After weeks of D.Va dominance, Overwatch 2’s September 17 update has finally arrived, nerfing the Tank hero along with the Tank role as well. Here are the full patch notes.
Throughout Overwatch 2 Season 12 it quickly became readily apparent that the D.Va meta was unstoppable, and when paired with Juno, you had one of the strongest dive comps you could play.
A solid month after the season arrived, D.Va is now finally getting some nerfs. The new patch ensures her armor gets a reduction while balancing things out by upping her base health, which should bring down her sustainability.
Wanted to try and do this one a bit differently by outlining some of the goals we have for future changes regarding Clash, hopefully is good insight for y'all! https://t.co/vPKposFeP6
— Alec Dawson (@GW_Alec) September 13, 2024
Clash and Flashpoint are also getting some changes. The Fast Respawn mechanic for after a point has been captured has been removed, and defenders will have their timers reduced for every segment captured by attackers in the last point.
As for buffs, several Supports now deal significantly more damage. The update sees a substantial improvement for Moira’s Coalescence, Lifeweaver’s primary fire, and Zenyatta’s overall lethality.
In particular, Zenyatta’s damage buffs are meant to up his viability in the current brawl and dive meta. So instead of buffing his survivability (we know how that has gone in the past), the devs have upped his lethality.
Cassidy got some buffs and changes to his Flashbang. Now the hinder won’t last as long, but its explosion damage has been buffed as a way to minimize its CC. Additionally, the cost for Deadeye has been reduced.
Hanzo too received some alterations making his one-hit headshot against 250 health heroes more viable by upping his damage, but the projectile hitbox has been significantly lowered, needing more mechanical skill to land it.
The full Overwatch 2 September 17 patch notes are as follows:
Overwatch 2 Retail Patch Notes – September 17, 2024
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General Updates
Role Queue Mystery Heroes
Role Queue Mystery Heroes is a new variation of the popular Mystery Heroes game mode but using the Role Queue rules. Once you select your role, your heroes played will be randomly selected among the heroes in that role and will not change roles throughout the match.
•Role Queue Mystery Heroes added to the Unranked Menu
•Open Queue Mystery Heroes removed from the Unranked Menu
•You can still create a custom game of Open Queue Mystery Heroes in Custom Games
Deathmatch
•Deathmatch is moved from the Unranked Menu to the Arcade Menu and will appear in dailyrotation with other Deathmatch modes.
Competitive Updates
Competitive Drives
Competitive Drives are limited-time events that take place near the end of seasons in Competitive Play Role Queue. As you complete a Drive you’ll earn bonus Competitive Points and a new reward called “Signatures”. Signatures are a cosmetic reward that appears on your name in most locations where your name is displayed, including your Name Card, Play of the Game Highlights, Scoreboard, and Hero Select. Signatures are upgraded as you reach Checkpoints in a Drive.
When you win a match you’ll earn Drive Score and progress toward the next Checkpoint. Losing subtracts Drive Score, but generally less than winning, and Checkpoints prevent you from losing score once you reach them.
There are 6 Checkpoints and they grant the following rewards in order of completion:
•500 Competitive Points
•Signature
• 1000 Competitive Points
• Advanced Signature
• 1500 Competitive Points
• Elite Signature
Your progression on a Drive is shared across all roles in Role Queue. You do not earn progression toward your Drive in Open Queue Competitive Play.
When you complete Drives your Signature will be upgraded to show off how many Drives you’ve completed in total.
Signatures are removed after a Rank Reset.
HERO UPDATES
General
• Armor flat damage reduction decreased from 10 to 7 per impact.
Developer Comment: The recent increase to armor’s effectiveness improved the survivability of armored heroes more than we’d like for how passive it is, so we’re tuning it down to a middle-ground value.
Tank
Role Passive
• Knockback resistance reduced from 40% to 25%.
Developer Comment: This knockback resistance value has changed a few times as the environment of the game shifts. With Juno entering the roster and bringing more sources of speed boost to help rush down the enemy team, we’d like to make tanks more susceptible to displacement again.
D.Va
• Mech armor health reduced from 375 to 325.
• Mech base health increased from 200 to 225.
Developer Comment: There has been a lot of community feedback surrounding D.Va lately. On average she hasn’t been overperforming, but she’s quite difficult to take down. So we’re shifting some of her armor to normal health and reducing her max combined health by 25 armor. With armor’s effectiveness being hit in the same patch, we’ll keep an eye on how this plays out and adjust as necessary.
Orisa
• Fortify
o Movement speed penalty reduced from 20% to 10%.
Developer Comment: We still don’t want Orisa to easily chase enemies down while Fortified since there’s not much you can do to fight back during that time, so while we’re not removing the movement speed penalty entirely, we are lowering it to a point where it will feel much better for Orisa to use.
