Overwatch PTR patch 1.10.0 is now live, features Lucio changes and the end of draws

Overwatch PTR latest patch is now up and running. This patch features some of the changes mentioned previously like the hero's backstory in the Hero Gallery, the new system Blizzard wants to implement to diminish draws, and also the highlight of the patch, balance changes to Lucio. Lucio's changes was hinted by the game's director, Jeff Kaplan during his AMA session in Reddit but no one knows what kind of changes, until now.

Lúcio

• Sonic Amplifier
  • Projectile speed increased from 40 to 50
  • Alternate fire now considers vertical orientation when knocking targets back
• Crossfade
  • Song's area-of-effect radius decreased from 30 meters to 10 meters
    • A temporary in-game visual has been added to illustrate this radius (it is only visible to Lúcio and his teammates)
  • Heal Song
    • Healing-per-second has been increased by 50% (also applies to Lúcio's Amp It Up ability)
• Sound Barrier
  • Radius decreased from 30 meters to 20 meters
• Wall Ride
  • Movement speed increased by 30% when wall riding
  • Lúcio now receives a burst of speed when leaping off a wall

Developer Comments: Lucio has often felt like a must-pick due to his raw healing output and the versatility of providing a speed bonus to your entire team. The goal of these changes is to keep those elements feeling strong, but making them harder to apply to everyone on your team at all times. The end result is that he should feel stronger with teams that he can stay close to but not as strong when on teams with heroes that are often spread out (such as Pharah, Widow, Genji, etc). Much of Lucio’s character power was tied up in his large passive auras, which caused other elements of his kit to be weakened over time in an attempt to balance him. Now that his auras are more focused it will allow them to be much stronger and allow Lucio to be more active in his role.

General

• Details about each hero’s unique backstory, along with information about some of their lore-inspired skins, have been added to the Hero Gallery

Competitive Play

• A tracking system has been added to Assault and Assault/Escort Maps that will allow us to break ties based on the progress that was made toward capturing the objective.

Developer Comments: To mitigate draws in Competitive Play, we're implementing a system that tracks each team's progress on the objective. This will work similarly to the system that's already in place for Escort and Assault/Escort maps, which grants a win to the team that pushes the payload the furthest. Now, even if neither team successfully captures the objective, a winner can be determined based on which team captured the largest portion. For testing purposes, the Competitive Play map rotation will be limited to Eichenwalde and Hanamura.

More information on the tracking system has been explained by Principal Designer, Scott Mercer here. 

Maps

• A new route has been added to Eichenwalde that connects the attacking team's spawn area to the capture point

You can switch your region to the PTR to test out all of these changes, the full patch notes can be found here. Remember, these changes are not finalized and it may be different when it hits live servers.