Are they working now?! I’m seeing them load on my end, but want to make sure its working!

Hello everyone,

We have a new update to share regarding Hero Pools. We’ve been listening to your feedback and constantly iterating on the feature behind the scenes. We initially implemented Hero Pools to address issues with stagnating metas and to keep match-ups exciting and fresh. However, we’ve found that the introduction of Experimental Card and increased hero balance updates has helped us work towards a healthy, changing meta in Competitive Play without needing to disable heroes.

Going forward, we’ve decided to make the following changes to Hero Pools starting immediately:

• Hero Pools will be removed indefinitely from Competitive Play, with no tentative date for re-implementation.
• Beginning June 13, the Overwatch League will utilize a single Hero Pool for the first two weeks of each tournament cycle, which consists of three weeks of qualifier matches and a tournament weekend featuring bracket play. Hero Pools will not be used for the week before each tournament or during tournament...

Hey folks!

Earlier this afternoon, we ended our most recent test on the Experimental Card - thanks to everyone that participated in the experiment while it was up. If you missed it, check out the Past Experiments notes: HERE.

Overall, this test was meant to take a balance pass at some of the heroes we feel are not currently in-line with their counterparts. We saw lots of discussion and feedback surrounding two heroes in particular: Genji and Moira. So, we wanted to take a moment to share some insights into what we were trying to achieve, as well as some learnings from the experiment.

GENJI:
We are generally trying to find a stronger niche for Genji, especially now that he’s competing against both Echo and Doomfist as a mobile burst damage hero. In this experiment, we tested pushing his strength towards dealing with hitscan heroes through Deflect. Additionally, we made adjustments to his Shuriken damage and Secondary Fire spread to improve his close range damage consistency. We feel bot...

Thanks for the report! We found a few bugs on the PTR, including the voiceline audio for the improved communication wheel. We’re currently working on some fixes and expect to have an update hopefully by tomorrow.

Hey everyone!

We just tried to push the experimental card to Retail servers, but saw that it caused some crashes. We’ve pulled it back temporarily until we can identify and fix the issue.

Thanks for your patience - we’ll update as soon as we have more information!

Our latest hero, Echo, is now live on the Public Test Region (PTR)! However, because of the current lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we haven’t been able to localize some of her voice lines & web content. Rest assured that these will be made available in the future.

We wanted to make Echo available for testing as soon as we could - please pardon our dust as we finish construction! Thanks for your understanding, and we hope you enjoy playing Echo on PTR.

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Hey everyone, we’ve just concluded the Triple Damage test in Experimental mode and have turned off the card in-game.

Thank you for all your feedback about Triple Damage (1-3-2) in the Experimental mode over the past week. We’ve been reading through all of your thoughts, ideas, and feedback - its immensely helpful!

As Jeff mentioned previously, Experimental will come back at a later date for testing of other balance updates, rulesets, and game modes. For more information on the new Experimental mode, see our developer update or patch notes.

We appreciate everyone’s feedback and look forward to more Experimental tests in the future!

Hey all!

In the most recent patch, we added a feature to the live game that changed the player death camera behavior to pan towards the player that just killed you. Previously, this was a quick snap. Our intention for changing the camera behavior is to make it easier to quickly tell at a glance if the person that killed you was behind you or to your side. Unfortunately, we’ve received feedback that this addition is causing motion sickness for some of our players. In an effort to address this, we’re working on a “Snap Death Camera to Killer” toggle option in the Gameplay options menu that will allow players to disable this feature. We expect this update to be coming soon - please keep an eye on patch notes for more information.

As always, thank you for the feedback!

Overwatch PTR Patch Notes – Dec 11, 2019

A new Overwatch patch is in development and now available for testing! To share your feedback or report any issues, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.

Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes may also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.

INTRODUCING: PARTY FLEX FOR ROLE QUEUE

Unsure of which role you want to play? Now, party members who queue for any game mode with Role Queue enabled can select multiple roles, indicating what they’re willing to play in the next game.

Your other party members’ role choices and Competitive Play skill ratings may affect which roles you are eligible to choose, or which role you can play. For example, if you selected all three roles (Tank, Damage, Healing) to indicate your willingness to play any of...

Overwatch PTR Patch Notes – Nov 13, 2019

A new Overwatch patch is in development and now available for testing! To share your feedback or report any issues, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.

Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes may also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.

INTRODUCING “WHILE YOU WAIT”

Coming with this patch, we will be removing the current “Skirmish” feature that allowed you to spar while waiting to start a game and replacing it with a brand new option called “While You Wait”.

When in queue, players will now be prompted to pick, if they want to, between the following game modes:

• Practice Range - Now available to be entered as a group
• Skirmish - Spar freely with other players without keeping track of score
• Deathmatch - Compete for the top place o...

Fixed! You shall not pass, typos!

Overwatch PTR Patch Notes – October 23, 2019

A new Overwatch patch is in development and now available for testing! To share your feedback or report any issues, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.

Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes may also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.

