Overwatch 2: Season 3 starts later today, with the development team at Blizzard dropping the first gameplay trailer recently. There’s lot to look forward to, from the new Antarctic Peninsula Control Map to new cosmetics like Amaterasu Kiriko. Patch notes for the update are now available and reveal what’s new, along with which heroes are eating nerfs.
Some general updates include improved options for subtitles, the ability to Endorse opponents, and Hero Challenges to unlock Ramattra. Mystery Heroes has also been changed, with each team only capable of having a maximum of three heroes in each role. If you die and already have three Supports, you’ll respawn as either a Damage or Tank hero.
Ramattra’s Annihilation no longer pauses when near enemies. Instead, the timer slows and can last up to 20 seconds and the Ultimate Cost is increased by 12 percent. The biggest change is to Mercy, whose Guardian Angel cooldown increased to 2.5 seconds, and healing reduced from 55 to 45 HP/s. The latter increases by 50 percent to allies under half health.
Mercy also has a new Passive, “Sympathetic Recovery,” which heals her for 25 percent of healing done. Check out some of the patch notes below and the full patch notes here.
GENERAL UPDATES
Accessibility Improvements
- Improved Subtitles Options: text scalability, character portrait icons, speaker name, text color, background color, and subtitle preview in the options menu
- Added mouse cursor size setting for PC
- Added setting to select custom colors for Group and Alert colors in the UI. Preview feature added to preview custom colors in the accessibility options
Challenges
- Added challenges to unlock “Silhouette” player icons for all heroes
- Added tracking for each of the roles for the Weekly “Role Mastery” challenge
- Added Ramattra unlock challenges
- Partial progress through the season three Battle Pass is now carried over to the “Wins for Ramattra” challenge
Endorsements
- Players can now endorse the opposing team
- All players can now be endorsed in Free-For-All game modes
Game Report
- Players can view scoreboards from previous matches within the View Game Reports menu found in the History tab of the Career Profile
Mystery Heroes Changes
- Mystery heroes now limits each team to a maximum of three of each role.
- Example: You are Reinhardt in Mystery Heroes. Your team also includes Mercy, Ana, and Lucio. When you die, you cannot respawn as a Support hero because there are already three Support heroes on your team. You will either be respawned as a Damage or a Tank hero
- This new maximum role limit can be changed in Custom Games under Settings > Modes > All > Random Hero Role Limit Per Team,
- This setting only functions when the Respawn as Random Hero setting is enabled
Overwatch Credits are back
- Overwatch Credits, which were previously labeled “Legacy Credits” and were not earnable in Overwatch 2, can now once again be earned through progressing in the Season 3 Battle Pass
- All players can earn up to 1500 credits as free rewards, and another 500 credits are available as premium rewards in the Season 3 Battle Pass
- Credits can be spent in the Hero Gallery, which now contains nearly all seasonal Epic and Legendary-tier skins released prior to the launch of Overwatch 2. This includes many skins that were previously only available for purchase with Coins in the “Just for You” section of our Shop
Ping System Update
- Pressing Ability 1 or Ability 2 when the ping wheel is open and when these abilities are on cooldown now prints these cooldowns in chat
- Example: If Baptiste’s Immortality Field is on cooldown and you press the key/button to activate the ability while the Ping Wheel is open, the cooldown for the ability will be printed in chat
COMPETITIVE PLAY
Season 3 competitive play begins now! Here are some of the latest updates aimed at improving the competitive experience in Overwatch 2:
- Skill tiers and divisions will adjust after every 5 wins or 15 losses and ties (formally 7 wins or 20 losses and ties)
- Players can select the “View Competitive Progress” button from the Competitive menu to view their progress toward receiving a rank update
WORKSHOP UPDATES
- Workshop Editor is back!
Workshop Moderation Tools
We added new menu options when reporting a player. Our goal is to give players more ways to report inappropriate behavior so that we can take action in a timely manner. As a result, you can select the category and sub-category that best explain why you are reporting the player or their custom content. The major categories include:
- Inappropriate Communication
- Inappropriate Name
- Cheating
- Gameplay Sabotage
- Inappropriate Custom Content
HERO UPDATES
ALL HEROES
- Maximum ultimate charge retained when swapping heroes reduced from 30 to 25%
Developer Comment: As part of this patch, there was a tuning pass for how often ultimate abilities are being generated, so expect to see several ultimate cost adjustments across multiple heroes.
