Hey everyone! It's Scott Kennedy, back for another Weekly Recall taking you behind the scenes as we gear up for Season 18. This time around, we’re going to learn more about PERKS!!
When we introduced the Perks system in Season 15, it was the largest fundamental change to core gameplay since Overwatch 2 launched. Our team worked with a cautious hand to ensure you could feel empowered playing all your favorite Heroes without moving away from the core fundamentals of Overwatch. It’s never fun to get demolished by the enemy team and not understand why!
Thankfully, your feedback has been mostly positive and extremely helpful from a design perspective. Heading into Season 18, we’re using what we’ve learned over the past few months to turn up the heat and invent bigger, bolder Perks that better align to our core philosophies, taking the place of Perks that didn’t quite hit the way we thought they would. There’s something for everyone, too: each Hero will be getting at least one new Perk to play with when Season 18 launches on Aug. 26.
Pondering The Perks
Our goal when developing and maintaining Perks was to build a system within Overwatch that added dimension, strategy, and new ways to enjoy playing your favorite Heroes. It’s important to us that Perks not only feel impactful within a match but also fun to use, all while being easy to understand.
Breaking it down even further, Minor Perks should feel beneficial for your Hero; you’re going to find value with them and can use them to improve parts of a kit based on your specific playstyle. Major Perks, on the other hand, should feel transformative. They should change the way that you think about an ability or affect the way you play the rest of a match. To us, many Perks were successful in this pursuit.
When deciding which Perks to tune up, tune down, refresh, or remove altogether, we work within those philosophies. Internal data like Perk pick rates and Hero win rates with certain Perks equipped is important, as is player feedback, but for this big refresh we looked at things through the lens of aligning with our original goals.
Time For An Upgrade
For each Hero, we tried to see what their kit was missing as far as current Perks were concerned and where improvements could be made. We also wanted to move away from a trend we noticed where certain Minor and Major Perks synergized together and amplified the same ability, essentially doubling down on part of a Hero’s kit.
Two of Juno’s current Perks—Familiar Vitals (Minor) and Locked On (Major) — revolve around her Pulsar Torpedoes. Choosing both gives you some serious projectile power, but those two Perks overwhelmingly ended up being the “default” options for Juno in most players’ eyes.
In Season 18, we want to add more utility to Juno’s kit with less overlap. Faster Blaster—her new Major Perk—makes Juno’s Mediblaster automatic while Glide Boost is active, combining improved weapon damage with a movement ability for those of you who like to play fast and furious. Locked On will also move to the Minor Perk role directly against Familiar Vitals, meaning you’ll have to pick between reducing the cooldown of your Pulsar Torpedoes or letting them aim more quickly. This choice will depend on the team around you, the enemies against you, and the match right in front of you.
Some Heroes have Perk options that already offer a variety of choices for multiple playstyles, but they need a little boost to better compete with others in their role.
Scatter Arrow enthusiasts got their wish with Hanzo’s current Minor Perk, which makes his Storm Arrows split into three new projectiles that bounce an additional two times. It’s a popular and fun Perk, but it hasn't made much of a difference as far as damage-dealing is concerned. For Season 18, we’re moving Scatter Arrow to a Major Perk slot and making it a bit more ferocious while maintaining balance. Storm Arrows will split into five arrows upon first ricochet and do 33% of normal damage for a possible total of 166% damage...if your simple geometry is right.
Other Heroes are suffering from success, enjoying Perks that make the enemy team’s experience more frustrating than fun. Ana’s Major Perk, Shrike, is the only Major that directly affects (and hugely improves) an Ultimate ability, giving her a little too much power.
Due to this, we’re removing Shrike. Before you get the pitchforks out, Biotic Bounce—another hugely popular Ana Perk—is moving to a Major slot with bonus buffs. Ana also gets a new Minor Perk, Speed Serum, which grants 40% movement speed to both Ana and her target once Nano Boost is cast. She’s still got the juice!
Dreaming Bigger
While lots of Perks are being improved or reimagined, Season 18 includes a ton of brand-new Perks that we hope will add more nuance and strategic choices to Hero kits. We can’t spoil all of them before Season 18 drops, but there are a few that deserve a shout-out.
Along with her sparkly Mythic skin, Sojourn will get a new Major Perk next season called Friction Generators. Her Power Slide will generate up to 50 energy for her primary weapon, which can be used to power up before an attack or delay Railgun energy decay between fights. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how this Perk meshes with additional base kit changes to Sojourn coming in Season 18, but we believe it adds another layer of strategy for you to work with. You’ll now have to decide whether to use Power Slide to escape a fight or to kick one off.
It’s always exciting for us when Perks check the boxes of “useful” and “wildly fun” at the same time. Everyone’s favorite rock enthusiast, Venture, is one of the few Heroes whose abilities don’t take up every slot (or button on console) available to them. We're adding SMART Extender as a Major Perk to take advantage of this free real estate. It increases Venture’s maximum projectile range by 100% to enable them to finish off enemies that were previously out of reach while keeping their Explorer’s Resolve shields high.
We can’t wait to see what you do with these new and improved Perks. Thanks for reading. Good luck and have fun!