A new set of adjustments occurs with a new season. Here are the Overwatch 2 patch notes for Season 4.
The patch notes for Overwatch 2 Season 4 are already available, despite the season’s April 11 debut. The game fixes various bugs and adds a new support character named Lifeweaver.
Some other heroes have undergone adjustments. So you may anticipate much more balance than before in competitive games. Additionally, a new fan-made map called Talantis has been introduced to keep things interesting.
Let’s check them out now without further ado.
Lifeweaver from Overwatch 2
Hero Lifeweaver is a scientist, an artist, and an activist. He wants to make the planet whole. He can accomplish this task with the aid of science and the beauty of nature. Its capabilities are listed below:
- Hold to charge a healing burst with the healing blossom. Release for targeted ally healing.
- Thorn Volley: Rapidly launch a variety of grenades.
- Petal Platform: Toss a platform that, when stepped on, springs upward.
- Rejuvenating Dash: Run in the direction you’re headed while lightly healing yourself.
- Life Grip: Guide an ally toward you while guarding them on the way.
- Place a tree called “Tree of Life” that instantly heals allies as it sprouts and regularly heals allies as it lives.
- Drop a present that heals the first opponent or ally to pick it up as your parting gift (passive) when you die.
Hero Alters
Tank
Reinhardt
- reduction in armor health from 300 to 250
- Base health was raised to 200 from 175
Developer Comment: Since his offensive powers have recently improved, Reinhardt has been outperforming. Since those adjustments are working effectively, we’re lowering his overall health through this reduction in armor in order to adjust his overall power.
Sigma
- Impact damage is down from 60 to 40 (total damage with explosion is 80)
- The time taken to knockdown increased from 0.8 to 1.1 seconds.
Developer Comment: Similar to Roadhog’s Chain Hook, Sigma’s Accretion and primary fire combination has the potential to be extremely devastating and seems like a kill is certain against enemies with 200 health. While we slightly decrease damage to make more primary fire necessary, we also lengthen the stun duration to give allies more time to react to successful impacts.
Damage
Cassidy
- Base health is now 200 instead of 225.
- a magnetic flare (120 damage as opposed to 131)
Developer Comment: Despite only working at close range, the magnetic grenade only required one extra primary fire shot after sticking to a target, making it too reliable to use. We are evenly distributing the direct target damage and explosion damage on the magnetic grenade to reduce the overall damage.
We’re returning Cassidy’s health to 200 because the recent reduced falloff-damage buff his primary fire received allows him to play from safer engagement ranges.
Sombra
- Blizzard can now be stopped by EMP
Developer Comment: To keep Sombra’s EMP consistent with how it impacts other device-controlled ultimates, we are increasing what it disables.
Support
Ana
- Tank heroes’ maximum duration was decreased from 5 to 3.5 seconds, a 30% decrease.
Developer Comments: We’ve been keeping an eye on Sleep Dart’s performance in 5v5 matches. Overall, it hasn’t been too disruptive, but since tank heroes have enormous hit boxes and it is much more profitable to land against them when there is only one tank on the field, we’re lowering its maximum duration against them.
Brigitte
- For the duration of the Rally, Brigitte now receives 100 restorable armor health points.
- Unlike her neighboring comrades, Brigitte no longer progressively increases her temporary health.
- Now that Rally has upgraded her Barrier Shield, it has more health and is bigger.
- During the last phase, barrier health rose from 300 to 750.
- Shield Bash now hits multiple enemies during Rally and momentarily stuns them.
- mobility bonus speed was decreased from 30% to 15%.
Developer Comments: Rally lost part of its potency when it switched from giving friends temporary health to increased armor, and it took a while for its defensive advantages to accumulate overall.
By getting a bigger armor health pool upfront and an improved barrier, which can be used to block for teammates while their temporary health grows or shock adversaries with the interrupt ability, this redesign aims to maintain it as a defensive ultimate ability with a more immediate impact.
Mercy
- The healing rate raised from 45 to 55 per second.
- Allies with less than 50% health no longer receive further healing.
- Reduced from 2.5 to 1.5 seconds in the cooldown
- Jump and Crouch have a longer active ability state duration of 1.5 seconds.
- It is no longer possible to manually start the cooldown early by manually interrupting the Jump and Crouch cancel active ability state.
Developer Comment: While the previous iteration was straightforward, it also had some unforeseen consequences, such as not being ready to use GA again after using Resurrect and flying in; thus, it still needs to be kept under control in some way.
Using the greater mobility from the jump/crouch cancel options or waiting for the base cooldown duration, Mercy can choose to opt into an additional 1.5 second cooldown with this patch, giving her more versatility.
