New Hero: Baptiste on PTR 1.34

Written by Medievaldragon on . Posted in Overwatch News

The newest support hero, Baptiste, is now on the PTR. Baptiste is very fun to play, and if friendly players are in trouble, and there is line of sight, you can quickly jump to high ground, or above buildings in Temple of Anubis to shoot a few healing lobes.

Overwatch: The Official Cookbook

Written by Medievaldragon on . Posted in Overwatch News

Recently, I was contacted by Insight Editions to inform that the Overwatch: The Official Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel is now available for pre-order. The book is slated to ship on October 1, 2019.

The book is still undergoing internal editing, but Insight Editions was able to provide a few samples. These are not final. The official cover will be revealed at a later time.

I’ll have the opportunity to interview the author at some point, so feel free to leave questions in the comments below or direct message me @blizzplanetcom via Twitter to submit your question.

Overwatch Wins The Game Awards 2018 Best eSports Game

Written by Medievaldragon on . Posted in Overwatch News

The Game Awards 2018 declared Overwatch as winner of the Best eSports Game award: “For the game that has delivered the best overall eSports experience to players (inclusive of tournaments, community support and content updates), irrespective of genre or platform.”

Overwatch was alongside: CSGO, DOTA 2, Fortnite, and League of Legends. Fornite was the biggest winner tonight sweeping several awards, but Overwatch dominated as the Best eSport game. The award was announced at 52:06 in the video.

Congrats to the Overwatch team.

Some time ago, Overwatch was chosen Best Game of the Year; and as in tradition, Jeff Kaplan stepped in onstage to give the Best Game of the Year Award to the developers of God of War (at 03:38:28).

Overwatch PTR 1.30 Teases New Hero

Written by Medievaldragon on . Posted in Overwatch News

In the Overwatch PTR 1.30, the Rout 66 map has a peculiar change that resembles the change made to Numbani a few months before Orisa and Doomfist were announced.

In Numbani, the Payload used to have the Doomfist gauntlet encased in a crystal tube. Later, the payload had a broken crystal with no gauntlet.

In Route 66, the payload used to have a strange egg-shaped capsule since the map was launched up until Patch 1.29.

 

In PTR 1.30, that capsule is missing its front, and the capsule is wide open. Whatever was inside has been stolen.

 

SPECULATION

Numbani has two heroes: Orisa and Doomfist. Thus, it’s logical to consider that besides McCree, there will be a new hero hailing from Route 66 as well. The fact that this payload item has been stolen, might indicate that a new Hero will be announced at BlizzCon. That, and the fact the PTR patch went up recently and so close to BlizzCon.

 

MCCREE

In order to understand what is going on, let’s take a look back at the Overwatch Visual Source Book:

“McCree has already made a name for himself as a member of the notorious Deadlock Gang, which trafficked in illicit weapons and military hardware throughout the American Southwest, when he and his associates were busted in an Overwatch sting operation. With his expert marksmanship and resourcefulness, he was given the choice between rotting in a maximum-security lockup or joining Blackwatch, Overwatch’s covert ops division. He chose the latter.”

McCree is from Santa Fe, New Mexico (according to the book). The new hero might be local as well. Possibly, a member of the Deadlock Gang. McCree had the opportunity to evade being in prison possibly for life by serving Blackwatch, but other members of the Deadlock Gang might not have been as lucky. Maybe one of them has a bone to pick with the traitor, with some extra push from Reaper.

As for the Payload item, if you take a close look at the blueprints on the table, at the Panorama Diner, you will notice that the Payload is a military-grade prototype.

There are blueprints of the train rail as well, which suggests that the Deadlock Gang studied the vulnerabilities of the bridge, and detonated a bomb that destroyed the bridge, and caused the military train to derail and crash near the Panorama Diner.

 

We can’t discard the possibility that the new Hero isn’t a human, but an Omnic or other type of artificial intelligence.

 

Hope you enjoyed this article. Please, support Blizzplanet on Patreon, and follow us in Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for daily Blizzard games news updates.
BlizzCon 2019 Panel Transcripts

 

Overwatch PTR 1.29 – Torbjorn Rework

Written by Medievaldragon on . Posted in Overwatch News, PTR Patch Notes

Blizzard Entertainment deployed the Overwatch PTR 1.29 to introduce testing of Torbjorn’s ability rework. This patch also includes a few balance adjustments to McCree, Pharah, Brigitte, Mei, Orisa, and Soldier: 76; as well as some bug fixes.

