A new hero joins the Overwatch team, and he's here to share some mid-season updates!

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🧊MEI🧊IS🧊BACK🧊 (AND A BUNCH OF OTHER UPDATES!) Check out the full list of #Overwatch2 Patch Notes. 👀… https://t.co/P2xtRQPnJc

Overwatch 2 Retail Patch Notes - November 17, 2022

A new patch is now live on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. Read below to learn more about the latest changes.

To share your feedback, please post in the General Discussion forum.
For a list of known issues, visit the Bug Report forum.
For troubleshooting assistance, visit the Technical Support forum.

OVERWATCH LEAGUE TOURNAMENT CHAMPION LEGENDARY SKIN REMIXES

Celebrate the Overwatch League’s Tournament Champions with the Royal Gladiator, Dallas Summer, and Shanghai Summer Legendary Skins! These skins are purchasable for a limited time with Overwatch League Tokens.

GENERAL UPDATES Competitive Play and Matchmaking

We’re continuing to monitor the health of competitive play and matchmaking across Overwatch 2, both for returning and new players. We’ve made numerous tuning adjustments on the server for both the initial and continued determination of a player’s skill tier and division, many of which will become even more noticeable at the start of Season 2.

We’ve increased the precision of our queue time estimates for each individual role in role queue.

Defense Matrix

The audio transcription feature has been added with a limited rollout for PC players in select countries. As a piece of our Defense Matrix initiative, audio transcriptions allow us to analyze a transcript from a temporary voice chat recording of a reported player. Players will now see a notification when entering voice chat for the first time during a play session indicating that voice chat may be recorded. Make sure you report as close to when disruptive behavior occurred to maximize this feature’s effectiveness. Once reported, a temporary audio recording will be used to make a text file transcript through speech-to-text programs. No one listens to the temporary audio recording, which is quickly deleted after being transcribed. Transcriptions are only made for reports of disruptive behavior in public voice channels, which includes team and match chat—group “party” chat is excluded.

Crossplay and Aim Assist

We made a change to Aim Assist in Crossplay (PC+ Console) lobbies. If you play in a Crossplay game now, Aim Assist is enabled in all matches except Competitive.

In our data, we found many groups were crossplay groups between PC and console players. This meant if you were playing on console and grouping with players on PC, you were opting into a bad experience for yourself to play with your friends. Also, if you had a group that was primarily console, but one of your friends was a PC player, you had to leave the PC player out to have a good experience.

We’d like to reiterate—at this point Aim Assist exists only on console platforms.

We’ll be monitoring the deployment of this change carefully and making changes quickly if needed.

HERO UPDATES TANKS

D.Va
Fusion Cannons

• Spread increased from 3.5 to 3.75

Boosters

• Impact damage reduced from 25 to 15

Call Mech

• Call Mech ultimate cost reduced by 12%

Developer Comments: D.Va felt too deadly after the last round of changes given how resilient she can be with her improved Defense Matrix.

Zarya
Particle Barrier

• Duration reduced from 2.5 to 2 seconds
• Cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds

Projected Barrier

• Duration reduced from 2.5 to 2 seconds
• Cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds

Developer Comments: Early player sentiment predicted Zarya as one of the weakest solo tanks in 5v5, although her high damage potential and barrier uptime have proven to be extremely effective. For opponents, feedback has indicated this can feel as though Zarya has very limited windows of vulnerability, which feels difficult to deal with when combined with her ramping damage potential.

These changes will reduce the barrier uptime, making it slightly more difficult for her to gain energy and will provide enemies with more time to deal damage to her.

DAMAGE

Genji
Shuriken

• Maximum ammo reduced from 30 to 24
• Damage reduced from 29 to 27

Developer Comments: Genji has greatly benefited from the move to 5v5. Changing to a single Tank and the reduction of crowd control has removed a lot of obstacles for Genji. However, he hasn’t received tuning updates since he wasn’t actively in the meta until launch—an intentional decision based on our general preference to avoid preemptive adjustments when possible. These changes will bring Genji more in line with the other flanking damage heroes like Tracer and Reaper.

Junkrat
Steel Trap

• Arming time increased from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds
• Trapped duration reduced from 3 to 2.5 seconds

Sombra
Hack

• Ability lockout duration reduced from 1.75 to 1.5 seconds
• Hacked enemies are no longer valid targets for hacking for the duration of the 8-second effect
• Hacked enemy damage multiplier reduced from 40 to 25%

Developer Comments: With Sombra’s rework, she gained a lot more damage to help account for the reduced ability lockout duration of Hack. This has proven to be too deadly for a flanker with easy access to the enemy backlines, especially in 5v5.

She can also no longer channel hack on an already hacked target as feedback indicated the reduced cooldown combined with hacking from stealth proved to be too frustrating for many players. This is essentially a per-target cooldown that enables Hack to keep its current 4-second cooldown for potentially hacking multiple targets.*

Kiriko

Swift Step

• Invulnerability duration reduced from 0.4 to 0.25 seconds

Developer Comments: This invulnerability window is primarily intended to help avoid instantly dying to something unseen after teleporting through walls, but it ended up being a little too long and led to some confusion while shooting at Kiriko.

