The second beta for Overwatch 2 has finally gone live with a new hero in The Junker Queen, a new hybrid map in the form of Rio’s Paraíso and loads of hero updates.
For the very first time, players on console (excluding Switch) can experience Overwatch 2 and try out some of the new modes, maps and more.
Most notably, this second beta included new looks for every hero and some new ones with the first beta’s Sojourn now able to fight alongside the newest tank, Junker Queen.
This update also includes some big updates to the ping wheel and scoreboard system, not to mention loads of hero balance updates.
Some of the big changes include completely revamping how Orisa’s new kit functions with a series of tune-ups, such as buffing her primary fire damage.
D.Va also got a nice change by converting some of her standard health into armor to improve her durability.
Mercy also got some improvements making it easier than ever to perform a Super Jump tech by just using Guardian Angel.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Console and Cross-Play Testing
The Overwatch 2 Beta will be cross-platform and available to players on Windows PC and Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4 consoles.
Our primary goal for the Overwatch 2 Beta is to test our console and cross-play capabilities. Players from different platforms can play with and against each other. This gives the team the opportunity to stress-test our game and see what players from different platforms think about Overwatch 2!
Temporary Change to Quick Play
With Competitive Play currently unavailable in the OW2 beta, we’ve made a temporary modification to our Quick Play queue, providing both Role Queue and Open Queue as options. Quick Play games will also use competitive rulesets for each map’s game mode. For Hybrid and Payload maps, both teams play Offense AND Defense in the same manner as competitive play, with the winner determined by which team performs better on offense. All other features of Quick Play are unchanged. This includes elements such as matchmaking, handling of leaves, and allowing players to backfill into games in progress.
NEW HERO
Junker Queen
Scatter Gun (Primary Fire)
- Pump Action Shotgun
Jagged Blade (Secondary Fire)
- Active: Throw the blade and re-activate to pull it back, along with any impaled enemy
- Passive: Wound enemies with Quick Melee or Throw, dealing damage over time
Commanding Shout (Ability 1)
- Temporarily increase health and movement speed for yourself and nearby allies
Carnage (Ability 2)
- Would all enemies in front of you, dealing damage over time
Adrenaline Rush (Passive)
- Heal from all damage over time dealt by wounds
Rampage (Ultimate)
- Charge forward and wound enemies; dealing damage over time and preventing them from being healed
NEW FEATURES
New Hero Looks
All heroes have new Overwatch 2 exclusive looks. Select “Classic II” from the Skin select screen in the Hero Gallery to check them out.
Dynamic Rendering Scale
Added “Dynamic Render Scale” to PC to improve performance when GPU limited.
- If Dynamic Render Scale is enabled, “Render Scale” can be set to “Custom” and supersedes the previous “Limit FPS” option, allowing for the ability to specify a minimum and maximum resolution scale:
- Minimum resolution can be lowered to improve performance
- Maximum resolution can be increased to improve visual fidelity
UPDATED FEATURES
Push
- Total game time extended from 8 minutes to 10 minutes
PING SYSTEM
New Hero Pings
- Symmetra can now ping her teleporters for her allies
- Ana now has unique ping VO and visuals when pinging sleeping enemies
- Junkrat can now ping the location of enemies in his traps through walls
- This places a unique type of unmoving Last Seen ping
Ping Visual Updates
- Ping icon visuals updated but are still a work in progress – pending final art
- Low and Critical health indicators added to enemy ping icons
- These indicators appear when you can see an enemy’s health and subsequently ping them. The following abilities/events can cause you to see an enemy’s health:
- Sombra’s Opportunist
- Sombra’s Hack
- Mercy’s Valkyrie
- Widowmaker’s Infra-Sight
- These indicators appear when you can see an enemy’s health and subsequently ping them. The following abilities/events can cause you to see an enemy’s health:
- Confirm and Cancel visuals added
- Canceling a ping removes it from the world
- Confirming a ping informs your allies that you see their communication with contextual responses
- Last Seen pings now have unique visuals
- Last Seen pings are unmoving pings and are only placed when you lose line of sight of an enemy that was previously pinged
- Offscreen pings now animate to draw attention
Ping Wheel Updates
- Opening the ping wheel now also automatically fires a contextual ping
- This will help with pinging enemies when you accidentally open the wheel
- The ping wheel now remembers the location your crosshair was aimed when the wheel opened (instead of when you make a selection on the wheel)
- World pings will now be placed at that location
- The ping wheel now has a bespoke dead zone, smaller than all other wheels (Comms, Emote, Voice Line, Response)
- The ping wheel now has a back button
- All wheels have the back functionality for controller
Pinging While Dead
- For the first 3 seconds of a hero’s death, the dead hero can ping the enemy that killed them
- This prevents spamming the ping on enemies to keep their position updated since your body doesn’t provide line of sight
- Allies are not provided line of sight from where you die, meaning you’ll only be able to place Last Seen pings if none of your allies also see them
- Many pings are not intended to work while dead, instead printing your remaining respawn time in the team chat
- Aiming at the enemy is not required since players are unable to aim in this 3-second window
- There is more stringent spam protection on these pings than on regular enemy pings
SCOREBOARD
Overall Updates
The game scoreboard has been updated in multiple ways based on all the amazing feedback we’ve received since the first beta.
