I doubt Yanlong has a role now, there just isn’t a market for frontline heroes that dont provide something for the rest of their team. Yan is just something you ignore, he won’t die as easily now but people don’t have a reason to care about him in the first place.
Matador is the biggest buff, I’ll have to test how the gold behavior works but with someone like Baron it seems like it could be absolutely broken. One of the most useful skills a support can have is a way to protect allies against early focus from the enemy (piloted) DPS. I hope his plat applies as a debuff to enemy armor but it sounds like a buff for him to ignore armor, which is not very exciting on a support but at least helps him avoid the huge damage loss he suffers from armor.
Fischer also got a surprisingly good buff. I’m not sure how they will handle max stacks for Wetwork but its nice to see some novel designs on an existing hero. Fischer seems like he will be very annoying after a couple submerge procs, but I hope HHG contemplated what this could mean for Fischer bounties. However, I don’t think Fischer will be a top PVP pick as long as we’re in the Flatline meta.
Surge is also a nice buff, but I don’t think he will enter the PvP meta unless the heal reduction is very small or the damage increase is massive.
Hideo’s gold buff is great, those stacks could make his lackluster single target into something very scary now, with his plat he is poised to put out almost unhealable amounts of teamwide damage. With Ronin and Mauler being diminished, I could see Hideo/Kuno/Clyde/Dog/Bolt fighting for the best DPS title since we’re still in the Flatline meta.
Speaking of the Flatline meta, Sapphyr gets another round of buffs that could make her a strong PvP choice. Healblock is buffed, Rift blade comes sooner, and Shadowstep sounds like it could provide 3 rift blades during its effect. I think her biggest issue will remain the fact that even if you Healblock someone for an easy kill through Flatline’s gold, Flatline’s plat can give her a rez as early as 20 seconds in. She still has a strong incentive to kill Flatline first and she simply can’t do that as well as certain mechs.
HHG finally acknowledged Beck’s grenade being literally worse damage than just shooting with her guns. Next up: Please take another look at Chesterfield’s terribly slow animations and tendency for traps to literally land at the wrong location.
Ronin nerf could break him if the damage goes low enough (was hoping they might buff eviscerate to compensate since they made that skill absolutely trash in December) but I doubt anyone will miss his broken DPS (except those abusing it of course). Mauler is another nudge toward not being broken, but the biggest thing keeping him in check is the Flatline meta. If Flatline were deleted from the game, the first hero I’d pick is Mauler and just go back to permastunning with a crit stack team.