Greetings heroes! Enjoying Overwatch? Have you and your friends found that one team composition that breaks the spirit of every adversary you face? Well, whether you’re going solo, running as part of a team, interested in casual play, or taking aim at competitive mode with aspirations of greatness, Overwatch is a game that’s bound to change as new content is added and players find creative ways to take advantage. Luckily, we’re here to keep you ahead of the curb with an easy guide to changes occurring in the game! Be sure to check back here and stay aware of any patches that come out and what they’ll affect. We’ll be sure to keep the latest patch info at the top of the list at all times. Enjoy!
01 September 2016
New Features
-Eichenwalde: The map sporting the rustic German village and it’s central gothic castle is now available for Assault/Escort matches! Players will battle upon an old battlefield scarred with the remnants of the Omnic Wars, when the Crusaders lead by General Balderich von Adler helped the German forces fight back the Omnics. The memories lay stagnant, but the battle continues, led by the new Overwatch forces!
General
-Symmetra will now communicate to other players how many charges her teleporter has left when using the “Ultimate Status” communication.
-The “Need Healing” communication will allow Lúcio, Ana, Mercy, and Zenyatta to tell other players to group up to receive precious support and supply a marker over the healer that other players can easily locate in order to find their way to the healers.
-Torbjörn now appears as an AI-controlled opponent in all applicable modes. (Practice vs. AI, Play vs. AI, and Custom Game modes)
-Unlockable Sit and Laugh emotes have been added for all Heroes.
-New unlockable legendary skins have been added for Reinhardt
Competitive Mode
-Skill is now rated via a new tier system running from 1 to 5000, with tiers added for groups of numbers:
Bronze: 1-1499
Silver: 1500-1999
Gold: 2000-2499
Platinum: 2500-2999
Diamond: 3000-3499
Master: 3500-3999
Grandmaster: 4000-5000
-Players in Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond will not lose their tier even if their skill drops below their tier level. Master and Grandmaster players will be moved to a lower tier if their skill drops below tier level.
-Players in Diamond tier in and below must be within 1000 points of each other to team up in competitive. Players in Grandmaster and Master must be within 500 points of one another to team up in competitive.
-Skill rating for players in Diamond tier and above (3000 and above) will lose skill rating for not competing in a single competitive match for 7 consecutive days, after which skill will decrease by 50 every following 24 hours.
-Skill rating will not drop beneath 3000 due to skill rating decay.
-Participation in one competitive match will cease skill decay and refresh the cycle.
-New time bank systems have been added to Hanamura, Temple of Anubis, Volskaya Industries, Dorado, Hollywood, King’s Row, Numbani, Route 66, and Watchpoint: Gibraltar. The objective time limit for each aforementioned map has been reduced from 5 minutes to 4 minutes.
-Competitive points from Season 1 will be saved and multiplied by 10 for Season 2.
-Winning matches will be wor points instead of 1
-Golden weapon costs have been increased from 300 to 3000.
-Players cannot earn more than 6000 competitive points.
-Sudden Death has been eliminated. Matches can now end in a draw worth 3 competitive points.
-Players must play 50 Competitive matches to be eligible to be in the Top 500.
-Players must play more matches than previous to clear the penalty for leaving a match early.
Hero Changes
General
-Ultimates that consume the full ultimate meter when activated will now empty the meter in .25 seconds instead of 1 second.
-A recent change that made projectiles smaller has been removed.
-Most hero abilities can no longer interrupt melee attacks
-Ultimate abilities can now interrupt melee attacks.
D.Va
-Defense Matrix’s delay before regenerating after activation has been increased from .5 seconds to 1 second.
Hanzo
-Hanzo’s decrease in speed while aiming has been reduced from 40% to 30%.
-Hanzo’s projectile speed has been increased by 30%.
-Hanzo’s projectile size has been reduced by 33%.
Genji
-The double jump no longer resets following a wall climb.
-Swift Strike no longer damages Widowmaker’s Venom Mine or Junkrat’s Steel Trap.
-Swift Strike no longer bypasses Junkrat’s Steel Trap.
-Swift Strike no longer interrupts melee strikes.
-Genji’s Dragonblade ultimate duration has been reduced from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
Lúcio
-The team speed boost for Amp It Up has been reduced from 100% to 70%.
McCree
-Activating DeadEye now drains McCree’s ultimate meter over a .25 second period, rather than 50% on activation and 0% on delivery.
Mei
-Blizzard radius has been increased from 8 to 10 meters and now pierces barriers.
Mercy
-Healing Beam’s heal-per-second has been increased by 20%
-Resurrected allies’ movement lock has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2.25 seconds.
Roadhog
-Chain Hooked enemies that have an obstacle between them and Roadhog when he pulls them in will be returned to their original location when they were hooked, avoiding collision bugs that may result.
Soldier 76
-Heavy Pulse Rifle bullet spread happens more quickly over extended fully automatic fire with an increased recovery time on spread.
Zenyatta
-Orb of Discord’s amplified damage from all sources has been reduced from 50% to 30%.
-Orb of Distruction’s damage has been increased from 40 to 46.
Map Changes
-Due to recent changes making it unnecessary, Watchpoint: Gibraltar’s first checkpoint has been removed.
User Interface
-A new option has been added to enable or disable visible allied health bars in the Controls menu.
-New menus have been added to Hero Selection to group up with or report other players.
-Matchmaking UI in Competitive Play queue is now purple.
-Typography in Spectator UI has been adjusted in several minor places.
Bug Fixes
General
-Kill participation metric can no longer go above 100%.
-Ana is no longer except from the Ability Cooldown modifier in Custom Games.
-Players will no longer see incorrect gains in experience when completing Custom Games.
-Heroes will no longer die when first spawned in Custom Games if Health and Damage modifiers are used simultaneously.
AI
-AI Bastion will no longer become stuck and continually heal himself in spawn areas.
-AI Torbjörn will no longer place his turret in impossible locations.
Heroes
-Ana’s projectiles will now play appropriately when hitting heroes, shields, armor, and barriers.
-Ana’s scope correctly displays custom reticles.
-All of Ana’s functions trigger appropriate rumble functions on controllers.
-D.Va no longer communicates Ultimate Status for Self-Destruct when preparing Call Mech.
-D.Va’s Boosters no longer auto-cancel when activated alongside primary fire.
-D.Va’s ultimate charge no longer drops to 0% if she falls to her death while in her mech.
-Hanzo’s “Spirit Dragon” voice line now plays correctly when using his Okami and Lone Wolf skins.
-issues with Junkrat’s voices and animations have been fixed.
-Junkrat’s ammunition now properly refilled when he is Resurrected.
-McCree’s Fan the Hammer now activates controller rumble functions for all six shots.
-Mei’s Ice Wall will no longer shove her aside when cast at her feet.
-Moving payloads will now always destroys any part of Mei’s Ice Wall it comes in collision with.
-Mei’s Ice Wall will always appear at target locations where cast.
-Reaper’s Shadow Step will no longer allow him access to unintended map locations.
-Reinhardt’s shield will no longer jitter when turning in third person.
-Roadhog’s chain will no longer become permanently extended if a hooked opponent disconnects from the match.
-Symmetra’s emotes and highlight intros have been fixed.
-Slipstream Tracer’s scarf no longer appears stiff during the Hurdle highlight intro.
-Tracer’s Sprinter and Track and Field skins now appear properly by name in applicable menus.
-Zenyatta’s Transcendence will no longer prevent Overtime from being triggered.
Maps
-Genji and Hanzo no longer have issue wall climbing a specific crate in Watchpoint: Gibraltar.
-Reaper can no longer reach unintended places on Watchpoint: Gibraltar.
User Interface
-Competitive Leaver penalty message no longer overlaps with PVP HUD at the top of the screen.
-End of Season banner no longer pops up while players are in match.
-Hero List in Custom Games now properly displays alphabetically.
-Spectate Option is now greyed out and unselectable when all spectator slots in a Custom Game have been filled.
-In-game statistics no longer run off edge of screen in 16:10 aspect ratio.