Roadhog
• Take a Breather
o Resource regeneration rate increased from 8 to 10 per second.
Developer Comment: This is a reversion to Roadhog’s previous resource regeneration rate to improve his primary tanking ability’s uptime. There were several adjustments to reduce the power of this ability but they may not have been necessary as Roadhog has been underperforming for some time now.
Sigma
• Hyperspheres
o Impact damage reduced from 25 to 15.
o Explosion damage increased from 30 to 40.
o No longer deals damage to self.
Developer Comment: This shift in damage from the Hyperspheres direct impact into the explosion component is to improve the effectiveness of the airburst explosion when playing at max range and makes it more threatening against tightly grouped enemies.
Damage
Bastion
• Configuration: Assault
o Spread reduced from 2.2 to 2 degrees.
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• Configuration: Artillery
o Ultimate cost reduced 12%.
Developer Comment: The spread reduction is intended to improve the Assault mode weapon’s effective range against smaller targets while not changing much in regard to how good it is against tank heroes and their large size.
Cassidy
• Flashbang
o Hinder duration reduced from 1.2 to 0.9 seconds.
o Explosion damage increased from 45 to 75.
• Deadeye
o Ultimate cost reduced 10%.
Developer Comment: We’re reducing how impactful the hinder effect is by lowering its duration, as this crowd control can be a significant source of frustration for players. Since now there is less time to follow up with shots from the weapon while the opponent is hindered, we’re increasing the explosion damage of Flashbang.
Hanzo
• Storm Bow
o Normal arrows are no longer affected by global projectile size increases.
o Maximum damage increased from 120 to 125.
o Time to fully charge increased from 0.72 to 0.87 seconds.
Developer Comment: This change restores Hanzo’s one hit headshot kill against 250 health heroes, though it will require more accuracy with the smaller projectile size and is now slower to charge shots to reduce the frequency of projectiles being thrown out.
After trying the recent iterations of Hanzo post Season 9, we feel the one-shot capability is too essential to the core gameplay feel of these sniper heroes (similar to Widowmaker) without a much larger rework. Being limited to a smaller range of heroes that could be one shot (225 HP and below) added some texture to the hero matchups but wasn’t a satisfying compromise for either side.
Venture
• Explorer’s Resolve (Passive)
o Shield health gained per ability reduced from 40 to 30.
Developer Comment: As a highly mobile damage hero, Venture doesn’t need quite as much shield health from their passive as they currently get to be successful. Even though they are a close-range
hero, their abilities enable them to close the gap quickly and effectively without taking much damage.
Support
Moira
• Coalescence
o Damage per second increased from 70 to 85.
Developer Comment: Moira’s ultimate didn’t feel threatening enough after the health adjustments across the cast and her own lower health value.
Lifeweaver
• Thorn Volley
o Maximum ammo increased from 80 to 100.
Developer Comment: The increased firing duration for Thorn Volley will give Lifeweaver more damage presence and it lines up better with his auto-charging heal timing to help that flow nicely.
Zenyatta
• Destruction Orb
o Damage increased from 48 to 50.
• Discord Orb
o Cooldown per target reduced from 7 to 6 seconds.
Developer Comment: With the current addition of more speed boosts in the game, Zenyatta (and generally more poke-oriented team compositions by extension) has fallen off a bit due to how immobile and vulnerable he can be. We’ve tried increasing his health in the past but it’s proven problematic, so instead we’re leaning into his glass-cannon nature. We’re improving his damage this time, which should enable new break points in how many shots are required to eliminate an enemy.
Map Updates
Clash
• Fast Respawn after a point has been captured has been removed from Clash. We’ll be looking to implement an alternate version of it for Clash in the future.
• Respawn times for defenders get reduced by 2 seconds for each segment the attackers secure in the final capture zone.
Flashpoint
• The initial boost of speed heroes receive when leaving the spawn has been increased in duration from 1 second to 2 seconds.
• Increased maximum potential duration of the speed boost effect from 5 to 6 seconds.
Bug Fixes
• Fixed an issue that would cause Lifeweaver’s petal platform to continue to rise when interacting with Mei’s Ice effects.
• Fixed an issue where wall climbing heroes could infinitely ledge grab.
• Fixed an issue where players were not gaining credit when queuing for all roles in challenges and progression stats.
• Fixed an issue where Lifeweavers’s petal platform can move horizontally if placed on a moving object.
• Fixed an issue where Deadeye would incorrectly indicate a killing blow on Ramattra.
• Fixed an issue where audio would remain muffled if you used a teleporter while hindered.
• Fixed an issue with D.Va’s Boosters movement speed stacking multiplicatively with speed boosting abilities.
• Fixed an issue with Sigma’s Gravitic Flux percentage health damage being affected by damage reduction.
• Fixed an issue with armor reducing more damage than intended when one hero had multiple armor health pools.