Overwatch: NVIDIA Reflex technology and balancing for Genji, Reaper, Zarya and more

Overwatch: NVIDIA Reflex technology and balancing for Genji, Reaper, Zarya and more

Overwatch

Although it is not destined to receive new heroes - for those we will have to wait for the second chapter - Overwatch continues to be constantly updated by Blizzard. In fact, in these hours it has seen a new rebalancing of the Heroes, as well as the arrival of a new technology.

A new patch already available for players of all platforms has intervened on the attacking heroes Genki, Mei , Pharah and Repear, and on tanks Zarya and Sigma. The Cybernetic Ninja's shurikens now boast a reduced cooldown, at the cost of a 15% increased ultra cost. Mei can heal faster, while Pharah's thrusters take longer to charge, and Reaper has seen the bullet damage of his hellmouths increase. The Experimental Barrier Sigma, on the other hand, recharges faster, while Zarya now consumes more energy. More details to follow.

March 11 Hero Balance

Genji

Shuriken: Cooldown reduced from 0.75 to 0.68. Dragon Sword: Ultra cost increased by 15%. Mei

Hibernation: Heals per second increased from 37.5 to 50. Pharah

General: Thruster regeneration speed increased from 35 to 43. Reaper

Hellmouths: Damage per bullet increased from 5.5 to 6. Sigma

Experimental Barrier: Cooldown reduced from 2.5 to 2 seconds. Zarya

General: Energy consumption increased from 1.6 to 1.8 per second. The news, we said, does not end here, since Blizzard has also implemented support for NVIDIA Reflex in the PTS for PC. This technology allows owners of the latest video cards in the house (from the 900 series onwards) to significantly reduce the latency of command input. As you can see in the attached graph below, on RTX 3080 it decreases from 26 ms to 16 ms, while on RTX 2060 Super from 47 ms to 24 ms. On the less performing GTX 1660 Super, however, the latency drops from 63 ms to 31 ms. You can test the feature by selecting the "Public Test Region" option from the Overwatch tab in the Blizzard Battle.net client, where it is currently in testing. NVIDIA Reflex is also available for Rainbow Six Siege.





Nvidia brings its latency-reducing tech Reflex to Overwatch

An update to Overwatch’s Public Test Region (PTR) is bringing Nvida’s latency-reduction tech, called Reflex, to the popular esports title (via Engadget). The tech aims to help reduce the amount of time between when you click your mouse, and when you see the resulting action on screen, making the game feel more responsive. The fact that it’s coming to Overwatch was announced back in January, but it’s now available to players who can access the PTR, and who have the latest Nvidia drivers.


If you haven’t been able to get your hands on one of Nvidia’s latest graphics cards, there’s still hope that you’ll be able to try Reflex out for yourself in Overwatch — the tech was announced alongside the 30-series graphics cards, but works on cards going back to the GTX 900-series.


Nvidia has an incredibly in-depth explainer on how the tech works, but the very surface-level overview is that the game will work with your GPU to make sure that frames are made “just-in-time” to be shown on your monitor, so you should theoretically always be seeing the latest information.


It’s worth noting that latency can have a few meanings, especially when it comes to online games. Reflex isn’t designed to help improve your network latency, so if you’ve got a bad internet connection it probably won’t help improve your gaming experience all that much.


Whether the difference in latency will be noticeable will depend a lot on the type of equipment you’re using, how much better it is, and how eagle-eyed you are. Still, if you’re one of the testers, it’s probably worth turning it on to try it out, and seeing if you notice the improvement. For everyone else, it’s something to look forward to trying out in a future update.


AMD also has a feature meant to reduce input latency on its graphics cards, called Radeon Anti-Lag, which can also be turned on for Overwatch.