Meet the Only Overwatch Hero That Has Never Been Nerfed

From time to time, almost every powerful Overwatch character undergoes Nerfing or Buffing. Nerfing means reducing a character’s power, skills, or dominance to make them a little weaker than they used to be. On the other hand, Buffing is when some changes are made that improve the hero’s strength and efficiency. Apart from reducing power, a nerf may reduce how tactical, fast or even safe a hero is.

The reason for these nerfs is to prevent players from overusing or abusing a particular hero’s strength of style of play. Over the last five years since Overwatch was first published, Blizzard has made many changes to the heroes on its roster. These changes seek to balance the game and give every hero a fair chance to dominate the battlefield. However, even though Blizzard does this tweaking to all the characters, there seems to be one unique hero who has never ever received any nerf.  That character is our favorite gorilla scientist Winston.

Recently, an Overwatch fan pointed this out on Reddit, and surprisingly, other Overwatch enthusiasts realized that they haven’t really paid attention to this fact.

Over the years, the Tank hero Winston has received different patches, but all of the adjustments have either been enhancements (buffs) or neutral changes. They include:

• On 21st March 2017, Winston got a Barrier Projector tweak that makes his cooldown ability kickstart when the barrier is placed.
• On 16th November 2017, Winston had another tweak that added a health bar display.
• On 16th October 2019, another Barrier Projector tweak was done to increase his health from 600 to 700 and duration from 6 to 9 seconds.
• 18th February 2021 Winston’s Base Armor/Health changed from 100/400 to 150/350.

Winston is regarded as a weak character from inception and had always been one of the most difficult heroes to play. Probably, this may be the reason why Blizzard has never thought it necessary to nerf him.

What is Winston’s Fate in Overwatch 2?

Although Winston hasn’t received any nerfs, he may be undergoing a lot of changes in Overwatch 2. Season 2 is coming with quite several dramatic changes that’ll affect team composition. One of the most significant changes is that there will only be one Tank Hero in each team. Hence instead of having a squad of 6, we will now have a team of 5– two offense  heroes, two support heroes and one defense hero. For this reason, it is eminent that Blizzard will be doing a lot of work on all the existing Tank heroes to make them ready for the task ahead.

We do not yet have a comprehensive list of the changes that Blizzard will be making to Winston in season 2, but we know that the gorilla scientist will be getting nerfed in season 2. Instead, he’ll get a new ability– a long-range hitscan fire alongside his famous Tesla Cannon. With this new enhancement, Winston will no longer struggle with his shooting range. He’s about to become a dangerous snipper that’ll be taking enemies out from a distance.

Although his fate may change in the season sequel, we have seen this new alternate fire in the game’s early playtests, so we’re pretty convinced that it has come to stay.  To make it better, since Overwatch 1 and 2 have the same PvP, this new ability will also be available in Overwatch 1 once the second season is released. Unfortunately, we still do not know when Overwatch Season 2 will be released. But while we all wait for the big announcement, you can trust us to bring you all the latest updates as they unfold.

 

(Header image via Overwatch)