the past. Even though I’ve gotten pretty decent at dodging hooks, I’m still pretty happy about this change.

Sombra’s 1337 h4x

“I know who’s been naughty.”

• Hack cooldown has been reduced to 8 seconds.
• The time it takes Sombra to hack has been slightly reduced (.8 seconds).

I feel like this change was definitely needed to give Sombra the extra boost she needed to be played more often. I think a lot of players undervalue the impact she can have, but I’ve seen plenty of Sombra players (shoutout to Frazier) who use her to the best of her ability.

I hope you enjoyed reading about the updates if you hadn’t heard of them already, and I’m glad you stuck around to read my opinions on the changes! If you have any comments about anything I’ve said, please feel free to comment below—especially if you disagree! I’d really like to hear you think!

I’ll be writing another post on Monday that will discuss the new game mode added—Capture the Rooster (Flag)—in more detail after I’ve played some more matches of that.

~ Wooly