Overwatch 2 Confirms Controversial Season 9 Character Updates

Overwatch 2 season 9, dubbed “Champions,” will arrive next week and bring with it the biggest changes to the game since it initially updated from Overwatch 1 to Overwatch 2. Blizzard has confirmed in a new blog post that previously leaked patch notes for and that starting in Overwatch 2 season 9 every character will be getting not only a health buff but changes are coming to projectiles sizes, healing, and more. According to Blizzard’s release on the Overwatch 2 season 9 updates, these changes are being made to “combat and hero survivability” which will alter “fundamentals of Overwatch 2 gameplay that affect every hero.” Let’s break them down below.

Overwatch 2 season 9 changes

Blizzard has highlighted three key pillars of Overwatch 2 that they’re hoping these new changes will help with, including:

• “Deliver a more consistent feel to firing and landing your shots on your opponents.”
• “Lessen the impacts of burst damage to allow for greater counterplay.”
• “Adjust where in-game healing and damage are effective to reduce stagnant team fights.”

As they write in their blog, “All of these changes have been designed to work in combination to balance each other out, and we’re excited for you to get in the game and experience them all at once.” Read on for more details.

When does Overwatch 2 Season 9 start?

Overwatch 2 – Season 9: Champions begins on Tuesday, February 13th and launches at 2 PM ET.

Overwatch 2 Changes Projectile Size

To address the seemingly random inconsistency that has plagued some projectile sizes, the Overwatch 2 team is making almost all of them larger. According to a graphic shared by the Overwatch 2 team the increases will be as follows:

• +0.05 meters for hitscan projectiles with a high rate of fire or spread (e.g., Tracer’s Pulse Pistols or Reaper’s Hellfire Shotguns) 
• +0.08 meters for hitscan projectiles that are more precise (e.g., Cassidy’s Peacekeeper or Soldier:76’s Heavy Pulse Rifle)
  
• +0.05 meters for travel time projectiles that are shotguns or have a very high rate of fire (e.g., Roadhog’s Scrap Gun or Ramattra’s Void Accelerator)
  
• +0.10 meters for travel time projectile with a speed greater than 50 meters per second (e.g., Zenyatta’s Destruction Orb)
  
• +0.15 meters for travel time projectile with a speed less than or equal to 50 meters per second (e.g., Pharah’s Rocket Launcher)
  

Some characters and projectiles will not be changed however, with Blizzard noting that any “very large projectiles” whose base size is greater than 0.5 meters have been excluded from size alterations entirely, examples including Orisa’s Energy Javelin or Reinhardt’s Fire Strike. Heroes that “don’t benefit from any projectile size changes” will have additional balance changes made in their favor.

“One of our main goals with these adjustments is to make firing your weapons and abilities feel more consistent without impacting the time to eliminate a target and without removing the overall feel of gameplay we all know and love,” their reasoning goes. “Crisp, responsive movement is important to the core gameplay feel, so we wouldn’t want to just slow down player movement. Instead, we’re improving hit consistency by making both damage-dealing hitscan and travel time projectiles larger.”

Overwatch 2 increases all character’s health pools

One of the biggest changes as well coming in Overwatch 2 season 9 is that every hero is getting increases to their HP. There will be incremental increases based on each character’s current health pools with additions going like this:

• 150 – 175 HP Heroes increased by 25 HP; meaning Tracer and Baby D.Va will go up to 175 and Widowmaker will go up to 200.
• 200 – 300 HP heroes increased by 50 HP; meaning characters like Ana, Echo, and Genji will go up to 250 HP, with Mei, Reaper, and Torbjorn moving up to 300 HP (the distribution of armor vs shields vs pure health points wasn’t disclosed)
• 300+ HP characters increased by 75 – 100; this only effects tanks and which specific tanks will be getting the lower end vs the higher end of that buff was not officially denoted. 

Overwatch 2 delivers new hero passives

Overwatch 2 season 9 will also bring about new passives to the different roles across the game, with one major one effecting every hero. 

• New All Heroes Passive: Passively regenerate 20 health per second of not taking damage for 5 seconds.
• New Damage Role Passive: Dealing damage reduces the target’s healing received by 20%. 
  
• Updated Support Role Passive: Will now begin regenerating health after 2.5 seconds.
• Tank Role Passive: Reduces knockback received. Less Ultimate charge generated by healing and damage received. Increased health in Role Queue game modes. (Unchanged)

Overwatch 2 Competitive Changes

In addition to major changes for heroes and roles in actual gameplay, Overwatch 2 season 9 will deliver a complete overhaul of the competitive system including a full rank reset and more transparency than ever about why user’s ranks are going up or down.

“We’ve heard your feedback on Competitive Play over the last eight seasons, and we have some big updates coming that will give you the opportunity to build on your skills and see how you progress through the Competitive ranks. We built a better system that’s more accurate while also helping convey the meaning behind the mathematical complexity of a modern matchmaker and bring clear insights about what impacts your rank in every match.”

Overwatch 2 rank change transparency

Moving forward, Overwatch 2 players will be able to see their rank change after every match and also denote exactly why it changed as much as it did with every shift. Modifiers have been added that will reveal exact reasons why a player’s rank will go up or down a specific amount after every match, some of which are very rewarding and others that will lower your rank even more than usual. Some examples that the Overwatch 2 team confirmed include:

• Getting a boost when defeating a team that was “more favored to win.”
• Receiving a decrease in rank after losing a game that your team was favored to win.

Overwatch 2 resets every player’s competitive Skill Rank

The larger changes to Overwatch 2 competitive in season 9 has also brought along an opportunity for the Overwatch 2 team to do something they previously shied away from when asked, a total reset of all player’s competitive Skill Rank. In order to re-calibrate everyone’s place in the Overwatch 2 rankings, this means all players will have to start over with 10 Placement Matches before they’re officially given a new Overwatch 2 competitive rank. A predicted starting rank will be shown at the start of each Placement Match that players partake in, with Blizzard advising that these 10 placement matches will be the only ones players have this year; perhaps signaling that another rank reset will arrive in 2025, but that has not been confirmed.

Overwatch 2 adds New Rank above Grandmaster

Previously the ranks in Overwatch 2 competitive have gone this way:

• Bronze
• Silver
• Gold
• Platinum
• Diamond
• Master
• Grandmaster

These all have had a scale of 5 to 1, meaning Bronze 5 is lowest rank and Grandmaster 1 is the highest. Overwatch 2 will now be adding what they call “the ultimate rank” which will be Champion, described as “the most prestigious tier above Grandmaster intended to show who is the best among the most skilled players in the game.” Players eager to test their mettle and be ranked Champion 1 “will still need to win a lot of games” according to Blizzard, who call it “the most exclusive rank in the history of Overwatch.”

Overwatch 2 introduces new competitive rewards

With the Overwatch 2 competitive changes also come new rewards for players that choose to participate. The “Golden Guns” that were purchasable with competitive points have been around in the game since the early days of competitive seasons in Overwatch 1, and though they will still be available for purchase, Overwatch 2 is adding new cosmetic weapons for purchase with 2024 bringing Jade Weapon Variants. 

Players won’t be able to use Competitive Points from the first 8 seasons to purchase the Jade weapons however and will only be able to buy them starting with Overwatch 2 season 9’s Competitive Points. All previously earned Competitive Points will be converted to Legacy Competitive Points starting in season 9, with all unused 2024 Competitive Points also automatically converted and added to Legacy Competitive Points at the end of the year.