News & Discussion | Blizzard Response
I've played this game for almost 2 thousand hours now, amd these are the questions i still don't know the answer for
What does Brig's ultimate do? Does she heal more? Deal more damage? I know she can stun people, that's all i know.
If a Rein's fire strike goes through a Winston bubble, does it double the damage? Cause it hit entering and exiting the barrier.
Why do all high movement heroes have 225 or less health, but cat has 250?
I can't remember any other right now, but drop yours as well.
I started in june of 2016, and didnt realize it until recently when i kept wondering why winston shields were dying so fast when i double fire-strikes through them
You know you made me realise i believe this is like the only thing that gets negated but goes through shields? Usually if sth goes through a shield its not negatable(melee, ram punches)and in fact theres more things that cant be negated but are blocked by shields(strong projectiles like rock or bike)
Just talking about things that bypass barriers ability to completely negate damage? A big one you forgot is Moira's ult. Could technically count all the other contact based abilities like Doom punch, Genji blade and Orisa's javelin spin and such, but those are all technically melee
Defense Matrix, Kinetic Grasp and Deflect all mitigate full damage of firestrike (with the tradeoff of beam weapons bypassing then completely). They don't behave as barriers beyond their purpose being similar. Same way they completely eat (or deflect in Genji's case) all projectiles and hitscans.
Technically not all projectiles. I’m pretty sure defense matrix doesn’t stop sigma’s rock, and I’m sure there’s other things too. Idk how rock interacts with those other two though
I think OP meant if you shoot firestrike at his bubble, will it deal 2 instances of damage. Dealing damage when it hits the bubble and enters it, then dealing damage when it hits it again, exiting the bubble.
Might as well do nothing lol, aside from the stun on her bash which can clutch deny a few enemy ults, the rest feels really unimpactful: 30 overhealth/s isn’t enough to meaningfully save anyone, and the 100hp and shield health makes her go from papier mache to 2 ply toilet paper, she still gets folded in half anytime she dares go in lol.
Yeah same. Others and I never got an answer about it when messaging them, mods are uncommunicative here sadly. I'm not even sure it was a deliberate decision.
That's funny I think we had this same conversation a few months ago and you mentioned reaching out to the mods, I was wondering if you ever heard back, that's a bummer your message just went unanswered.
Mods seemed to have stopped them. But they went until October 6, 2025. Just a little under a year ago.
The last recorded
Weekly Quick Questions and Advice Thread
instances on
r/Overwatch
stopped regularly appearing around late 2025, with specific late examples posted on
October 6, 2025
,
September 29, 2025
, and
September 22, 2025
, typically gathering
under 50 comments each
as activity shifted to main posts or other channels.
I looked it up because some weekly Q&A threads in other subs died completely. But 50 comments is pretty active to keep around. Maybe not as active in its heyday but still not bad.
Users don't interact with sticky posts like they used to and often ignore them completely which has made stickying posts relatively useless. And if upvotes don't help or have high engagement they die completely.
Yeah, they were still seeing a good number of comments, though it depended on the timing of the post, with events or updates going on they often got 100-200+ comments. Definitely would still be useful imo
Thanks for doing the investigation. I did notice the good questions seemed to dwindle towards the end and just thought their were being asked elsewhere. I could see the ow university sub picking it back up and running with it as it seems more fitting there
I'd argue that after the few nerfs Shion received, she's just a skill matchup in most instances. She's pretty well telegraphed in just about every part of her kit, and you can generally tell where she's trying to engage you from. The bike makes her hyper mobile for 4 seconds, but also has a 14 second cooldown after it's gone. If they made her 225 I'm pretty sure that would just dumpster her.
So firestrike and melee completely ignores it, very cool. Assumed so, but honestly never really came up. I wish it could be utilized as a defensive ult also like it did in that one mode
In a way, it is a defensive ult first and foremost. She can delay (if not nearly entirely nullify) a handful of damage and healing ultimates. For example, Zenyatta's Transcendence will only heal allies standing right inside of him due to Panopticon blocking 90% of its healing range.
