It has been a week now since the return of the closed beta for Blizzard Entertainment’s highly anticipated team-based shooter, Overwatch, and while the game has been excellent in general, there are a few problems that Blizzard will need to address before launch, especially in regards to the way certain heroes are balanced.

Bastion

Transforming robot Bastion got a few tweaks during the hiatus, including the removal of his forward-facing shield and the addition of increased armor while he is in his turret form.

The primary issue with Bastion currently is that it is almost impossible to kill him in a one-on-one situation with most other heroes, and it generally takes at least two or more players working together to take him down.

In his turret form, Bastion has an insane amount of effective HP, extremely high damage and accuracy, and the ability to self-heal any damage he sustains. His only weakness is the fact that he can’t move unless he transforms, and he has a small weak spot on his back. His weak spot is incredibly difficult to exploit, however, as he can quickly turn in 360 degrees to take care of any threats that manage to sneak up on him.

There are a few ways Blizzard can solve Bastion’s overwhelming strength depending on how they want the hero to play. A simple solution would be to decrease his accuracy over long distances, but he would still be tough to kill from a distance due to his high armor and self-healing.

Another option would be to lower his turn speed, making flanking heroes like Tracer more effective against him. This would also punish players for setting up turret mode in a poor location.

Torbjorn

Torbjorn’s turret is basically a mini-Bastion that he can set anywhere and replace seconds after it is destroyed, and unlike human players, the turrets never miss. This makes them especially dangerous for high-movement, low-health heroes like Tracer, whose primary advantage is the ability to avoid enemy fire.

The turrets have incredibly long range and begin firing the instant they see a target, which makes it difficult for heroes to destroy the turret from a distance or even from cover.

In one match, all six players on the defending team played as Torbjorn and won easily. Any time a turret was destroyed, it was replaced instantly, and because there were so many of them set at various different angles, it was impossible to destroy them all before the attacking team died, even while using shield heroes like Reinhardt and Winston.

Team Fortress 2 also has a character, the engineer, who can build automated sentry guns, but those sentries take a significant amount of time and resources to place and upgrade, and they take a moment after acquiring a target before they begin firing. They also have relatively short range, which means that engineers in TF2 are punished for not being smart about where they place their sentry.

Meanwhile, an unskilled Torbjorn player can drop their turret almost anywhere and it will be effective and difficult to destroy.

DVa

Unlike Bastion and Torbjorn, which are both too strong, DVa feels incredibly weak for what should be a hard-to-kill target. While her Defense Matrix ability, which shoots down incoming projectiles, is incredibly powerful, DVa herself dies quickly in many encounters, even against heroes who should function like glass cannons.

Another issue is that when DVa’s mech suit is destroyed, she becomes effectively useless until either her ultimate ability charges, which takes some time, or until she dies. This has led many players to intentionally let DVa die after losing her suit so that they can get into a new one faster. Obviously, this is not a strategy that Blizzard would want to encourage.

If the studio is happy with DVa’s current survivability, then it will need to make her non-suit form a bit stronger, either by giving her better mobility (she seems pretty acrobatic after all), or by lowering the amount of time it takes for her to get a new suit so that it is shorter than dying and returning to the battle.

Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment