Developer Comment: Zarya's secondary fire didn't benefit much from the projectile size changes in Season 9 since it's mostly aimed at the ground. We're increasing its damage to keep it feeling effective relative to her primary fire beam.
Developer Comments: Increasing the health on these barriers also means the total energy Zarya can gain per barrier is increased, so this is a boost to both her offensive and defensive capabilities.
Developer Comment: We have been increasing the value of some tank ultimate abilities to account for the increased health pools and it helps to make the decision of when to counter-swap more of an interesting tradeoff. Graviton Surge was still very useful to set up combos with other ultimate abilities but we want to makes sure it's powerful enough on its own.
Developer Comments: Please don’t burst Zarya’s bubble, no matter how big it gets.
Developer Comments: Please don’t burst Zarya’s bubble, no matter how big it gets.
Developer Comments: Zarya is using the barrier on her allies more often to peel or initiate combination plays, which makes the ability more team-oriented and less self-serving. This change preserves that interesting choice by keeping the cooldown reduced when used on an ally while targeting her energy sustain instead, which has increased significantly with the bonuses to the barrier health and size.
Developer Comment: Zarya often spends both barrier charges on herself as it is usually more consistent for building energy. The change to Projected Barrier incentivizes using the barrier for her allies more often.
Early player sentiment predicted Zarya as one of the weakest solo tanks in 5v5, although her high damage potential and barrier uptime have proven to be extremely effective. For opponents, feedback has indicated this can feel as though Zarya has very limited windows of vulnerability, which feels difficult to deal with when combined with her ramping damage potential.
These changes will reduce the barrier uptime, making it slightly more difficult for her to gain energy and will provide enemies with more time to deal damage to her.