Overwatch 2 has brought some crowd control back to the game by reworking Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade, but players are not happy with how many heroes it counters.
Blizzard opted to remove plenty of CC abilities from Overwatch 2 with the change to 5v5 and one less tank on each team, but the Season 5 patch has reimplemented a couple of those old mechanics.
In addition to Mei getting her freeze back, Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade now behaves a bit like his old Flashbang, completely negating movement abilities with a new “Hindered” status effect.
This new effect completely interrupts movement abilities and prevents them from being activated. As it turns out, this is quite a powerful new tool, and players are worried it might be too strong.
Cassidy’s new grenade counters plenty of Overwatch 2 heroes
Shortly after the patch went live, players began to complain that Cassidy’s grenade could interrupt Junker Queen’s ultimate and put lots of other heroes in a vulnerable position.
“What players out there are begging developers to put free CC into games? It feels like sh*t to play against, and it doesn’t feel rewarding to use low skill CC,” one remarked on Reddit.
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“His grenade has (near) infinite reach, auto locks, and stops movement abilities. Very strong at the moment,” another replied.
Others complained that it shouldn’t be able to cancel ultimates, but believed that the hero should have a way to fend off flankers.
In its current incarnation, Magnetic Grenade can stop Genji from Wall Climbing, Tracer from Blinking, Winston from jumping and just about any movement in a kit. Combine this with pinpoint accuracy, and Cassidy players are in a good position.
We’ll have to see what the devs decide to do and if they tone the CC down a little bit in time for the future mid-season patch and the upcoming Team Queue ranked mode.