Overwatch 2 Update Kicks Off Season 14 with New Patch Notes

Season 14 of Overwatch 2 has officially arrived and with it comes safety precautions. The Scottish tank hero Hazard makes his gameplay debut alongside the introduction of the 6v6 Role Queue experiment, which fans have been asking for since the original Overwatch. The patch notes add more information on the Winter Wonderland 2024 event which runs through January 7, 2025. The event will bring holiday cheer with fan-favorite modes such as Mei’s Snowball Offensive and exclusive seasonal rewards like a festive Winter Casual Hanzo skin.

With this being patch notes, the latest update brings its buffs and nerfs for a few heroes. With the introduction of Hazard, the tanks will reap a good amount of buffs to their base health, damage, and recovery time. Damage-type characters such as Sojourn, Pharah, and Ashe are receiving updates to fix inconsistencies in their gameplay styles. Supports will get difficulty fixes for Illari, Baptiste, and Brigitte. When it comes to bugs, a lot of them will be ironed out due to Hazard joining the cast.

Take a look at the hero updates and bug fixes coming from the newest Overwatch 2 patch:

RELATED: Overwatch 2 Season 14 Update Confirms When the 6v6 Mode Returns

Season 14: Hazard

• Get ready for an explosive season as we introduce Hazard, the new Scottish tank hero, embodying the spirit of anarchy for the greater good. Then test your skills with a unique blend of past and present in the 6v6 Role Queue event, where teamwork and synergy shine within the 2-2-2 setup. Plus, prepare to wield the hammer of Gods as Mythic Thor Reinhardt and earn up to five Legendary skins with the Premium Battle Pass. Packed with nostalgia, customization, and radical gameplay, Season 14 has everything you need to dominate in style and become a hazard to the competition.

Winter Wonderland 2024

• The Winter Wonderland event returns now through January 7, bringing fan-favorite modes and exclusive rewards for the holiday season! From Mei’s Snowball Offensive to Freezethaw Elimination, there’s something for everyone. Complete challenges to earn seasonal rewards, including the festive Winter Casual Hanzo skin.

6V6 Role Queue Experiment

• Explore Overwatch 2’s latest evolution with the 6v6 Role Queue experiment, where strategy meets nostalgia. Dive into this unique mode to experience the dynamics of 6-player teams while maintaining structured gameplay, showcasing how modern Overwatch 2 heroes and abilities adapt to the classic team format.

Hero Mastery – Ashe

• Practice your sharpshooting skills and get B.O.B. to do something, when Hero Mastery courses for Ashe arrives on January 14.

Hero Updates

Damage Role Passive

• Debuff duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds.
• Healing reduction increased from 20% to 25%.

Global Projectile Size Bonus

• Hitscan radius large reduced from 0.08 to 0.07 meters.
• Hitscan radius small reduced from 0.05 to 0.04 meters.
• Projectile radius large reduced from 0.15 to 0.12 meters.

• Developer Comment: We’re increasing the potency of the damage role passive in order to make the threat of sustained damage more meaningful by slowing down health recovery while in combat. At the same time, we’re slightly decreasing how reliable hitscan and large travel time projectiles are to hit.

Tank

Doomfist

• Developer Comment: The recent increase to Rocket Punch wall slam angle has added a lot of consistency and made Doomfist significantly more threatening. To help account for this we’re pulling out some of the survivability from Seismic Slam.
  • Seismic Slam
    • Shockwave range reduced from 18 to 15 meters.
    • Cooldown increased from 6 to 6.5 seconds.

Hazard

• Developer Comment: The community feedback from Hazard’s trial has been largely positive, despite underperforming slightly. We’re adjusting his kit to increase the damage of his primary fire, making Bonespur more consistent and a reliable tool for finishing off enemies. Spike Guard protection sometimes felt inconsistent due to being used from a third-person perspective. To address this, we’ve widened the forward blocking angle, providing Hazard with more reliable protection. Additionally, the damage of Spike Guard has been slightly reduced to balance the increased Bonespur damage and protection radius. We’re also strengthening the Jagged Wall to make it more impactful, while increasing the time required to retrigger the knockback effect to minimize frustration from frequent knockback.
  • Bonespur
    • Damage per spike increased from 6.75 to 7.5.
    • Each volley’s center projectile no longer has a random launch spread and now always launches straight.
  • Spike Guard
    • The angle of protection provided by Spike Guard increased from 104 degrees to 180 degrees.
    • Damage per second reduced from 75 to 70.
  • Violent Leap
    • Post-slash recovery time for Primary Fire and Quick Melee increased from .3 seconds to .5 seconds.
  • Jagged Wall
    • Health increased from 350 to 400.
    • Knockback damage increased from 40 to 50.
    • Damage interval increased from 1.5 seconds per target to 1.75 seconds per target.
  • Downpour
    • Airborne momentum lost by casting Downpour reduced from 90% to 50%.
  • Vault
    • Minimum obstacle height to trigger Vault reduced from 1.75 meters to 1.25 meters, which should allow Hazard to scale short obstacles more consistently.

Mauga

• Developer Comment: The Overrun changes from the last patch have been great for enabling more active Mauga playstyles. We’re converting some of his armor back to normal health to balance out some of the added survivability gained from the Overrun changes.
  • Base armor reduced from 200 to 150.
  • Base health increased from 375 to 425.