TANK ROLE PASSIVE
- The health totals for all tank heroes will be lower when playing any game mode that does not have a role queue. Health totals will remain the same for tanks when playing any Role Queue enabled game.
Developer Comment: This change to the tank HP pools helps to address the relative power of those heroes in game modes where there can be multiple of them on the same team.
TANK
D.Va
- Mech base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 350
- Mech base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 350 to 200
Doomfist
- Base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 450
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 450 to 300
Junker Queen
- Base health in Role Queue modes increased to 450
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 425 to 300
Developer Comment: The overall base health for Junker Queen is increased by 25 HP.
Orisa
- Base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 275
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 275 to 125
Augmented Fusion Driver
- Damage falloff range reduced from 25 to 15 meters
Ramattra
- Base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 450
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 450 to 300
Annihilation
- Damaging enemies with the ultimate now slows the duration timer down instead of pausing it entirely. Lasts up to 20 seconds
- Ultimate cost increased 12%
Developer Comment: The idea of an ultimate ability potentially lasting forever is an exciting concept, but the reality is that if it’s too easy to do it causes a lot of frustrations and with Ramattra’s ultimate in particular, an excessive amount of visual noise. We’re limiting the maximum duration to 20 seconds, which is still highly impactful for most team fights, but it guarantees it’ll end in a reasonable amount of time.
Reinhardt
- Base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 325
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 325 to 175
Charge
- Cooldown reduced from 8 to 7 seconds
Fire Strike
- Damage increased from 90 to 100
Earthshatter
- Direct hit damage reduced from 250 to 170
- Knockdown duration increased from 2.5 to 2.75 seconds
- Ultimate cost increased 7%
Rocket Hammer
- Knockback impulse reduced from 10 to 6
Developer Comment: In similar fashion to Roadhog’s Chain Hook combo changes last season, we’d generally like to avoid heroes in the Tank role from killing enemies in one shot. Earthshatter direct hit damage is being reduced with that goal in mind. In most cases, targets on the receiving end would die anyway during the knockdown stun, but it does open up some potential for their allies to intervene.
For now, we’re fine with Charge pin staying lethal to many characters due to the difficulty and risk involved. The Fire Strike damage increase does mean it could once again one-shot when combined with Baptiste’s Amplification Matrix, but that requires an ultimate combo with another hero. We’ll see how it plays out and adjust if necessary.
The Rocket Hammer knockback reduction sounds like a loss of power though it is actually aiming to reduce the number of times Reinhardt accidentally knocks enemies out of his melee range.
Roadhog
- Base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 700
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 700 to 550
Whole Hog
- Maximum duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds
- Ultimate cost increased 8%
Developer Comment: Allowing Roadhog to use abilities during his ultimate made it much more reliable in a solo tank environment, though doing so was often much like just canceling the ultimate as it ran out of time. We’re adding a couple seconds to the maximum duration to increase the flexibility of player choices during the Whole Hog ultimate, but we’ll keep an eye on if it’s simply too much damage or knockback overall.
Sigma
- Base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 350
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 350 to 200
Gravitic Flux
- Ultimate cost increased 7%
Winston
- Base health in Role Queue modes remains the same at 350
- Base health in none non-Role Queue modes reduced from 350 to 200
Barrier Projector
- Health reduced from 700 to 650
Wrecking Ball
- Base health in Role Queue modes reduced from 600 to 450
- Base health in non-Role Queue modes reduced from 600 to 300
- Shield health increased from 0 to 150
Pile Driver
- Cooldown reduced from 10 to 8 seconds
Minefield
- Ultimate cost increased 9%
- Arming time reduced from 1.5 to 1 second
Developer Comments: Wrecking Ball received some of the fewest changes in the transition to 5v5 as he proved to be one of the most effective solo tanks in early testing. His extreme mobility and massive health pool enable him to choose when to fight much more freely than other heroes. These changes are aimed at reducing his downtime so he can press that advantage even further. The regenerating shield health pool often leads to not needing to search for as many health packs before getting back in position.
Zarya
- 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%