It's no secret: Overwatch has a meta problem. Every since Ana's big buff shortly after her release, the meta has exploded into a three-tank and sometimes four-tank extravaganza where heroes with low skill ceilings shot to the top of the most-played charts while the higher skill ceiling, offensive heroes were all but unviable.
Arriving in the PTR today, a new patch may come to Overwatch's rescue, not only dealing a heavy blow to the tank meta but also addressing some other major issues.
First and foremost, Ana has undergone even more nerfs, and these ones might be enough to actually change how she's played and how team's pick around her. Ana's Biotic Grenade (an AOE burst heal) made it so tanks could survive almost any situation when grouped up. After nerfing the grenade's healing bonus, it's burst healing and damage to the opponents have both been cut in half, and Ana's left-click damage has been reduced by 25%.
This should go along way toward limiting Ana's effectiveness on a team full of tanks, which will either reduce the number of tanks that are picked or encourage the use of other healers, as Ana is a mainstay of competitive and tournament games.
Not only that, this new PTR patch will add some other much-needed changes to other heroes. For instance, Junkrat (who saw a historically pathetic 0% pick rate at last month's Apex Season 2 tournament) will no longer damage himself with his own explosions. While this is unlikely to drastically affect his pickrate, it's a step in the right direction, and this change should go through the PTR without incident.
Also, this patch contains an under-the-radar buff to Winston that may turn out to be huge and make him a much more-often picked tank, wheras he is usually only picked to counter Reinhardt-led deathballs. Now, the cooldown timer on his Barrier Projector will start counting down as soon as Winston places the barrier. Currently, that cooldown only starts once the barrier is destroyed. This should make him a lot more sustainable in fights and in diving.
Full patch notes can be found here, and the update should be in the PTR in the next few hours.
