Overwatch 2: Season 2 Patch Reveal Doomfirst Buffs, Kiriko Nerfs, and More

The latest season of Overwatch 2 went live yesterday with a new Tank, Ramattra, along with the Escort map, Shambali Monastery. In addition, several balance changes have been made to Heroes.

The first thing to note is that Hero Challenges are live for Junker Queen, Sojourn, and Kiriko for those who didn’t sign in before Season 2. The Shop also now has a tab for purchasing Heroes.

Over 70 player icons were added as rewards to Challenges, and the Damage role passive has had its movement speed bonus removed while its reload speed bonus has gone from 25 to 35 percent.

As for Hero changes, Doomfist’s Rocket Punch has had its impact damage range increased to 25-50 damage while the wall slam damage is reduced to 10-30 damage. The stun duration from being slammed into walls by Empowered Rocker Punch is now 0.25-0.75 seconds. Power Block’s cooldown is now seven seconds, while its duration is 2.5 seconds. Meteor Strike slows enemies for three seconds and grants Empowered Rocket Punch on landing.

As for Kiriko, the cost of Kitsune Rush, her Ultimate, has been increased by 10 percent. The movement speed bonus is now 30 percent, instead of 50, and its cooldown rate is now twice as fast as opposed to three times. To offset this, the cast time of Protection Suzu is now 0.1 seconds, while her max Kunai is now 15.

Check out some of the patch notes below and full notes here. For more details on other content in Season 2, head here.

Overwatch 2 Retail Patch Notes – December 6, 2022

Doomfist

Developer comments: There are several changes here for Doomfist with the intent to increase his presence as a disruptive brawler-style tank. The buff to his passive ability will help him stay in the fight longer, especially when he’s hitting multiple enemies with his abilities.

The changes to Power Block and Meteor Strike are intended to increase the availability of Empowered Rocket Punch, which enables him to more easily disrupt enemies and impact multiple targets. Due to gaining Empowered Rocket Punch more consistently, the stun duration and size are slightly decreased to reduce some of the frustration in playing against it.

For Rocket Punch we’re shifting some of its damage away from requiring wall impacts so that it’s broadly more useful regardless of where fights are taken.

Rocket Punch

• Impact damage range (minimum-maximum) increased from 15-30 to 25-50 damage
• Wall slam damage range (minimum-maximum) reduced from 20-40 to 10-30 damage
• Empowered Rocket Punch wall slam stun duration range reduced from 0.5-1 to 0.25-0.75 seconds
• Non-Empowered Rocket Punch now stuns for the minimum 0.25 second duration on wall slam
• Empowered Rocket Punch knockback radius reduced from 4 to 3 meters
• Minimum time before cancel option becomes available reduced from 0.25 to 0.12 seconds
• Cooldown reduced from 4 to 3 seconds. This has been in since his rework but was not mentioned

Power Block

• Cooldown reduced from 8 to 7 seconds
• Duration increased from 2 to 2.5 seconds
• Minimum damage mitigated required to empower Rocket Punch reduced from 90 to 80 damage

Meteor Strike

• Now empowers Rocket Punch on landing
• Enemy slow duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds

The Best Defense…

• Maximum temporary health increased from 150 to 200 health
• Temporary health gained per target hit with abilities increased from 30 to 40 health

Junker Queen

Developer comments: Commanding Shout is Junker Queen’s primary tanking ability and utility, but the additional survivability it granted her team proved to be too powerful and needed to be tuned back significantly in a previous patch. We’re looking to shift more of that survivability into Junker Queen herself by increasing the amount her passive ability heals through dealing damage with wounds.

• Torso and head hit volume size increased 12%

Rampage

• Wound duration reduced from 5 to 4.5 seconds
• Ultimate cost reduced by 10%

Commanding Shout

• Cooldown reduced from 15 to 14 seconds

Adrenaline Rush

• Adrenaline passive healing multiplier increased from 1 to 1.25x damage dealt by wounds

DAMAGE

Bastion

Developer comments: The intent for Bastion’s ultimate is that enemy players can survive it if they are quick to react to the damaging impact areas, however, it ended up being too easy to avoid the damage areas entirely. We’re reducing both the amount of warning time and explosion damage so that it’s more reliable in dealing damage, but it won’t be as lethal the closer the target gets to the edge of the explosion range.

Configuration Artillery

• Delay before projectile drops reduced from 1 to 0.6 seconds
• Explosion damage reduced from 300 to 250
• No longer deals explosion damage to self
• Minimum delay between placing shots reduced by 20%

Reconfigure

• Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds

Sojourn

Developer comments: Sojourn is performing well at the highest tiers of competitive play but poorly below those tiers. Much of the perception that she is too powerful seems to be driven by the reaction to dying to long range, charged headshots from her Railgun secondary fire. These changes are aimed at reducing frustrations there, with the biggest change being the reduced critical multiplier for headshots. A fully charged headshot no longer kills a full health 200 hp hero. To help account for this loss of power we’re increasing the damage of her primary fire and how quickly her energy charges during her ultimate.

Railgun

• Energy delay before draining reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
• Secondary fire damage falloff starting range reduced from 70 to 40 meters
• Secondary fire critical damage multiplier reduced from 2 to 1.5
• Secondary fire damage now scales linearly with energy from 30 to 130 damage (1 energy converts to 1 damage added)
• Primary fire damage per projectile increased from 9 to 10
• Overclock energy charge rate increased by 20%

Symmetra

Developer comments: The changes to Symmetra’s primary fire will make her gameplay faster by enabling her to charge the beam up to dangerous levels more quickly. However, it will also drain to less lethal levels at an increased rate when not damaging a target. We’re reverting the adjustments to her ammo management because, while it helped with matchups where there were no barriers, it lost something interesting to its interactions.

Proton Projector

• Beam charge rate and decay rate increased by 20%
• Primary fire ammo consumption rate increased from 7 to 10 per second
• Primary fire gains ammo from damaging barriers again

Tracer

Developer comments: We balanced Tracer’s damage in a previous patch due to an undiscovered bug regarding her Pulse Pistol’s falloff damage. The bug is resolved, so we are reverting the damage.

Pulse Pistols

• Damage increased from 5 to 6

SUPPORT

Ana

Developer comments: Sleep Dart is still one of the most powerful crowd control abilities in 5v5, though with the addition of cleanse mechanics to offer a potential counter to this effect we’re more comfortable with reducing the cooldown here to improve Ana’s personal survivability.

Sleep Dart

• Cooldown reduced from 15 to 14 seconds

Kiriko

Developer comments: The hit volume adjustment is to help address her arms sometimes blocking headshots in some of her animations. Kiriko feels balanced overall, but her ultimate could feel too frenetic at times. We’re reducing both the movement speed and cooldown rate boost it grants so that it’s easier to aim during its effect for both allies and enemies, as well as there being fewer abilities being thrown about. The rest of the changes are primarily for quality-of-life improvements to make the abilities feel better to use.

• Arm hit volumes width reduced 15%
• Added an auto-wall climb hero option

Kitsune Rush

• Ultimate cost increased by 10%
• Movement speed bonus reduced from 50 to 30%
• Cooldown rate reduced from 3 to 2 times faster

Protection Suzu

• Cast time reduced from 0.15 to 0.1 second

Kunai

• Ammo increased from 12 to 15

Swift Step

• Ability input can now be held to activate

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