Overwatch 2 Heroes Changes

Overwatch 1, a new team-based first-person shooter developed and released by Blizzard Entertainment in mid-2016 quickly become a very popular game. During the next few years, Blizzard added a lot of new content such as heroes, maps, and cosmetics.
Three years after the release of the original Overwatch on BlizzCon 2019, the new Overwatch 2 was revealed as a successor to Overwatch 1.
Overwatch sequel is supposed to expand heroes and map pool, rework some existing heroes that are underperforming, and introduce new interesting mechanics to shake the stale meta that existed in Overwatch 1 for a while. The list of all changes is currently very long and still expanding so let’s get right to it.

Armor now reduces incoming damage by 30% instead of reducing it by flat 5 points.

Changes per hero class:

Tanks – Increased knockback resistance by 30% and lowered the speed of ultimate charging by damage taken.
Support – Supports passively regenerate 15 HP per second while not being damaged for two seconds.
DPS – Increased movement speed by 10%

Changes effective all hero classes differently allow characters to be more easily distinguished from one another, it helps the “Class fantasy” of certain heroes and solidifies the role identity.
Now when we tackled changes affecting all heroes, let's move onto heroes specific changes, some of them received just minor ability tweaks and cosmetics upgrades while changes to others may be considered a full kit rework.
Here is a list of changes grouped by hero Class in alphabetical order:

Ashe

We are starting the list with a minor nerf to Ashe ultimate, her robot friend B.O.B got his health reduced by 200, from 1200 to 1000 HP

Bastion

Bastion received more significant changes than most heroes,
his self-repair and tank mode abilities got removed along with his passive ability, instead, he received:
Configuration: Assault – Transforms bastion into the tank, reducing his movement speed by 35% and allows Bastion to fire his minigun with infinite ammo, ability has a 6-second duration and 12-second cooldown allowing for use of this configuration for 1/3 of all gameplay time.
Tactical Grenade – Bouncing sticky grenade that deals damage and knockbacks enemies it hits
Artillery (Ultimate) – Allows bastion to fire map-wide artillery missiles up to three times dealing massive damage.
Additionally Bastion Configuration: Recon got increased damage by 25%, removed weapon spread, and reduced fire rate by roughly 40%.

(Previously McCree) Cassidy

Our Cowboy Cassidy received a small adjustment of two of his ability and one ability rework:
His flashbang grenade got removed and replaced with a Magnetic Grenade that sticks to enemies dealing high damage on the explosion.
Changes to other abilities include damage reduction during his Ultimate ability duration, increased damage scaling and slightly increased fire rate on his Peacekeeper ability.

Echo

Echo as a relatively new hero received just number adjustments to some of her abilities:

Focusing Beam maximum DPS reduced by 12.5%
Duplicate max health has been reduced to a maximum of 300.
Other than those two changes our AI girl was left as she was in the original Overwatch.

Hanzo

Despite being one of the original heroes in Overwatch, our Dragon Archer received only one small nerf to his Storm Arrow ability by reducing damage to 65 (previously 70) per shot.

Junkrat

Junkrat is another hero that got barely touched in the new overwatch, his only change is a nerf to Steel Trap ability, instead of disabling target movement, it reduces its movement speed by 65%.
As a recompensate, the ability got slight damage and massive projectile speed increase.

Mei

Mei received some significant gameplay-affecting changes to her kit:

Endothermic Blaster no longer stuns an enemy, instead slows the target by 50% and deals almost double the damage compared to Overwatch 1.
Ice Wall pillar health got reduced from 400 to 250 and its range got reduced from 35 to 20.
Her ultimate received a slight cost increase, by 15%.

Reaper

Reaper was always a tank killer with massive damage from a close range, due to Armor changes, his shotgun damage got a slight nerf from 6 to 5.4 damage per pellet and increased spread to make his damage more in line with what it is now.

Soldier:76

Soldier 76 received some significant nerfs mostly due to changes affecting all the hero classes, his Sprint movement speed got reduced by 10% (so his speed is basically unaffected with a 10% increase for DPS heroes), and his weapon got damage decreased by 10%.
His ultimate ability received some significant tweak by reintroducing damage falloff but allowing him to score headshots when aiming at the enemy head.

Sombra

Sombra got a mini-rework and play style change, she is now more of an assassin instead of a quirky saboteur:
Damage reduced from 8 to 7.
Hack now has half the cooldown, has a lightly higher cast time, has lowered ability hack duration but reveals hacked enemies for 8 seconds, and increases damage dealt by Sombra to hacked targets by 40%
Stealth has significantly lowered fade time but the Enemy detection radius got increased from 2 to 4.

