‘Overwatch’ PTR Finds: Upcoming Doomfist Hero, Winston, Roadhog Buff, Ana Debuff

Overwatch PTR Build 1.8 is now live, and it brings new buffs for tanks Roadhog and Winston, and a debuff for Ana. New hints also suggest Doomfist is coming.

For the unfamiliar, PTR or Public Test Region is a unique crowd testing solution developed by Blizzard to make sure that all patches and new features are spotless on public release. This PTR is a pool of 10,000 Overwatch players who gain access to new features and fixes before the patch is rolled out to the rest of the some 25 million Overwatch-playing community on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Blizzard game director for Overwatch Jeff Kaplan explains the PTR via Applause.

“The most important thing when we patch Overwatch to all of the live services is that the game is stable and works correctly and that there is as few bugs or crashes or glitches as possible in the game. The PTR really lets us iron all of these issues out. We will put up versions of the game frequently on the PTR. Sometimes it has a lot of issues and it allows us to solve them very quickly.”

So if you’re on the PTR (or just a concerned Overwatch player who doesn’t want to get left off the loop), Overwatch’s Bill Warnecke and Geoff Goodman have announced via the Overwatch forums that PTR build 1.8.0.0.34524 is now live. This build, which will roll out as a patch to the rest of the world as soon as it’s stable, will bring the following changes to two of our favorite tanks.

Roadhog
Scrap Gun
a) Spread decreased by 20 percent

Chain Hook
b) Targets are now pulled to a location 3.5 meters away, up from 2 meters.
c) Cooldown increased from 6 to 8

Winston
Critical hit volume reduced by 15 percent

Goodman notes about these hero changes.

“The Roadhog changes overall reduce the power of his hook a bit, but his gun is now more effective when not using the hook.

“Winston’s head hit volume was just abnormally big, making him take more damage than he otherwise should. This change brings it more in line with other heroes.”

Goodman also confirms in another Overwatch thread that they’re putting a cap on Ana’s Nanoboost, in response to a circulating video that made Bastion basically immortal after they implemented the damage reduction of 35 percent on his sentry mode.

“We’ve actually implemented a damage resistance cap [for Ana’s Nanoboost], but it didn’t make the initial PTR build. It should be in the latest PTR build from this morning, however. Currently the cap is set to 70%, but it is easily adjustable if needed.”

The video of the immortal bastion could be watched below. See how Bastion only takes 144 damage from D.Va’s self-destruct sequence on the newly buffed sentry mode paired with Ana’s Nanoboost. After the hard cap implemented on the recent PTR build, the damage will now go up from 144 to 300.

And in other hero news, an Overwatch player is noticing more Easter Eggs on the PTR, which if put together, could hint that Doomfist could be the next hero to join the Overwatch family.

If you look hard enough, as hard as YouTuber Arekkz Gaming did, you’ll notice Doomfist references all over the Overwatch map Numbani. Three new changes on the Overwatch PTR, however, make more references to Doomfist—more than subtle, this time, actually.

First, the opening music of Overwatch on the PTR is different from the opening theme of everyone else’s version. Apparently, the new opening music on the PTR is confirmed by dataminers to be the theme of Doomfist, which was heard on the first cinematic trailer for Overwatch. So why change the song to Doomfist’s, Blizzard?

Next, another Doomfist reference was spotted hidden in the files of Numbani. If you’ll notice, one of the payloads at Numbani has a glass casing carrying Doomfist’s gauntlets inside. Arekkz and other dataminers, however, found that there’s a file on the latest PTR build for Overwatch that depicts a wire mesh for an alternate version of the payload. This alternate version shows a broken glass casing, which could only mean one thing, of course: Doomfist’s gauntlet will be forcibly taken from inside.

In this video, @Arekkz takes a look at the recent Doomfist hints on the #Overwatch PTR. https://t.co/v6RXTFJfbl pic.twitter.com/DHnTIHHGbs

— VG247 (@VG247) February 11, 2017

Last but not the least, the hero gallery at the Overwatch PTR is different from our normal hero gallery. While Arekkz cautions that this may be a bit of over-reading, it is undeniably interesting to note that the portraits of the Overwatch heroes on the PTR hero gallery are not symmetrically distributed, compared to the original hero gallery. On the PTR hero gallery, Arekkz has noticed that there is a bit of space on the lower left side of Reinhardt that is wide enough to fit in just one more hero portrait.

While these could all reference to Doomfist, however, there is a chance that Doomfist could not actually be coming as a hero. There could be another Overwatch event related to Doomfist, or maybe an introduction of a new Overwatch hero that works for or with Doomfist, and not Doomfist per se.

You can decide for yourself and watch Arekkz Gaming’s full video below.

For more information on how to join the Overwatch PTR, you can check the official Overwatch PTRlanding page here.

[Featured Image by Blizzard]