The most drastic change is that Torb will no longer craft Shield Packs and collecting Scrap is gone too. His Molten Core now creates pools of molten slag that damages enemies. Deals additional damage to armor.

Instead of crafting Shield Packs for teammates, this ability has been replaced with Overload — which makes Torbjorn to gain additional armor, improved attack, movement and reload speed. My video below shows these changes in a solo map.

GAMEPLAY

Overwatch PTR Patch Notes – September 21, 2018

A new Overwatch patch is currently in development and now available for testing. To share your feedback or report and issue, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.

Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes will also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and therefore will only reflect changes coming specifically to that platform.

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

Colorblind Options Updates

Customize how team colors are displayed in your UI (e.g. nameplates, HUD, health bars) and hero outlines with a set of nine different colorblind-friendly colors to choose from. You choose to colorize enemy and friendly UI separately as well. These options can be found under Options > Video > Color Blind Options. All changes made will be saved and ready for you to see in the next match you play!

HERO UPDATES

General

  • Updated visuals for all shields and barriers to increase readability

Brigitte

Barrier Shield

  • Shield health reduced from 600 to 500

Developer Comments: The health of Brigitte’s barrier was extremely difficult for most heroes to deal with even as she was able to close the distance with her targets. This change still provides Brigitte with substantial survivability but should also be more rewarding for opponents who pressure her.

McCree

Combat Roll

  • Cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds

Developer Comments: Previously, the cooldown of McCree’s Combat Roll felt too restrictive, which sometimes prohibited players from using it. The new, faster cooldown should allow for more flexibility when choosing between using it for mobility or an instant reload.

Pharah

Concussive Blast

  • Cooldown reduced from 12 to 9 seconds

Rocket Launcher

  • Attack speed increased
  • Lowered recovery between shots from 0.9 to 0.75
  • Damage redistributed between explosion and impact
  • Explosion damage reduced from 80 to 65
  • Impact damage increased from 40 to 55
  • Explosion knockback reduced by 20%
  • Self-knockback range increased by 25%

Developer Comments: We wanted to increase how responsive Pharah’s Rocket Launcher felt. Having almost a full second of recovery between shots made it feel sluggish. To balance out the improved recovery time, we shifted some of the damage from the rocket’s explosion to the direct impact damage. The overall damage potential is now increased when landing direct hits and decreased slightly when only dealing explosive damage. We reduced the amount of knockback each explosion causes, as they made it very difficult to aim at Pharah while rockets came in at a faster pace. The Concussive Blast cooldown reduction should allow the ability to sync up more closely with the Jump Jet cooldown when used for mobility.

Mei

General

  • Updated visual effects for all abilities

Orisa

Fusion Driver

  • Maximum spread reduced from 1.5 to 1.2

Developer Comments: Orisa spends a significant amount of time firing her Fusion Driver from a relatively stationary location and the weapon’s spread value caused it to feel too random when leading targets at a distance, taking into account the projectiles’ travel time. We’ve tightened the spread slightly, which should leave her close- and mid-range damage potential largely unchanged, while making it feel better to try to hit targets at longer ranges.

Soldier: 76

Heavy Pulse Rifle

  • Number of shots until max spread increased from 6 to 9

Developer Comments: Soldier: 76’s damage output was a bit low but not too far off from where we feel it should be. Making it take a few more shots to reach max spread smooths out the weapon spread curve and should help his damage be more consistent.

Torbjörn

General

  • Reduced the size of Torbjörn’s head hit volume by 10%

Rivet Gun

Primary Fire

  • Projectile speed increased from 60 to 70 per second
  • Reload time reduced from 2.2 to 2 seconds
  • Turret targets enemy hit by primary fire

Alternate Fire

  • Recovery lowered from 0.8 to 0.6 seconds
  • Damage per shot lowered from 150 to 125
  • Reload time reduced from 2.2 to 2 seconds
  • Spread randomization readjusted

Forge Hammer

  • Radius increased to align with Quick Melee

Deploy Turret

  • Now a thrown projectile
  • Automatically builds over three seconds
  • No longer has different levels
  • Same damage output as previous level 2 turret
  • Maximum health reduced from 300 to 250
  • Now incurs a 5 second cooldown when deployed
  • Now incurs a 10 second cooldown when destroyed in combat
  • No longer able to deploy a new turret if it’s in combat
  • While the turret is firing
  • If the turret has taken damage within three seconds
  • Now able to destroy turret using the Interact input
  • Now will complete self-building once deployed, even if Torbjörn is eliminated

