Two improvements to enable Torb for comp

Torb is in a relatively good spot right now.
However, it’d be even nicer if he could be a non-throw pick in any comp tier.

The biggest issue with Torb is that he needs his turret to have decent uptime to be most effective. With the exception of Widow, who intrinsically counters Torb, there are too many further characters who can do two things at once -

  1. dispose of the turret within <1…1.5 seconds and
  2. do not take any risk while doing so.

And they can do this because they have projectiles which do an especially high amount of damage over time compared to hitscans (except for Widow, as mentioned).

For example Hanzo can dispose of the turret in around 0.7 seconds if he combines a normal projectile with 2 Storm arrows, at virtually zero risk.

Now a second big problem even amplifies this greatly:
Torb is gimping himself if he attempts to use the one ability he has to temporarily keep his turret up some more: Overload.
This ability could be awesome to interweave with his skills to allow him to last temporarily longer and especially for his turret, but unfortunately this ability is broken because it was a way to long activation delay.
When you hit Overload it means you cannot repair anything for way too long to actually make this ability any useful in REAL clutch situations - it can only shine in medium/low skill situations, read: Situations where timing is just so-so.

So I have two suggestions to make Torb playable all around:

  1. Halve the, what is effectively a self-stun, activation-delay on Overload.
  2. Make the turret take half damage from projectiles.

poeple being able to kill the turret with no risk is not a flaw, its a design choice.
the only real change he needs to be a solid pick would be make overload reload his weapon. I’m pretty surprised that this wasn’t something they thought of when the ability was released.
with that change alone he would go from a mediocre pick to a fairly solid anti dive pick.

That’s a good point too. I wanted to focus more on the turret upime aspect, but you’re right, I was always wondering why Overload wouldn’t just instantly reload, should definitely be a thing. Again a lot of needless hampering that prevents clutch skill (eg peeling just a moment for team to adapt if own tank died and non-nano’ed enemy Rein is approaching or sth, whatever).