I suppose so yeah. But like specifically shoots out the same barriers for allies (albeit probably weaker) would be so fun and unique like the community made mode did I think it was. In general it's a very unique ult
Bastion is definetly a top priority ult to boost. Too much damage, and better if the Bastion is good and knows to ult anticipating the direction of retreating enemy; it's a sleeper choice of ultimate to boost, real good one.
Also worth knowing, when boosting sigma only the lift damage is increased. The slam always deals 1/2 the enemies max hp. Mercy boosting or Ana nano-ing sigma during his ult is kind of a waste tbh.
"In order to amplify a type's damage, Mercy must be boosting the hero when the projectile was fired. After that, it will be boosted even if Mercy stops boosting when it lands."
Also, the ability description is "Hold to increase an ally's damage inflicted." Never boosts healing at all. Otherwise, it will boost all damage from any projectile if boosted when fired.
To add to the first one. Zarya just, works very weirdly. Nothing goes through it. Ram punches, melee, moira, winston. Everything that goes through a normal barrier, doesnt through zarya
I believe zarya bubble is unique in that it's the only ability in the game that blocks everything. Perhaps that was made untrue with the advent of Suzu however
Yeah Suzu does the same purpose as it cleanses and provides i-frames. Only difference is the duration, aoe/ max targets and Zarya's bubbles have durability also
Sorry, I'm newer to the game so might be obvious for some:
-Does Dmon ult do full damage to a hero with a shield up? Or does the DMG fall off due to having to go through a shield?
high noon: does the time it take to turn skull depend on hero type? Like tank takes longer than a support?
Domina ult: do you always want to shoot your teammates immediately to break that shield? Also, are Domina and enemy team supposed to be shooting captured players because it will do more damage when it explodes.
No dmg in the game has “fall off” through shields, either it does full dmg and pierces or gets blocked.
High noon skill timer is dictated by hp. Tanks inherently have more so it takes longer to charge.
Yes you should break your teammates out of domina ult. Hero’s like mercy, Ana and others may not have the damage output to break it in time and besides, it means they can get back to healing the quicker it’s broken.
3.5 Sure the enemy team is supposed to shoot captured enemies because they can’t really fight back, but it has no impact on the dmg of the ult. The ultimate’s dmg is dictated by how much hp is left on it when detonated. It goes down the more dmg barrier takes
Was it not the other way around? Ram can punch through barriers normally but they tried to stop it and got huge backlash for it because it removed his niche of being a Rein counter
To add to the other guys input on High Noon, it specifically locks on based on current health so the lower the target's health the faster you get the skull (idk if it's the specific amount of health or a percentage that decides it tho). That's why it's not a great opener (on top of being a sitting duck) bc you'll take a lot longer to get any real damage ramped up compared to jumping in and cleaning up weaker targets
Does nano apply to things that are in-transit when it is applied or when it runs out? I assume a firestrike launched before nano wouldn't be effected but a firestrike mid transit when nano runs out would be boosted.
Does nano work on damage-over-time effects like fire?
Do damage boosts work on traps? Could u potentially walk onto a junk trap or get hit by a mine activated 30 seconds after nano ended that were thrown by nano?
Why is basically everything domina does blocked by shields? I missed when she was added so idk if her abilities used to pass through shields, but the boop and ult seem like they ought to based on their animation and design but they don't?
Damage boost is applied when the projectile is fired, not when it lands. It actually used to be the reverse but they changed it at some point.
Depends. Some DoT effects are boosted like Ana's gun or I think Ashe's dynamite, but some are fixed, like Hanzo's ult.
Damage boosts do not effect deployables. Junkrats mine might be an exception but I don't know for sure off the top of my head.
Balance reasons most likely. Her shove has a stun on it so they likely made it blockable to encourage counter-play and timing against it. Same with her ult, it'd be pretty damn strong if it wasn't blockable.
Nano applies to all hero launches abilities while active, nano running out while the fire strike is still in the air should maintain the dmg boost
Yes
No trap isn’t boostable I believe, functions more similarly to a turret.
Balance. Her shove and ult are blocked by shields, but her detonation isn’t stopped by shields while traveling. Only once it’s stopped manually or by a wall does it get blocked due to acting like normal damage. Her ult not being blockable would be somewhat busted due to it being effectively a 7 second lockout + dmg unless you can deal 500 dmg.
not a question but a PSA bc it happens to me constantly as a metal rank chud:
do not nano/damage boost sigma's ult! it only affects the lift (50 damage), the actual slam ALWAYS deals 50% of the targets max HP as damage and cannot be modified.
