Doomfist and Brigitte nerfed again on the Overwatch PTR – patch notes

Additional nerfs to Brigitte and Doomfist have been added to the current Overwatch PTR.

There’s recently been a lot of criticism over the prevalence of crowd control – abilities that in some way inhibited other players’ actions – in the game, and Brigitte and Doomfist have been the biggest targets of player frustration.

Both heroes were the targets of nerfs in the original build of the current PTR, but in the wake of continued feedback a new update has added additional changes intended to reduce the impact both currently have on the game.

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For Brigitte, the damage dealt by her Shield Bash ability has been reduced significantly, while the healing power of her “Inspire” passive ability has also been nerfed. These changes add to the previous nerf which prevented her Shield Bash from working through shields.

Meanwhile, Doomfist’s Seismic Slam no longer removes air control from its victims, while the damage of his Meteor Strike outside of the inner ring has been reduced, although the inner ring itself has been widened slightly.

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Previously, the loss of air control inflicted by his Rising Uppercut had also been reduced, while the range of his Seismic Slam had been reduced as well.

The full notes on the most recent changes:

Brigitte

• Shield Bash
  • Damage reduced from 50 to 5
• Inspire Passive
  • Cooldown reduced from 1.5s to 1.0s
  • Duration increased from 5s to 6s
  • Total healing increased from 80 to 100

Dev Notes: Reduces Shield Bash’s damage reduces her total stun combo damage potential while still allowing Whip Shot and her basic melee attacks to retain their full strength. Brigitte is a hybrid tank/healer, and lately we’ve been reducing her effectiveness by reducing the power of her non-healing functionality, but we want to make sure she is still a viable pick so we’re increasing the uptime of her Inspire passive to help increase her overall healing output.

Doomfist

• Seismic Slam
  • Victims no longer lose air control while being pulled in.
• Meteor Strike
  • Inner ring damage radius increased from 1.5m to 2.0m. This is the ring where Meteor Strike deals its full 300 damage.
  • Max damage outside of inner ring decreased from 300 to 200. This is the ring where damage falloff happens, which still reduces the damage down to 15 at max range.

Dev Notes: The PTR Doomfist changes are all about trying to give his enemies more opportunities to effectively fight back, and these changes are no exception. The Meteor Strike changes will make it harder to secure a “free” kill on heroes without mobility such as Zenyatta or Ana, while still preserving its max potential damage when aimed well or when combined with other abilities such as Graviton Surge or Sleep Dart.

Overall we’re looking carefully at the amount of crowd control abilities (such as stuns and knockbacks that remove air control) and seeing if we can remove or reduce some of the effectiveness of some of these. Any further changes to this PTR will be posted in this thread as well.”