First info on Hanzo’s new ability: Rapid Shot
Game director Jeff Kaplan revealed the first info on Rapid Shot - the new ability that will replace Hanzo’s Scatter Arrow - and shared an early concept art.
During the developer update of February 14th, Jeff Kaplan announced that the Overwatch team was working on a new ability to replace Hanzo’s Scatter Arrow. They tried to address some issues with the present ability, such as the frustrating foot-shots, but any change ended up being a nerf for the hero.
Afterwards, he talked about a new skill with which Hanzo could fire arrows in rapid succession. Lead designer Geoff Goodman joined the conversation in the Blizzard forums:
“Currently it lasts up to 6 seconds, and allows you to fire about 3 arrows per second (up to 6 total). Each arrow fires at “full power” but deals only 80 damage (instead of his normal 125).”
The dev team continued working on it during the past month, therefore we don’t know yet the final results, but today Jeff communicated some news to the community:
“We’ve done a lot of playtesting of his new rapid shot ability (that’s the working name). We’re happy with that, the sonic arrow changes and the increase in speed of his arrows. It’s all feeling pretty good.
Before it goes to our VFX and animation team, we do concept art. Here is one version of what it might look like by Ben Zhang (DISCLAIMER: this is just concept art – when we get into implementation things can and will change).”
Rapid Shot concept art - Image: Blizzard
Some fans believe that the ability is a little too obvious for the opponents, but Jeff pointed out that it is intentional because “You need to know when Hanzo is in that mode”
He also explained some changes to Sonic Arrow, which are helpful to enhance the map awareness of the team:
“Sonic Arrow cooldown is significantly faster while the radius and duration have been slightly reduced. End result: you can move it around more.”
Finally, he confirmed the new “dash”, without revealing further information.
According to the developer update, it is a quick horizontal leap that allows Hanzo to leap in whatever direction he is facing. The ability can be used to disengage or to reach cool places of the map, and should have a small cooldown to balance the huge boost in mobility.
Header image: Blizzard
