Overwatch adds even more changes in its Season 1 midseason patch, which is live as of March 10. Here are all of the updates from this patch, inclduing the full patch notes from Blizzard.
The battle continues! The event will conclude its final week on 3/16 and a global winner will be announced!
Emre only, 4v4. Are you ready to Slay?
Junkrat’s Loot Hunt is back again, running from March 27-30! Earn lootboxes by completing challenges that unlock as you play!
This patch is lighter in scope, as many adjustments for newer heroes were made earlier to support balanced performance since launch. The focus of this update is on subrole tuning, addressing heroes that are out of line, and applying additional refinements to the newest heroes.
Medic Subrole
The Medic subrole has been underperforming, as its self-healing conversion was not impactful enough in combat. Increasing self-healing will allow it to cut through in engagements.
Bruiser Subrole
The activation threshold for the Bruiser subrole has been adjusted from critical health to below 50% health. This change standardizes when the effect becomes active and increases the window when the subrole is active.
Initiator Subrole
The Initiator subrole’s passive has been reduced in effectiveness as it has been providing more healing than intended throughout matches. Healing will no longer trigger while at full health to avoid starting the internal cooldown.
D.Va’s mobility and survivability combination provides a high level of uptime during engagements. Increasing Boosters’ cooldown creates clearer commitment windows while reducing the effectiveness of the Initiator subrole.
Boosters
Hazard was originally placed in the Stalwart subrole to mitigate the impact of crowd control during engagements. Since the introduction of subroles, he has struggled in performance. Moving Hazard to the Initiator subrole better supports a more aggressive, sustain-focused playstyle.
Reducing Void Barrier’s cooldown improves its cycling within engagements, while increasing Annihilation’s damage per second enhances its presence during extended fights.
Void Barrier
Annihilation
Roadhog’s overall effectiveness has remained lower than intended since his minor rework. Increasing Scrap Gun’s damage will improve the consistency of his Hook combo while additionally increasing overall damage output.
Scrap Gun
These movement adjustments improve Inferno Rush’s fluidity and traversal options while the ability is active.
Inferno Rush
Reducing the delay before Altered Vitals triggers allows it to activate more reliably when disengaging.
Altered Vitals
Siphoning Strike has provided significant self-sustain relative to being a Minor perk. Moving it to Major better reflects its impact while additionally avoiding the overall passive power when combined with Relentless. Raging Storm damage has been reduced and moved to a Minor to compensate.
Raging Storm – Minor Perk
Siphoning Strike – Major Perk
Illari has been delivering strong healing alongside high offensive pressure. Reducing her secondary fire uptime and tuning down specific perks lowers her overall performance while maintaining her identity.
Summer Solstice – Minor Perk
Sunburn – Major Perk
Solar Rifle
Territorial has been removed due to high offensive potential with limited counterplay. Claws Out moves to a Major perk with a reduced cooldown due to its relative strength, while a new Minor perk Ulterior Motive introduces an additional fuel recovery option to support healing-focused playstyles.
Territorial – Major Perk
Claws Out – Major Perk
Ulterior Motive – Minor Perk
Maintaining allies within Remedy Aura’s radius can be restrictive during engagements. Increasing the radius improves accessibility, while reducing the degeneration delay makes sustaining higher Aura levels more difficult.
Remedy Aura
Stadium General Mod Icon Update
Hey everyone! Let’s talk General Mods – the bread and butter of your Stadium builds, what makes or breaks a match, what defines heroes and – well, you get the drift. When Stadium launched last March, we knew that eventually we’d like to update the design of the General Mods and make them look similar to our Powers and Hero Items. When discussions for Season 1 of Overwatch began, we believed it would be the perfect time to give the General Mods a ‘refresh’ as the rest of the game was getting the same treatment.
We wanted to create designs based on the mod name and color them based on stat (ex: ‘Field Rations’ is now a macaroni and cheese container, and ‘Aerial Distresser’ looks like a plane) because we believed it would be far easier to locate unique and distinct designs than trying to find ‘that mod with a health icon’. And though we aimed high with these designs, we missed the mark and strayed away from one of our core design principles of accessibility and readability. We’ve heard your feedback (thank you, by the way!) and have reverted the General Mods back to rarity color, with slightly brighter backgrounds so the icon art pops against it. Additionally, in the coming months, we’ll be performing color passes on the icon art to ensure that it maintains readability (don’t worry, the overall shape won’t change!) and we’ll continue to monitor feedback from the community and see how we can improve to ensure everyone’s Stadium experience, especially in the Armory, is as smooth as possible!
General
Stadium
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