Hanzo's Scatter Arrow replacement is already getting nerfed

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His rapid fire Storm Arrows will no longer one-shot 200 hp heroes.

Overwatch's Hanzo had a rework recently, finally replacing his much-hated Scatter Arrow with a new ability: Storm Arrows. When Storm Arrows is activated, Hanzo's next six arrows fire instantly, without having to be charged up, but at reduced damage than a regular fully-charged shot.

Now that the new Hanzo has been in the wild for a bit, players are finding the new Storm Arrows to be just as frustrating as the old Scatter Arrow. The biggest complaint about Scatter Arrow is that it could one-shot almost every hero in the game by firing it at their feet, making all the scattered shots hit the target at once. The new Storm Arrows are frustrating to play against for similar reasons—even at reduced damage (80 instead of 125 for a regular fully-charged shot), Hanzo can one-shot 200 hp heroes if he headshots them with a Storm Arrow while Mercy is Damage Boosting him. 

"We’ve been testing some nerfs internally and have decided to make a change for the upcoming patch," Overwatch principal designer Geoff Goodman wrote on the forums. "We’re reducing the damage per arrow from 80 to 70, which not only drops them out of one-shot territory for 200 hp heroes (w/ dmg boost), but also drops them out of one-shot range of 150 heroes such as Tracer and D.Va pilot."

Goodman says the team is also monitoring Hanzo's ultimate charge generation rate, as his Dragonstrike is an extremely powerful ult that is devastating in combination with Zarya's Graviton Surge. They're not ready to make a change on that just yet though.

"We’ve talked about this as well but changing a hero's damage already affects their ult charge. If it still seems too frequent after Storm Arrows lands in a good place we can look at it again," he said.

Goodman said this change should land on the Overwatch PTR soon.

Bo Moore
Bo Moore

As the former head of PC Gamer's hardware coverage, Bo was in charge of helping readers better understand and use PC hardware. He also headed up the buying guides, picking the best peripherals and components to spend your hard-earned money on. He can usually be found playing Overwatch, Apex Legends, or more likely, with his cats. He is now IGN's resident tech editor and PC hardware expert.