Overwatch 2 beta gets another mid-cycle patch
Tweaks hope to rebalance hero abilities, both old and new.
Blizzard has made further changes to its Overwatch 2 hero roster in another beta mid-cycle patch.
Six more heroes have had their abilities tweaked in a bid to rebalance the game ahead of its formal release, including Doomfist, Junker Queen, Orisa, Sojourn, Symmetra, and Zenyatta.
Doomfist's changes include minimum damage required to empower Rocket Punch reduced from 100 to 90 damage, and the movement speed penalty while blocking reduced from 50 to 35 per cent. They will also now deal damage to all enemies knocked back "instead of only the first target impacted".
Junker Queen has her Commanding Shout radius reduced from 20 to 15 metres, her allied bonus health now decays over its duration, although its maximum duration has been boosted from four to five seconds. Her Rampage radius, however, has dropped from six to five meters.
Orisa's Fortify now disables critical damage, and her Javelin Spin bonus movement speed has been buffed from 40 to 50 per cent. Sojourn has had a Railgun nerf - the fire rate is now reduced from 15 to 14 shots per second - and their Railgun Alt fire projectible radius now scales with energy level from 0 up to the previous 0.1 meters; the higher the energy level, the bigger the projectile radius.
Symmetra, on the other hand, had her Photon Projector Alt Fire charge time reduced from 1.2 to one second - a change Blizzard had previously hinted was coming - whilst her projectile radius has increased from 0.4 to 0.5 metres. The big change, though, is her Teleporter; its cooldown has been boosted from 16 to 12 seconds.
Last but not least there's Zenyatta, who has had their shield health nerfed from 175 to 150, which sees the overall max HP fall to 200 from 225.
Other quality of life (QoL) fixes include changes to help stop the game crashing on Xbox - and in Portuguese on PS5 - as well as bug fixes to Soldier 76's sprint, Genji's Dragon Blade - it sometimes got stuck as active even when it had finished - and now Junker Queen's ability icons will appear in the kill feed.
For the full list, head on over to the official Overwatch website.
Blizzard confirmed that it would be tweaking both Mercy and Symmetra in the Overwatch 2 beta mid-cycle patch last week. In a blog update, Blizzard said that the team has been hard at work "compiling player feedback, [and] squashing bugs", and revealed that part of this will be revisiting Mercy's changes in light of fan feedback.
For more, including the Overwatch 2 beta release time, end date, and how to sign up for the Overwatch 2 beta, here's our guide on how to get beta access to Overwatch 2 on consoles and PC.