Tracer

Tracer, similar to Soldier76 and Reaper received a small nerf to damage by reducing her pistols damage from 6 to 5 points. It is a very significant change due to armor changes, back before Overwatch 2 when armor would reduce most of her damage, now she can deal with armored targets much more easily.

Widowmaker

Due to being an Overwatch sniper hero, she didn’t need to receive any DPS nerfs, her only change is a small health buff from 175 to 200.

This concludes the list of changes for DPS heroes from Overwatch 1 to Overwatch 2, as you can see most DPS heroes are left mostly unchanged and receive just a slight adjustment due to armor rework.

Ana

Ana received some minor changes reducing her ability to crowd control opponents and shifting her power more to the healing aspect of her hit, her biotic rifle.
Sleep Dart cooldown increased from 12 to 15sec.
Biotic Grenade duration reduced from 4 to 3sec.
Biotic Rifle ammo increased from 12 to 15.

Baptiste

Baptiste's healing capabilities got increased while slightly reducing his damage by reducing the cut-off of damage falloff from 25 to 20.
Regenerative Burst healing increased by 25, from 75 to 100.
Biotic Launcher healing ammo increased from 10 to 13.

Brigitte

Brigitte received a crowd control nerf to her shield bash ability, she can no longer stun enemies but as a recompensate ability cooldown got lowered, travel distance increased, damage massively increased(from 1 to 50) and knockback doubled.
Additionally, Inspire now triggers damage from Shield Bash.

Lucio

Lucio was left mostly unchanged from Overwatch 1 but his power was slightly shifted to more team-reliant gameplay:
His self-healing got reduced by half.
His Ultimate ability cost got reduced by 12%.

Mercy

Angel Mercy received just one small change, due to all support heroes passively regenerating health, her regeneration passive got changed to increase the passive regeneration by 50%.

Zenyatta

All changes Zenyatta received in Overwatch 2 so far are made to make him less vulnerable to enemy assassins, his base shield got increased from 150 to 175 and he received a new passive:
Zenyatta melee attacks deal 50% more damage and knock back the enemies.

Support heroes received even fewer changes than DPS heroes, most changes across the whole support class were made to increase the time-to-kill of allies and reduce the crowd control duration so support feels more like healers than stun-bots.

D.VA

Diva received some durability changes increasing her base health from 600 to 650 but reducing her armor from 300 to 200, the change is probably due to armor being more effective across the board.

Her weapon spread got reduced by 25% and her movement speed penalty while firing for reduced by 20%.

Doomfist

If you were confused as to why Doomfist wasn’t presented in the DPS heroes section, Doomfist got reworked into a tank hero. He received a whole kit rework with changes to all of his abilities now better suiting a tank class:

His base health got increased from 250 to 400.
His Uppercut ability got removed.
His Hand Cannon damage got reduced but the ability ammo regeneration rate got increased by more than half.
His Rocket Punch and wall slam damage got significantly reduced(50-100 to 15-30 and 50-150 to 20-40), ability maximum charge time got lowered and the area of effect increased.
Power Block is a new ability that blocks incoming damage by 90%, this ability also empowers Rocket Punch after soaking enough damage, Rocket Punch Damage, Knockback, and Area of effect is increased.
Seismic Slam now creates a shockwave that deals additional damage and slows enemy movement speed by 30%.
His ultimate range got halved and knockback removed but now slows enemy movement speed by 50%.

Orisa

Orisa is another hero that received a full-blown rework in Overwatch 2, she is now more of a pusher than a defensive option, here is a list of all the changes:

Halt ability removed
Protective Barrier ability removed
Supercharger Ultimate ability removed
Augmented Fusion Driver – Fire projectiles that deal less damage the further they travel, have no ammo but instead can overheat to prevent shooting for 3 seconds.
Fortify – reduces movement speed by 20% and overheat buildup on Fusion Driver, additionally, grants 125 Overhealth.
Energy Javelin – Throw a Javelin dealing damage and mini-stunning and knocking back hit enemies, if an enemy flies into a wall they take additional damage and got mini stunned again.
Terra Surge Ultimate – Gains fortify and pull enemies while channeling, when released, Terra Surge slows and deals AOE damage to all enemies in radius based on channel duration.

