Blizzard Implements Balance Changes to Overwatch 2’s Latest Support Hero, Illari
As the highly anticipated Overwatch 2 continues to develop and introduce new heroes, the need for balancing these characters becomes crucial. Blizzard Entertainment has now begun making adjustments to Illari, the game’s latest support hero, in an effort to rein in her overwhelming power.
The recent patch notes released by Blizzard outline the changes made to Illari’s abilities, focusing mainly on balancing her healing and damage output. Upon her debut, players, including those at my city, noticed that Illari seemed more like a DPS hero with healing abilities, rather than a dedicated support character. In response, Blizzard has made tweaks to her kit, shifting the numbers in order to emphasize a more active healing playstyle.
One of the major changes includes a significant reduction in durability for Illari’s Healing Pylon. The shields of the Healing Pylon have been decreased from 75 to 50, making it easier for opponents to destroy. Additionally, the healing provided by the Pylon has been lowered from 40 health per shot to 30. This alteration aims to discourage players from relying solely on the Healing Pylon’s passive healing, encouraging them to utilize Illari’s secondary fire for healing while the Pylon recharges.
Another substantial alteration revolves around Illari’s Ultimate ability, Captive Sun. This ability allows her to attach an explosive orb to enemies which, upon reaching a certain threshold of damage, detonates and damages nearby foes. To counterbalance its potential devastating impact, Blizzard has introduced new counters to this ability. Projectiles from Captive Sun can now be blocked by barriers, both during the initial impact and the subsequent explosion. This provides players with an opportunity to defend themselves and their teammates from the ensuing damage by utilizing protective shields.
Lead Hero Designer Alec Dawson explained on Twitter that reducing the size of the Captive Sun projectile is actually a buff. This change enhances precision aiming and minimizes the chance of the projectile being blocked by barriers.
According to the official patch notes, the full list of changes made to Illari are as follows:
– Healing Pylon: Shields decreased from 75 to 50. Heal decreased from 40 to 30.
– Captive Sun: Projectiles are now blocked by barriers. Projectile size decreased from 1.5 to 0.75 meters. Sunstruck duration decreased from 7 to 6 seconds.
In the patch notes, Blizzard states, “Illari has had a strong showing since her launch. The following changes are meant to promote a better balance between healing and damage while adding more counterplay against her abilities. We are making the Healing Pylon weaker, as it’s often placed out of line-of-sight or at odd angles and isn’t being destroyed as often as we expect. Captive Sun ignoring barriers is not immediately intuitive, but we are also reducing the projectile size, so blocking or destroying will require more precision. Finally, the Sunstruck effect lasts too long to reasonably avoid the detonation damage threshold.”
These adjustments have been implemented as Illari is now available for competitive play. As is customary, new heroes are not immediately included in ranked games until a designated period of time after their launch.
For more information on Overwatch 2, be sure to check out our analysis of the game’s new story missions.