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Overwatch Patch Reworks Lúcio, Adds New Path In Eichenwalde Map
Lúcio has long been the healer of choice for Overwatch players, even as Ana and Mercy have stepped in and out of favor in the competitive and casual scenes. However, while the best Lúcios could pull off some incredible feats, his effectiveness often relied on him simply standing there, healing or speed-boosting everyone.
Blizzard hopes to address this issue of passivity in its latest patch, now live on the PC-only Public Test Realm. The patch reduces the effective range of the character's auras from 30 to 10 meters, but makes them 50 percent stronger. Additionally, he is now faster while wall-riding, and his Sonic Amplifier alt-fire now factors in your aim a bit better when blasting foes away from him.
The Eichenwalde map has also been reworked, adding a new path near the attacking team's starting area that leads to the capture point. A few minor changes also include reduced draw games in Competitive Play through a system that accounts for how much of a point each team has captured on maps like Eichenwalde and Hanamura, as well as the ability to save custom game settings as presets, making it easier to start new servers without having to tinker with the default settings again.
[Source: Overwatch Official Blog]
Our Take
I don't play much Lúcio, but he was definitely someone I went to on occasion when no one else chose a healer, simply because of his ability to just sit there and heal. His aura won games, so I'll be interested to see how the meta shakes up now that players will have to be more mindful of their positioning in order to heal up. As a Roadhog player, I don't mind (I'll heal myself, thanks). But I'm actually more excited about the Eichewalde map change, since the initial capture point there was the hardest bottleneck to break for many teams. It's a minor change (just a doorway on the right side of the bridge that wasn't there before), but it should help players find more ways around blockades. That final payload point is no slouch, though, so hopefully the new path will make for better matches.
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