Cassidy’s Magnetic Grenade ability rework at the start of Season 5 of Overwatch 2 is terrorizing the community. After getting rid of many crowd-control abilities with the move to the sequel, players call this change an overstep in stopping characters from moving freely.
The big problem stems from the new effect, Hindered. Not only does Magnetic Grenade slow enemies by 30%, but this new status prevents heroes from using any mobile abilities. For flankers, Tracer can’t Blink or Recall, Genji can’t Dash, and Sombra can’t Translocate. Characters like Echo, Mercy, and Pharah drop out of the sky because they can’t fly anymore. Even tanks like Reinhardt, Wrecking Ball, and Doomfist are stopped from charging, rolling, and rocket punching.
After this change, Magnetic Grenade has supplanted itself as one of the strongest abilities in Overwatch 2. It’s on a 10-second cooldown currently, which is not terrible, but the ease of use is alarming. As long as an enemy is close to you, the grenade tracks them down. The damage was reduced, but anyone who decides to be in your vicinity becomes an easy target for your team to kill.
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After our testing with Cassidy’s new Magnetic Grenade, we tend to agree with the community that it is too strong currently. This one move simply takes all flankers out of the game, similar to how Brigitte did when she was introduced in Overwatch 1. Even if you compare this to Sombra’s Hack, at least that ability has a short time before you can activate it. Magnetic Grenade is too quick of a deployable move.
While we don’t expect Blizzard to remove the Hindered status anytime soon, we think some scaling back on Magnetic Grenade should be coming. Maybe increasing the cooldown, lowering the chase range on the ability, or severely lowering the damage more could help.
