New experimental Overwatch patch brings massive Brigitte nerfs and D.Va buffs

Overwatch's development team is hard at work trying to shake the meta up, leaving the game in its healthiest state possible with the sequel looming in the near future. The latest experimental card will certainly do so after the extensive nerfs Brigitte was subject to, one of the most polarizing characters in Overwatch received.

As a way to give players from all platforms access to wacky, sometimes extreme changes, Blizzard introduced an experimental mode, which will now feature a version of the support hero that won't be able to stack armour to fully healed allies with her repair pack.

According to a post in the official Blizzard forums by Community Manager Molly Fender, the dev team is responding to general feedback about the character feeling too strong.

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“We’d like to try some changes intended to bring Brigitte’s balance more in-line with other supports. This test will be focused on a key change to her Repair Pack that no longer grants additional armour when healing full health targets. Additionally, we’re testing some updates to her Barrier Shield that enable it to block more damage upfront but with more downtime if it gets destroyed.”

(Picture: Blizzard Entertainment)

As for D.Va, the offtank saw her playtime severely reduced with the double shield meta in place revolving around Orisa and Sigma as the tank duo. Blizzard intends to test "a few changes to her abilities that should allow for quicker reactions when using her guns and Defense Matrix."

Overwatch Experimental Card patch notes

ASHE

• Dynamite: Cooldown increased from 10 to 12 seconds

BRIGITTE

• Repair Pack: No longer grants an additional armor health pool when healing full health targets
• Barrier Shield: Maximum health increased from 200 to 250. Regeneration rate decreased from 100 to 85 health per second. Cooldown when destroyed increased from 3 to 5 seconds

D.VA

• Fusion Cannons: Movement penalty reduced from 50 to 40%
• Defense Matrix: Cooldown reduced from 1.5 to 1 second
• Micro Missiles: Activation delay reduced from 0.5 to 0.25 seconds

JUNKRAT

• Concussion Mine: Trigger delay reduced from 0.156 to 0.1 seconds
• RIP-Tire: Time to take control of Junkrat post detonation has been reduced from 1.5 to 0.9 seconds

If you're a Brig main, fret not, with these changes coming to the experimental mode rather than the Public Test Realm (the last step before any confirmed updates make their way to the live servers), it means there's a strong possibility this is just a one-off, and the support remains untouched.

Speaking of the PTR, a nice quality of life update is getting ready to go live, with Blizzard giving a much-needed polish to the Career Profile section

Overwatch PTR patch notes

The Career Profile page has been redesigned to provide a better, more streamlined experience when viewing player profiles.

• Game mode play time has been added to the overview section, so you can see exactly how much time you’ve spent in modes like Competitive Play or any of the community’s creative Workshop modes
• Statistics are displayed in a tabular format, separated by “Average/10 min”, “Best”, “Total”, providing a cleaner, more readable view
• Your in-game achievements are grouped by category, and can be filtered by what you’ve earned and have yet to unlock
• Your Player Icons are now grouped by category and can be filtered by hero and whether you own them

General

• Capture the Flag in-game achievements have been moved to the Maps category
• Added additional playback languages for Echo’s Duplicate ability video

Junkrat

• Concussion Mine: Trigger delay reduced from 0.156 to 0.1 seconds
• RIP-Tire: Time to take control of Junkrat post detonation has been reduced from 1.5 to 0.9 seconds

Here’s how the new profiles will look like.