Game Director of Overwatch Jeff Kaplan announced on Reddit that Torbjörn, the turret-building class, is getting nerfed in an forthcoming update. “We will reduce the damage done by Torbjörn’s turret by 30 percent on Xbox One and PS4. PC will remain unchanged,” he said, giving a release estimate of mid-to-late July. A 30 percent damage reduction is massive, and will certainly decrease Torbjörn’s effectiveness, perhaps even his necessity, for an Overwatch team playing on consoles.
Kaplan’s announcement came in response to a post on Reddit by Canadlaw complaining about Torbjörn, which received more than 600 upvotes. Canadlaw’s comments sum up a lot of the complaints about Torbjörn on consoles:
Everything about this game is fun EXCEPT for the fact that Torbjorn is in it. He just completely ruins the game for everyone. I have a 51% win rate overall, so I’m just pretty average at the game. However, my Torb win is 80, and I’ve played him a bunch so that’s not just a couple wins. Every other match is basically whether a team can successfully turtle [a competitive game strategy focused on defense instead of offense] with their Torb (or, more likely, your 2 or 3 Torbs). If correctly combined with a Reinhart and some good players, some maps are virtually unwinnable on attack.
This isn’t as much of a problem on PC because of the difference in playing with a controller versus a keyboard and mouse. Keyboard and mouse is more accurate and thus the accuracy of Torbjörn’s turrets don’t outweigh that of the average player. However, on consoles, Torbjörn’s turrets are far more accurate than the average player. Coordination via voice chat is, anecdotally, also less common on console than on PC, so it is harder to plan out attacks to counter Torbjörn.