Overwatch 2 Update Live, Patch Notes Released

A new update is now live in Overwatch 2, and it seems to offer a significant amount of changes for players to look forward to. Notably, the game’s One-Punch Man collaboration is now available, and new Overwatch League team skins have been added. There are also bug fixes, changes to enemy footsteps, and new challenges. Several of the game’s heroes have also seen tweaks, including Mei, Roadhog, Wrecking Ball, and more. Full patch notes from the game’s official website can be found below:

NEW COLLABORATION: OVERWATCH 2 X ONE-PUNCH MAN

Onepunch is all you need in this limited-time Overwatch 2 x One-Punch Mancollaboration! Complete challenges through April 6 and earn free themedrewards, including the Legendary Mumen Rider – Soldier: 76 skin.Complete your hero collection with additional Legendary bundlesfeaturing Saitama – Doomfist, Terrible Tornado – Kiriko, and Genos –Genji from the in-game shop.

OVERWATCH LEAGUE 2023 SEASON

New Overwatch League Team Skins

NewOverwatch League Team Skins are now in-game! Celebrate your favoriteteams, including the Seoul Infernal and Vegas Eternal, by equippingtheir team skins for your favorite heroes.

Team Bundles Now Available

TeamBundles are now on sale! Trios of hero skins will land in the OverwatchLeague shop throughout the season, available for all teams. Thesebundles will include team-branded Weapon Charms!

General Updates

Adjusted Distance Attenuation on Enemy Footsteps

Wemissed a change in our Season 3 patch notes about some adjustments madeto the distance in which you can hear enemy footsteps. We’ve continuedto refine this change and have found a nice middle ground between whereit 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 beshown 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 thematch and persisting it on the tab scoreboard during post-match.Previously a player’s stats and name would disappear as soon as theyleft 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 whichhave 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 allowplayers to easily access the tier legend, leaderboard, and competitiveprogress 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 beinterrupted by most abilities, as it gains the same effects as Fortify.While this makes sense for stuns, Sombra’s Hack interrupt shouldn’t benegated and now correctly cancels Terra Surge.

• Terra Surge can now be interrupted by Hack

Ramattra– Developer Comment: Players found that shifting out of Nemesis Formbefore activating the Annihilation ultimate would fully reset NemesisForm’s bonus armor. To smooth out the gameplay, it now resets the armorhealth automatically as part of the ultimate activation.

• Using Annihilation while in Nemesis Form refreshes your bonus armor

Roadhog– Developer Comment: The Chain Hook cooldown beginning when the abilitystarted, instead of at the end, caused some confusion when discussingthe cooldown since once you can see the timer, it appeared a secondshorter (7 seconds) than the actual maximum cooldown. After fixing that,we’re reducing the cooldown overall by an additional second to increasethe frequency of Roadhog’s team utility now that being pulled in byChain Hook is less deadly.

• Chain Hook cooldown now starts when the ability ends instead of at the start
  
• Chain Hook cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds

Wrecking Ball– Developer Comment: There is now a hero control option for Wrecking Ballto set a separate aim sensitivity while transformed into a ball asplayers may want to aim his weapons in first-person and move the camerain third-person significantly differently. In addition, a visualindicator for Grappling Claw has been added to indicate its maximumduration before automatically detaching.

• Added the hero-specific option “Relative aim sensitivity while rolling”
• Added the hero-specific option “Relative gyro sensitivity while rolling” (Nintendo Switch platform only)
• Added a timeout indicator for Grappling Claw located above the ability icon
• Minefield arming time increased from 1 to 1.25 seconds

Zarya– DeveloperComment: A previous change decreased both barrier duration and increasedthe cooldown at the same time, lowering Zarya’s effectiveness more thananticipated. This is a partial reversion to help level it out.

• The shared cooldown for Particle Barrier and Projected Barrier reduced from 11 to 10 seconds

Damage

Ashe– Developer Comment: We want to enable Ashe and B.O.B. to easily assistone another more. B.O.B. now prioritizes targets damaged by Ashe’srifle, which may allow for more flexible Ultimate placement.

• B.O.B. now prefers to shoot at enemy targets that Ashe damages with her rifle

Hanzo– Developer Comment: Hanzo has high burst damage potential with Storm Bowand Storm Arrows and strong utility with Sonic Arrow but stillunderperforms compared to other heroes in the same role. This changeincreases his survivability without directly improving his strengths.

