Overwatch 2 gets some of its biggest changes yet in new season

09.02.2024 - 11:02 / polygon.com / Aaron Keller / Some Of

Overwatch 2’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 is set to make “major changes to the fundamentals of Overwatch 2 gameplay” with season 9, known as Champions.

At the most basic level, expect every hero in Overwatch 2’s roster to have more health, and for their bullets, missiles, and arrows to be bigger. As previously teased by game director Aaron Keller, all heroes will get some passive self-healing.

According to a blog post, the team is making these changes to “deliver a more consistent feel to firing and landing your shots on your opponents”; lessen the impact of burst damage; and reduce stagnant team fights, during which support characters endlessly heal teammates as players exchange fire in frustrating stalemates.

Overwatch 2 season 9 will also introduce projectiles that are larger across the board. Blizzard breaks down the specifics in the following infographic:

The post also notes that “even players with excellent aim often mention how it can feel random whether a shot hits or not.” That’s due to various reasons, including Overwatch 2’s rapidly moving and teleporting characters.

“Crisp, responsive movement is important to the core gameplay feel, so we wouldn’t want to just slow down player movement,” it’s explained. “Instead, we’re improving hit consistency by making both damage-dealing hitscan and travel time projectiles larger.”

Even Heroes that won’t be affected by the change will still get some balance updates. “However, we don’t want to make too many hero adjustments before getting a better understanding of the effects from these initial changes, so tune in for more on individual heroes in future updates.”

Heroes’ hit points are also changing, in accordance with those larger projectiles. Here’s how that breaks down:

The reasoning behind the health boost is that the team wants to keep time to kill in Overwatch 2 consistent.

When it comes to healing, expect even bigger changes. It’s explained:

The changes to projectile size and health pools effectively reduce the impact of burst damage and tones down the relative strength of healing, meaning it will take longer to heal someone from 1 HP to full health. To ease the friction of an increased time to fully heal allies out of combat and enable Support players to make more informed decisions on who to heal, everyone can now regenerate health passively at a rate of 20 healing per second after 5 seconds of not taking damage, and the Support role passive heal has been adjusted to 2.5 seconds.

An increase to health pools and weakening of burst damage means that heroes live longer, and team fights will take longer