It's not a return to six-on-six, but it's clear the Overwatch 2 developers knew something had to change quickly after releasing one of the most unpopular balance updates in recent memory.

Season 11’s midseason patch on July 9 brought widespread buffs to tanks, among other changes, and made the game feel awful to play for many. I can personally attest that ranked felt less balanced than ever, with almost every game feeling like my team was either overwhelming our enemies or just getting steamrolled by the opposition, with little room for balanced games. And the core characters of every one of those games were almost exclusively tank characters, with Maugas and Ramattras flourishing. Today, Blizzard has addressed some of those concerns, most notably with Ramattra, and further toned down Pharah, who continues to prove to be a pain in the ass for many players to deal with.

Hotfix now live, addresses a number of outliers we saw in 2.11. 1. Overall, the patch achieved our goal of finding a better middle ground for tank survivability compared to pre- and post-Season 9. https://t.co/5l8f9cG8Rf

https://x.com/GW_Alec/status/1811827444812513473While the nerfs came quickly, they’re by no means drastic changes. Only five heroes are affected, and Blizzard apparently doesn’t view Mauga as the problem child players seem to think he is, with his hypercharged Cardiac Overdrive and more burst-y stomp. Instead, lead gameplay designer Alec Dawson indicated that the dev team was happy to see “a better middle ground for tank survivability,” and suggested that the team play a longer game to see how all of the changes from such a big patch impact things — even if that patch did inspire a renewed push to simply change the game back to the six-vs-six experience of the original Overwatch.