The seventh character to receive changes is DPS character Torbjorn. The only change that the developers have made to him is the cooldown on his Overload ability has been reduced from 12 seconds to 10 seconds.
This change to Torbjorn isn’t the biggest but it’s a nice change to help with the fact that he struggles in the latter stages of a team fight when his turret has died and Overload has finished. This just allows him to use this ability more than once in lengthy team fights, allowing him to survive longer whilst still putting out damage.
The eighth character to receive an update is DPS character Genji. Genji has only received one change this update and it sees his Shuriken ammo increased from 24 to 30.
This little buff for Genji can go a far way in this new low health shield meta that will start to form. It helps him counter the armor damage resistance buff and allows him to have a bit more of a finishing touch on his targets, it also helps him spam shields more and keeps some ammo for when the shield goes down so he can inflict damage.
The ninth and final character to receive a change is tank hero Zarya. Zarya has received two changes to her secondary fire. The explosion radius has been increased from 2 to 2.25 meters and the other change sees the cost of using this secondary fire go down from 25 to 20.
These changes to Zarya make her secondary fire more viable as before her primary fire needed all the ammo you could get because of having a superior damage value so players didn’t want to waste ammo and then time reloading her weapon. Now you can fire the secondary fire at a distance when closing the gap on your opponents to then switch to your primary fire when up close.
How these changes will affect the Fusion roster?
I mentioned in my previous piece breaking down the Fusion roster that the tank situation for Philly will be very interesting and now it’s just become box office stuff with these major changes to tanks. The changes to tanks will change the entire league due to the meta changing but Philly will probably benefit from these changes and here’s why.
Poko is known for how good he is on D.Va and with D.Va becoming much more viable now with this update you’ll probably see Poko revert to maining the character he made his name in the league with. This will be huge for Fusion this year as Poko on D.Va in season 1 was a major part of getting them to the final so having Poko on the character he was so successful with should put the Fusion ahead of the competition heading into the season.
It’ll be interesting to see where Fury and SADO will fit into the new meta if Poko does go back onto D.Va. Obviously, the meta will probably still include shield tanks but we could also see a comeback for previous metas like dive and see either SADO or Fury pickup Winston, it’s a really interesting thing to think about and theorize about, because there are so many ways it could go.
Shield heroes being majorly nerfed instantly buffs the entire DPS class and guys like Carpe, Eqo, and Ivy will benefit from this. Carpe will love this update as a Widowmaker main, even though he will lose some mobility it still doesn’t hurt at all with shields going down quicker which means he can pick off the opponent’s healers and DPS a lot easier. Eqo can play Genji quite well so the ammo buff for Genji will be a nice bonus for him from this update and Ivy can play Genji too so all three DPS players have benefitted from this huge update.
With Moira being the only support hero touched, the Fusion’s support players are pretty much in the same position as they were before the update was announced. Moira’s healing nerf definitely affects the league as a whole but there are so many different support combo’s pro teams do in the league, it doesn’t really change much.
Personally, I have mixed emotions surrounding this update. Something needed to change with the double shield meta, it was seriously boring to play, however, I feel they may have overshot the nerfs on Orisa and Sigma so the only playable tank duo will be Reinhardt and Zarya. It will be different in the league because the players are obviously much better and are basically gods at some of the characters regular players believe to be bad. I have a feeling they’ll tweak the Orisa and Sigma nerfs in a later update before the league kicks off in February, but it’s nice to know that the developers realize the current meta is boring and needs to change.
