Blizzard reveals a new era of Overwatch 2: Bigger health bars, self-healing, and a reworked Competitive mode

GamesFPSOverwatch 2Blizzard reveals a new era of Overwatch 2: Bigger health bars, self-healing, and a reworked Competitive modeWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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The list of changes coming to Overwatch 2 next week are bigger than anything Blizzard has done since the introduction of 5v5. In some ways, it’s a new era for the hero shooter that hasstruggled to find its footingin the year since its release.

“One of our main goals with these adjustments is to make firing your weapons and abilities feel more consistent without impacting the time to eliminate a target, without removing the overall feel of gameplay we all know and love.” Blizzard wrote in a blog post.

Reinhardt and his giant hammer, however, won’t benefit from the buffs. The changes are limited to heroes with guns of some kind. But Blizzard says it’s looking to tweak outliers in future updates.

With zero buffs to healing abilites, I suspect support will start to resemble the role as it’s played in MOBAs, where the focus is on clutch saves and setting up kills for your team rather than overpowering incoming damage with raw healing—a direction Overwatch 2 has already been creeping toward since the sequel’s release. A hero like Mercy might have to rely on her damage boost beam over her healing beam simply because her healing can’t outpace the new DPS passive.

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Overwatch 2 infographic with details on season 9 changes to hero health pools

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Overwatch 2 infographic with details on season 9 changes to hero role passives

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Overwatch 2 infographic with details on season 9 changes to hero projectile sizes

As I wrote when theregenerating health passive was announced,I’m skeptical of the way Blizzard wants to narrow the focus for every hero in the game to securing kills, even if the goal is to alleviate the inconsistent teamwork from match to match. Simplifying the goal of a match runs the risk of flattening the playstyles, or erasing the creative ways players can help their team without even firing a shot. Season 9 might not take a sledgehammer to the entire meta as we know it, but Blizzard is creating cracks in the foundation of how Overwatch has been played for years, and I’m not convinced that’s a good thing.

Ranked, renewed

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OW 2

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