Overwatch devs knew Jetpack Cat and Bastion could be scary
Team 4 let Jetpack Cat and Bastion’s aerial assault run wild long enough for players to discover the fun before tuning it down.
Overwatch developer Team 4 knew Jetpack Cat and Bastion could become a problem before the flying-cat hero reached the live game. In an interview with PC Gamer, Associate Game Director Alec Dawson described the combination as “a little scary” during internal playtesting, especially when Mercy joined the team-up.1
The combo that took over
Jetpack Cat is an adorable ginger cat piloting a flying mech, but her ability to carry another hero through the air created an unusually potent pairing with Bastion. Bastion’s turret form can pour out heavy fire, and giving that firepower a mobile aerial platform made the duo difficult to challenge once players worked out the strategy.1
The combination did not stay confined to ordinary matches. PC Gamer reports that the Jetpack Cat meta appeared prominently in the Overwatch Champions Series from the start, making the pairing a competitive talking point as well as a source of frustration for players. The article describes it as one of the most immediately dominant new-hero combinations seen in the game’s esports scene for some time.1
Why Blizzard left it alone at first
Dawson said Team 4 deliberately allowed players to experience some of the extreme interactions before stepping in. His explanation was that the team wanted to preserve the memorable, chaotic moments that make a new hero exciting, rather than removing every unusual combination before the community had a chance to discover it.1
Jetpack Cat was later reworked, including a reduction to how quickly she could move while carrying another hero. That change reduced the pairing’s impact without erasing the idea behind it. The result is a useful example of the balancing tension around live-service games: a combination can be obviously powerful to developers, yet still be worth watching in the wild before it is tuned down.
Our opinion
This is the right kind of problem for a live-service game to have. Jetpack Cat and Bastion sound memorable precisely because the interaction was easy to understand, spectacular to watch and strong enough to reshape matches. The important part is the follow-through: letting players find the fun, then adjusting the combination once its competitive effect became clear. That approach can produce a messy meta for a while, but it gives a new hero a chance to make an impression instead of arriving already sanded down.
The episode also explains why early balance complaints are not always evidence that a hero has failed. Sometimes they show that the character has created a distinct interaction the developers can refine. In this case, the eventual movement nerf kept the fantasy of a flying assault team while making the pairing less oppressive.1