Blizzard says forget about Overwatch 2's support players, soon anyone can heal themselves

Blizzard just can't help but make some baffling changes to Overwatch 2, the latest being an upcoming one that will give every hero a passive healing ability.

I'm no Overwatch expert. I've put a few hours into it, I was OK at it, but I'm not exactly someone who knows all the ins-and-outs. That said, the idea of adding in a self-healing passive in a game that has support characters whose express purpose is to heal its teammates, feels like a bit of an odd choice, even to me. Blizzard explained the upcoming change in a recent blog post, where it shared that in season 9, "both Tank and Damage heroes will get a modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive. This should give non-Support players more options in terms of sustaining themselves.

"It should also take some of the pressure off Support players to keep everyone alive since individual players now have more control of their own health pool. In Overwatch, there is a constant tug of war between the power of a team and the power of an individual hero or player. A change like this shifts that balance a bit. This is something that we are constantly evaluating. We still want Overwatch to be defined by team strategy and mechanics, but we feel this can be pulled back a bit now and possibly more in the future."

According to Blizzard, this all comes in the name of teamwork. The post noted how it introduced the Ping system and Spawn Together system in order to help players work together better, with the latter of the two apparently getting a tuning in season 9 to "make the effect more prominent." The self-healing passive is an attempt at answering the question "what happens when your team is not working well together?" I am aware that there are certain players (looking at you, Moira mains) that can prioritise damage over healing, but to me this sounds like a change that will discourage support players from doing their job. But hey, that's just the humble opinion of a Bastion player with comparatively minimal hours in the game!

Overwatch 2 season 9 doesn't have an exact release date just yet, but it is expected to launch in February. In the meantime, you can jump into a limited time version of Quick Play called Hacked, but you should do so soon, as it wraps up today.