'Overwatch' patch nerfs Roadhog and Ana, improves kill feed

The latest Overwatch patch not only introduced the Year of the Rooster event, it introduced a few changes to the main game including hero balance tweaks and a couple new features that players have been asking for.

Patch 1.7 came out on all platforms Tuesday, bringing with it changes to Ana, D.Va, Lúcio, Roadhog and Sombra, as well as an expanded communication wheel, and ability icons and headshot signifiers in the kill feed.

Communication wheel

Overwatch now gives you more ways to communicate and personalize your characters with the communication wheel, allowing players to equip up to four emotes, sprays and voice lines on each hero. Imagine equipping four different sprays so you can leave a mark for any given situation.

You can now also bind individual emotes, sprays and voice lines to any button you want for even faster communication.

Kill information

One thing players have been asking for is information on exactly how they died, and now they have it. The kill feed in the top right will now display an icon for exactly which ability took you down so you can better understand why you died.

Along with that, the kill feed will now indicate which kills were from headshots with a red icon so that everyone can see how amazing you are with McCree's revolver.

Hero changes

Ana

• Biotic Grenade damage and healing duration reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds and healing boost decreased by 50 percent.

Ana's Biotic Grenade is really good -- she's able to damage enemies and heal friends simultaneously. Perhaps a little too good, consider that the duration of its effects have been reduced by a second. With the additional nerf on its heal effects, Ana players will have to focus a bit more on shooting allies with her Biotic Rifle.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

D.Va

• Health increased from 200 to 400 and armor decreased from 400 to 200.

• Fusion Cannons' bullet damage decreased from 3 to 2 but number of bullets per shot increased from 8 to 11.

One of the more contentious changes to the Overwatch hero lineup, D.Va's survivability has been reduced, making her less effective as a damage sponge now that 200 points of her health bar no longer regenerate automatically. The changes to her Fusion Cannon make her auto attack a bit more consistent, though.

Lúcio

• Lúcio can use the Backwards Wall Ride to start wall riding while moving backwards.

Roadhog

• Chain Hook now pulls targets directly in front of Roadhog (rather than straight to him), except in cases where Roadhog drastically rotates.

• Chain Hook targets are now released if they leave Roadhog’s line of sight before being pulled and now checks line of sight from Roadhog's position rather than the hook's position.

Roadhog's Chain Hook was a little bit unreasonable, pulling enemies through walls and across insane distances if the conditions were just right. That won't happen any longer, making the Chain Hook more consistent and reasonable.

Sombra

• Hack cooldown has been reduced from 12 seconds to 8 seconds and the time it takes to hack a target has been decreased from 1 second to 0.8 seconds.

Sombra relies heavily on her Hack ability to be an effective teammate, but sometimes it's tough to actually disable enemies' abilities. By reducing the cooldown of Hack and making it affect enemies faster, Sombra can be a better team player and more viable pick.