- Completed reorganized layout, bringing the most important information together for an easier viewing experience
- Improved ultimate progress indicators that now show numeric values
- Increased transparency to allow you to see more of the game action while viewing the scoreboard
We look forward to more of your feedback on this feature, as we’re still looking to update and polish the scoreboard.
Statistics Updates
A large reorganization is in progress for the statistics displayed on the scoreboard, as well as the statistics for each hero. The scoreboard now displays Eliminations, Assists, Deaths, Hero Damage dealt, Healing Done, and Damage Mitigated. Here are the new statistics:
- Assists is a new statistic that increments whenever a player earns what we previously referred to as a Defensive Assist or an Offensive Assist
- Damage Mitigated is a new statistic that encompasses the previous Damage Blocked statistic, but also keeps track of damage prevented by effects such as Ana’s Nano Boost or Orisa’s Fortify
- There’s still work to be done here, as we plan on adding tracking for damage mitigated by effects such as Lucio’s Sound Barrier
Many heroes still have statistics that are not yet implemented. These are marked by the NYI tag after the name of the statistic. We have included these unfinished statistics in the scoreboard to provide opportunities for players to give feedback on this feature.
SOUND
Home Theater Surround Sound Updates
- All ambience soundscapes are now mixed for surround sound
3D Audio Updates
- Xbox – Overwatch now supports Dolby Atmos for home theater and 3d audio over headphones
- PS5 – Overwatch now supports Sony 3d audio through headphones and TV
MAPS
Control
- Ilios
- Evening Lighting
- Lijiang Tower
- Dawn Lighting
- Oasis
- Night Lighting
- Nepal
- Morning Lighting
- Busan
- (NEW) Night Lighting
Escort
- Circuit Royal
- Night Lighting
- Dorado
- Evening Lighting
- Route 66
- Night Lighting
- Gibraltar
- (NEW) Morning Lighting
- Junkertown
- Morning Lighting
Hybrid
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- Midtown
- Morning Lighting
- King’s Row
- Evening Lighting
- Eichenwalde
- Evening Lighting
- Hollywood
- Morning Lighting
- (NEW) Paraíso
- In the heart of Rio lies our new Hybrid map, Paraíso! Take a bumping carnival float through the city streets, making your way from the sunny beach to Lúcio’s own Clube Sinestesia
Push
- New Queen Street
- Morning Lighting
- Colosseo
- Evening Lighting
Deathmatch
- Kanezaka
- Malevento
HEROES
General Updates
- Support Role Passive
- Time to activate healing increased from 1 to 1.5 seconds
- Damage Role Passive (New)
- Swapping to other damage heroes maintains up to 30% of your new hero’s ultimate charge
- Previous movement speed passive has been removed
- Heroes that previously had their movement speed adjusted due to the role passive have been returned to their original values
TANK
Reinhardt
- Armor reduced from 350 to 300
- Health increased from 300 to 325
Winston
Barrier Projector
- Projector health reduced from 800 to 700
Primal Rage (Ultimate)
- Ultimate cost increased 10%
D.Va
- Mech Armor increased from 200 to 300
- Mech Health decreased from 450 to 350
Doomfist
Seismic Slam
- No longer slows enemies
Power Block
- Damage reduction reduced from 90% to 80%
Orisa
Augmented Fusion Driver
- Damage increased from 10 to 12
- Projectile size no longer scales with distance
- Projectile initial size reduced from 0.3 to 0.1
- Critical damage bonus increased from 50% to 100%
- Damage falloff at maximum range reduced from 70% to 50%
- Maximum falloff range reduced from 15-35 meters to 15-25 meters
Fortify
- 20% movement speed penalty removed
- Headshot immunity removed
Javelin Spin
- Cooldown decreased from 10 to 7 seconds
- Speed boost reduced from 65% to 40%
- Knockback increased
Energy Javelin
- Impact damage reduced from 80 to 60
- Cooldown increased from 6.5 to 8 seconds
Terra Surge
- Max damage increased from 275 to 500
- Damage begins to ramp after the old 200 damage timing
DAMAGE
Bastion
A-36 Tactical Grenade
