Overwatch 2 Aug 20 patch notes: S12, new hero Juno, D.Va nerfs, Mercy buffs, more

The Overwatch 2 Season 12 patch has gone live on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch adding a new hero in Juno, the Clash game mode, and a slew of balance changes.

Juno, the game’s latest support, has arrived in Season 12 bringing an exciting speedy and air-focused kit to the roster. She’ll be available in ranked right away, so be sure to be ready to play with and against the new character.

The new game mode, Clash, is also going live in ranked play with a new map in the form of Throne Of Anubis. Both it and Hanaoka are going to receive a temporary frequency boost so players can expect to battle it out on these maps more often to begin the season.

On the balance side, there are quite a few updates with a handful of nerfs and buffs across the board, especially when it comes to lowering HP.

Of note, D.Va is getting her Defense Matrix nerfed with its max duration being lowered from 3.5 seconds to 3.

Orisa’s Energy Javelin impact damage is getting a decent improvement going from 60 to 80. Zarya’s damage is also being improved with her Secondary fire minimum damage now 55 while the maximum is raised to 110.

Sombra’s health is being lowered by 25, but to compensate, she’s getting a movement speed buff while in stealth and her Virus ability will now deal 35 impact damage, up from 25.

Mercy’s HP is also being lowered, but fans of the support will be happy to see her healing is going up slightly to 60 HPS and her secondary fire damage boost is going up from 25% to 30%.

Also on the support side, Lifeweaver’s Petal Platform duration is getting reworked to where its duration will only count down while it’s raised and will reset if no one stands on it for two seconds. Healing Blossom will now no longer hinder his movement and it will charge passively at a reduced rate.

To make up for these buffs, though, Rejuvenating Dash’s HP restore is being lowered from 60 to 45.

Full patch notes:

Overwatch 2 Retail Patch Notes – August 20, 2024 

Season 12 – New frontiers 

Prepare for an interstellar journey to discover new frontiers as this season introduces Juno, a cheerful and extraordinary new Support hero hailing from Mars. Then battle through two new maps in the Clash game mode where you’ll engage in an intense tug of war for the win! Unleash ancient Egyptian divinity with the new Mythic Anubis Reaper Hero Skin and smite your foes using the heavenly sword of the sun God Ra with the upcoming Mythic Midnight Sun Ana Weapon Skin. Upgrade to the premium battle pass and add Legendary Bast Doomfist, Oni Ana, and more to your collection.  

New Hero – Juno 

Overwatch 2’s newest Support hero has touched down from Mars! Juno has landed with her versatile Mediblaster and Pulsar Torpedoes providing simultaneous healing and damage. Plus, Juno’s Hyper Ring propels the team into action, boosting movement for faster fights, and her high mobility allows her to swiftly maneuver the battlefield to provide critical support or evade threats effectively. 

Juno Teo Minh was born on Mars during Project Red Promise – Lucheng Interstellar’s secret multi – stage initiative to terraform the planet. When dust storms began to ravage the planet, the Red Promise Colony lost contact with Lucheng, throwing the project’s future into jeopardy. To protect Juno, the Red Promise Team sent her to planet Earth, where she could live her life in safety. Now, Juno is determined to find a way to save her home and family – before time runs out. 

New Core Game Mode – Clash 

Get ready to experience Clash, a new core game mode in Overwatch 2! Clash features 5 capture objectives placed in a linear path on a mirrored map. Only one objective is active at a time, and the match starts with Objective C, the center one. Capture an objective by standing on it uncontested until the capture progress is complete. Teams that capture an objective are awarded 1 point to their score.  

Since the trial for Clash that took place earlier this year, the final capture points for each team (A and E) are even more rewarding, worth three points that are split up into segments on the capture progress. A win comes when a team reaches five total points from capturing various objectives on the map, or if they manage to push into their opponent’s territory and fully capture the final objective. 

Clash arrives in both Quick Play and Competitive Play with the new Hanaoka and Throne of Anubis maps and a temporary boost in frequency to ensure you get more chances to play. You can also play Clash in the Arcade for a limited time as well. 

New Clash Map – Throne Of Anubis 

Deep within these once-proud temple grounds lies the Throne of Anubis, the god program quarantined by Helix International. The quiet streets and historical sites surrounding 

the Throne carry an air of tension, for fear that the power that began the Omnic Crisis may yet again awaken.  

Hero Mastery Updates 

Charge up your particle cannon and load up your rockets! Hero Mastery single-player courses for both Pharah and Zarya launch this season. Time your shots and protect ally bots as you take part in new challenges in a limited-time event from August 20 to September 3. Plus earn new rewards and up to 22,500 Battle Pass XP. 

