Blizzard Entertainment has released a new patch for the Overwatch closed beta with the goal of bringing some much needed balance to some of the game’s strongest and weakest characters.

Balance is a constant concern for all of Blizzard Entertainment’s games, and Overwatch is no different. While it is perfectly fine for some heroes to be situationally useful, Blizzard does not want to have some heroes that are always chosen because they are too strong, or for there to be heroes that are rarely chosen because they are too weak.

Luckily, the beta test gives Blizzard the chance to make rapid changes to the game’s balance, and yesterday’s patch came barely a week after the previous game update.

As we pointed out earlier this week, some of the heroes that most needed to be retuned included Bastion and Torbjorn, who were both too strong, and Dva, who was too weak. Yesterday’s patch made major changes to all three heroes, but not necessarily in the ways we expected.

Bastion

Bastion, a robot that can transform into a powerful-yet-stationary turret, was both weakened and strengthened in Blizzard’s patch.

Bastion has lost his increased armor in turret form, which has made him significantly easier to kill, but his damage has been effectively increased in both turret and recon mode.

In recon mode, Bastion’s weapon spread has been reduced by 25 percent, making his weapon more accurate at longer ranges. In sentry mode, changes that were introduced in last week’s patch have been reverted, which increased his damage. Essentially, Bastion deals more damage in both forms now, but he has less overall health.

Here is how Blizzard explained the changes to Bastion in the patch notes:

We’ve given Configuration: Recon a bit of a boost to allow Bastion to “run-and-gun” more efficiently when needed. We’ve also made significant changes to Bastion’s survivability and offensive capabilities when in Configuration: Sentry. By removing the 300 additional armor, Bastion is now more vulnerable to attack; however, its overall damage output has been increased (as a result of reverting earlier nerfs to sentry bullet damage). We’re very eager to see how both of these updates play out in the beta.

Torbjorn

Torbjorn is Overwatch’s version of Team Fortress 2’s engineer, a relatively weak character capable of building a powerful sentry gun that automatically shoots at enemies.

Unfortunately, Torbjorn’s turret was a little too strong, as was the hero’s ability to restore its health by whacking it with his hammer. As a result, Blizzard has greatly lowered the amount of health Torbjorn can restore with each hit, and the damage each turret bullet deals has also been lowered slightly.

Torbjorn’s sidearm did get a slight upgrade, with the cost of its alt-fire lowered from 5 to 3, but its overall ammo capacity was also lowered to 18.

Here’s what Blizzard had to say:

Torbjörn’s turrets currently feel a little too powerful, so (to start) we’re taking away some of their power as well as removing Torbjörn’s ability to out-repair reasonable incoming damage. Torbjörn’s Rivet gun is also getting a small boost to allow for more liberal use of his Alternate Fire when needed.

DVa

DVa is one of Overwatch’s tank heroes, which are meant to defend teammates and mission objectives while also being difficult to kill.

DVa has the advantage of getting a second chance when she is killed because she ejects from her mech rather than dying. This leaves her in a weaker form that is still capable of dealing some damage, and if she can survive long enough for her ultimate ability to charge, she can call down another mech and jump back into the fight.

Unfortunately, this was taking a bit too long, and many players chose to kill off DVa so that they could respawn in a new mech rather than having to wait around for their ultimate.

Because of this, Blizzard has greatly reduced the cost of using DVa’s ultimate, and it has also removed the control lockout that prevented DVa from moving while she called her new mech.

Here are Blizzard’s comments on its changes to DVa:

The changes we made to how heroes gain Ultimate charge in the February 9 beta patch had some unintended side effects for D.Va, making it much harder for her to generate Ultimate than before. These changes should help correct this pain point, as well as provide a nice quality-of-life change to the process of summoning her mech.

Image credit: Overwatch courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.