Blizzard Agrees Heroes of the Storm's New Overwatch Character Is Too Good

On a conceptual level, it seemed like Tracer--the first Overwatch character to appear in Heroes of the Storm--would be a nuisance to deal with. In practice, she did indeed prove to be incredibly effective, and Blizzard has noticed.

Just a week after she was made available for sale to all HotS players, Blizzard will release a balance update that aims to tone down Tracer's effectiveness. The patch, launching this Wednesday, May 4, deals exclusively with Tracer: According to the patch notes, no other character, map, or game element is touched.

The changes to Tracer happen across the board: Her health, health regeneration, and basic attack damage are all being lowered, and the cooldown on Recall (her teleport ability) is now two seconds longer. A few of her talents are being adjusted as well, though not all negatively; Locked and Loaded now provides a 40 percent damage increase (up from 35), for instance.

"As we're sure many of you have noticed, Tracer is performing just a little too well on all fronts," Blizzard said in comments accompanying the patch notes. "While we are excited to bring her to the Nexus, we understand that in the right hands, she can be an absolute terror to the enemy team. We're lowering her health, basic attack damage, and increasing Recall's cooldown to make her less universally powerful. We're going to be giving back some of that basic attack damage on her level 16 talent tier to further separate Sleight of Hand from the other options, which should help the choice between more Pulse Bomb charges vs. stronger basic attacks feel like a more meaningful decision.

"We also saw an opportunity to help improve her talent pick rates, so we're making minor adjustments to Pulse Strike and Slipstream.

"We'll continue to keep a close eye on her, as we believe she is similar to Illidan, where the right place from a balance perspective is more narrow than most of our other heroes."

Check out the full patch notes below.

Heroes of the Storm May 4 Balance Update

• Health decreased from 1270 (+4% per level) to 1206 (+4% per level).
• Health Regeneration decreased from 5.25 (+4% per level) to approximately 5.02 (+4% per level) Health per second.
• Basic Attack damage reduced from 29 (+4% per level) to 27 (+4% per level).
• Focus Fire (Talent)
  • Final shot damage bonus increased from 30% to 35% of the total magazine’s damage.
• Locked and Loaded (Talent)
  • Damage bonus increased from 35% to 40%.
• Melee (W)
  • Pulse Strike (Talent)
    • Pulse Bomb charge bonus increased from 15% to 20%.
• Recall (E)
  • Cooldown increased from 24 to 26 seconds.
  • Slipstream (Talent)
    • Cooldown reduction decreased from 4 to 2 seconds.