My patience with Overwatch 2 is wearing thin, and it’s only getting thinner as the hero shooter enters its 13th season today, October 15. The Halloween-centric season is full of recolors of old skins and a lot of the cosmetic favoritism that has plagued the game in the past year. But it also has a new patch, one that reworks the stealthy, hack-based hero Sombra just a year after Blizzard’s dev team last overhauled the DPS character. And y’all, I think my patience is reaching its limit for how this game keeps shaving down what makes its heroes special and worth playing.
Sombra is my secondary Damage hero behind Soldier: 76, so I have dozens of hours logged as her over the years. I wasn’t thrilled when Blizzard took away her hit-and-run playstyle in favor of a more committed one last year, but I adapted. A lot of the fundamentals like her cloaking ability that let her sneak into the backline of enemy team formations were still there, so I made it work. Now, Sombra can only really use her cloaking to escape, rather than to sneak around and sabotage her foes. The new patch notes for her are as follows:
Hack
Stealth
Translocator
EMP
Opportunist
Developer Comments: This is a significant change to Sombra’s playstyle in the hopes of making her more interactive for the opposing team and shifting some of her power from the utility of Stealth and Hack into increased lethality.
Stealth having a limited duration less than the Translocator cooldown is intended to create brief windows of vulnerability. It still enables Sombra to cross through dangerous areas unseen, but to really hang around in the enemy backline will require moving from cover-to-cover similar to other flanking heroes. No longer having the stealth movement speed removed upon taking damage also enhances its usefulness as an escape tool.
The idea behind the changes is that Sombra’s playstyle will be less about stealth and sabotage and more about flanking like fellow DPS hero Tracer. To which I say: fuck that. This is the kind of balance philosophy that comes from looking at stats on a scoreboard, rather than considering how utility factors into the value a good Sombra brings to a team. This is the kind of change that feels like it comes strictly from the perspective of someone facing Sombra who has probably gotten annoyed that she keeps sneaking behind them and harassing their backline. But now, she’s just another Tracer, but with more bells and whistles that are just overcomplications of a different, simpler playstyle.
Because this patch is targeting me, specifically, it also makes a significant change to Ramattra, the Omnic tank hero who joined Overwatch 2 shortly after its launch in 2022. Ramattra’s biggest asset was that he was able to pierce through shields and other defensive abilities with his Pummel attack, dealing short-range damage through them. This let him disrupt enemy tanks, and required you to play around his cooldowns instead of barreling toward him without a care. Now, he only does increased damage to barriers.
Pummel
Developer Comments: Ramattra’s Pummel projectiles passing through barriers was a source of frustration for players trying to protect themselves or their allies. With these changes enabling Ramattra to deal critical damage to barriers, he will still be a valuable hero choice against barrier mechanics, but won’t immediately apply damage to players on the other side.
What are we doing here, Overwatch 2? Why is it that the original mechanics for heroes that make them distinct from each other keep falling by the wayside? Why are characters like Juno and Junker Queen these weird amalgamations other heroes instead of bringing new things to the table? I don’t know, y’all. Sombra was always such a reliable switch for me when my team was having trouble penetrating an enemy team’s defenses, and now it just feels like she’s worse in pursuit of some sanded-down version of Overwatch 2 where every character’s “balanced” by way of them all being the same. Without a story mode to tell me more about this world and the characters all becoming the least interesting versions of themselves, I’m not sure what I’m doing here anymore.
The full season 13 patch notes read as follows:
Haunt your foes in Season 13 with Mythic Spellbinder Widowmaker, a master of witchcraft with stylish animations and enchanting effects. Then battle it out in Junkenstein’s Laboratory, the spooky new Halloween Terror PvP game mode with mutations that turn heroes to horrors! Plus, heroes and villainswatch their ideas of justice collide in the My Hero Academia collab featuring exclusive cosmetics inspired by the anime’s iconic characters. Get ready for a season filled with magic, might, and macabre moments!
Choose heroism or villainy with the latest Overwatch 2 collaboration featuring exclusive skins inspired by My Hero Academia’s iconic characters. Battle as a hero of justice with Tracer as Deku, Reinhardt as All Might, and Juno as Uravity, or create chaos with Reaper as Tomura Shigaraki and Kiriko as Himiko Toga. Don’t miss the Mega Bundle for the ultimate My Hero Academia collection—available for a limited time only, October 17-30.
© K. Horikoshi / Shueisha, My Hero Academia Project
This Halloween, the Halloween Terror event delivers a spooky good time with both brand-new and returning game modes. Experience the eerie madness of Junkenstein’s Laboratory, a fast-paced Team Deathmatch where you can enhance your heroes with powerful cursed talent cards. Then return to the chilling co-op adventure of Junkenstein’s Revenge, battling hordes of zombie Omnics and monstrous bosses. Finally, uncover the terrifying secrets of Adlersbrunn in Wrath of the Bride, a gripping PvE experience filled with puzzles, haunted castles, and jump scares. Face the frights and conquer the terror!
Two new heroes will test their skills in Hero Mastery. Starting on October 31st through to November 12th, you’ll have a chance to perfect your skills with Cassidy’s Peacekeeper or bash bots of the edge with Brigitte’s Shield Bash. Complete exclusive challenges through to earn new exclusive rewards and bonus Battle Pass XP as you test your skills in these new courses.
