As season four of Overwatch 2 is about to end, upcoming changes are being set before the new season starts. The highlights are the focus on heroes like Junker Queen and Lifeweaver and tweaks for crowd-control abilities.
Before we look into these changes, the dev team revealed that season three and season four were some of the most balanced on a win rate perspective. Of course, there were a few standouts and one of these was Junker Queen.
In the middle of season four, a patch was released that gave Junker Queen some buffs which allowed her to dominate, increasing her win rate by around 5%. This made the hero one of the highest picked, especially in the latter half of the season. However, at the Masters and even above, she still wasn't highly picked. So, the hero received an increase in healing from her passive, but this gave her too much survivability.
To balance things out, the health she gets from Commanding Shout is reduced from 200 to 150. In addition, the cost of her ultimate is going to be increased by a small amount.
Another hero that's going to experience change is Lifeweaver. Despite being a dynamic hero, he's not powerful enough for players to pick him. While his tweaks are not yet confirmed, expect adjustments like a possible increase on his healing and damage output or a slightly reduced hitbox as the next season progresses.
Crowd Control Abilities
The team is also looking into crowd-control abilities. When the game was launched, one of the biggest changes for the combat model was the format from 6v6 to 5v5. This removed most crowd-control abilities from damage and support heroes. Since then, several changes have occurred and it seems there's still some room for more CC effects.
As such, players can look forward to changes for Mei and Cassidy in season five. Mei's Endothermic Blaster will be updated, with the primary fire still slowing targets but it now builds up to an effect that applies a much larger slow for 1.5 seconds. Meanwhile, Cassidy's magnetic grenade will deal less damage but at the same time applying an effect which slows and blocks movement abilities.
Overwatch 2 is free-to-play on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
