Overwatch 2Blizzard’s next season will introduce a major rework for at least one hero, but every hero in Blizzard’s team-based shooter will feel different starting in the new season. The developer plans to “make major changes to the basics of Overwatch 2 gameplay” with season 9, known as Champions.
At the most basic level, expect any hero Overwatch 2‘s selection to have more health, and to make their bullets, missiles and arrows bigger. As game director Aaron Keller previously teased, all heroes will have passive self-healing.
According to a blog post, the team is making these changes to “provide a more consistent feel when firing and landing your shots on your opponents”; reduce the impact of crack damage; and reduce stagnant teamfights, where supporting characters endlessly heal teammates while players trade fire in frustrating stalemates.
Overwatch 2 Season 9 also introduces projectiles that are larger across the board. Blizzard breaks down the details in the following infographic:
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
The post also notes that “even players with excellent aim often mention how it can feel arbitrary whether a shot hits or not.” There are several reasons for this, including: Overwatch 2‘s fast-moving and teleporting characters.
“Powerful, responsive movement is important to the core feel of the gameplay, so we don’t want to just slow down players’ movements,” it explains. “Instead, we improve hit consistency by increasing both the damage-dealing hit scan and projectile travel time.”
Even heroes unaffected by the change will still receive some balance updates. “However, we don’t want to make too many hero adjustments before we better understand the effects of these initial changes, so look out for more information on individual heroes in future updates.”
Heroes’ hit points also change, in accordance with those larger projectiles. Here’s how that breaks down:
- 150-175 HP Heroes: Increased by 25 HP
- 200-300 HP Heroes: Increased by 50 HP
- 300+ HP (Tank) Heroes: Increased by 75-100 HP
The reason behind the health boost is that the team wants to preserve time to kill Overwatch 2 consistent.
When it comes to healing, you can expect even bigger changes. It is explained:
The changes to projectile size and health pools effectively reduce the impact of burst damage and reduce the relative power of healing, meaning it will take longer to heal someone from 1 HP to full health. To reduce the friction of the longer time to fully heal allies from battle and allow Support players to make more informed decisions about who to heal, everyone can now passively regenerate their health at a rate of 20 heals per second after taking no damage for 5 seconds and the passive healing of the support role has been adjusted to 2.5 seconds.
An increase in health pools and a weakening of burst damage means that heroes will live longer and team fights will last longer. To combat some of the potentially extreme situations out there, we’re also introducing a new damage passive, making it easier for them to fulfill their role in securing eliminations, reducing healing in combat, and potentially adding an extra strategic layer to focus target shooting .
Here’s how role-specific passive feelings change with the new healing rules:
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Season 9 of Overwatch 2 will also bring changes to competitive play and the way players rank up and down. According to the post, the team wants to be clearer with players about how their performance in competitive play affects their rank, and will announce these details to players after each game.
Finally, players’ competitive rankings will be reset and they’ll have to establish their new rank with 10 placement matches – yes, those return from the original Overwatch. The message states that it will give players the chance to “make big wins in determining your starting rank” with matches based on their predicted starting rank, and that this will only happen once this year.
It’s also very clearly illustrated how rank changes are determined on a game-by-game basis, something that players who care about rank will definitely want to study.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Overwatch 2 season 9 starts on February 13. More details on what’s to come are available in the post. Further down the line, Overwatch 2 players can expect reworks for Pharah and the Junkertown map in seasons 9 and a Cowboy Bebop intersection.