Blizzard Previews Overwatch's Hanzo Rework

Blizzard's rework for the Overwatch hero Hanzo isn't far away now with a sneak peek at one of his new abilities previewed on the game's forums.

The Hanzo rework is one that both Blizzard and Overwatch players have been talking about for some time now, but now that Brigitte has been fully released, players are looking to the PTR and the forums for more information on Hanzo. One player took to those forums and asked for a preview of the new Hanzo while others backed up this request. Blizzard's Overwatch developer Jeff Kaplan responded to the inquiry by giving players a work-in-progress name for the new version of Hanzo's Scatter Shot that's now being called Rapid Shot.

"We've done a lot of playtesting of his new rapid shot ability (that's the working name)," Kaplan said. "We're happy with that, the sonic arrow changes and the increase in speed of his arrows. It's all feeling pretty good."

While Kaplan didn't reveal what the ability would actually look like through gameplay, some concept art was provided to give an idea of what Rapid Shot may look like, though it was stressed that what's shown may not be the final version of the ability.

"Before it goes to our VFX and animation team, we do concept art. Here is one version of what it might look like by Ben Zhang (DISCLAIMER: this is just concept art – when we get into implementation things can and will change)."

The ability would allow Hanzo to fire off arrows quickly as the name suggests, though one player suggested that the concept art was too much of a giveaway for when the ability was being used. Kaplan responded by saying that the noticeable visuals for the ability were intentional so that Hanzo's opponents were fully aware when he was using his power.

This new version of his current Scatter Shot ability is just part of Hanzo's rework as well. He's also getting an altered Sonic Arrow ability that comes with the trade-off of having a "significantly faster" cooldown while having a reduced radius and duration. Hanzo is also getting a dash ability that Kaplan confirmed is still part of the rework plans.

It's not known at the moment when the Hanzo rework will officially hit the PTR for PC players to test it, but it's been said by Blizzard in the past that April was the target month for the changes, so expect an update to hopefully reveal his rework sometime soon.