I've always been a fan of how Blizzard tends to care for balance in their games. In Overwatch, reducing the damage of a DPS's shots by one can be significant to balancing an overpowered hero. At the same time, mildly increasing the shield provided by a support can make this hero more valuable and increase its pick rate. In the past, we have seen significant changes made to Mercy, Zenyatta, D.VA and many more. But recently Blizzard decided to look at a hero that was long forgotten in competitive play and generally tilt-inducing in Comp and QP, and I’m so happy about that!

Torbjörn is back with a huge rework changing his turret functionality, eliminating his armor packs, making his previous ultimate a basic skill, and adding a whole new ultimate. With that said, it’s time to go over the Torbjörn rework and how this affects his viability and playstyle. For the purpose of this guide, I will keep it simple by explaining the general functionality changes of the skills without going into specific numbers.

Rivet Gun

Torbjörn's basic attack consisted in projectiles with falloff that made landing consistent shots or headshots complicated. His right click (Rivet Burst) was a very strong source of damage but it had a huge spread making it useless once you were a few feet from your enemy. To improve his direct source of damage, Blizzard increased the speed of his projectiles while reducing his reload time. His Rivet Gun's spread pattern was also reduced making it still a useful tool for dealing damage to enemies at a short to medium distance.

Overload

What used to be Torbjörn's ultimate has now replaced his Armor Pack ability and I think this is great. The old Molten Core has now become Overload, a skill that:

• Gives Torbjörn temporary armor
• Increases movement speed
• Increases attack speed and reload
• Increases Hammer attack

The skill now has a short cooldown meaning that it can be used a lot more times in a game and to me, the main value this skill adds to the hero is survivability. While the old Torbjörn would have a rough time in a one on one against most heroes, Overload can turn the tides in Torbjörn’s favor in many one on one fights and even makes survival possible when being caught off guard by an enemy flank.

An important fact that I can’t leave out about overload is that it no longer affects your turret.

Molten Core

The simplest way of putting it is that Torbjörn's new ultimate makes his claw create pools of lava. This new skill gives Torbjörn 10 rounds that can be shot shoot to create pools of molten slag on the ground where they land. These pools deal damage over time and rhis damage is significantly higher on heroes with armor. Another neat factor about these special rounds is that they will bounce off walls, so you can shoot these from safe angles or behind enemies to prevent their escape.

This new skill can be very valuable in 2CP maps, specifically on point B because it can halt respawning enemies from even exciting their spawn gates to contest the point.

Deploy Turret

You'll notice how I left Torbjörn's Deploy Turret ability for last and that's because it's the change I'm most excited about. Gone are the days of hammering away to get your turret to level 2 and choosing between shooting or keeping your turret at high health. Torbjörn's new turret is now thrown and will automatically build into what previously was his level 2 turret. Torbjörn can now manually destroy his turret to replace it for his next fight and since its now a launchable object it can be placed in areas that were previously impossible.

These are all the basics about the new turret but the single factor I'm most excited about is that your turret will redirect its damage to the target you are attacking. This means that the enemy team can no longer send a shielded Reinhardt to draw aggro while his team members destroy your precious turret from a different angle. That also means that that sneaky Pharah that always waits for your turret to focus other players in a team fight to fly in will have to think twice from now on.

As all hero reworks, we still have to see how these changes will actually affect Torbjörn's pick rate once the craze is over, but I feel the hero is in a much better spot right now and if he's not where he needs to be just yet he's getting a lot closer. I hope I managed to shed some light on the new Torb. and that you all are as excited as me about the prospect of seeing him used in competitive Overwatch. Till the next one!

Like our content? Support us by getting our merchandise in our shop