• Hero Mastery Courses for Pharah and Zarya have been added.

General Updates 

Avoid As Teammate 

The Avoid List has been updated with the following new features:

• Players now have 15 avoid slots divided into 3 Pinned slots and 12 Recent slots. 
• Pinned Avoid slots guarantee that these players will never be in your matches and unlike our old Avoid slots, they never time out. 
• The new Recent Avoid slots do time out after 7 days like the old Avoid slots, and they only prioritize constructing teams without these players on them.
• The player with the lowest time remaining in the Recent list is removed from the list if a new player is avoided when the list is full. 
• Time Remaining for an avoided player in the Recent list can be refreshed by using the Reset Avoid Expiration feature. 
• The Avoid List is now its own tab in the Social menu (which still only appears when at least 1 player is avoided). 
• Any players that were avoided when Season 11 ended will be removed from the avoided list due to the aforementioned updates to the system.

Developer Comments: Avoiding other players has been a great way to curate your experience since the system was added, but with these changes we wanted to explore giving players best ways to manage their avoid slots. 

Spawn System Changes 

• Group Respawn is replaced by Wave Respawn for all non-Competitive modes. 
• Wave Respawn is added to Competitive Play.
• Default respawn time increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
• Overtime respawn time increased from 13 to 14 seconds.
• Wave Respawn is disabled in Overtime.  
• Overtime respawn time is not increased in Flashpoint.
• Wave Respawn is disabled when the Payload is near the end of the track in Escort and Hybrid game modes (the same time the existing Anti-Stall system activates). 
• When the first hero on a team dies, they start a new Wave for their team.  
• Any hero that dies within 6 seconds of a Wave starting automatically joins that Wave.
• A hero joining a Wave will respawn at the exact same time as the hero that started the Wave.  This means that the respawn time of heroes joining the wave can be as long as 12 seconds if they died at the same time as the first hero or as short as 6 seconds if they catch the end of the Wave.  
• If a hero starts a Wave and no other hero joins the Wave they will respawn 2 seconds faster. This hero will respawn in 10 seconds (the default respawn time before Season 12).

Developer Comments: These changes are designed to reduce the number of one-sided matches.  For an in-depth analysis of our thought process behind the changes to respawning, read the latest Director’s Take on PlayOverwatch.com.

Shop Updates 

• You can now try out all skins in the practice range from the Hero Gallery or the Premium Shop. 

Competitive Play Updates 

Mid-Year Rank Reset 

• Competitive skill ranks for all players have been reset for Season 12.
• Players will need to complete ten placement matches for each role to be ranked and start climbing 0n the leaderboard. 

Developer Comments: Our plan is to reset ranks every 6 months alongside larger updates that shake up the metagame including significant hero balance changes, new heroes like Juno, new game modes like Clash, and changes to core systems like the respawning changes mentioned above. 

Predicted Rank 

• The Predicted Rank that was displayed to players in Placements at the end of each match is now displayed in all locations that rank is displayed for individual players.
• Predicted Rank is only displayed to players viewing their own Rank (other players can’t see this information). 
• Predicted Rank is now used to determine whether a group is Wide or Narrow, meaning that Placements are no longer automatically considered Wide.
• This will allow players to get much faster queues in many scenarios after their Rank has been reset. 

Hero Updates 

Developer Comments: Our recent 2.11.1 patch (which adjusted all the Tank heroes), saw a significant gain in interest for the role and had a positive lasting effect in queue times for Damage and Support as well. There are a few additional tuning changes in this update for Tanks but this patch is largely focused on adjusting many of the more mobile heroes in the Damage and Support roles. 

Mobility is very powerful and we would like for there to be more of a tradeoff for the flexibility that it brings, especially as we add speed boosting abilities by welcoming Juno to the game. We’re moving a handful of heroes to a 225 HP maximum and in some cases increasing potency elsewhere in their kit. 

Tank 

D.Va 

• Defense Matrix 
  • Maximum duration reduced from 3.5 to 3 seconds. 

Developer Comment: The increase in Defense Matrix availability didn’t help D.Va’s overall performance that much compared to the amount of frustration it is causing players on the opposing team, so we’re reverting it to the previous duration.

Orisa 

• Energy Javelin 
  • Impact damage increased from 60 to 80. 

Developer Comment: Orisa is still underperforming so we’re increasing the impact damage of Energy Javelin to better reward accuracy with the ability. 

Zarya 

• Particle Cannon 
  • Secondary fire minimum damage increased from 47 to 55. 
  • Secondary fire maximum damage increased from 95 to 110. 