- Cooldown reduced from 10 to 8 seconds
Cassidy
Combat Roll
- Now grants 50% damage reduction for its 0.4 second duration
Junkrat
Steel Trap
- Fully locks movement again
- Projectile speed increased from 10 to 15
Frag Launcher
- Projectile size increased from 0.2 to 0.25
Pharah
Rocket Launcher
- Reload starts 0.25 seconds sooner when out of ammo
Concussive Blast
- Now deals 30 damage and deals additional knockback on direct hits
Symmetra
Photon Projector (Primary Fire)
- Maximum ammo increased from 70 to 100
- No longer generates ammo when damaging barriers
Photon Projector (Secondary Fire)
- Projectile speed increased from 25 to 50
- Max damage reduced from 120 to 90 (45 impact, 45 explosion)
- Max charge projectile size reduced from 0.5 to 0.4
- Ammo cost increased from 7 to 10
- Charge time increased from 1 to 1.2 seconds
Teleporter
- Build time reduced from 2 to 1 second
- Now has a maximum lifetime of 10 seconds
- Cooldown increased from 10 to 16 seconds
- Cooldown starts when Teleporter is placed
- Health reduced from 300 to 200 (50 health, 150 shields)
- Range reduced from 30 to 22
Sentry Turrets
- Travel speed increased from 15 to 20
- Movement speed reduction on targets reduced from 20% per turret to 15% per turret
Torbjörn
Rivet Gun (Primary Fire)
- Fire recovery reduced from 0.6 to 0.55 seconds
Rivet Gun (Secondary Fire)
- Fire recovery reduced from 0.8 to 0.7 seconds
SUPPORT
Zenyatta
Orb of Discord
- Time to fall off target when not in line of sight reduced from 3 to 2 seconds
Mercy
Guardian Angel
- No longer can be canceled using crouch for a big vertical boost
- Now automatically launches you upwards if you reach the end of Guardian Angel
Angelic Descent
- Angelic Descent will now additionally slow ascent speed if held, not just descent speed
- This means you can dampen vertical knockbacks (such as Junkrat’s Concussive Mine) but also reduce the amount of height that the GA vert boost gives you
BUG FIXES
General
- Fixed a bug where avoiding teammates would not work
- Fixed a bug where the crosshair preview was missing from the options menu
- Fixed a bug where some hero settings were blank
- Fixed a bug where some pings would display the Punch Kid icon
- Fixed a bug where skipping killcam would result in enemy player footsteps being substantially quieter after you respawned
- Fixed several bugs relating to emotes, victory poses, and skins
- Fixed several bugs relating to UI, Chat, Game browser, and Custom Games
Heroes
- Fixed a bug where using some ultimates could lock the camera below the map
Doomfist
- Fixed a bug where Doomfist’s Power Block could reduce damage done by Bastion’s Sticky Grenade and Echo’s Sticky Bombs
- Fixed a bug where hitting targets with a minimally charged Rocket Punch into the wall would deal no impact damage
Genji
- Fixed a bug where Swift Strike would not reset after kill and would go on cooldown again
- Fixed a bug where Genji was not taking the proper amount of damage when using Swift Strike while a sticky bomb explodes
Orisa
- Fixed a bug where Orisa’s Javelin Spin could not be canceled by being hacked
Roadhog
- Fixed a bug where Roadhog could still pull enemies with Chain Hook after getting stunned, hacked, or slept
Sombra
- Fixed a bug where high frequency sounds would get cut off when in Stealth mode as Sombra
Zarya
- Fixed a bug where Zarya could apply a Projection Barrier to an ally that was dying, consuming a charge
Zenyatta
- Fixed a bug where reapplying the Orb of Discord on an enemy would show the ability icon as blue
Known Issues
- Sprays are not appearing on some objects
- Several Issues/Bugs with Golden Weapons
- Controller Rumble is not present for all of Junker Queen’s abilities
- Sombra’s “undetected” highlight will sometimes not play during Play of the Game
- Some Zenyatta skins are missing coloring
- Players can clip through or jitter when changing directions while Ice Wall spawns
- Multiple heroes may have outdated hero tips
- Baptiste’s Exo Boost may occasionally hitch
- Some assets may not load during play of the game or kill cam
