Overwatch 2 season five started off with a wide array of hero balance changes, some of which represented philosophical shifts for Blizzard’s hero design team. And the game’s mid-cycle patch released today is poised to further shake up the game’s meta with 10 different heroes getting tuned.
In a Director’s Take blog post at the end of June, Blizzard’s Aaron Keller mentioned a number of changes that are on the horizon for the game, including hero balance changes set for the mid-cycle patch. The teaser included changes coming to Zenyatta’s Orb of Discord, as well as buffs to Reinhardt and Orisa. Meanwhile, Blizzard is moving the emphasis away from Torbjörn and Symmetra’s turrets.
There’s a lot to parse through as far as balance changes are concerned, especially for a mid-cycle patch. So without further adieu, here are the Overwatch 2 season five mid-cycle patch notes. For more information on some of the minor bug fixes in the patch, you can also check out Blizzard’s official post.
Overwatch 2 season five mid-cycle patch hero balance changes
Tanks
Orisa
- Fortify damage reduction increased to 50 percent, up from 40.
Orisa’s viability in the current meta is often limited by her inability to handle compositions that include a lot of crowd control. The developers felt that buffing her Fortify might help with that, but I’m not sure that the slight buff to a singular ability is all that she needs in order to be a dominant force.
Related: The definitive Overwatch 2 hero tier list for season 5
Ramattra
- Ravenous Vortex projectile now passes through enemy heroes but is still blocked by barriers.
While this is a slight buff, Blizzard’s dev notes refer to it as more of a quality-of-life improvement. It will just make it so players can have a bit more consistency when using the Ravenous Vortex.
Reinhardt
- Barrier Field maximum health increased to 1,400, up from 1,200.
With heroes like Ramattra and Sigma frequently getting picked over Reinhardt when a shield is required, the tried-and-true classic tank hero needed some kind of boost to his kit. Improving his shield is the least Blizzard could do to help improve his viability at higher levels of play in my opinion.
Wrecking Ball
- Quad Cannon manual reload time reduced to 1.6 seconds, down from two. This does not affect automatic reload time while transformed into a ball.
This is certainly a buff, but how substantive it is seems to be up for debate. Most of the time players just use the automatic reload from transforming into a ball anyway, so I’m not sure they’ll make too much use of this.
DPS
Sojourn
- Railgun number of shots to reach maximum spread increased to 12, up from 8. Spread also reduced by 12 percent.
This spread decrease will make Sojourn exceptionally lethal in the hands of higher-level players. I’m not sure quite how much of an impact this could have on the overall competitive ladder meta, but it’s certainly one of the most significant buffs in the patch.
Soldier: 76
- Heavy Pulse Rifle damage increased to 19, up from 18.
- Helix Rockets explosion damage increased to 90, up from 80.
- Biotic Field healing per second increased to 40, up from 35.
Keller didn’t mention Soldier in his dev take so this set of buffs comes as a surprise to many, but the team is looking to bring back more reliability in his damage throughput.
“We’d like to avoid going all the way back up to 20 damage on his primary fire since it has proven too powerful in the past,” the dev notes said. “So instead, we’re adjusting both primary and secondary fire damage slightly.”
Symmetra
- Photon Projector secondary fire maximum impact and explosion damage increased to 50, up from 45.
- Sentry Turret damage per second reduced to 25, down from 40. Turrets now reveal enemy heroes to allies while being damaged and for one second afterward.
The team seems to be looking to make heroes like Symmetra and Torbjörn less map dependent. While the two are often good as defenders on capture points where they can set turrets up at chokes, they’re less useful generally. Changes to them are aimed at making them more versatile, but I think that it might honestly just hinder their ability to be useful in situations where they can be dominant.
Torbjörn
- Rivet Gun secondary fire spread reduced to 4.5 degrees, down from 5.
- Deploy Turret damage reduced to 11, down from 14. Cooldown increased to 12 seconds, up from 10.
- Overload now reloads 6 ammo on use.
The nerf to Deploy Turret doesn’t seem to be as aggressive as the changes to Sentry Turret damage, and the update to Overload will certainly make flankers think twice before trying to engage the magma spewing Swede.
Kiriko
- Healing Ofuda recovery reduced to 0.9 seconds, down from one.
This is a partial reversion of a previous change to allow Kiriko to have more responsiveness when she needs to focus on healing. The change is so minor that I’m not totally sure how much it will be felt by players that don’t main Kiriko though, and I certainly don’t think it puts her in the realm of Ana who has dominated the role for a while now.
Zenyatta
- Orb of Discord maximum range reduced to 30 meters, down from 40. Time to wear off a target outside line-of-sight reduced to 1.5 seconds, down from 2.
As a Zenyatta main, I was wishing for the best and expecting the worst when Keller said Orb of Discord was getting a nerf, and I believe this is a best-case scenario. The ability is certainly slightly weaker, but it hasn’t been nerfed into the ground by any stretch.