Orisa

• Developer Comment: Although Orisa’s effectiveness dropped off further than expected, the removal of the Fortify heat reduction mechanic has had positive effects on gameplay by making her ammo resource more meaningful. We’re keeping that change while walking back some of the armor health loss. We also think her Terra Surge ultimate ability could be more effective so it now pulls enemies in from a further distance but the damage range hasn’t changed so it won’t be harder to get out of the area.
  • Armor increased from 300 to 325.
  • Base health reduced from 175 to 150.
  • Terra Surge
    • Pull radius increased from 8.5 to 10.5 meters

Ramattra

• Developer Comment: Ravenous Vortex will now be more effective at dealing with bursts of high speed momentum, though this change does not have much effect on abilities that continuously move you for a duration like Reinhardt Charge or D.Va Boosters.
  • Ravenous Vortex
    • Now briefly interrupts horizontal momentum when first affecting a target.
    • Slowing field now ignores barriers for line of sight.

Winston

• Developer Comment: Winston’s leap now has a higher maximum damage to better reward accuracy when landing directly next to a target, though it still has damage falloff when landing further away.
  • Jump Pack
    • Damage increased from 50 to 60.

Damage

Ashe

• Developer Comment: There were some inconsistencies for when Coach Gun was disabled by mobility lock abilities. Now Ashe will be able to activate Coach Gun while mobility is locked out (such as Junkrat’s Steel Trap) to knockback enemies but won’t move herself.
  • Coach Gun
    • Can now be activated while affected by mobility locking abilities but won’t move Ashe.

Pharah

• Developer Comment: Pharah is a difficult hero to deal with for many due to her high flying mobility and burst damage. We’re reducing how often her horizontal movement cooldown is available to make it slightly more of a positioning commitment when used.
  • Jet Dash
    • Cooldown increased from 8 to 9 seconds

Sojourn

• Developer Comment: Sojourn has received adjustments to increase the rate of her energy gain and shifted some power into her Disruptor Shot ability recently, though the secondary fire lacking in impact undermines her core gameplay fantasy as “the Railgun hero”. We’re adding some damage back to it and will keep a close eye on how powerful she ends up being.
  • Railgun
    • Secondary fire damage scaling increased from 1-100 damage to 20-120 damage.

Soldier: 76

• Developer Comment: Soldier could use a small increase to his effectiveness and with changes to the damage role passive it’s a good time to make his Biotic Field more available.
  • Biotic Field
    • Cooldown reduced from 18 to 15 seconds.

Symmetra

• Developer Comment: Symmetra is performing quite well but we’d like to further enable teamplay around an interesting ability like the Teleporter by making it more difficult to destroy.
  • Teleporter
    • Base shield health increased from 200 to 250.

Torbjörn

• Developer Comment: We’d like to make the turret more effective without increasing its damage. It now builds more quickly to better enable repositioning it for a faster pace of gameplay. We’ve also fixed a grievous oversight from moving to larger health pools and Torbjörn’s Forge Hammer will strike fear into his enemies once again.
  • Forge Hammer
    • Damaged increased from 55 to 70.
  • Deploy Turret
    • Build time reduced from 3 to 2.5 seconds.
    • Base health increased from 225 to 250.

Venture

• Developer Comment: This is mostly a quality-of-life change that makes Venture’s cooldown cycle more consistent, as they tend to activate Burrow while soaring through the air quite often.
  • Drill Dash
    • Cooldown rate is now faster anytime Burrow is active, rather than requiring the player to be underground.

Support

Baptiste

• Developer Comment: Adjusting the values of Regenerative Burst will increase Baptiste’s self-survivability while also providing greater support to his teammates.
  • Regenerative Burst
    • Cooldown decreased from 15 to 14 seconds.
    • Radius increased from 10 to 12 meters.

Brigitte

• Developer Comment: The duration has been reduced to limit Brigitte’s Inspire uptime, while the healing per second remains unchanged, ensuring that healing output is unaffected when Inspire is triggered consistently.
  • Inspire
    • Duration reduced from 5 to 4 seconds.

Illari

• Developer Comment: Illari’s Captive Sun can be difficult to use effectively due to enemies’ ability to dodge its effects. Increasing the radius will improve the consistency and overall value of the ultimate.
  • Captive Sun
    • Explosion radius increased from 8 to 10 meters.

Lúcio

• Developer Comment: The adjustment to Lúcio’s health pool has impacted his survivability in fights, this change will increase his durability in combat by improving his self-healing capabilities. Additionally, Sound Barrier now falls faster while in mid-air, enabling more reactive and safer usage from higher positions.
  • Crossfade
    • Self-healing penalty decreased from 60% to 40%.
  • Sound Barrier
    • Now falls faster when used in mid-air.

Custom Game Updates

• A new option to enable or disable passive health regeneration is now available in Settings > Heroes > General.

Bug Fixes

• Maps
  • Temple of Anubus
    • Fixed an issue where spectating on the Temple of Anubis map could cause extreme performance issues.
• Heroes
  • Brigitte
    • Fixed an issue where Brigitte could still get damaged while holding up her shield at the end of the Bash ability.
  • Hazard
    • Fixed a bug where Vault would sometimes abruptly cancel itself when attaching to walls via Violent Leap.
    • Fixed a bug where Vault sometimes wouldn’t climb walls when Hazard was perfectly perpendicular to the wall.
    • Fixed a bug where Vault wouldn’t climb walls at all when Hazard’s forward movement was partially impeded by a flanking wall.
  • Mercy
    • Fixed an issue causing Mercy’s resurrect lines to not play.
  • Moira
    • Fixed a bug where Moira’s orbs would sometimes visually stop moving.
  • Reinhardt
    • Fixed an issue where Reinhardt’s Earth Shatter ability was not affecting enemy heroes on certain floor sections.