28 June 2016
New Features
-Competitive Play: Overwatch is raising the bar for competitive players, giving them the perfect arena to sharpen their skills and hone their strategies.To make sure everyone playing the mode has a solid understanding of the game’s mechanics, maps, and heroes, Competitive Play will be locked until you hit level 25. Once you reach level 25, the mode will become available under the “Play” button in the main menu. Simply select “Competitive Play” from the submenu, and you’re ready to enter a match. You can join on your own or in a group, and Overwatch’s matchmaking system will automatically find the best game possible for your (or your group’s) skill level.
General
Gamepad Controls
-Players can now swap the left and right sticks on a control pad
-“Legacy” controls option has been added:
Left stick up/down moves forward/backward<br>
Left stick left/right turns left/right<br>
Right stick up/down aims up/down (these can be inverted)<br>
Right stick left/right strafes left/right<br>
Sticks can also be switched <br>
-Improved dead-zone controls, giving players increased accuracy during off-center and diagonal stick movement
Miscellaneous
-When activating Widowmaker’s Ultimate ability, Infra-Sight, her voice line will now be audible map-wide
-“Weapons” section added to the Hero Gallery
-Added McCree as an AI hero in Practice vs. AI, Play vs. AI, and Custom Game modes
-Added a variety of a social options to the hero selection and end of match screens
-Removed “Avoid This Player” option from the game UI
Bug Fixes
General
-Fixed a bug that would cause players’ weapons to auto-snap straight up or down when the crosshair was aimed between 85 and 90 degrees
-Fixed a bug that caused players who backfilled and then completed a game to sometimes receive a loss on their Career Profile and not receive their XP bonus for backfilling
-Fixed a bug that would move players toward the source of a knockback rather than away from it
-Fixed a bug that allowed players to spam objective-based voice lines
-Fixed a bug that caused Hearthstone-themed sprays to ignore localization
-Fixed several framerate issues that could occur when cycling through the hero selection menu
-Fixed a variety of issues with and made several improvements to ambient lighting
-Made some improvements to how AI heroes respond to one another
-Made a variety of performance and optimization improvements across the game
-Unicode keys for non-English keyboards are now displayed properly in the keybinding interface
Maps
-Players can no longer be resurrected in out-of-play areas on Ilios
Heroes
-Fixed a bug with the “Junkrat RIP-Tire Kills—Average” lifetime statistic
-Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause projectiles to hit Reinhardt instead of his Barrier Field
-Fixed a bug that allowed Torbjörn to pick up Scrap while dead
21 June 2016
General
As revealed in a recent post, Director Jeff Kaplan had determined that players were abusing the “Avoid This Player” function by avoiding highly-skilled players, creating massive queue times for players who just happen to be good at the game. The team has expressed desire to iron out this function in the future, but until that can be done, it has been determined that it’s simply easier to turn it off for the time being.
-Disabled “Avoid This Player” functionality. The game UI option is still active, but will be removed in a future patch. “Prefer This Player” function is also still functional.
Bug Fixes
General
-Fixed several client crashes.
Heroes
-Fixed even more bugs that allowed Reaper to Shadow Step to unintended locations on certain maps
-Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause projectiles to hit Reinhardt instead of his Barrier Field in “High Bandwidth” Custom Game
14 June 2016
Hero Balance Changes
McCree and Widowmaker were thought to be just a little bit too much of a threat to all characters, rather than the niches they were supposed to fill. Balances have been made to eliminate their opportunities as catch-all hero picks while keeping them in-line with what they are meant to be capable of.
McCree
-Alternate Fire recovery time (i.e. the amount of time before McCree starts reloading) decreased from 0.75 seconds to 0.3 seconds.
-Bullet damage decreased from 70 to 45.
Widowmaker
-Scoped Shot Base damage decreased from 15 to 12. Scoped shot damage multiplier remains unchanged
-Headshot damage multiplier increased from 2x to 2.5x
-Players must now wait for the unscoping animation to completely finish before scoping
-Infra-Sight Ultimate cost increased by 10%
Bug Fixes
General
-Improved stability of the High Bandwidth option in Custom Games
Heroes
-Fixed a bug that allowed Mercy to gain Ultimate charge whenever damage boosting an ally who was attacking a barrier or Ice Wall
-Fixed a bug that allowed Reaper to Shadow Step to unintended locations on certain maps
Maps
-Fixed an issue with collision on certain areas of Dorado not blocking line of sight
