Blizzard defends Overwatch 2’s controversial new self-healing as part of ‘much larger set of changes’

Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller has clarified how Blizzard Entertainment’s plans to add self-heal passives for every playable hero is part of a wider set of changes following prominent fan backlash.

On Jan. 12, Keller dropped the news that, for season nine, tank and damage heroes will be receiving their own healing passives. This is a bold change to the meta, with Keller explaining this is to take pressure off support hero players (whose primary job is to heal their teammates) while giving individual players more control of their own health pool. As such, you don’t have to rely too much on your teammates, which is something Keller described as “one of the best and worst attributes of our game.“

The fan reception has been mixed. While it’s not without some support and deemed a “lovely change” by some, a quick glance through the responses on X (formerly Twitter) suggests most players hate the idea.

“This is an utterly awful idea,” one player said, “Just to start, supports are already just better DPS in a lot of scenarios so taking the “heal the team” responsibility away just enables this even more?”

“As an OG support main, please just get rid of this idea and also the support passive,” another added, “Let supports have some skill expression with whether they use their self healing cooldown for themselves or the team. You’re oversimplifying the game with all this.”

There’s clearly been enough of a backlash for Keller to issue further comments to try and appease the critics. “[Self-heal is] one part of a much larger set of changes coming to the game in season nine,” he explained on X, “Internally we’re talking about, and targeting some of these changes at damage spikiness in game, the role of DPS in securing kills, and the strength of healing.” He also admits announcing this change without additional context was “a mistake.”

If you look at the original blog post, it did mention a “massive set of gameplay and balance changes” are planned for “reducing damage spikes in combat.” The self-heal passives were just used as an example, but perhaps that wasn’t the best choice to lead with. Then again, had Blizzard saved this detail for a full list of balance chances for season nine, it likely would’ve generated a lot of outrage regardless.

No one really knows for sure what sort of impact this change will have on Overwatch 2’s meta, but Blizzard faces an uphill battle convincing a good chunk of players it’s for the best.