To give players easier access to social features, especially on controllers, we’ve added the ability to interact with the Scoreboard. The Interactive Scoreboard is intended to make reporting faster and easier, but also to improve your social experience through whatever channels you prefer to communicate in or avoid entirely. The following features are now accessible via Interactive Scoreboard:
Developer Comments: We’re not seeing any measurable impact from this tech in preventing loss streaks and we’re concerned it might be making queue times longer. So we’re scaling it back for now.
Developer Comments: We believe that match quality improves significantly when you are matched closely with one of the members on the opposing team in the same role. We believe we can tighten this preference without significantly impacting queue times.
Developer Comments: We’ve been thinking about how to improve the Tank experience from every angle, to give them more even matchups and reduce 1-sided matches for the whole team further.
Developer Comments: At our highest ranks these modifiers could sometimes allow very high skill players playing on new accounts to get lucky and surpass their peak ranks considerably, without actually earning their new rank like other players that have played more on their accounts.
Developer Comments: At the highest ranks, groups have had noteworthy advantages against teams composed of all solo players for some time now. Our aim with this addition isn’t to remove the advantage of grouping at higher ranks entirely, but we’d like the advantage of grouping at higher ranks to be less extreme.
Developer Comments: A reminder that we’ve been actioning accounts that post disruptive content in the Game Browser and we’re serious about removing problematic players that don’t follow our Code of Conduct. Whenever an account is actioned for a social penalty, they’re reduced to Endorsement Level 0, so the combination of social actions and this feature will allow for one chance to change their behavior before they’re permanently banned. Anyone that is below Endorsement Level 3 can still host games with the “Friends” or “Invite Only” settings, but they will not have access to the “Everyone” setting.
Developer Comments: We’ve been listening to community feedback that newer accounts should be required to earn access to the feature, but it’s important that this feature can’t be abused by various types of disruptive players that tend to play on very new accounts. As a reminder, the “Hide My Name” feature does not prevent disruptive players from being punished when they’re reported since we know their actual battle tag behind the scenes.
Developer Comments: Challenges are now in the main menu to highlight their rewards, primarily for new Event Challenges.
The requirements to appear on the Top 500 Leaderboard have changed:
Developer Comments: This change adds a more friction to counterswapping, especially in the extreme case where two players on opposite teams are both sitting in spawn with the scoreboard open and rapidly switch their heroes in response to each other’s choices.
Mauga
Incendiary Chaingun
Developer Comment: Increasing the duration of Mauga’s burn effect will help better reward going for the smaller, harder to hit targets.
Ramattra
Pummel
Developer Comments: Ramattra’s Pummel projectiles passing through barriers was a source of frustration for players trying to protect themselves or their allies. With these changes enabling Ramattra to deal critical damage to barriers, he will still be a valuable hero choice against barrier mechanics, but won’t immediately apply damage to players on the other side.
Reinhardt
Barrier Field
Developer Comments: This is just some fine tuning for the barrier health and regeneration rate as it had become slightly too tough to break through.
Hanzo
Developer Comments: We are reverting Hanzo back to his previous health now that it’s possible to take out an opposing Hanzo with a well-aimed headshot thanks to the weapon damage changes.
Sojourn
Railgun
Disruptor Shot
Developer Comments: These Railgun changes swap out the 25 minimum energy it decays to for a longer time before it begins to degenerate which alleviates some of the pressure to quickly use the secondary fire. Disruptor shot is getting a damage increase to helps its effectiveness as an area denial tool, andlong with additional utility through generating a small amount of Railgun energy to make it more broadly useful.
Sombra
Hack
Stealth
Translocator
EMP
Opportunist
Developer Comments: This is a significant change to Sombra’s playstyle in the hopes of making her more interactive for the opposing team and shifting some of her power from the utility of Stealth and Hack into increased lethality.
Stealth having a limited duration less than the Translocator cooldown is intended to create brief windows of vulnerability. It still enables Sombra to cross through dangerous areas unseen, but to really hang around in the enemy backline will require moving from cover-to-cover similar to other flanking heroes. No longer having the stealth movement speed removed upon taking damage also enhances its usefulness as an escape tool.
Baptiste
Biotic Launcher
Developer Comment: This change is aimed at reducing the fatigue resulting from controlling the recoil over longer periods of play more than trying to add power to Baptiste’s primary fire.
Brigitte
Repair Pack
Developer Comment: Brigitte’s healing output over the course of a match is quite high, so this is just a slight adjustment to help bring that in line.
Juno
Mediblaster
Developer Comments: Juno’s healing output is too high for how much mobility she possesses so we’re shortening her falloff range to increase the importance of positioning well with her mobility abilities.
Developer Comments: We want to reduce the number of one-sided stomps occurring in the Clash game mode. We also want to address the difficulty of securing at least one segment on the final objective points as attackers. So, we tweaked the capture time for the defending team to make the fight for objective points B and D a bit more favorable for attackers.
Circuit Royal
1st Point
2nd Point
3rd Point
Dorado
1st Point
2nd Point
3rd Point
Havana
1st Point
2nd Point
3rd Point
Numbani
1st Point
2nd Point
3nd Point
Baptiste
Sigma
Reaper