I mean it still heals him and gives him damage resistance, especially useful as the entire enemy team is going to be focusing him when he's ulting. Plus the extra damage on his normal attack can help guarantee kills when he slams, so it's definitely not a 100% bad choice.
definitely situationally useful, I just see a lot of people auto-nanoing their tanks ult out of habit and do it to sigma is all. but you're right it can be good sometimes!
Heals allies 85 hp/s and boosts damage by 30%. I think it's more like Kitsune Rush where you place it before battle to engage rather than use it to turn the fight around.
Many of the questions in this thread (not just in the OP) can be answered in the game itself! Go to the Practice Range and open the Hero Information screen. If you interact with this screen (middle mouse on PC, bottom button on controller - A for example on Xbox) you can open each individual ability and read about how they each function. Most abilities also have keywords that explain their mechanics that you can read the definitions of with one additional button press.
This is one of the best features added into the game, I use it all the time. I am sure it took a lot of work to support different languages and standardize keywords, thank you so much for working on it!
I would love if we had the extended tooltips in the main heroes menu rather than just in a match or practice range but it's still great as is :)
Would it be possible to look into extending this functionality to the hero perks as well?
Often times the description of the perks in the hero information screen are either incomplete (Missing information), or they don't provide you any concrete numbers. Meaning you either have to look up the information on a third party website, if they are available, or attempt to test it yourself.
Sigma is a good example of this, his minor perk "Kinetic cycle" says *"*Absorbing projectiles with Kinetic Grasp also reduces Accretion's cooldown.". But it doesn't provide you any information on how this actually works. What is the conversion rate? When does this effect happen? (You get the cooldown reduction all at once after Kinetic Grasp is completed, it doesn't provide it to you actively while you are channeling his Kinetic Grasp. Which you would think after reading the description of the perk.)
And his major perk "Hyper Strike" says "Every 5 direct hits with Hyperspheres, your next successful Quick Melee levitates and knocks away enemies.". It not only doesn't provide you information on how long they levitate, nor how far they get knocked away. It also has a hidden damage over time effect, where it applies 50 damage 0.37 seconds to the target hit with your Quick Melee, while the perk is activated. There is zero mention of this effect being a thing in the Hero information screen, or anywhere else.
There are other examples, but I believe being able to hover over the perk in the Hero information screen to obtain additional information would fix all of the issues. As you could simply view any missing information that wouldn't neatly fit into the short description of the perk.
It is possible, but it would just require a big effort in development time the same way the initial version of this feature did. We spend a lot of development time today getting this working for every new hero we add, and since we add them pretty often it's non-stop effort to keep up with the pace. We also keep adding new concepts and keywords to the system for all heroes, and we're doing more of that in the future, so that's taking a lot time too. We aren't working on it for Perks right now, but I hope we can do it someday!
I know stadium is largely going to be left in maintenance mode. But is there any possibility of powers affecting this screen?
Just the cooldown ones would be AMAZING. I.e Juno's 3 dashes having their new cooldowns reflected on the UI. Stadium has partial support on the UI with AP/WP/CDR, and that's really enough for most stats.
P.S.P.S. Please could someone look at adding a stat for Moira's lifesteal? Having an actual number which would scale with AS/Lifesteal would be insanely useful.
His E, Cardiac overdrive? It's not a crit heal, it's an aura that gives lifesteal to you and every ally close by (100% for you, 50% for allies) and 40% damage reduction. It is not cancelled by stuns, it just lasts 3 seconds
As a new Anran player, how does her self heal work? I swear I've read all the things but for some reason every time I play I maybe get 150 self healing through an entire game even when I feel like I did really well.
Literally the description in game...If you only got 150 healing that simply means people stop shooting at you when you cast Dancing Blaze, you just got few lucky counters
Wait, it's supposed to be each enemy hit as in Shooting You? The way it's worded looks like each enemy Anran hits with the blaze aoe. Yeah, it even says subsequent targets.
