A PTR update gives Doomfist bug fixes, quality of life buffs galore

Doomfist has always been an interesting character, since he exists in a First Person Shooter without doing much, well, shooting. Instead, he has four knuckle shots, and then the rest of his time is spent jumping around, charging up massive punches, or slamming into enemies. Doomfist made a big impact on the pro scene after his release, and he’s capable of destroying squishies with one well timed punch near a convenient wall, but he’s had a few problems in the bug department.

The latest PTR patch makes sweeping fixes and tweaks to Doomfist, with more on the way. This isn’t a set of changes that dramatically changes a character, like the recent Mercy rework. Instead, you should get the exact same Doomfist experience... except a little better. Geoff Goodman walked us through the changes in a recent forum post.

Things that are fixed

Wall slamming should be much improved. The wall slamming logic has also been simplified so players should find that a 45 degree impact angle is the cutoff between the target being slammed into the wall, or sliding off. This is the biggest change that should be noticeable instantly.

Rocket Punch now breaks breakables again. Not only was the bug fixed that caused it to no longer break breakables, but the system we have in place now should break them much more consistently than before.

Seismic Slam being canceled when landing too close to a wall should be fixed.

Seismic Slam will now ‘slide’ a small ways up ramps instead of instantly triggering. Winston’s leap has also changed in the same way. The slide distance is manually tuned so let us know if it seems like he is sliding up ramps too much or too little.

The tl;dr on this is that Doomfist’s Rocket Punches near walls should connect more reliably without odd disconnects or targets seemingly walking away. He’ll also be less hampered by unexpected bugs near terrain; he can slam through breakable terrain, slide up ramps, and Seismic Slam without having walls cancel the effects.

Blizzard Entertainment

This patch is just the first set of Doomfust bug fixes and qualify of life changes. Goodman shared what’s left on the dev team’s to do list:

Things we’re still working on

Seismic Slam has a bug when you or your target is near a corner, it will sometimes not find them as a valid target. We have identified this bug but it is going to take a little longer to get a fix in place.

Ghost punches. This is an issue where you Rocket Punch and go through an enemy, instead of impact them. Some of these reports are latency related, but we did find an issue that was causing this to come up beyond just typical networking issues. Hopefully we’ll get in a fix in soon.

Corner bounce. This happens if you use Rocket Punch near a corner or edge, and it causes you to ‘bounce’ off and slide quite a ways away, probably messing up your punch. This is a recent bug caused by a seemingly unrelated change. We have identified why this can happen though, and are working on a fix for it.

Things we’re still investigating

Rocket punch vs. Rocket Punch/Charge. We get reports that it can feel really ‘random’ what happens when 2 Doomfists using Rocket Punch hit each other, or a Reinhardt using charge hits a Doomfist that is Rocket Punching. We’re still gathering data and information on this one, and hope to be able to improve the consistency of situation. The intended result is that both players should fall over, much in the same way that two Reinhardts charging into each other knocks both of them down.

Aerial Seismic Slam sometimes causing Grounded Seismic Slam. We’ve gotten reports of people being up in the air and using Seismic Slam sometimes triggering the ‘Grounded’ version instead of the ‘Aerial’ version. This one seems really rare so its pretty hard to track down, but we’re looking into it.

In addition, the Blizzard dev team will be more transparent with bug fixes, listing them in PTR patch notes along with balance changes. While content on the PTR is always subject to change, these fixes should be good news for Doomfist players who want a little more punch in their play.