Anyone who played Overwatch at launch is probably riddled with bad (secretly awesome) memories of how chaotic and borderline broken it could be at times. It felt like competitive shooters went the way of the party game, but that was all thanks to wacky abilities like Mei's primary fire, which could properly freeze foes in place, and it's set to make some sort of comeback in Overwatch 2.
Overwatch 2's associate game director Alec Dawson essentially confirmed it in a new blog post. While discussing the pros and cons of the game's newly introduced perks - mid-match upgrades that let you slowly buildcraft - Dawson says that "players have responded well to perks that bring back old components of a hero's kit, like Orisa's Protective Barrier and Hanzo's Scatter Arrow."
In line with that positive feedback, he also strongly hinted that Mei's freezing capabilities are next in line. "We can't give away all the changes here, but another classic will be reintroduced – in a different, less overwhelming way – as a Major Perk for a certain icy DPS hero."
Mei's freeze elicits such strong reactions because it was A) super fun to stop an enemy in their tracks and line up the perfect, lethal headshot, and B) super annoying to be stopped in your tracks, powerless, and watch an enemy Mei slowly point their icicle shooter in between your eyebrows.
There weren't many ways to counter the ability aside from simply running away, and one-on-one fights with Mei were almost always going to go her way, regardless of how skillfully you played. So I'm interested to see how Mei's new, perky freeze works this time around since Blizzard is clearly aware of why it got deleted in the first place.
Dawson didn't say when Mei's freeze would return, but the blog post was all about Season 16, which is set to kick off on April 22.
