Overwatch 2 Team Teases "New and Refreshed Abilities" for More Heroes

Overwatch 2's beta has been out for just over a week now to give players time with characters new and old including those who've been reworked between now and the original Overwatch. The changes planned for these heroes aren't done yet, however, with Blizzard teasing this week that it had more "new and refreshed abilities" planned for some characters, specifically for those in the Support role. These will happen "in the near term," Blizzard said, with longer-term plans including the release of more "exciting support heroes" in Overwatch 2.

Blizzard talked about Support heroes and broader plans for the role in the developer blog that went up this week covering the first couple of days of the Overwatch 2 beta. Before talking about what's to come, however, the company first talked about the state of Supports from the alpha tests to now. Blizzard said they acknowledged that Support heroes felt a bit vulnerable to dives and flanks without another tank backing them up now that the game's shifted to a 5v5 setup and made changes accordingly prior to the beta.

"We made a significant adjustment to their role passive heading into Beta, allowing support heroes to recover more health faster and improve their survivability," Blizzard said. "This change improved their overall power and durability, and overall supports are performing well in the Beta, but we know that balance is only one aspect of what makes a hero fun to play."

Continuing on that idea, Blizzard further acknowledged that the DPS and Tank heroes have more new tools to play with in this beta compared to Supports. Blizzard will continue to add new Supports to the game in the future, they said, but this beta itself could even see some Support adjustments come for existing characters.

"Longer term, we believe the most effective way to tackle this issue is to add exciting new support heroes to the game, and that is part of our plans," Blizzard continued. "In the near term, our hero design team is also experimenting with significant, but shorter lead time, ideas including new and refreshed abilities for some existing support heroes. These types of ideas could be deployed later this first Beta test but more likely would be in our next test."

Blizzard's Overwatch 2 beta is currently ongoing with the beta expected to end on May 17th, so be sure to spend as much time with it and its heroes as possible to keep up with these changes before the first test ends.