Lúcio’s Overwatch PTR changes aim to make him more fun to play, less of a must-pick

Blizzard is amping up Lúcio on the Overwatch public test region.

More of a rework than a strict buff or nerf, Lúcio’s changes are an attempt by Blizzard to make the musically-inclined healer less of a necessity on Overwatch teams—but still keeping him strong in certain situations.

“The end result is that he should feel stronger with teams that he can stay close to but not as strong when on teams with heroes that are often spread out (such as Pharah, Widow, Genji, etc),” Blizzard said in the PTR notes.

Here’s exactly where you’ll see the adjustments.

• Sonic amplifier
• Projectile speed increased from 40 to 50
• Alternate fire now considers vertical orientation when knocking targets back
• Crossfade
• Song’s area-of-affect radius decreased from 30 meters to 10 meters
• Blizzard’s added a temporary in-game visual to map out its new radius. It’s only visible to Lúcio and his teammates, however.
• Heal song
• Healing-per-second increased by 50 percent and also applies to Lúcio’s Amp It Up ability
• Sound Barrier
• Radius decreased from 30 meters to 20 meters
• Wall Ride
• Movement speed increased by 30 percent when wall riding
• Lúcio now receives a burst of speed when leaping off a wall

“Much of Lúcio’s character power was tied up in his large passive auras, which caused other elements of his kit to be weakened over time in an attempt to balance him,” Blizzard said. With tighter focus on his auras, Lúcio will have to be more active in his role of healing and boosting his team.

Speeding up his projectile speed will make his shot a bit more accurate, with less wait time before the projectile hits its target. The movement speed increase for wall riding is a nice bonus, too. It’s an incentive for players to take to the walls and get more active in creative playstyles.

Besides the Lúcio adjustments, Blizzard is also making changes to Overwatch’s competitive play system in an effort to reduce the number of draws. A tracking system has been added to assault and hybrid maps that will allow Blizzard to break ties based on progress made toward capturing the objective.

“This will work similarly to the system that’s already in place for escort and assault/escort maps, which grants a win to the team that pushes the payload the furthest,” Blizzard said. “Now, even if neither team successfully captures the objective, a winner can be determined based on which team captured the largest portion.”

For now, the competitive map play rotation on Overwatch’s PTR will be limited to Eichenwalde and Hanamura.

Additionally, Blizzard is making continued adjustments to Eichenwalde itself, adding a route that connects the attacking teams’ spawn area to the capture point.

Outside of the game, Blizzard added details about each Overwatch heroes’ backstory, including information about some lore-inspired skins.