Overwatch 2's mid-season balance patch has been released, but there are fewer hero balance changes than expected. The hotfix hero balance patch in mid-December to a few Overwatch 2 heroes addressed the most prevalent issues, so this scheduled patch addressed more gameplay and visual bugs than usual.
Overwatch 2's early days have seen new maps, heroes, and metas come and go on a regular basis. This January balance patch will see the beginning of the Battle for Olympus Team Deathmatch mode, where Overwatch players will play as heroes in Greek-themed skins and amped-up abilities to earn those skins, signature voice lines, and glory. With the Battle for Olympus taking center stage and other major hero balance changes addressed in a December update, this balance patch is light on hero adjustments but addresses some serious bugs that have been affecting the Overwatch playing experience.
Overwatch 2's midseason hero balancing only affected 4 heroes. Junker Queen got buffs that will improve her personal healing. The healing granted from her Adrenaline Rush passive ability gets a boost so when an enemy is afflicted with the effect of the Wounds and dies, she will continue getting wounds healing until the Wounds affect timing runs out. Her Carnage ability cooldown will also reduce by 2 seconds for every enemy she hits with it. Jagged Blade direct hit damage is decreased from 80 to 50, but causes 30 Wound damage and will stack with Wound caused by melee hits or Jagged Blade return. Junker Queen buffs have been a major talking point among Overwatch 2 fans and the last two hero patches have taken a big swing at making her viable again.
Zarya will have the energy reduction rate decreased slightly from 2.2 to 2 points per second and the delay before energy degradation begins has been increased from 1 second to 2 seconds. Brigitte will have her shield health increased from 250 to 300. Moira's Biotic Orb damage will now restore a small amount of Biotic Energy. Bug fixes in this patch will address the improper placement of Ramattra's Souveniers, black textures should no longer appear during Kiriko's Whirlwind animation, Reaper's animation when coming out of the "Take a Knee" emote, and other non-gameplay animations. Hero Gameplay bug fixes include making Tracer able to take damage from her pulse bombs again, a Kiriko Swift Step bug specific to Capture-the-Flag mode, and other bugs with Mercy, Ramattra, and Bastion. Bugs that occur in Watchpoint: Gibraltar and Shambali have also been addressed.
After the January 5 patch notes were released, Aaron Keller made a tweet stating that the anticipated rework to Roadhog may show up by late January. For better or worse, the Overwatch development team has remained consistent with hero balancing and listening to the community about addressing hero issues and bugs. Hopefully, that will remain a constant for this game.
Overwatch 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Blizzard