Overwatch PTR Patch Massively Nerfs Brigitte’s Shield Bash Damage

A new hero is available in Overwatch, but the development team at Blizzard Entertainment continues to iterate on existing characters. Brigitte and Doomfist have been the subjects of the most recent Public Test Realm patch, currently available to PC players. While the developer has tuned Brigitte’s Shield Bash to not stun targets through barriers, recent changes have nerfed the damage the ability does.

According to Geoff Goodman, lead designer in charge of hero design, Brigitte’s Shield Bash now does 5 damage, down from 50 damage. Her Inspire passive, which provided healing over time when hitting targets, has had its cooldown reduced from 1.5 to 1 second, while the duration has been increased to 6 seconds from 5 seconds. The total healing it offers is now 100 instead of 80.

As for Doomfist, victims of Seismic Slam no longer lose air control when pulled in by the ability. His Ultimate Meteor Strike has also had its inner ring damage radius increased from 1.5 meters to 2 meters. The inner ring’s damage has been increased to 300, but the damage outside of it has been decreased to 200. The main point of these changes is “seeing if we can remove or reduce some of the effectiveness” of the current crowd control abilities in Overwatch.

You can check out the developer’s notes below, along with the full PTR patch 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.