Additional Modifications & Updates
Accessibility
added a feature to let players choose their own colors for the health, shields, armor, and overhealth bars. enhanced preview functionality with various sample backgrounds and unique color options.
System for Stranded Spawns
It’s never been simpler to gather your team after becoming stranded in a spawn chamber! Spawn rooms will now continue to function partially for 7 seconds after shutting down due to capturing or failing to complete an objective.
Other new features have been triggered in these spawn rooms, albeit you can’t change heroes there still. The doors are still sealed for the opposing team in these “stranded spawns,” the healing field is still present, and you may now use the Interact key to rapidly teleport to the new active spawn chamber.
Matchmaking
Finding players with skills closer to those of the other players in the match will now take precedence when backfilling players in unranked modes. Matchmaking quality is improved for large groups by small adjustments.
Competitor Updates
Leaderboard Top 500 Eligibility
Before becoming eligible to enter the Top 500 leaderboard for a given role, queue, or area, players will now need to win 25 competitive matches.
Developer comments: Prior to this change, we only required 25 games to be finished, regardless of outcome, in order to qualify for the Top 500 leaderboards. This modification should ensure that players consistently strive to win games, which will help guarantee that the leaderboards feature the top players in each region.
Competitive Changes to Leaver Penalties
For the purposes of establishing the length of suspensions or receiving a seasonal ban from competitive play, matches left in various competitive queues are still treated separately. The severity of these suspensions and bans is no longer completely reset at the beginning of a new competitive season.
This should, ideally, stop players from quitting competitive games at the end of a season without suffering significant repercussions at the beginning of the next one.
After a 5-win competitive update, matches that are still in competitive play will have a more detrimental impact on a player’s skill tier and division.
Challenge Titles in Competition
Seasonal competitive titles now indicate whether they were obtained through challenges in the open queue or the role queue. For instance:
- The “Diamond Open Challenger” title may be obtained by finishing in Diamond rank in the Open Queue.
- The “Diamond Role Challenger” title can be obtained by finishing in Diamond rank in the role queue.
- Developer Comments: By making these adjustments, we hope to avoid any misunderstandings regarding a player’s rank from a prior season if they take part in numerous Competitive queues.
Rank in competitive matches
An emblem indicating the average skill tier and division of all players in that match will now be displayed at the top of the first loading screen for competitive matches, which displays all of the participants.
Players should be able to compare their own ratings to those of other players in the match more effectively as a result.
Removed Seasonal Rank Decay
A player’s Competitive Play rank won’t be lowered at the start of a season as of Season Four. The impacts of this rank lowering from earlier seasons will likewise be reversed. Most players will see their skill tier and division grow depending on how many games they played in the previous season.
The matchmaker’s estimation of your skill will now closely match your skill tier and division at the start of Season 4.
Developer Comments: Players were quite confused by the prior seasonal rank decay since they would see players in competitive games who did not seem to be of a similar rank. These athletes frequently had comparable skills, but they had fewer games under their belts during the season to make up for the initial degradation.
Competitive Skill Upgrading and Development
Information regarding a player’s losses, ties, and wins will now be displayed on the Competitive Progress and Competitive Update screens.
Players will now be able to see their current progress within a skill division on the Competitive Update screen. This should help clarify how a player’s skill tier and division are impacted by the outcomes of games they play after the update.
Players that have a winning record but don’t advance in skill level are nevertheless able to do so because all advancement takes place within a single category. Players will be able to see that they did, in fact, make progress, even if it wasn’t enough to move up a skill tier or division.
For players who are Grandmaster 1 but have not yet made it to the Top 500 leaderboard, a similar message is also included with competitive updates. This ought to give those gamers insight into how close they are to reaching the Top 500 leaderboard.
Map revisions
Generally Speaking
Map Pools are no longer active, and all maps are now being rotated.
Talantis, a fresh arcade map
A submerged Talon base with jump pads, pit traps, enormous fish, and waterfalls was created thanks to your idea and our construction.
Between April 25 and May 1, Talantis will only be available for a brief period of time to play.
Map Lighting for Season 4
Push
- Dawn on New Queen Street
- Colosseum – Early
- Esperanza – Early
Hybrid
- AM in Blizzard World
- Morning in Eichenwalde
- Night in Hollywood (New)
- Evening in King’s Row
- Midtown – Early
- Numbani – Early
- Paraso – Early
Escort
- Night in Dorado
- Cuba at night
- Gibraltar watchpoint in the evening
- Morning in Junkertown
- Morning in Circuit Royal
- Rialto – Early
- Morning on Route 66
- Night at Shambali Monastery
Control
- Night in the Antarctic Peninsula
- Busan – Early
- Ilios – Early
- Tower in Lijiang at night
- Nepal – Early
- Evening by Oasis
Fixing bugs
- The rank-up animation would sometimes play in competitive modes even while a player was actually ranking lower.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Relative Aim Sensitivity from being set to 0%.