Developer Comment: Zarya’s secondary fire didn’t benefit much from the projectile size changes in Season 9 since it’s mostly aimed at the ground. We’re increasing its damage to keep it feeling effective relative to her primary fire beam. 

Damage 

Junkrat 

• Frag Launcher 
  • Projectile size is now reduced by half after the second ricochet. 
  • Projectiles preserve slightly more velocity on ricochet. 

Developer Comment: This is mostly a reversion back to how Junkrat’s grenades used to ricochet in early Overwatch, which enables more control over the angle of the bounce and helps the weapon better control spaces with some tricky shots, but the projectile size is now reduced after a couple of bounces so there will be fewer random feeling direct impacts near the end of the projectiles lifetime. 

Echo 

• Base health reduced from 250 to 225. 

Developer Comment: No additional adjustments to support the reduced health pool as, like Pharah, Echo was one of the top performing Damage heroes recently. 

Sombra 

• Base health reduced from 250 to 225. 
• Stealth 
  • Bonus movement speed increased from 45 to 60%. 
• Virus
  • Impact damage increased from 25 to 35. 

Developer Comment: The increased movement speed while stealthed will better enable Sombra to get into advantageous positions or be slightly more evasive with the new lower health.

Sojourn 

• Railgun 
  • Primary fire weapon spread reduced from 2 to 1.6 degrees. 
  • Critical hits now grant 10 energy. 
  • Energy degeneration rate reduced from 33 to 15 per second after 7 seconds. 

Developer Comment: After reducing the maximum damage of the Railgun’s secondary fire, we’re continuing to look at the effectiveness of Sojourn’s primary fire. These changes are to make it more accurate and better reward accuracy by increasing the energy gained from headshots.

Hanzo 

• Base health reduced from 250 to 225. 

Developer Comment: Hanzo doesn’t quite fit the category of being as highly mobile as the other heroes we’re moving to 225 HP, but like Widowmaker, has the potential long-range lethality merits, as he is now able to one-shot the 225 HP heroes. It’s also nice for the Hanzo mirror match to be more decisive as well. 

Torbjörn 

• Base health reduced from 250 to 225. 
• Base armor increased from 50 to 75. 

Developer Comment: This shift in armor health for Torbjorn is to increase survivability against the heroes which are most affected by armor’s damage reduction, such as Tracer.

Support 

Juno 

• Juno has been added to the lineup. 
• Juno is now eligible for Competitive Play. 
• Base health reduced from 250 to 225. 
• Hyper Ring
  • Deploy range increased by 3.5 meters. 
  • Cooldown reduced from 16 to 14 seconds. 
• Pulsar Torpedoes
  • Damage and Healing impact increased from 75 to 85. 
  • Heal-over-time reduced from 60 to 50 health. 
• Orbital Ray
  • Beam travel speed increased from 1.9 to 2.25 meters per second. 
• Mediblaster 
  • Burst projectile volley rate of fire reduced from 34 to 28 shots per second. 

Developer Comment: Community feedback on Juno’s trial was split between over and underpowered. On the stat side, she performed strongly in most every categories but particularly overperformed in healing output over the course of a game. These changes are improving her utility while pulling back lightly on healing throughput, since we’d still like her to launch in a strong state as players grow accustomed to her playstyle. There were also quite a few quality-of-life improvements that are listed elsewhere in the patch notes. 

Kiriko 

• Base health reduced from 250 to 225. 
• Kunai 
  • Critical multiplier reduced from 2.5 to 2x. 
  • Damage increased from 45 to 60. 
  • Recovery time increased from 0.5 to 0.55 seconds. 

Developer Comment: Despite the perception of how powerful Kiriko feels to play against, she is a hero that consistently underperforms when it comes to winning games. However, she is a highly evasive hero that makes a lot of sense to be in the 225 health bracket. To help counterbalance the loss of health, we’re smoothing out her damage dealing consistency by increasing the Kunai weapon’s base damage and removing the enhanced critical multiplier.

Illari 

• Solar Rifle
  • Maximum ammo reduced from 16 to 14.
• Captive Sun
  • Projectile environment collision size reduced from 0.15 to 0 meters.

Developer Comment: Illari can deal a lot of damage over the course of a game but may have too much ammo, given that her projectiles are easier to land hits due to their increased projectile size. We’re also removing the extra environment collision size on her Captive Sun projectile so that it doesn’t accidentally detonate early when firing at nearby walls and such. There is a similar fix to prevent her secondary fire beam from impacting a wall instead of allies near it.

Mercy 

• Base health reduced from 250 to 225.
• Caduceus Staff
  • Primary fire healing increased from 55 to 60 health per second.
  • Secondary fire damage boost increased from 25% to 30%.

