MAUGA already receiving SURVIVABILITY BUFFS ahead of Overwatch 2 Season 8 launch

As part of Overwatch 2 Game Director Aaron Keller’s address to the public yesterday, he touched on the upcoming buffs heading Mauga’s way. The new hero has not been officially released yet, having been teased out in trial format. Mauga is set to release in December with Season 8, and is the first Overwatch Hero to receive a trial ahead of their official launch.

Getting a Tune-up

Ahead of his official release in December, Mauga will be receiving survivability buffs. The anticipated adjustment is based on feedback from the community, and data from Blizzard themselves.

Here are the anticipated/considered changes:

• Replacing a chunk of health with armor. Internally experimenting with 150 as the value.
• Reducing size of head hit volume
• Increasing damage reduction on Overrun. Original value was 30% > looking to increase to 50% currently. (Also removing Hack’s ability to interrupt Overrun)
• Increasing lifesteal on Cardiac Overdrive.
• Multiple considered changes for his primary weapon. This includes: fire spread, fire rate, damage, ammo count, damage falloff numbers.

These adjustments are not meant to represent final changes.

According to Keller, the trial pinpointed Mauga’s current primary flaw as feeling weak. He especially underperforms at higher skill tiers. The goal with the changes, he cites, is to increase survivability, make damage against smaller targets more reliable, and reduce damage output vs large Heroes (such as other tanks).

Successful First Trial?

As part of their new initiative attempt, Blizzard will release a new hero Mauga, it is the first Hero releasing as a trial. One of the main points of success in the eyes of Keller and his team was that, thanks to the trial, Blizzard’s team had three things going for the ahead of the official launch - feedback from the community, good data on the hero, and most importantly, enough time in advance to make a ‘serious set of changes.’

Following this success, Keller underlined that moving forwards, it would be a good template to utilize, not just for heroes, but also for other large pieces of content.

Credit: Mauga // Overwatch 2

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