Reinhardt

Reinhard got just some adjustments due to changes received by all heroes and armor rework:
Steadfast passive got removed.
Base armor increased from 200 to 300.
Base health increased from 300 to 350.
Barrier field damage reduced from 1600 to 1400 and shield regeneration rate reduced from 200 to 144 hp/s.
Charge now has a slightly reduced cooldown, deals less damage on wall impact, and can be canceled by Reinhardt.
Fire strike has now an additional charge and deals 10% reduced damage.

RoadHog

Roadhog received one small and one big change – his ultimate rework, here is what happened to his abilities:
Healing from Take a Breather increased from 300 to 350.
Whole Hog ultimate requires a player to fire shots instead of automatic firing but can not be canceled by crowd control effects, Roadhog can also use his other abilities while his ultimate is active.

Sigma

Sigma receives some buffs increasing both his offensive and defensive capabilities:
His base shield got increased from 100 to 200
Damage from Accretion got increased from 70 to 100
His Experimental Barrier received a small nerf by reducing barrier regeneration from 120 to 100.
Winston

Winston got a new right-click ability that charges up his Tesla cannon to release a plasma ray that deals up to 50 damage, additionally:

His base armor got increased from 150 to 200
His barrier projector health got increased from 650 to 800 but its duration and cooldown got reduced by one second.
His ultimate now costs 10% more.

Wrecking Ball

Wrecking ball wasn’t performing very well in terms of durability so in Overwatch 2 he got some small buffs to help him withstand the enemy fire:

Base armor got increased from 100 to 150.
Base Health got increased from 500 to 550.
Adaptive Shield radius got increased by 25% and health gained per affected target by 25, from 75 to 100.
Additionally, he received a small crowd control effect buff:
His knockback during roll got increased by 36%

Zarya

Zarya also received some durability buffs by giving her shield a slightly higher uptime:
Base Health increased from 200 to 250.
Base shields increased from 200 to 225.
Particle Barrier now how two charges but shares cooldown with Projected Barrier, additionally its duration got increased by 10%.

Tank heroes in overwatch 2 receive significantly more changes than other hero classes, it is very apparent that Blizzard wanted to make tanks more durable while at the same time reducing the utility provided by tanks to their allies and also widen the difference gap between support and tank heroes.

Along with all the hero changes to existing characters, Blizzard announced that there will be three new heroes on the release of Overwatch 2, currently, we know about two heroes:

Sojourn and Junker Queen

Sojourn is a new DPS character

Here is a quick breakdown of Sojourn abilities:

Railgun – Rapid projectiles on left click and high impact shots on right-click.
Power Slide – Slide in the direction you are moving, gain speed and jump boost while active.
Disruptor Shot – Shoots an energy shot that slows and damages enemies hit by the projectile
Overclock – Allows his weapon to auto-generate energy for ability duration and makes her attacks pierce enemies allowing projectiles to hit multiple enemies at once.

Junker Queen is a new Tank Character

Abilities breakdown:

Adrenaline rush – applying wounds applies a damage over time effect and heals Junker Queen
Scattergun- fire a shotgun projectiles similar to Reaper shotgun
Carnage- Cleaves enemies by applying wounds to all enemy hit
Commanding Shout – Increase Speed by 30% and health by 100 of all allies affected by buff in area
Jagged Blade – Throws a knife that can be pulled back to inflict wounds 

As you can see those new heroes kits seem quite interesting! We will see what Blizzard comes up with for the third hero but based on the fact that there are three primary hero classes and we already got a tank and a DPS, we can safely assume that 3rd new Overwatch 2 hero will be from the support class.

With the release of Overwatch 2, Blizzard game director Aaron Keller announced that they want to make players move less across ranks, they want to see players understand that reaching a higher tier is a hard earned victory.

Another post by the same game director mentions that instead of moving ranks after each game, rank update will happen every seven played games. This change may make climbing feel bad as players may not notice progress as the short term glorification after each win is lost.

There are more changes to come in the upcoming months before the scheduled date of Overwatch 2 release on October 4, 2022.

While overwatch 2 will certainly shake the meta and change our gameplay significantly, the base core of the ranked system will probably remain mostly unchanged, there will still be points to win, a ladder to climb and rewards to receive.
If you feel in need of help, or just a slight little push in the right direction and playing those last games to reach your desired rank seem overwhelming to you, don’t hesitate, we have plenty of great players just waiting to help you achieve your goal in a quick and professional manner.