• Lunge cooldown decreased from 5 to 4 seconds

Mei– Developer Comment: Mei’s Blizzard ultimate cast time sometimes led tosituations where the animation appeared to have been completed, butthere was still additional time that it could get interrupted. Thischange will help mitigate that feeling without significantly reducingcounterplay.

• Blizzard ultimate cast time reduced from 0.5 to 0.4 seconds

Pharah– Dev Comment: In addition to rapidly launching her upwards, Jump Jet usedto always move Pharah forward a small amount which made the abilityfeel less responsive when trying to move to the side or backwards. Thischange now enables a small amount of horizontal momentum in anydirection.

• Jump Jet movement is now influenced by directional inputs

Sojourn– Developer Comment: Due to the angle of Sojourn’s torso in her defaultanimation stance, her torso hit volume was more difficult to hitcompared to similarly sized heroes.

• Torso hit volume width increased by 20%

Support

Baptiste– Developer Comment: Baptiste is capable of potent damage and healingoutput but often slightly underperforms across many skill levels. Thischange to the Immortality Field’s minimum health threshold willstrengthen his utility and enable him to more reliably assist his alliesafter its effect ends.

• Immortality Field minimum health threshold increased from 10 to 25%

BUG FIXES

General

• Fixed an issue where the option to report Inappropriate player names were missing
• Fixed a bug with Game Reports showing incomplete data
• Fixed a bug where players on PlayStation® 5 were unable to save Highlights
• Fixed an issue where player presence was shown as ‘Practice Range’ when in Custom Game
• The Ultimate Battle Pass Bundle should now show as ‘Owned’ forplayers that purchased it (this was just a visual issue, purchases ofthis item were successful)
• Fixed a bug where some players who own all name cards could get stuck loading when using the Filter’s tab in the Name Cards menu
• Fixed a bug on Nintendo Switch™ where all friends on the Social screen had the same player icons
• Resolved an issue where heroes performing an emote appeared as t-posed for players loading into the game

Maps

Antarctic Peninsula

• Fixed areas where some heroes could become stuck
• Fixed several gaps in the environment
• Made changes to the lighting in some parts of the map
• Fixed a bug where penguins were missing a noise when being hit with projectiles
• General improvements

Busan

• Fixed a bug with the physics of the cow

Circuit Royale

• Resolved a collision issue that could cause some heroes to be stuck

Colosseo

• Fixed a bug with the camera placement for some Plays of the Game

Esperanca

• Fixed an issue with a tree that could cause D.Va to get stuck when entering her mech

Lijiang Tower

• Fixed areas of the map that allowed players to escape

Midtown

• Fixed an area where players were able to unintentionally stand
• Fixed a bug on Midtown with railing collision not being correctly removed after being destroyed in some cases
• Midtown can now be selected as an option for Skirmish in Custom Games

Heroes

Ashe

• Fixed a bug with the Raijin skin clipping into the camera when aiming and firing down the sights

Echo

• Fixed an issue where cloning a Sombra with a Charm equipped could cause Echo to lose all textures while Cloaked
• Fixed missing sound effects for the Sticky Bombs ability

Hanzo

• Fixed a bug where shooting someone with an arrow from a Golden bow could turn their gun gold

Reinhardt

• Fixed an issue where in some cases players were able to walk out of being pinned by a Reinhardt

• Fixed a bug with Fire Strike VFX remaining after being eaten by a D.Va’s Defense Matrix

Lúcio

• Fixed a bug where Lúcio’s Amp it Up animation would continue to play after being stunned

Orisa

• Resolved a bug with Terra Surge that resulted in the VFX ring notdrawing for parts of the environment higher than Orisa when used

Symmetra

• Fixed a bug where you could be sent to the wrong location if taking Symmetra’s Teleporter as it is destroyed

Torbjörn

• Fixed a bug where your turret would target the same targets as other allied Torbjörn players

Workshop

• Resolved an issue where the ‘Is Firing Secondary’ condition would not be triggered by certain heroes
• Resolved an issue where the ‘Is Firing Primary’ condition was not being triggered by certain heroes
• Fixed a crash that could occur when creating a large number of rules
• Fixed an issue where it was hard to tell where the UI focus was when using a controller

All in all, these look like pretty significant changes! It will be interesting to see how the player community reacts to today’s update, particularly the change to footsteps. Overwatch 2 fans have been begging to see this fixed, so hopefully today’s update will strike the balance that Blizzard is hoping to achieve. Fans will just have to play to find out for themselves!

What do you think of today’s update? Are you excited about these changes? Letusknowinthecommentsorshare your thoughts directly onTwitterandon Hiveat @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!