Overwatch PTR has disabled Reinhardt, but added new visual effects for shields

Reinhardt nerf

If you’ve been playing on Overwatch’s Public Test Realm, you may have noticed that Reinhardt hasn’t been showing up. That’s because the hammer-wielding hero has been disabled on the PTR to prevent crashes.

While players test out the new rework to Torbjorn, which changes the way his turret works and strips out the salvage system, Reinhardt has been put on ice. DblTap reported Saturday that Blizzard developers explained that he’s been disabled on the PTR because of server crash issues he was causing.

“Hey everyone,” wrote Overwatch developer Romain Dijoux in a post to the Overwatch forums. “As my colleague Bill [Warnecke, lead software engineer] noted in another post, Reinhardt is currently disabled on the PTR due to a server crash that can happen when he’s used.”

Dijoux wrote that the team is hoping to have a fix out for Reinhardt early next week, hopefully by Monday.

In the meantime, the PTR is also testing out new visual effects for shields, DblTap reports. Characters including Orisa, Brigitte, and Winston all have flashing effects on their shields when the shields’ health gets low.

In the meantime, it’s probably a good time to hop on the PTR to check out the major changes coming to Torbjorn, who now has a new ability called Overload. Naturally, all the elements of the character rework are subject to change, but Torb has some significant tweaks in the pipeline.