BUG FIXES GENERAL

• PC Only – The Default setting for audio mix has been changed to “studio reference”
• Resolved an issue where some players could be stuck in Bronze 5 even after several rank updates
• Console Only – Fixed an issue where the PC interface was being forced on for some console players
• Console Only – Fixed a bug on console where your game could freeze if you opened and closed a Hero cinematic
• Console Only – Fixed an issue where ‘Capture Highlight’ could not be unbound from Left D-Pad
• Addressed multiple leaderboard issues causing inaccurate placement and ordering
• Players who getting healed will no longer see the healing status effect on their screen while they’re full health
• Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be placed into an empty game
• Resolved a bug that prevented players from rejoining their competitive game after being disconnected
• Fixed a bug where typing in chat could purchase an item from the Hero Gallery
• The ‘No Name Card’ selection in the Name Card interface is now selectable
• Fixed a display issue where players were shown the incorrect amount of Overwatch League tokens, which made them unable to purchase items. The display now shows the correct amount of tokens a player owns
• The ‘Avoid Teammates’ button is no longer hiding behind the Recent Players list
• Fixed an issue with the Challenge ‘Farsighted’ not correctly tracking and/or completing
• Fixed an issue with the Challenge ‘Damage Sponge’ not correctly tracking and/or completing
• Resolved instances of the player’s screen becoming blurry/out of focus
• Fixed an issue where some players were missing the Noire Widowmaker skin
• Various visual improvements to the First Time User Experience
• Fixed in last update - Practice bots now show up through walls correctly when you play a healer

MAPS

Junkertown

• Fixed additional areas in the map that were causing performance issues in some cases

HEROES

Brigitte

• Fixed a bug where Brigitte’s shield could become invulnerable under certain conditions

Cassidy

• Cassidy now correctly drops the flag during Combat Roll in the Capture the Flag game mode

Doomfist

• Fixed in last update - Fixed a bug with Seismic Slam being stopped early by obstructions
• Fixed in last update - Fixed a bug with being able to jump during Seismic Slam

Genji

• Fixed an issue with the Genji Mythic Skin’s hit volumes
• Fixed in last update - Fixed an issue where players could get infinite Dragonblade Custom Games

Hanzo

• Fixed in last update - Jump/wall climb no longer destroys breakables

Junker Queen

• Commanding Shout and Rampage now correctly drop the flag in the Capture the Flag game mode

Kiriko

• Fixed an issue where Kiriko could escape map boundaries using Swift Step

Mei

• Has been added back to the line-up
• Fixed several issues with Mei’s Ice Wall that allowed players and projectiles to occasionally pass through it or slip off it

Mercy

• Audio made a change to the sound of Mercy’s first-person glide to address frequencies that some players found uncomfortable

Reinhardt

• Fixed in last update - Fixed an issue where quick melee did not swing Reinhardt’s hammer

Sojourn

• Sojourn can no longer pick up the flag in Capture the Flag when using Power Slide

Sombra

• Fixed in last update - EMP can no longer be damage boosted

Torbjorn

• Fixed in last update - Fixed an issue where quick melee did not swing Torbjorn’s hammer

Wrecking Ball

• Fixed an issue with Adaptive Shield that could cause you to lose health in some cases

Since introducing Defense Matrix, our new initiative to stop disruptive players in Overwatch 2, we’ve successfully taken action on thousands of accounts that we’ve found to violate the Blizzard In-Game Code of Conduct.

We have continued to listen to player feedback and evaluate our barriers of entry that can prevent players from being able to join. As a result, we’re making a new change to our SMS Protect Requirements to play Overwatch 2 starting with today’s patch. Effective immediately, anyone with an eligible prepaid phone can now register their number on their Battle.net account and play Overwatch 2.

This change doesn’t affect any current Overwatch 2 accounts, regardless if they have SMS Protect or are exempt because they own a previous Overwatch game license. Players can register their phone numbers at account.battle.net. Here are a few questions to help determine if your phone number is eligible to play.

Q. Does any prepaid service now work to play Overwatch 2?
A. No. While we expect most prepaid service plans to be now eligible, mobile carriers sometimes define their plans differently.

Q. Do any VOIP, WiFi, text-only, or internet phone services work?
A. We do not support any of these services to register for SMS protect.

Q. Can I assign a single phone to multiple accounts?
A. No, we still require each phone number to be linked to a single BattleNet account.

Q. What if I have an eligible carrier or plan, and my phone number is still not working?
A. Your phone number could be registered on another battle.net account, or your phone number may be ineligible because it came from a previous phone plan that is still not eligible to be used.

Q. What if I am an Overwatch player who has not started playing Overwatch 2? Do I now need to register a phone number?
A. if you previously played Overwatch, you may now play Overwatch 2 without an eligible SMS on your account.

Q. What if I have another question about SMS Protect?
A. Check out our official support article for information about registering your phone number on your Battle.net account.

RT @BlizzardCS: [#Overwatch2] Update about the mid-season cycle patch: https://t.co/8V2649xZ9w

Today’s patch is delayed as we work to resolve a critical issue. We’ll provide an update here and set the patch live as soon as the problem is addressed.

This includes the upcoming balance changes, bug fixes, including those that affect Mei, and core content updates we have planned for this patch. This delay also impacts the delivery of Overwatch League Viewership Incentives & Perks from the Postseason matches during the period between Oct 30 - Nov 4, along with the rotation of cosmetics in the Overwatch League shop.

Daily and weekly challenges will reset today, as well as the standard shop refresh.

Thanks for your understanding, we’ll be working on releasing this patch as soon as possible. Follow our forums and socials at @PlayOverwatch for updates.

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