The second season of Overwatch 2 is upon us, with plenty of balance changes, a new hero and map, and some familiar maps returning with new visual effects on them. The Overwatch patch notes for season 2 went live on December 6 and can be downloaded through Battle.net launcher or the Xbox, Playstation, or Nintendo stores.

The Overwatch patch notes for Season 2 seek to remedy the imbalances from Season 1. This includes nerfs to Sojourn and buffs to Junker Queen, Tracer and Doomfist. And then there are tweaks to Symmetra and Kiriko that will help their playstyles feel less oppressive.

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This is the first large patch since the launch of the new Overwatch. Blizzard seems to be taking their time gathering data from each season and making changes based on those. Now without further ado, here are all the Overwatch patch notes for Season 2.

OVERWATCH PATCH NOTES: SEASON 2 COMPETITIVE PLAY

• There are new, temporary Competitive title rewards for name cards based on your end of season rank

  • You can only earn these titles at the end of the current Competitive season and can only use them in the season following

• Heroes that aren’t eligible for competitive play will have a lock icon in the Hero Gallery
• Implemented a group of matchmaking enhancements to improve match quality
• Minor polish improvements to the competitive play UI flow
• New hero, Ramattra, won’t be available in competitive for 2 weeks

HERO UPDATES

GENERAL

• Damage Role Passive

  • No longer provides a movement speed bonus
  • Reload speed bonus increased from 25 to 35%

TANK

Ramattra

• Ramattra has been added to the line-up

Void Accelerator (Omnic Form)

• Primary: Fire a stream of projectiles in a fixed pattern
• Secondary: Create a barrier at the targeted location

Nemesis Form

• Transform into Nemesis Form, changing your attacks and gaining bonus armor

Pummel (Nemesis Form)

• Primary: Punch forward, creating a wave of piercing energy with every swing
• Secondary: Significantly reduces damage taken from the front and reduces movement speed

Ravenous Vortex

• Fire a nano ball, which explodes when it hits the ground, spreading a damaging field. Affected enemies are slowed and pulled downward

Annihilation

• Enter Nemesis Form and create an energy swarm surrounding yourself. This swarm will lash out towards nearby enemies, dealing damage and pausing the duration when damage is dealt.

Doomfist

Rocket Punch

• Impact damage range (minimum-maximum) increased from 15-30 to 25-50 damage
• Wall slam damage range (minimum-maximum) reduced from 20-40 to 10-30 damage
• Empowered Rocket Punch wall slam stun duration range reduced from 0.5-1 to 0.25-0.75 seconds

  • Non-Empowered Rocket Punch now stuns for the minimum 0.25 second duration on wall slam

• Empowered Rocket Punch knockback radius reduced from 4 to 3 meters
• Minimum time before cancel option becomes available reduced from 0.25 to 0.12 seconds
• Cooldown reduced from 4 to 3 seconds

  • This has been in since his rework but was not mentioned

Power Block

• Cooldown reduced from 8 to 7 seconds
• Duration increased from 2 to 2.5 seconds
• Minimum damage mitigated required to empower Rocket Punch reduced from 90 to 80 damage

Meteor Strike

• Now empowers Rocket Punch on landing
• Enemy slow duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds

‘The Best Defense…’ Passive

• Maximum temporary health increased from 150 to 200 health
• Temporary health gained per target hit with abilities increased from 30 to 40 health

Junker Queen

• Torso and head hit volume size increased 12%

Rampage

• Wound duration reduced from 5 to 4.5 seconds
• Ultimate cost reduced by 10%

Commanding Shout

• Cooldown reduced from 15 to 14 seconds

‘Adrenaline’ Passive

• Adrenaline passive healing multiplier increased from 1 to 1.25x damage dealt by wounds

DAMAGE

Bastion

Configuration Artillery

• Delay before projectile drops reduced from 1 to 0.6 seconds
• Explosion damage reduced from 300 to 250
• No longer deals explosion damage to self
• Minimum delay between placing shots reduced by 20%

Reconfigure

• Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds

Sojourn

Railgun

• Energy delay before draining reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
• Secondary fire damage falloff starting range reduced from 70 to 40 meters
• Secondary fire critical damage multiplier reduced from 2 to 1.5
• Secondary fire damage now scales linearly with energy from 30 to 130 damage (1 energy converts to 1 damage added)
• Primary fire damage per projectile increased from 9 to 10
• Overclock energy charge rate increased by 20%

Symmetra

Photon Projector

• Beam charge rate and decay rate increased by 20%
• Primary fire ammo consumption rate increased from 7 to 10 per second
• Primary fire gains ammo from damaging barriers again

