It may surprise you to know that Hanzo’s Scatter Arrow, one of the Overwatch character’s most-contentious abilities, has been buffed. It may surprise you slightly less, however, to learn that the buff was an accident.
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Hanzo’s Scatter Arrow is a bouncing projectile that ricochets off walls and can hit several targets at once. It’s very unpopular, and is a significant focus of Blizzard’s rework of the character, which is due next update. Unfortunately, Blizzard ended up buffing it in the game’s latest patch, reducing its cooldown from ten seconds to just eight. That wasn’t a very popular move.
Happily, it’s been confirmed that the change was in fact an accident. On a post on the Overwatch forums, game developer Geoff Goodman stated that the change is “unintended.” He said “as some people have guessed, this is an accidental change that came from his big changes coming next update.”
That’ll come as very good news for some players, but the bad news is that while Blizzard are considering reverting the change, they might not end up doing so. Goodman says “there’s a chance we end up leaving it as-is for now” as the update in which they plan to change Hanzo is due relatively soon anyway.