Calling all heroes – Season 7 is here for Overwatch 2!

Overwatch 2 is moving into its seventh season, and with it brings a slew of updates and changes to almost every part of the game. In celebration of Halloween, we’ve got access again to some fan favorite modes, as well as a new crossover event. Plus, there’s a new control map, as well as a much needed rework for Sombra.

HALLOWEEN TERROR 2023

Get ready for the spookiest event of the year as Overwatch 2 transforms into a haunted battleground. Halloween Terror is back with your favorite game modes—Junkenstein’s Revenge, Wrath of the Bride, and Trials of Sanctuary, a new Blizzard crossover game mode. Team up with the heroes of Sanctuary, power up their abilities, and defeat powerful bosses, including Butcher Roadhog, Azmodan Wrecking Ball, and Lilith Moira.

NEW MAP – SAMOA

Samoa is a new Control map where you’ll fight on a tropical beach, a gleaming city, and inside a volcano! Watch out for deadly pitfalls, or you might just be swimming in lava! Samoa will be available to play right away in a dedicated Arcade card and will appear in Quick Play and other unranked modes starting on October 10 with it appearing in Competitive Play later in the season.

HERO REWORK – SOMBRA

We approached the Sombra Rework by identifying key goals to guide decisions throughout the design iteration process: make Sombra more committal when engaging, increase the active feel in her ability kit, and uphold the current Hacker fantasy. With these goals, there were multiple angles to tackle around her existing kit. Naturally, many ideas were also meant to address frustrations playing against the character, ensuring there is proper counterplay for enemies.

 

Machine Pistol

• Damage increased from 7.5 to 8.
• Minimum Spread reduced from 0.5 to 0.
• Number of shots until max spread has been increased from 3 to 6 shots.
• Reload time reduced from 1.4 seconds to 1.2 seconds.

Hack

• Cast time reduced from 0.75 seconds to 0.65 seconds.
• Now cancels Stealth when hacking an enemy hero.
• Cooldown increased from 4 to 6 seconds.
• Hack has a reduced cooldown of 3 seconds if Hack is interrupted or if a non-hero enemy is hacked.
• The “Hacked” warning text will now only appear while you are silenced and not for the remainder duration of the hack debuff.

Opportunist

• Removed.

Stealth

• Ability reworked to be a passive. Sombra automatically becomes invisible after 3.5 seconds while not shooting, using a damaging ability, or receiving damage.
• Stealth movement speed bonus reduced from 60% to 45%.
• Fade Out duration into Stealth reduced from 0.375 seconds to 0.25 seconds.
• Fade In duration from Stealth reduced from 0.5 seconds to 0.375 seconds.
• Updated the UI messaging to the Sombra player when hacking Health Packs to “Revealed” instead of “Detected”. Now the message “Detected” is only used when an enemy player is in the detection radius.

Translocator

• Can no longer can be manually activated. Translocator will now automatically teleport Sombra after 0.25 seconds from being thrown or when impacting the environment.
• Reduces the Stealth passive cooldown after teleporting.
• Projectile speed increased from 25 to 72.
• Cooldown reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. Cooldown now begins after
• Sombra teleports to the location of the Transponder.
• Projectile launch initial vertical offset removed.

EMP

• Ultimate charge cost increased by 15%.
• Health percent damage decreased from 40% to 30%.

Virus

• This is a new ability assigned to Ability 1 by default.
• Fire a projectile that damages an enemy over time. Damage is dealt faster on Hacked enemies.
• Impact Damage: 10 (20 on hacked target).
• Damage over time: 100 over 4 seconds (100 over 2 seconds on hacked target).

You can check out the rest of the patch notes for S7 here.

Will Sombra’s new kit drastically alter the meta? Or is it much of the same? Tell us what you think via our socials!

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