Tracer

Pulse Pistols

• Damage increased from 5 to 6

SUPPORT

Ana

Sleep Dart

• Cooldown reduced from 15 to 14 seconds

Kiriko

• Arm hit volumes width reduced 15%
• Added an auto-wall climb hero option

Kitsune Rush

• Ultimate cost increased by 10%
• Movement speed bonus reduced from 50 to 30%
• Cooldown rate reduced from 3 to 2 times faster

Protection Suzu

• Cast time reduced from 0.15 to 0.1 second

Kunai

• Ammo increased from 12 to 15

Swift Step

• Ability input can now be held to activate

Mercy

• Weapon swap time reduced from 0.5 to 0.35 seconds

Caduceus Blaster

• Ammo increased from 20 to 25

OVERWATCH PATCH NOTES: SEASON 2 MAP POOLS

Push

• New Queen Street – Morning
• Colosseo – Evening
• Esperança – Morning

Hybrid

• Blizzard World – Overcast (NEW)
• Eichenwalde – Evening
• King’s Row – Evening
• Midtown – Morning
• Paraíso – Morning

Escort

• Dorado – Evening
• Junkertown – Morning
• Circuit royal – Night
• Rialto – Morning
• Route 66 – Night
• Shambali Monastery – Night (NEW MAP)

Control

• Busan – Night
• Ilios – Evening
• Lijiang Tower – Dawn
• Nepal – Evening (NEW)
• Oasis – Morning (NEW)

OVERWATCH PATCH NOTES: SEASON 2 BUG FIXES

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug that was causing Roadhog’s breaths to not be audible when viewing some animations in the Hero Gallery
• Fixed a bug that caused some players to lose competitive challenge progress
• Resolved an issue where several products couldn’t be unlocked from the Hero Gallery
• Fixed an issue with the Lifesaver Challenge not counting Mercy’s Resurrect as a ‘Save’
• Resolved an issue with purchases not immediately showing up after purchase
• Fixed a bug with Torbjörn and Symmetra’s turrets displaying hostile red overlays in Deathmatch for the player that placed them

MAPS

Busan

• Fixed an area of the map where players could get stuck

Colosseo

• Fixed geometry that allowed some heroes to contest undetected

Esperança

• Fixed some areas that could be used to escape the playable space
• Fixed geometry that allowed some heroes to contest undetected

Gibraltar

• Fixed lighting issues across the map
• Fixed some areas where Torbjörn could place his turret in unreachable spots

Nepal

• Replaced some missing pillars on Sanctum

Rio

• Fixed a bug that allowed some heroes to get inside of the payload

Route 66

• Fixed lighting issues across the map

New Queen Street

• Fixed some issues with shadows across the map
• Fixed an area of the map where players could get stuck

HEROES

• Heroes no longer take damage from their own abilities if they’re on the other side of a friendly barrier
• Fixed an issue with the Damage Passive where sometimes a double reload animation could occur when the buff was active

Cassidy

• Resolved an issue with some skins using the wrong props in the ‘Flashbang’ victory pose

Doomfist

• Fixed an issue where Doomfist’s Power Block reduced the damage from some area of effect abilities
• Meteor Strike – You can no longer detect Sombra if the targeting reticle gets near her

D.Va

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to use Self-Destruct during their Mech’s destruction while Hacked

Junker Queen

• Jagged Blade can no longer be recalled while slept, stunned, hacked or frozen
• Fixed an issue with Jagged Blade being consumed by friendly abilities like Deflect, Defense Matrix, etc.
• Jagged Blade now takes a curved trajectory on return

Mercy

• Guardian Angel now correctly resets its cooldown if Valkyrie is used
• Guardian Angel ‘cancel boost’ is now disabled when Mercy is stunned

Moira

• Junkrat’s Trap no longer displays at chest height in first person when using Fade

Pharah

• Fixed a bug that reduced the ult cost of Rocket Barrage

Soldier 76

• Fixed an issue where Soldier 76 was unable to critical hit max range enemies during Tactical Visor

Symmetra

• Fixed a bug that resulted in all VO being cut out when taking the Teleporter

Tracer

• Fixed a big causing her Pulse Pistol damage falloff to not start until max range

Winston

• Resolved an issue with the Werewolf skin and the ‘Excuse me’ highlight intro turning Winston red in the Hero Gallery

Zenyatta

• Fixed an issue with melee not correctly animating if used to cancel alternate fire

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Featured image courtesy of Respawn Entertainment.

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