Overwatch has turned Reaper into an aggressively sneaky rascal
From ambusher to trickster
When I first saw Reaper, I thought "that's the Overwatch shootyman for me". If you look past the whole 'try-hard 13 year old's version of cool' deal, you'll see a stupidly high DPS assassin who can teleport and become temporarily immortal. But then if you looked past that, you'd realise the teleport was slow and left you achingly vulnerable, which meant it wasn't much use in a fight. No more!
Thanks to yesterday's buff, Reaper's teleport takes nearly half as long, makes you invulnerable while you materialise, and keeps working if you get knocked back. AND it's got a slightly shorter cooldown. I am a fan.
The update went live alongside the Storm Rising co-op event, which runs until May 6th.
The patch also makes Junkrat's bombs bounce less but explode sooner, and lets Symmettra place her teleporter over breakable objects. But none of the other patch notes matter to me*.
I've played one game with nouveau Reaper, and I already see fights with him in a different way. He always had the tools to sneak up on groups and dish out unseemly damage, but those tools weren't fantastic at letting him escape. Now that his Shadow Step is so much faster, you can pull tricks like ducking behind a corner and quickly teleporting to the other side of the street. I've managed that precisely once before, pre-buff (much to the shock of both me and my pursuer), but in the game I just played I escaped ten situations in a row using similar shenanigans. The buff has turned a straightforward ambush character into a trickster, and I couldn't be happier.
Well I could, because Shadow Step now gets interrupted by Zarya's Graviton Surge and Junkrat's Steel Trap. I'm also a bit disappointed you can't jump off something and then activate Shadow Step - you can only teleport mid-air if someone starts punting you around after you press the button. But that's fine. One of my favourite games just tweaked a character to be fundamentally more suited to my tastes. This is a good Wednesday.
Reddit user "itsjieyang" has put together a handy visual demonstration.
*Apart from the bug fix that addresses "an issue with the steam not rising correctly from Ana’s cup in the Tea Time emote". I'm surprised no one noticed the game wasn't playable, tbh.