'Overwatch' Update: Hanzo Changes to Arrive by April
"Overwatch" developer Jeff Kaplan has said that they are hoping to release the previously announced changes for Hanzo by next month, specifically once they are finished working on and fully releasing Brigitte to the public.
"The animation, visual effects and sound work are scheduled to begin post-Brigitte release. PTR will be after that. Hoping for a PTR sometime in April," Kaplan wrote on the official Blizzard forums.
A few weeks ago, Kaplan had announced that they were finally able to schedule their visual and sound design artists toward working on creating assets for Hanzo's upcoming new abilities. Evidently, it seems that Blizzard had decided that, for now, Brigitte will take top priority and that they will work on adding the necessary objects and features for Hanzo once she is out and about in the live servers.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
For those that have not been keeping up with the news, Blizzard previously said that they wanted to rework Hanzo and his infamous Scatter Shot. They acknowledged that getting instantly killed by a seemingly stray shot that would randomly ricochet off walls was frustrating and just not fun. To alleviate this issue, the developers have decided to scrap Scatter Shot completely and replace it with, not one, but two new abilities for the archer.
Lunge is Hanzo's new mobility technique that behaves similarly to Tracer's Blink or McCree's Combat Roll. With Lunge, Hanzo is capable of quickly leaping across any direction. This will allow him to engage and disengage from fights at his discretion and make him nimbler on the battlefield.
Volley is a much more offensive ability and is what directly replaces Scatter Shot. With Volley, Hanzo will be capable of rapidly firing arrows from his bow. At the time of this writing, the developers have said that they are experimenting with six arrows per activation with each one doing less than a standard arrow.
Hanzo's new abilities are expected to arrive to the public test region come April.
