Blizzard investigating accidental Reinhardt nerf in Overwatch

Have you noticed something feeling off about Reinhardt’s hammer in Overwatch this week?

If you have, you’re not alone. Reddit user “dadnaya” posted on the Overwatch Subreddit asking Blizzard Entertainment to “revert the change” to Reinhardt’s hammer. And after Blizzard looked into it, it was clear there was definitely an inadvertent change to his attack.

With Overwatch’s anniversary event also came a new update for the game, and one of the update’s changes included an alteration to the height of Reinhardt’s Earthshatter ultimate—but Reinhardt’s basic attack was also somehow affected.

Before the update, Reinhardt’s attack would register more quickly, when his hammer was in the middle of the screen during its animation. Now, the hit will only register after a full swing, effectively doubling the time it takes for him to damage somebody.

Nothing about this change was mentioned in the new patch notes.

Thankfully, Overwatch lead engineer Bill Warnecke is on the case, as he responded to the thread with haste. “Hey folks,” said Warnecke. “I don’t think we intended to change Reinhardt’s hammer. We will dig into this.”

There’s no time frame for the fix, but it could possibly come on Wednesday when season five of the game’s competitive mode begins.