The long-awaited mid-season patch is available for Overwatch 2. It adds the One-Punch Man collab event, available until April 6th but also adjusts the distance to which players can hear enemy footsteps. As for changes, the developer said it found “a nice middle ground between where it was in Season 2 and where it was before today’s patch.”
Challenges have also seen adjustments, with “To The Victors” and “Coin Line” removed. New Weekly Challenges added include “Casual Dedication” (win 15 games in any Unranked mode), “Competitive Advantage” (win 10 games in any Competitive mode) and “Change of Pace” (win five games in Mystery Heroes, FFA Deathmatch or any Arcade mode).
Daily Challenges have also seen some changes, with “Support Weapon Mastery” requiring 10,000 damage instead of 12,500 and “Support Ability Mastery” going from 10,000 to 8,000. You can also check the progress of Challenges at the end of matches. Also, those who love Mystery Heroes can partake in a Competitive version, with Season 1 beginning on March 14th.
Check out some of the patch notes below and full notes here.
Overwatch 2 Retail Patch Notes – March 7, 2023
General Updates
Adjusted Distance Attenuation on Enemy Footsteps
We missed a change in our Season 3 patch notes about some adjustments made to the distance in which you can hear enemy footsteps. We’ve continued to refine this change and have found a nice middle ground between where it was in Season 2 and where it was prior to today’s patch.
Challenges
Weekly Challenges
- Removed “To the Victors… – Win 15 games in Unranked or Competitive.”
- Added a new challenge, “Casual Dedication – Win 15 games in any Unranked mode.”
- Added a new challenge, “Competitive Advantage – Win 10 games in any Competitive mode.”
- Total number of challenges needed to earn all Overwatch Coins is still 11.
- Removed “Coin Line – Win 5 games in Arcade.”
- Added a new challenge, “Change of Pace – Win 5 games in Mystery Heroes, Free-for-All Deathmatch, or any Arcade mode.”
- Changed “Role Mastery” to “Win 5 games each as 2 different roles in Quick Play or Competitive Play.”
Daily Challenges
- “Support Weapon Mastery” reduced from 12,500 to 10,000
- “Support Ability Mastery” reduced from 10,000 to 8,000
Challenge Progress during End of Round
- Challenges the player has made progress on during the match will be shown with a visual representation of remaining progress needed
Scoreboard
End of Match Scoreboard Update
We are taking a snapshot of each player’s final stats during the match and persisting it on the tab scoreboard during post-match. Previously a player’s stats and name would disappear as soon as they left the match
Matchmaking
- We fixed a bug causing large parties to wait longer in queue than intended
- The matchmaker will now prioritize putting parties together which have a similar delta between the highest and lowest rated player
- We made improvements that should help reduce Unranked queue times and increase Competitive match quality
Competitive Updates
Competitive Mystery Heroes
- Competitive Mystery Heroes added to Competitive Play
- Season 1 begins on March 14!
Competitive Screen Layout Update
We have added buttons to the Competitive Play menu that will allow players to easily access the tier legend, leaderboard, and competitive progress screens.
Top 500 Leaderboard Update
Players in the Top 500 will now see an animated update of their current position on the leaderboard after each match.
HERO UPDATES
TANK
Orisa
Developer Comment: Terra Surge is a channeled ultimate which cannot be interrupted by most abilities, as it gains the same effects as Fortify. While this makes sense for stuns, Sombra’s Hack interrupt shouldn’t be negated and now correctly cancels Terra Surge.
Terra Surge
- Terra Surge can now be interrupted by Hack
Ramattra
Developer Comment: Players found that shifting out of Nemesis Form before activating the Annihilation ultimate would fully reset Nemesis Form’s bonus armor. To smooth out the gameplay, it now resets the armor health automatically as part of the ultimate activation.
Annihilation
- Using Annihilation while in Nemesis Form refreshes your bonus armor
Roadhog
Developer Comment: The Chain Hook cooldown beginning when the ability started, instead of at the end, caused some confusion when discussing the cooldown since once you can see the timer, it appeared a second shorter (7 seconds) than the actual maximum cooldown. After fixing that, we’re reducing the cooldown overall by an additional second to increase the frequency of Roadhog’s team utility now that being pulled in by Chain Hook is less deadly.
Chain Hook
- Chain Hook cooldown now starts when the ability ends instead of at the start
- Chain Hook cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds