1.8 Patch Notes reveal defender spawn penalties – Overwatch
Defender spawn penalties now apply on Assault, Escort and Hybrid maps.
Amongst all of the hero tweaks and game features that we’ve known about for weeks now, Blizzard has managed to slip in one very important change for the way spawn times will work on certain maps.
Here’s the very small section of the patch notes that could end up making a massive difference to the way certain games play out:
“When attackers outnumber defenders while taking a control point on Assault, Escort and Assault/Escort maps, the defenders’ respawn time will slowly increase until it hits a maximum value or the defense manages to gain the upper hand.”
What this means is that on maps where you have to either move a payload or attack a point, you’ll see fewer defenders rushing lemming-like towards the objective, in order to prevent the capture timer or checkpoint from being claimed while the rest of their team rush to catch up.
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Each time they do sacrifice themselves to the point, they’ll face an increasingly long spawn timer – assuming there is a greater number of attackers on the point, that is.
Here are the guys from OverwatchCentral discussing the change:
This should provide a little extra capacity for an attacking team to make extra – meaningful – pushes against the objective in question. It’s a clever change that could potentially have a massive impact, and we’re looking forward to seeing how this affects the for ourselves!