After confirming Orisa’s Overwatch 2 rework previously and confirming more recently that Doomfist will indeed be a Tank in the new game, Blizzard fully unveiled the reworks for these two heroes on Wednesday. That includes a breakdown of their abilities new and old with some parts of the heroes’ kits remaining while other parts have been adjusted to better fit into the goals and meta of the new game. Some context for these decisions was provided, too, to offer explanations for why these specific changes were made.
Starting with Doomfist, you can see his reworked abilities below. Power Block and Seismic Slam are the ones to pay attention to in this case aside from the already known change of him being a Tank now instead of a DPS hero. That role swap comes with an expected health increase, but Blizzard said it’s the Power Block players will want to pay attention to.
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“Power Block is the new core of Doomfist’s kit,” an overview of his rework said. “With Power Block, Doomfist enters a defensive stance that reduces all damage taken from the front by 90%. Doomfist’s gauntlet becomes charged if he blocks enough damage with Power Block. His charged gauntlet empowers his next Rocket Punch’s damage, knockback radius, travel speed, and distance. His targets will be stunned if he knocks them against a wall.”
Lead hero designer Geoff Goodman who led the Doomfist rework compared the hero’s new mobility to that of Winston and Wrecking Ball. The Seismic Slam move is best used to get behind teams before launching carries into your own team using Rocket Punch while the Meteor Strike is meant to be an initiation tool.
In the same post, we learned about Orisa’s rework, too. Orisa’s health and armor were buffed with a reworked primary weapon intended to let her “push and engage enemies more,” according to senior hero designer Brandon Brennan who worked on Orisa. The Energy Javelin functions similarly to a projectile-based Rocket Punch and is a “micro-stun” which deals more damage when there’s a well behind the target.
Javelin Spin is a new ability that’ll destroy incoming projectiles to make Orisa a more formidable frontline hero while Terra Surge is a totally new ability for the character.
“We started her rework by removing Orisa’s barrier and her Halt ability, but we still thought Halt was really cool,” said Brennan. “We incorporated the idea of Halt into Orisa’s new ultimate, and this is where the pull comes from.”
Overwatch 2’s first beta will start soon enough, so it won’t be long before people are able to go hands-on with these reworks and a new hero for the first time.
