Overwatch 2 boasted a relatively successful launch for its new hero, Hazard, but a gap in win rates between PC and console has the devs hinting at a potential change.
Season 14 saw the release of a brand new Tank hero, Hazard, a dive tank who is designed to hop into the backline, wreak havoc, and return to his team. Hazard was a welcome addition to the Tank roster, a role often perceived as neglected, and his launch was an overall success for Overwatch 2’s PC community.
As indicated by Overwatch 2’s director, Aaron Keller, Hazard had a 50% win rate during his initial playtest, which increased to 55-56% for his official release depending on what rank you’re looking at. The Overwatch developers aim for higher win rates for newer heroes, so this was expected and indicated a positive trend for the new character.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case for Hazard across all systems. There’s an alarming statistic for Hazard that has the devs hinting at potential change for the character overall.
Overwatch 2’s Hazard has a win rate gap between PC and console
While Hazard’s win rate is very high for PC, there was a sharp decline in win rate for Overwatch 2’s console communities. Due to the difference in aiming mechanics between the two systems, Overwatch 2 heroes often see a difference in win rate and strength depending on which platform you play on.
“Before the balance patch this week, he had about 3-4% lower win rate on console platforms than PC,” said Keller in a recent blog post. “This is sometimes the reality for heroes with leaping mechanics in Overwatch 2 on console, as we have seen the same phenomenon with Winston in the past.”
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As Hazard often needs to make wide shifts in aim due to his leaps, his win rate is predictably lower on console. It’s worth noting that a 3-4% lower win rate from 55-56% still lands him above 51% on average. When compared to win rates for other heroes on a stat site like Overbuff, a 51%+ win rate would land him as comfortably above average.
Hazard recently received a relatively minor hotfix nerf to his Ultimate cost, so it’s yet to be seen whether or not this change will impact him significantly on PC or console.
More than likely, any changes to Hazard’s gameplay to improve his performance on console will be console-specific. Overwatch has a history of console-specific changes before. During Ana’s release, due to her aim-intensive mechanics, a “friendly aim assist strength” slider was added to help Ana players on console heal their teammates more reliably.
If the Overwatch 2 devs were to make any number of changes to Hazard, these likely would not be console-specific.
