5/14/2025
Developer Comments: Zarya continues to overperform at all levels. Most of her power comes from how Weapon Power scales with Energy, allowing her to reach very high damage ceilings, so slowing down the rate at which she can scale her Weapon Power.
- Reduced cash income from damage and healing by 12.5%.
5/9/2025
Developer Comments: Zarya continues to be overperforming, especially at higher levels of play. We're reducing some of the survivability of Weapon Power Zarya builds so that she should be more vulnerable, especially if she is opting to itemize full damage.
Lifelift – Power
- Reduced Particle Barrier health scaling to 25% of your bonus Max Life (down from 50%).
Pre-Workout – Power
- Reduced Lifesteal to 15% of your Energy (down from 20%).
5/1/2025
Developer Comments: Lifelift has proven to be the most consistently effective Power for Zarya. We're reducing the scaling on it to try and make it feel less like a must pick in all styles of Zarya builds.
We’re also adding a little bit more healing in hopes of making Here to Spot You a bit more reliable of a power to choose from.
Lifelift – Power
- Particle Barrier health scaling reduced to 50% of your bonus Max Life (down from 100%).
Here to Spot You – Power
- Increased healing to 20% of your Max Life over 3s (up from 15%).
4/1/2025
Developer Comment: Zarya's enemies have always feared her skills in battle, but now they will run in fear of her reflection too.
Particle Cannon
- Primary Fire now ricochets off of enemy heroes and the environment.
3/25/2025
Energy
- Degeneration rate increased from 2 to 2.5 per second.
2/18/2025
Jump-Ups
- Secondary Fire's self-knockback is increased by 75%.
Graviton Crush
- Graviton Surge deals up to 30% of enemy max health as damage over time.
Energy Lance
- Particle Cannon's beam pierces enemies while over 50 energy.
Spotter
- Projected Barrier activates ally health regeneration and increases their movement speed by 15%.
12/17/2024
- Base health increased from 175 to 225.
Particle Barrier
- No longer shares a cooldown with Projected Barrier.
- Health reduced from 225 to 200.
- Duration reduced from 2.25 to 2 seconds.
- Cooldown reduced from 11 to 10 seconds.
Projected Barrier
- Health reduced from 225 to 200.
- Duration reduced from 2.25 to 2 seconds.
- Cooldown reduced from 9 to 8 seconds.
8/20/2024
Developer Comment: Zarya's secondary fire didn't benefit much from the projectile size changes in Season 9 since it's mostly aimed at the ground. We're increasing its damage to keep it feeling effective relative to her primary fire beam.
Particle Cannon
- Secondary fire minimum damage increased from 47 to 55.
- Secondary fire maximum damage increased from 95 to 110.
7/12/2024
Particle Barrier
- Shared cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds.
- Duration reduced from 2.5 to 2.25 seconds.
Projected Barrier
- Shared cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds.
- Duration reduced from 2.5 to 2.25 seconds.
7/5/2024
Developer Comments: Increasing the health on these barriers also means the total energy Zarya can gain per barrier is increased, so this is a boost to both her offensive and defensive capabilities.
Particle Barrier
- Health increased from 200 to 225.
- Duration increased from 2 to 2.5 seconds.
Projected Barrier
- Health increased from 200 to 225.
- Duration increased from 2 to 2.5 seconds.
5/14/2024
Developer Comment: We have been increasing the value of some tank ultimate abilities to account for the increased health pools and it helps to make the decision of when to counter-swap more of an interesting tradeoff. Graviton Surge was still very useful to set up combos with other ultimate abilities but we want to makes sure it's powerful enough on its own.
Graviton Surge
- Radius increased from 6 to 7 meters.
- Duration increased from 3.5 to 4 seconds
4/1/2024
Developer Comments: Please don’t burst Zarya’s bubble, no matter how big it gets.
Developer Comments: Please don’t burst Zarya’s bubble, no matter how big it gets.
Particle Barrier and Projected Barrier
- Increases the size of the bubbled target by 1.75x.
2/20/2024
Particle Cannon
- Primary fire minimum damage increased from 85 to 95 damage per second.
- Primary fire maximum damage increased from 170 to 190 damage per second.
2/13/2024
- Health increased from 100 to 175.
Particle Cannon
- Primary fire beam width increased from 0.15 to 0.2 meters.
10/10/2023
Developer Comments: Zarya is using the barrier on her allies more often to peel or initiate combination plays, which makes the ability more team-oriented and less self-serving. This change preserves that interesting choice by keeping the cooldown reduced when used on an ally while targeting her energy sustain instead, which has increased significantly with the bonuses to the barrier health and size.
Projected Barrier
- Size decreased 15% now matching back to the size of Particle Barrier.
- Health decreased from 225 to 200 matching back to the health of Particle Barrier.
9/1/2023
Developer Comment: Zarya often spends both barrier charges on herself as it is usually more consistent for building energy. The change to Projected Barrier incentivizes using the barrier for her allies more often.
Projected Barrier
- Health increased from 200 to 225.
- Cooldown decreased from 10 to 8 seconds.
- Size increased 15%.
8/10/2023
Particle Barrier
- Particle Barrier duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds.
Projected Barrier
- Projected Barrier duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds.
Graviton Surge
- Damage per second increased from 5 to 30 for 105 damage total.
Energy (Passive)
- Energy degeneration rate reduced from 2 to 1.5 energy per second.
3/7/2023
Developer Comment: A previous change decreased both barrier duration and increased the cooldown at the same time, lowering Zarya's effectiveness more than anticipated. This is a partial reversion to help level it out.
- The shared cooldown for Particle Barrier and Projected Barrier reduced from 11 to 10 seconds
2/7/2023
- Base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 250
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 250 to 100
Graviton Surge
- Ultimate cost increased 8%
1/5/2023
Energy
- Energy degeneration reduced from 2.2 to 2 per second
- Delay before energy degeneration begins after gaining energy increased from 1 to 2 seconds
11/17/2022
Early player sentiment predicted Zarya as one of the weakest solo tanks in 5v5, although her high damage potential and barrier uptime have proven to be extremely effective. For opponents, feedback has indicated this can feel as though Zarya has very limited windows of vulnerability, which feels difficult to deal with when combined with her ramping damage potential.
These changes will reduce the barrier uptime, making it slightly more difficult for her to gain energy and will provide enemies with more time to deal damage to her.
Particle Barrier
- Duration reduced from 2.5 to 2 seconds
- Cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds
Projected Barrier
- Duration reduced from 2.5 to 2 seconds
- Cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds