New Overwatch PTR Update Details Roadhog, Winston Changes

Blizzard has detailed new Overwatch balance changes coming to the public test realm "soon." The characters being tweaked are Roadhog and Winston.

As detailed on the game's forum, Roadhog's changes overall "reduce the power of his hook a bit." However, his gun is now "more effective when not using the hook." Additionally, Winston's "head hit volume was just abnormally big," which meant he was taking more damage than he should have been. Blizzard has made adjustments to remedy this.

Take a look at the list of changes below.

Roadhog

• Scrap Gun
  • Spread decreased by 20 percent
• Chain Hook
  • Targets are now pulled to a location 3.5 meters away, up from 2 meters
  • Cooldown increased from 6 to 8

Winston

• Critical hit volume reduced by 15 percent

Blizzard recently discussed upcoming changes it is making to Bastion, a hero that was considered to be dramatically overpowered when the game first launched but is used very little now due to various balance changes. Blizzard hopes to make Bastion a little more self-sufficient by improving his Self-Repair ability. Other heroes including D.Va and Mercy have also been the subject of change, and you can read about them in full here.

Changes are introduced to the public test realm by Blizzard as a means to gather information on how they impact the game and make further adjustments based on feedback, if required. The PTR is only accessible on the PC version of the game. It is available by selecting the PTR: Overwatch option from the Region/Account drop-down menu in the Battle.net client.

On February 9, Activision Blizzard reported earnings for its fourth quarter and full-year ended December 31. As part of this, it was revealed that Blizzard's monthly active users was 36 million, which is up 37 percent from 2015. For the fourth quarter alone, Blizzard had 41 million monthly active users.