Overwatch 2’s mid-season patch has been delayed due to a ‘critical’ issue

Zarya and Sombra will be heavily altered as part of the update

Overwatch 2‘s next balance patch has been delayed due to a “critical” issue.

The patch, which was meant to begin rolling out late last night, was delayed at the last minute, leaving the character Mei unplayable.

“Today’s patch is delayed as we work to resolve a critical issue,” an official post on the Blizzard forums read.

“We’ll provide an update here and set the patch live as soon as the problem is addressed.” A later update to the article claims that the patch is now scheduled for Thursday, November 17 at 11am PST.

The patch will mainly target some popular heroes such as Zarya and Sombra. Zarya’s abilities will receive larger cool-down windows, as players have been suggesting she’s too hard to kill in her current form.

Overwatch 2‘s next hero, Ramattra, will be released on December 6 as part of the game’s Season 2 update. The character, who has been part of the Overwatch lore for over three years since he first appeared during the Storm Rising event, will be a tank-class hero.

The full patch notes for the delayed update are as follows:

Overwatch 2 mid-season update

Sombra

Hack ability lockout duration reduced from 1.75 to 1.5 seconds
Hacked enemies are no longer valid targets for hacking for the duration of the effect
Hacked damage multiplier reduced from 40 to 25%

Dev Comment: With Sombra’s rework, she gained a lot more damage to help account for the reduced ability lockout duration of Hack. This has proven to be too deadly for a flanker with easy access to the enemy backlines, and we’ve similarly had to address the damage output of heroes like Tracer, Reaper, and now, Genji, in the 5v5 format.

She can also no longer channel hack on an already hacked target as feedback indicated the reduced cooldown combined with hacking from stealth proved to be too frustrating for many players. This is essentially a per-target cooldown that enables Hack to keep its current 4 second cooldown for potentially hacking multiple targets.

Genji

Maximum ammo reduced from 30 to 24
Shuriken damage reduced from 29 to 27

Dev Comment: Genji is a Hero that has greatly benefited from the move to 5v5. Changing to a single Tank and the reduction of crowd control has meant Genji has had less obstacles in his way, however he hasn’t received tuning updates since he wasn’t actively in the meta until launch (something also informed by our general preference to avoid preemptive adjustments when possible). We also saw that, in early beta tests, other flanking Heroes such as Tracer and Reaper were also significantly more effective in OW2. These changes will bring Genji more in line with the other flanking damage heroes.

Zarya

Barrier duration reduced from 2.5 to 2 seconds
Barrier cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds

Dev Comment: Early player sentiment predicted Zarya as one of the weakest solo tanks in 5v5 though her high damage potential and barrier uptime have proven to be extremely effective. For opponents, feedback has indicated this can feel as though Zarya has very limited windows of vulnerability, which feels difficult to deal with when combined with her ramping damage potential.

These changes will reduce the barrier uptime, making it slightly more difficult for her to gain energy and will provide enemies with more time to deal damage to her.

D.va

Fusion Cannon spread increased from 3.5 to 3.75
Boosters impact damage reduced from 25 to 15

Dev Comment: D.va ended up feeling too deadly after the last round of changes given how resilient she can be with the improved Defense Matrix. Both our stats and high-level player feedback regarded her as not effective enough before that compared with other tanks, so this is a partial revert to establish some middle ground there.

Kiriko

Swift Step invulnerability duration reduced from 0.4 to 0.25 seconds

Dev Comment: This invulnerability window is primarily intended to help avoid instantly dying to something unseen after teleporting through walls, but it ended up being a little too long and led to some confusion when shooting at Kiriko