Overwatch 2 Season 3 patch notes include tank and ultimate changes

Published , by Ozzie Mejia

Earlier today, Blizzard revealed new details about Overwatch 2's upcoming Season 3. The publisher also teased that among the things to look out for are a fresh batch of balance changes. Details about those changes have arrived and they include some big changes to maximum ultimate charges and tank heroes as a whole.

To this point, any time a player swaps heroes, they could retain 30 percent of their ultimate charge. That will change with Overwatch 2's Season 3 update, as that total will be reduced to 25 percent. Meanwhile, tanks will see their health totals reduced for any game that does not have a role queue.

Here are the full Season 3 patch notes, as found on the Overwatch forums:


Source: Blizzard Entertainment

General Updates

Accessibility Improvements

Challenges

Endorsements

Game Report

Mystery Heroes Changes

Overwatch Credits are back

Ping System Update

Competitive Play

Season 3 competitive play begins now! Here are some of the latest updates aimed at improving the competitive experience in Overwatch 2:

Workshop Updates

Workshop Editor is back!

Workshop Moderation Tools

We added new menu options when reporting a player. Our goal is to give players more ways to report inappropriate behavior so that we can take action in a timely manner. As a result, you can select the category and sub-category that best explain why you are reporting the player or their custom content. The major categories include:


Source: Blizzard Entertainment

Hero Updates

ALL HEROES

Developer Comment: As part of this patch, there was a tuning pass for how often ultimate abilities are being generated, so expect to see several ultimate cost adjustments across multiple heroes.

TANK ROLE PASSIVE

Developer Comment: This change to the tank HP pools helps to address the relative power of those heroes in game modes where there can be multiple of them on the same team.

D.Va

Doomfist

Junkerqueen

Developer Comment: The overall base health for Junkerqueen is increased by 25 HP.

Orisa

Ramattra

Developer Comment: The idea of an ultimate ability potentially lasting forever is an exciting concept, but the reality is that if it's too easy to do it causes a lot of frustrations and with Ramattra's ultimate in particular, an excessive amount of visual noise. We're limiting the maximum duration to 20 seconds, which is still highly impactful for most team fights, but it guarantees it'll end in a reasonable amount of time.

Reinhardt

Developer Comment: In similar fashion to Roadhog's Chain Hook combo changes last season, we'd generally like to avoid heroes in the Tank role from killing enemies in one shot. Earthshatter direct hit damage is being reduced with that goal in mind. In most cases, targets on the receiving end would die anyway during the knockdown stun, but it does open up some potential for their allies to intervene.

For now, we're fine with Charge pin staying lethal to many characters due to the difficulty and risk involved. The Fire Strike damage increase does mean it could once again one-shot when combined with Baptiste's Amplification Matrix, but that requires an ultimate combo with another hero. We'll see how it plays out and adjust if necessary.

The Rocket Hammer knockback reduction sounds like a loss of power though it is actually aiming to reduce the number of times Reinhardt accidentally knocks enemies out of his melee range.

Roadhog

Developer Comment: Allowing Roadhog to use abilities during his ultimate made it much more reliable in a solo tank environment, though doing so was often much like just canceling the ultimate as it ran out of time. We're adding a couple seconds to the maximum duration to increase the flexibility of player choices during the Whole Hog ultimate, but we'll keep an eye on if it's simply too much damage or knockback overall.

Sigma

Winston


Source: Blizzard Entertainment

Wrecking Ball

Developer Comments: Wrecking Ball received some of the fewest changes in the transition to 5v5 as he proved to be one of the most effective solo tanks in early testing. His extreme mobility and massive health pool enable him to choose when to fight much more freely than other heroes. These changes are aimed at reducing his downtime so he can press that advantage even further. The regenerating shield health pool often leads to not needing to search for as many health packs before getting back in position.

Zarya

Cassidy

Developer Comment: Combat Roll not being blocked by players is mostly a small quality-of-life change to make the ability feel smoother, particularly when rolling in a direction that you're not facing.

Junkrat

Developer Comment: As the Concussion Mine already has damage falloff the further from the explosion the enemy player is, lowering the maximum damage will require Junkrat to be slightly more accurate to achieve the same lethality with some of his combos.

Mei

Pharah

Reaper

Soldier:76

Developer Comment: This is more an adjustment for the gun feels rather than strictly trying to add power, but it does have an effect on both. It makes the weapon handle more similar to the original version in that you can burst fire more accurately before the recoil kicks in.

Sombra

Developer Comments: Sombra is underperforming after her last round of changes. While we make progress on a small rework for her abilities, this damage increase will help strengthen Sombra even against targets that aren't affected by her Hack effect. It's a small increase per projectile, but it adds up quickly due to her fast fire rate. The health pack duration increase is a minor buff to avoid needing to re-hack them quite so often.

Symmetra

Torbjorn

Developer Comment: With the move to 5v5 and one less player to shoot at it, Torbjorn's turret tends to survive longer than ever. We're reducing its health slightly to help it feel less like a sixth player and be easier to deal with once someone turns their attention to it.

Widowmaker

Developer Comment: We experimented with Widowmaker at 200 health for a while due to concerns that the increased power of tanks made her too vulnerable to them. Ultimately she gains more advantages from 5v5 than she loses so we're returning her back to 175 HP to better enable more heroes to contest her lethal ranged capabilities.

Ana

Brigitte

Developer Comment: Repair Pack having a small amount of instant healing will help Brigitte have more agency in saving an injured ally and generally makes the ability feel more responsive and impactful.

Lucio

Mercy

Developer Comment: Replacing Mercy's Regeneration passive with a more interesting interaction was something we wanted to do after all support heroes gained a similar version of it through their Role Passive.

For the Caduceus Staff change, this will empower Mercy even more as a triage healer and enable her to more often save low health allies. The overall time it takes to fully heal a 200-health hero from 1 hp is about the same as before.

For Guardian Angel, the cooldown increase is necessary to reduce the greatly increased mobility resulting from the recent rework to the jump cancel. It enabled Mercy to quickly launch herself long distances in any direction and be overly evasive for such a short downtime.

Moira

Zenyatta

Developer Comment: We've been discussing options to potentially increase Zenyatta's survivability. We've seen previously in the beta that Zenyatta is on somewhat of a knife's edge for balance. Even just 25 more shield health pushed him into overpowered-must-pick territory at the pro level. To balance his powerful damage output, the lack of mobility is an intentional disadvantage by design, so we'd prefer not to change that too much. Instead, we're adding more ammo to lengthen the times between when Zenyatta is most vulnerable, which is when he is reloading.

Season 3 Map Pools

Push

Hybrid

Escort

Control

Bug Fixes

Maps

Heroes

There's more to check out from the world of Overwatch 2 beyond today's patch notes. For more on what to expect from this Tuesday, check out our story on the Overwatch 2 Season 3 overview from earlier today.