Overwatch Developer Update: Competitive Open Queue To Become Permanent in July

In a new Developer Update, Jeff Kaplan announced that they are working to make Competitive Open Queue into a full game mode that will no longer be just in the Arcade. This will go live with the beginning of Competitive Season 23 in early July. The announcement also mentioned that a new experimental card will be going live soon. This will have many balance changes keyed towards making Bastion more viable.

Competitive Open Queue has seen an unprecedented response. Kaplan mentioned that it is now the second most-played game mode in Korea. However, the mode is less popular than Mystery Heroes in North America. They did not expect that response but are now working quickly to make it into a staple game mode. He said it will be taken off the Arcade soon but will be back up in early July. Once Competitive Season 22 ends and 23 begins, there will be a new card when players select Competitive Play from the menu. In this card, they can choose between the standard 2-2-2 competitive or Open Queue.

The experimental balance changes going live soon are centered around making Bastion a better pick across all skill ranks. Kaplan gave several examples of tunings, including making Ana do less healing, buffing Mercy’s healing output, and buffing Zenyatta’s Damage Orb back to a 30% Damage increase. He mentioned that there are a lot of changes coming to Moira, but did not go into details. Likewise, he alluded to balance changes to Junkrat but did not specify what.

Stay tuned into TGH as we will keep you up-to-date on any and all Overwatch and Overwatch League news and updates.

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