Director’s Take – Juno, Clash, and a Look Ahead to Midseason

Hey y’all, Alec here. This week’s Director’s Take will be a small reflection on the first half of Season 12 with the release of Juno and Clash, as well as a brief look at some tweaks coming in the Midseason Patch and beyond.

Checking in on Juno

Let’s start with Juno! Honestly, it’s been such a joy seeing the community fall in love with our favorite Martian. We started on her prototype early last year and went through many iterations to get to the Juno you see today. Heck, we were still a little worried about a lock-on damage ability but y’all have seemed to acclimate well to combating her Pulsar Torpedoes.  Since that first round of buffs shortly after her launch, Juno has remained in that “safe side of strong” zone we aim for. While Juno finds success in most modes, she does particularly well on Payload and Hybrid maps such as Circuit Royal, King’s Row, and Blizzard World. This is quite different than a hero like Lúcio, whose best modes are typically Flashpoint and Control.  It’s still early, but there’s some indication that her speed may be more useful in tighter corridors and less open spaces. Things are still settling as far as composition goes, but if OWCS Korea is setting the trend, expect to see Juno getting paired with Ana or Brigitte more in the weeks ahead.

Overall, we are very happy with Juno’s introduction to Overwatch 2. Your feedback during the trial led to plenty of changes going into Season 12, and the team has loved seeing all the fan art, gameplay clips, and genuine excitement for Juno over the last few weeks. As we progress further into the season, we’re going to let Juno sit in her current state for a bit and observe how some elements of her kit mature over time to see if additional changes are needed (for example, how allies play with her Ultimate). Thanks for the warm reception here.

Next Steps for Clash

One of the other big additions in Season 12 was our new mode Clash. When we set out to make Clash, we wanted it to contain more constant action than other modes, where you wouldn’t feel like you are taking long treks to the next teamfight or objective. At one point during development there was so much action that it became hard for folks to have a clear understanding of which point was active at any given time – nothing worse than winning a teamfight on the wrong point! With Clash now live, not only does it stand out in terms of pacing—Clash is fast and frantic—but the communication of where the match stands is also much more clear. Your feedback was quite helpful here to confirm a suspicion we had: going for the last objective (A or E) was a herculean task and generally not worth it. So, we split up the final points into three segments to make it easier to acquire at least a single point on A or E.

Even with some of those early changes to Clash, we think more tweaks are needed. Here are some of our current priorities (in order) for adjustments to Clash:

• Decrease current stomp rate and number of matches with an extremely short duration

• Incentivize attacking objectives A or E even more for the Attackers

• Increase overall feeling of fairness

• Keep Clash clear and understandable

 Ultimately, we’ll be implementing a series of changes that can independently target different aspects of Clash while keeping the above priorities intact. Why are these priorities so important? Let’s take a closer look.

Decrease current stomp rate and number of matches with an extremely short duration

No one likes it when queue times exceed your match time, and some Clash matches end very quickly. While Overwatch can be a swingy game, often we find that matches stabilize after a certain number of teamfights. Giving teams an additional chance or two to not get blown out will be quite healthy for Clash overall.

Incentivize attacking objectives A and E even more for the Attackers

The final capture areas on Clash can be difficult to gain points on. Splitting these capture points into three ticks helped, but we believe the attacking team should feel more comfortable going for that first tick rather than posturing and seeing if they force out Ultimates from the defending team. We don’t want you to feel like the correct strategy is to hang back too often, as fighting on the final points can create good in-match tension.

Increase overall feeling of fairness

Attacking into the enemy’s side of the map should feel worthwhile, but currently there are games of Clash you lose even though you felt your team had the upper hand for the majority of the match. A defending team can snowball two fights into a final fight at the center point when your team (the previous attackers) didn’t have the opportunity to group yet. We want to make some tweaks to increase the feeling of fairness for Attackers, particularly on the B or D objectives.

Keep Clash clear and understandable

Clash can be chaotic. It’s part of the allure of the mode but also needs to be kept in check. By adding too much complexity to scoring, we run the risk of making it very hard for you to have a sense of how a match is progressing and how close a match is to finality. Right now we feel there’s a good base to work from here without uprooting Clash’s current fundamental rules.

While we think some of Clash’s blemishes will improve naturally, we’ve been testing tweaks to the mode with the above priorities in mind. Some light changes will go into Season 12’s Midseason patch and our first full round of tweaks will come at the start of Season 13. Thanks for all the feedback here!

Midseason Balance

Finally, as we head into Season 12’s Midseason patch, we’re looking at the survivability of Tanks. Since our bigger Tank patch in 2.11.1, Tank survivability shot up and it’s felt very difficult to punish Tanks effectively (D.Va especially). We want to pull back slightly, looking specifically at the power in Armor and some of the defensive passives given to the Tank role. Expect those changes and more to drop next week.

Beyond the Midseason balance changes, we’re currently experimenting with reducing the effectiveness of certain hero counters, such as beam damage against a subset of Tanks while they are using their defensive abilities. Sombra has been a hot topic lately and we’re looking at some changes to her Stealth duration, among other things.

You can look forward to these updates in the Midseason Update coming next week, along with the Overwatch 2 x World of Warcraft special cosmetic event. I’m supposed to drop some WoW puns, but a large gust of wind blew through camp and scattered them around Stranglethorn. Thanks everyone, let’s make a great game.