‘Overwatch 2’ beta update adjusts 6 heroes

There’s been a fair amount of controversy surrounding the upcoming release of Overwatch 2 and the currently active beta, with players vocalising their needs for hero adjustments loud and clear over social media and fan forums.

With a midcycle patch released July 14, six further heroes see adjustments to their abilities. The changes follow a patch to Mercy just a few days previously, on July 11, after fans expressed their disappointment at an alteration to her Guardian Angel ability.

Since then, players have made their feelings regarding the Junker Queen known too, with many suggesting that she needs to be larger to fit more in line with the Tank class aesthetic. Whilst Blizzard has delivered a patch for Mercy that addressed the concerns, including the removal of an interruptive launch into the air, there had been no word regarding any Junker Queen updates until now.

Unfortunately for fans that vocalized their concerns regarding her appearance, the adjustments to Junker Queen in the new patch are performance-related, and no aesthetic changes have been made to her character model. This is perhaps unsurprising, as it would be a vast undertaking to change a character model mid-beta. If those issues are going to be addressed, it’s likely to be after the beta ends on July 18.

In a blog post on the Overwatch website, patch notes say that Junker Queen has had her Commanding Shout radius reduced, and the duration increased from 4 to 5 seconds. Ally bonus health will also now decay throughout the duration, whilst her Rampage radius is reduced. She’s also had some bug fixes applied including an issue that would cause wounds to apply to barriers, ice walls and other invalid targets, and where Carnage would apply the Jagged Blade wound effect.

Alongside Junker Queen’s tweaks, fellow tanks Orisa and Doomfist have also had their abilities adjusted during the beta. Doomfist’s Power Block now requires less mitigated damage to trigger Rocket Punch, and the movement speed penalty has been reduced. His Rocket Punch, when triggered, deals damage to all knocked back enemies instead of the first target impacted. This is quite a substantial buff to the hero, who has changed class between games, being a Damage hero in the original Overwatch. Orisa’s Fortify will now disable critical damage and her Javelin Spin sees bonus movement speed increased, giving her a slight buff that Orisa players will surely appreciate.

Newcomer Sojourn has had her Railgun fire rate reduced, but the alt fire will now scale with energy level meaning the higher the energy level, the bigger the projectile radius. Symmetra, another Damage hero, sees her Photon Projector’s Alt Fire charge time reduced and projectile radius increased, whilst her teleporter cooldown has had a substantial 4 second reduction. Finally, beloved Support hero Zenyatta’s shield health has been reduced by 25HP.

The midcycle beta patch also sees some bug fixes including crashes affecting consoles, a map bug that affected spawn doors, and some hero-specific fixes to Soldier 76 and Genji.

In other gaming news, developer Rare has announced that Sea Of Thieves Season 7 has been delayed to August 4 in order to deliver on quality.