This Overwatch turret change is an indirect buff to Torbjörn in some situations

A new patch hit the Overwatch servers today. It’s a relatively small patch, but there’s one change that could be an indirect buff to Torbjörn.

Sure, Torbjörn isn’t going to become a meta hero overnight from the change, but it’s a boost in his favor. “Turrets no longer target barriers directly, but will still target enemies behind them,” Overwatch community manager Tom Powers wrote in the patch notes.

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Turrets targeting barriers was mainly a problem with Orisa shields; turrets would target the shield regardless of whether it was leftover and somewhere random, or actually blocking enemy heroes. Instead of targeting a flanking enemy or participating in a different battle, the turrets would stay focused on the useless shield until it was knocked out. It may not seem like a big deal, but that meant that the turret was doing nothing in a fight.

When enemies are behind a shield, the turret will fire right at the enemies, but the shield will stop it from doing damage. It was also a problem with Symmetra’s turrets in instances where the turrets where behind an enemy—they’d sometimes target the shield instead of the enemy. A bug with Brigitte was most noticeable, as turrets targeted her shield even when it wasn’t deployed. That’s been fixed with this patch.

The other changes in the Overwatch patch notes are bug fixes—one fixed a visual bug that caused effects to be absorbed into surfaces, while another fixed a bug that allowed Reaper to reach unintended locations.