Everyone is buzzing about the new hero in Overwatch, Brigitte, but the game also rolled out a brand new patch that is impacting a number of heroes and adding more tweaks.
Doomfist, Mei and Sombra were the primary focus of the new patch but the game made other tweaks as well to round out what has been a pretty intense week for the team at Blizzard.
Here is the breakdown via Blizzard:
HERO UPDATES
Doomfist
- Hand Cannon
- Ammo recovery rate increased from 0.8 seconds to 0.65 seconds per bullet
- Developer Comments: This change will help Doomfist more consistently be able to use his weapon as part of his combos.
Mei
- Endothermic Blaster
- Freeze (slow) duration increased from 1 second to 1.5 seconds
- Weapon alternate fire ammo cost reduced from 25 to 20
- Developer Comment: Increasing Mei’s slow duration helps her freeze targets that are particularly elusive such as Genji or Lúcio. Lowering her alternate fire ammo cost allows her to more safely use it without costing her the ability to freeze enemies.
Sombra
- EMP
- No longer blocked by small objects (e.g. sign posts)
- Hack
- No longer gains ultimate charge from health pack healing
- Cast time reduced from 0.8 seconds to 0.65 seconds
- Now disables the following abilities:
- Genji—Cyber-agility
- Hanzo—Wall Climb
- Pharah—Hover Jets
- Lúcio—Healing Boost and Speed Boost (turns off current song entirely), Wall Ride
- Mercy—Angelic Descent
- Machine Pistol
- Machine Pistol spread reduced from 3 to 2.7
- Opportunist
- Enemy health bars are now visible when health drops below 100% (formerly 50%)
- Her ability to detect enemies through walls at 50% or less remains unchanged
- Translocator
- Duration increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds
- Developer Comment: The goal of these changes for Sombra is to remove the necessity for her teammates to take damage and heal themselves with her hacked heath packs to try to get her ultimate charged up quickly. Her ultimate will now come up less often, but there are more abilities that are disabled by Hack so it is more effective when used. Previously, Opportunist would only activate when an enemy’s health bar dipped below 50% but now the passive will reveal all damaged enemies which should help Sombra identify targets in her line of sight to pick off. Overall these changes should make her more effective and less reliant on her ultimate.
MAP UPDATES
Blizzard World
- Some health pack sizes have been reduced
- Some health pack locations have been changed
- Additional health packs have been added
- Developer Comments: Health packs are a valuable resource in Overwatch and positioning around them is key to holding ground on defense or keeping up momentum on offense. We have moved the location of some health packs and included additional ones to improve game play on Blizzard World.
USER INTERFACE UPDATES
Mercy
- Valkyrie
- No longer shows enemies’ health bars unless they have taken damage
- Developer Comment: This helps remove some clutter from Mercy players’ screens when they use her ultimate
BUG FIXES
- General
- Fixed a bug that prevented Capture the Flag statistics from displaying on the Career Profile if the match was played on Ayuttheya in the Arcade
- Maps
- Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented announcement voice lines from triggering on Blizzard World