Developer Comment: Mercy’s Guardian Angel movement enables her to be highly evasive and difficult to engage with for many heroes, but is also one of the most fun parts of her ability kit so we’d like to keep that strength, so we’re moving her to 225 HP and increasing the output of her Caduceus Staff beams. 

Moira 

• Base health reduced from 250 to 225.
• Biotic Grasp
  • Secondary fire damage increased from 60 to 65 damage per second.

Developer Comment: Moira can be difficult to take down between the low cooldown on her Fade ability and self-healing with the Biotic Orb, so now she has 225 HP and slightly higher damage output to keep an edge to her offensive potential.

Lúcio 

• Base health reduced from 250 to 225.
• Sonic Amplifier
  • Primary fire damage increased from 18 to 22. 

Developer Comment: Lucio is one of the most mobile heroes and makes his allies faster as well, so we’re moving him into the 225 HP hero category. His playstyle tends to get into closer ranges more often than other heroes in this category, so we’re turning up his Primary fire damage output to increase his effectiveness at range before diving in.

Lifeweaver 

• Petal Platform
  • Duration only counts down while the platform is raised. 
  • Platform now resets if no one is standing on it for 2 seconds. 
  • Duration increased from 10 to 12 seconds. 
  • Health reduced from 400 to 300. 
• Healing Blossom
  • Healing progress can now charge passively at a reduced rate. 
  • No longer reduces movement speed when holding a full charge. 
• Rejuvenating Dash 
• Healing reduced from 60 to 45. 

Developer Comment: The Petal Platform was too easy to waste if a player accidentally ran over it without intending to make use of it. Now it resets back to the ground if no one is standing on it. We’re also reducing its health so that it’s more reasonable counterplay to destroy the platform. Healing Blossom will now passively charge at a slower rate to enable players to swap between weapons without the fear of falling too far behind when swapping back to healing.

Hero Quality of Life Updates 

Developer Comments: Alongside balance changes that should make Juno a strong and viable choice in the Support Role, we also heard community feedback to apply several small changes to make the experience of playing with or against Juno a lot more enjoyable. Thank you for your detailed feedback during Juno’s Hero Trial. 

Support 

Juno

Mediblaster 

• The weapon model visuals and firing sounds were updated to indicate when the weapon is at low ammo. 
• The heal sounds that play locally to the Juno player were updated to be more noticeable when healing allies closer to full health.

Pulsar Torpedoes 

• The cooldown when the ability is canceled after no successful lock-ons has been reduced from 5 seconds to 2 seconds.
• Line of Sight checks were improved to better find targets with hitboxes in view.
• Added range forgiveness of an extra 5 meters on current targets that might move beyond the max 40 meters range. 
• The local cancel sound was increased in volume to be more noticeable for the Juno player. 
• The ally and enemy impact sounds were updated to be more noticeable for the Juno player.
• Healing torpedoes have new impact visuals when hitting enemy barriers and when clipping near walls. 

Glide Boost 

• Now adjusts Juno better when she hits level architecture such as doorways. 

Hyper Ring 

• Juno players will now hear the initial Hyper Ring apply sound when entering their own ring for the first time. 
• The sound when re-entering the Hyper Ring was updated to be more noticeable.

Orbital Ray 

• The Ultimate enemy voice line was updated in tone to better contrast the ally version.
• The enemy version of the ray’s start sound was updated to be more noticeable.

Map Updates 

Flashpoint 

• Passing through the spawn door barrier of your own spawn will apply a temporary speed boost to get to the capture point faster.
• The speed boost is removed when taking or dealing damage.
• The speed boost is applied by both the default and forward spawns.
• The speed boost counts toward the existing movement speed bonus cap of 75%. 

Push 

• The Push bot collision has been updated so players cannot contest from certain high ground positions. 

General map & Mode updates 

• Updates to our map recency system to increase the frequency of new maps and modes at the start of each season. 
• Capture point outlines can now be seen through walls on Clash and Flashpoint when the capture point is unlocked. 
• Lighting scenarios are now randomized in Quick Play and Competitive Game Mode.

Bug Fixes 

General 

• Fixed a bug where the Gotcha achievement was not awarding properly. 
• Fixed a bug where weapon skins were not showing in the weapon variant menu.
• Fixed a bug where first-time users could not skirmish which waiting for a game.

Heroes 

Ashe 

• Fixed a bug where some of the effects would not trigger with the Ashe mythic skin equipped on Steam. 

Illari 

• Fixed a bug with Illari’s Solar Rifle secondary fire healing beam impacting the environment instead of players when aiming near edges of collision.

Juno 

• Cleaned up some of the effects of Juno’s Pulsars torpedoes when they landed as D.Va was re-entering her mech.