GENERAL UPDATES

New Gameplay Option: High Precision Mouse Input

Enabling this option will allow Overwatch to use your mouse’s native polling rate when determining exactly where to shoot. Note: There may be a slight performance cost to enabling this option.

WORKSHOP UPDATES

New Workshop Features:

• Variable Renaming
• Increased number of allowed variables up to 128
• Autosave Preset

New Workshop Values:

• Custom String
• All Tank Heroes
• All Support Heroes
• All Damage Heroes
• Map
• Current Map

HERO UPD...

Overwatch PTR Patch Notes – September 24, 2019

A new Overwatch patch is in development and now available for testing! To share your feedback or report any issues, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.

Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes may also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.

ANNOUNCEMENT

• Patch 1.41 is a remaster and will require a relatively large download for all platforms.

HERO UPDATES

D.Va

Defense Matrix

• Regeneration rate increased from 12.5% to 16% per second
• Delay before regeneration begins lowered from 1 second to 0.75 seconds

Orisa

Protective Barrier

• Cooldown increased from 9 to 10 seconds

Roadhog

Scrap Gun

• Ammunition increased from 5 to 6.

Sigma

Kinetic Grasp

• No longer blocks Chain Hook and Whip Shot

Gravitic Flux

• High gravity effect durati...

Hey everyone,

We’ve identified a bug that prevents Competitive Season 18 stats from being shown in the Career Profile until placement matches are finished in any role or playing one match in each role. We’re actively investigating solutions and will update with more information when we have a fix.

Thanks for the reports!

Hey everyone,

Season 18 of Competitive Play is here – and with it, Role Queue!

Unlocked at level 25, Competitive Play is designed for those players who want to put their skills to the test, and offers a more serious experience than our Quick Play or Arcade Modes.

GETTING STARTED

Before you can kick off your competitive career, every player will be required to complete five placement matches in a selected role to obtain their seasonal skill rating for that role. Players will earn separate skill ratings (SR) for each role in Competitive Play, for a total of three distinct SRs. This rating will be a number between 1 and 5000, with higher values indicating a greater skill level. Players will also be assigned a tier per role based on their rating—Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, or Grandmaster – and climbing into the next tier is possible as you improve.

Skill ratings and tier icons will be visible at the beginning of every match. As you compete, your selected role skill rat...

Thanks to everyone that has been participating in our Role Queue Beta Season! We’ve been reading all your feedback and we look forward to officially launching Role Queue to Competitive Play and Quick Play soon.

As you may have read previously, we’ve been planning to enable Role Queue for Competitive Play and Quick Play simultaneously. However, Role Queue is a huge change to Overwatch gameplay and we want to ensure a smooth launch for both Competitive and Quick Play. To this end, we’ve decided to separate the launch times and delay Role Queue for Quick Play until September 3rd at 11:00 PST. This will allow us to fully support and respond to any issues that may arise for both Competitive Play and Quick Play.

Please reference below for Role Queue official launch times:

• Competitive Play: August 31st @ 5PM PST (September 1st 00:00 UTC)

• Quick Play: September 3rd @ 11AM PST

• Quick Play Classic (Arcade Card): September 3rd @ 11AM PST

Thank you again for your patience and feedback!

Overwatch PTR Patch Notes – August 22, 2019

A new Overwatch patch is currently in development and now available for testing! To share your feedback or report and issue, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.

Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes will also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.

NEW FEATURE: SHARED INSTALL (PTR AND LIVE)

The PTR and Live Overwatch PC clients can now share storage when installed to the same file path on disk. This should reduce the disk space required to install and update multiple clients. As a result, today’s PTR client should require only ~1.2GB of additional disk storage. Players with previous Overwatch PTR clients installed can uninstall and reinstall to a common disk location to benefit from this feature.

Note: Overwatch League Replay...

Hi there! The issues causing role limits to be placed on Quick Play today have been resolved. Reminder: Role Queue will be enabled for Quick Play on September 1st. Full details here: https://playoverwatch.com/news/23060961/

We’re aware of a bug that is incorrectly applying role limits to Quick Play matches. We’re currently investigating and will update when resolved.

If you’d like to help us test Role Queue, jump into the Role Queue Beta Season available now until September 1. Role Queue will be fully available for Quick Play and Competitive Play beginning on September 1 for the start of Competitive Season 18. If you’d like to continue playing without role limits, Quick Play Classic will become available in the Arcade starting on September 1.

Please continue to share your feedback. Thank you!
Molly

Update - Aug 13 @ 4PM PST:

The issues causing role limits to be placed on Quick Play today have been resolved. Enjoy your games!

Overwatch PTR Patch Notes – August 1, 2019

A new Overwatch patch is currently in development and now available for testing! To share your feedback or report and issue, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.

Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes will also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.

HERO UPDATES

Sigma

• Sigma’s cosmetic progression content is now available to view and unlock.

BUG FIXES

General

• Fixed a bug that could cause players to appear invisible in-game when certain skins were equipped (PTR only).