Blizzard is Nerfing Torbjörn’s Turret on Consoles

When it comes to competitive gameplay, balance is key. With everything from weapons to abilities changing how a character feels and plays, making sure that no one character has better stats and can wipe the floor with other characters. This gets even more complicated when the same game is played on consoles and PCs, offering not only a different way to play but different factors to consider for balancing a characters abilities. Blizzard has shown that they’ve noticed this and decided to nerf Torbjörn’s turret, but only on consoles.

Jeff Kaplan, the game director for Overwatch, explained the decision on Reddit stating that the reason for the change was due to the engineers high win rate on consoles. The explanation is simple, he wins too much. With a win rate of 68% on consoles, instead of the 59.6% experience with the same characters. The teams reaction is that “in an upcoming patch we [Blizzard] will reduce the damage done by Torbjörn’s turret by 30% on Xbox One and Ps4. PC will remain unchanged”.

This will be the first example of the console and PC versions varying, a big change considering the recent calls for cross play compatibility pitting both consoles and PC gamers against one another.