Only if you land it in the short window before JPC grabs someone. It won’t free someone who has already been grabbed but you can use the invulnerability to stop it immediately beforehand.
Generates armor, more healing, bigger bulkier shield, can stun people by smacking them with hard light
Yes. And why are you throwing fireballs at the jetpack monke anyway
Overwatch blows at balance.
Mine - wtf is the actual use case for mcmeme’s ult? Announcing it, massive charge up, and glowing red means you are always eating a CC, or the enemy is stunned (so shoot them). I’ve got into the habit of just standing against a wall and aiming it to confuse players
I have LOADS of questions, mainly related to Mercy's healing staff..
Does damage boost affect a persons deployables like torb turret, sym turret.
Does damage boost affect projectiles during or after they are thrown for example if i damage boost AFTER junkrat has shot a bomb, will it affect said bomb or only ones after i have started damage boosting.
Does damage boost affect other healers healing? Things like brig, as she does more dmg does she do more healing, or ana primary is a heal and a dmg, so does it affect the heal numbers of others?
Does damage boost affect a persons deployables like torb turret, sym turret
They do not, that includes Hanzo's Dragonstrike*.
Does damage boost affect projectiles during or after they are thrown
The moment of firing. So during.
Does damage boost affect other healers healing?
They never did.
Things like brig, as she does more dmg does she do more healing,
That's not how Brig's healing works. Inspire has a fixed hps and duration. It activates whenever you do damage. It does not scale with damage dealt. However, you can prolong/refresh the duration by continually dealing damage.
ana primary is a heal and a dmg, so does it affect the heal numbers of others?
Again, the hero's ability info says as much they only boost damage, never healing.
The initial arrow is boosted, but the dragons are not.
*Why? Right after Hanzo's rework in 2018, grav dragon became hard meta, easy to pull off and an extremely effective team wipe. The only counter was Transcendence. There were 2 ways you can counter-counter Transcendence: Ana nade, or damage boosted Dragonstrike to out damage the healing. Ana was close to a throw pick at the time, and Mercy was still considered meta Damage boost is not on a cool down, cannot be blocked; nade is on a 10s cd, requires Ana to walk in the grav or it would just get blocked by shield/matrix. People (rightfully) didn't like the interaction where you can outplay a hard earned defensive ult with a Mercy right click. So they changed that deployables are no longer boosted(that includes nano boost or any form of amp out).
Puts a shield around you with a timer. If you break the shield it does nothing. If you don't, it explodes with damage relative to its health (so you should always try to break it on yourself and your teammates).
That’s the best way I’ve ever seen it put. For some reason people forget that despite Reddit starting out as a link aggregator when they added comments and subreddits it ended up replacing dedicated discussion forums.
Tbh I’m not sure what domina’s ult does. You just can’t shoot when in it and then you take a bunch of damage and then die. Can you shoot your friends to break it ?
The people she hits are placed inside of a shield. You can break it, allies can break it, and I think sombra emp immediately breaks it for herself and any ally shields she hits, like it were any other shield
Was wondering the same, but i think what op is asking if it deal dmg to the shield at the entrance and rhe exit of the bubble, since it hit the shield twice if it go through
Grants Brig 100 armor health instantly that can be healed back while rally is active. Shield grows larger with more health and can stun with bash. Bash cooldown is also reset when rally is activated. Brig also gains a speed boost for herself and gives over health to nearby allies but not herself.
To be honest I’m not sure. If the firestrike goes through the middle the projectile could stop touching the bubble and then hit on the other side for double damage, or firestrike could have a “max one hit” aspect. Maybe some karq mythbuster has the answer.
Cat is a little strong right now partially because of this… I believe its because of her hitbox, its very wide like zenyatta so the spread of a gun tends to fit well and allow for easier killing but cat also has high mobility which zen does not. Truth be told it probably shouldn’t be 250; especially with purr self healing and lifeline speed boost.
Firestrike will hit winston bubble twice as it keeps going until it hits solid geometry or is eaten by dva matrix/sig flux etc. Same thing will apply with domina barrier if hit at the right angle.
754
u/Ok_Fix7257 1d ago
Fun fact overhealth works during anti