'Overwatch' season 2 is live for all players with new map and hero changes
UPDATE: Sept. 2, 2016, 1:27 p.m. EDT Patch 1.3 is also live on PS4. It was previously only live on PC and Xbox One.
Overwatch launched into its second competitive season Thursday night with patch 1.3, bringing with it the new map Eichenwalde and updates to a handful of heroes.
New features
The new hybrid map Eichenwalde is set in a German village and castle, tasking attacking players with capturing a point and escorting a payload up into the castle while defenders try to stop them. The map was first revealed at Gamescom in August and has been available to play on the public test realm for a week and a half.
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Patch 1.3 also brings a helpful update for heroes that need healing. When a healer-class hero uses the "Needs healing" emote while targeting a teammate, the healer will tell them to group up to get healed. The players that are targeted will see a marker above the healer's head to make them easier to spot.
Hero changes
Most of the heroes that received updates have been nerfed in the latest patch, making them less likely to appear in every lineup, namely Genji, Zenyatta and Lúcio. A few other characters like Mei and Mercy have gotten pretty nice buffs.
Looking at nerfs, Genji can no longer damage traps with Swift Strike, can now get trapped in Junkrat's Steel Trap and his ultimate Dragonblade now lasts six seconds instead of eight. Zenyatta's overpowered Orb of Discord now amplifies damage against enemies by 30% instead of 50%, but his Orb of Destruction projectile does 46 damage instead of 40.
Lúcio has less of a movement increase when he uses Amp It Up, increasing by 70 percent instead of 100 percent. And McCree's ultimate Deadeye doesn't drop the meter to 50% when you activate then cancel it. Instead it behaves like other ultimates in the game, and it needs to be fully recharged.
As for buffs, Mei's ultimate, Blizzard, has an increased radius -- now 10 meters instead of eight -- and its projectile now pierces barriers. Mercy's healing-per-second has gotten a 20 percent increase, and when she uses her Resurrect ultimate, heroes will be able to move after 2.25 seconds instead of 3.
You can check out the patch notes for further details and see if your favorite hero was tweaked.
Competitive changes
Season 2 of competitive Overwatch is looking quite a bit different from the first. One of the biggest changes is the new ranking system, which scales from 1-5,000 instead of 1-100 and has tiers based on skill rating:
Bronze: 1-1,499
Silver: 1,500-1,999
Gold: 2,000-2,499
Platinum: 2,500-2,999
Diamond: 3,000-3,499
Master: 3,500-3,999
Grandmaster: 4,000-5,000
Along with that, sudden death has been removed in favor of having matches end in draws. With a new time bank system that gives one minute of bonus time instead of two, the likelihood of a match ending in a draw is very low.
You can check out more details about the competitive changes in Season 2 here.