New Ability: Overload

  • Replaces Armor Pack
  • Lasts for 5 seconds (12 second cooldown)
  • Temporarily grants 150 armor
  • Increases attack, movement, and reload speed by 30%

New Ultimate: Molten Core

  • Switches weapon from Rivet Gun to his claw arm
  • Lasts 6 seconds
  • Fire up to 10 molten globules that create damage pools where they land for 10 seconds
  • Bounces off walls and ceilings until coming into contact with the ground
  • Base damage is 130
  • Damage increases from 130 to 190 against enemies who have armor
  • Heroes affected by armor: Bastion, Brigitte, D.Va, Orisa, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, Winston, Wrecking Ball
  • Heroes who can grant armor to their allies: Brigitte

Developer Comments: Torbjörn was initially designed to be a specialized hero, intended to be a strong defensive option due to his armor-generating capabilities and ability to control areas with his turret. However, the scrap collecting and Armor Pack mechanics have proven to cause problematic gameplay issues through their feast or famine nature. In order to make the hero more flexible in a wide variety of situations, we’ve removed the scrap system, made the turret much easier to deploy, replaced the Armor Pack ability with Overload—a powerful self-buff—and transformed Molten Core into a powerful new area denial ultimate ability.

Learn more here.

MAP UPDATES

General

  • Reduced the setup timer for Assault, Escort, and Assault/Escort maps from 1 minute to 45 seconds

BUG FIXES

Heroes

Bastion

  • Fixed a bug that caused the roll bar on Bastion’s Dune Buggy skin to obscure its view when backing up or firing in Tank configuration

D.Va

  • Fixed a bug that prevented some glow visual effects from appearing on D.Va’s Nano Cola skin
  • Fixed a bug that prevented D.Va from fully appearing when viewing her MEKA Activated highlight intro in the Hero Gallery

Hanzo

  • Fixed a bug that caused Hanzo’s Storm Bow reticle to be visible while emoting

Mei

  • Fixed a bug that prevented Mei’s Blizzard from freezing enemies when cast in areas with low ceilings

Reinhardt

  • Fixed a bug that caused the player’s reticle to pitch up after using Earthshatter
  • Fixed a bug that caused Reinhardt’s Earthshatter animations to play if used while he was juggled in the air by knockback abilities

Sombra

  • Fixed an issue that caused Sombra to change the direction she was facing when using her Translocator to teleport

Symmetra

  • Fixed a bug that caused Symmetra to have a chance of playing inaccurate voice lines when placing turrets

Torbjörn

  • Fixed a bug that prevented Torbjörn’s medal from appearing in his Medal victory pose

Zarya

  • Fixed a bug that caused Zarya’s Particle Cannon reticle to be visible while emoting

Maps

Busan

  • Fixed a bug that allowed players to stand on some prohibited rooftops in Downtown
  • Fixed a bug that prevented sprays from displaying on glass windows in MEKA Base

Volskaya Industries

  • Fixed a bug that prevented players from receiving capture credit if they dropped onto the point from one of the moving platforms

Game Browser and Custom Games

Deathmatch

  • Fixed a bug that prevented the “your team has lost” or “your team has taken the lead” voice lines from playing when the score swap happens due to self-inflicted deaths

VS AI

  • Fixed a bug that prevented players from receiving an “unable to join” error message if they attempted to spectate a Player vs AI match when all spectator slots were full

BlizzCon 2018 Virtual Ticket: Sombra Demon Hunter Legendary Skin

Written by Medievaldragon on . Posted in BlizzCon 2018, Overwatch News

During the BlizzCon 2018 All-Access Kickoff Livestream Show, Michael Chu revealed the new Legendary Skin for those who pre-order the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket. The massive tease of something Diablo being announced at BlizzCon continues to flow in the air. This time Sombra is getting a Diablo III Demon Hunter skin. You can obtain this skin today.

 

Hope you enjoyed this article. Please, support Blizzplanet on Patreon, and follow us in Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for daily Blizzard games news updates.
BlizzCon 2019 Panel Transcripts

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