- Hero Options might become unresponsive if changed during the respawn phase, but that bug has been fixed.
- a problem where some map preview pictures were missing from game reports and replays has been resolved
- Fixed several instances where Streamer Mode failed to obscure BattleTags.
- By defaulting to a lower ping, a problem with the Custom Game Browser’s sorting was resolved.
- Fixed a problem wherein Competitive’s circular transition screen could malfunction when the resolution was set to 21:9.
- Fixed an issue where the Round Transition screen would become much darker if colorblind settings were turned on.
- Fixed an issue whereby using a souvenir as you loaded the map may cause the camera to move.
- Fixed a flaw that made it impossible to use the endorsement user interface when on the challenge progress screen.
- The While You Wait menu could not be accessed by users unless they first highlighted the middle card on the screen on a controller or joystick.
Maps
Cirque du Soleil
Several lighting issues in Circuit Royale were fixed
Hanamura
Many instances of lighting and geometry were fixed
Ilios
Fixed locations in Ilios where users could become stuck
Queen Street, New
Fixed numerous lighting and geometry issues in Toronto
Oasis
- Locations in Oasis that prevented players and gameplay were fixed
- Monastery of Shambali
- Fixed sections in Shambali Monastery permitted players to stand in places they weren’t supposed to.
Heroes
Ashe
- When scoped in, Ashe’s Viper no longer occupies a sizable portion of the screen thanks to changes made to the Raijin skin.
- A bug that permitted Ashe to get Ultimate while B.O.B was active has been fixed
Bastion
- Fixed a problem where some skills could interfere with the targeting reticle of artillery
- It was fixed that Bastion’s attack animations may appear sped up when Kitsune Rush’s effects wore off, even though they weren’t.
Cassidy
- A glitch in Cassidy’s Deadeye that caused a Killing Blow to be delivered before the enemy had been marked with a skull was fixed in a prior release.
- Fixed a problem that allowed the damage from Deadeye to be increased by regaining the same target before Deadeye finished.
Doomfist
Seismic Slam’s failure to always register when utilized on uneven surfaces has been fixed.
Echo
fixed a problem where Echo’s Duplicate would occasionally fail when copying a D.Va while casting Self-Destruct.
Genji
fixed a problem where some skills would not work as intended once Genji had successfully dodged them.
Kiriko
- Resolved a problem wherein Swift Step occasionally failed to teleport the player.
- ‘Terrible Tornado’ was a problem that caused Kitsune Rush to seem orange to adversaries when Kiriko was wearing it.
- For a short time, fixed invisible entities in Kiriko’s ultimate Kitsune Rush are pingable.
Mercy
- Fixed a bug that allowed Mercy to clip into the surroundings for extended periods of time while using Valkyrie, preventing crucial shots.
- Fixed a problem where, occasionally, Mercy may counteract the effects of a Rocket Punch
- Fixed a bug where Mercy’s crouching footsteps were extra quiet
Moira
A problem where Moira’s hand animations would jerk during gameplay has been fixed
Orisa
An issue with the artwork on Orisa’s Forest Spirit Spear has been fixed
Pharah
Fixed a bug where the game’s barrage mode wouldn’t use the selected skin’s custom rockets.
Roadhog
Fixed a whole hog and hook interaction where the hook would clip into the target camera.
Sigma
- Fixed an issue where heroes might be picked up by Gravitic Flux just before the Revive was about to end.
- The tooltip for Kinetic Grasp has been corrected. Now it clearly says that it provides “extra health.”
Sombra
- Fixed an issue where players who had identified Sombra may still hear her footsteps.
- Torbjorn
- Fixed an issue where projectiles from the Molten Core may become caught in the air if they were deflected by Orisa’s spear.
Tracer
Fixed a bug where, occasionally, Tracer’s blink charges would not return in full upon respawning.
Widowmaker
Venom Mine no longer lacks a team color if Widowmaker is sporting an away OWL skin due to a problem that was fixed.
Zarya
A problem where Zarya wouldn’t receive a charge from Brigitte’s Shield Bash has been fixed
Zenyatta
- Fixed a problem where, when using a gamepad or controller, Zenyatta’s ability might prompt the target characters in the wrong order.
- Fixed a bug where Orb of Discord may make an adversary seem Blue in team colors.
Let’s Talk About Workshop Projectiles
You may now construct either a functional projectile or a purely decorative projectile effect with the use of three new Workshop actions:
- Make a Projectile
- Making a homing projectile
- Projectile Effect Create
Furthermore, a matching workshop add-on is available that offers 19 projectile visual effects.
Thanks for reading!