Overwatch March 12 update patch notes: Baptiste buffed, Mei nerfed, more

A new Overwatch patch has gone live with the Archives event, bringing with it a series of nerfs, buffs and even sharable replays.

Many of the changes had already been tested on the PTR and Experimental Mode, but now they’ve hit the live game and promise to drastically mix up the meta in the process.

One of the major nerfs come to D.va’s boosters, which go from a three second cooldown to four. This should make it easier to pin down the mech tank, but only time will tell if she still dominates the skies.

Support Baptiste has also had his healing buffed with Regenerative Burst’s cooldown going from 15 to 13 seconds. This means the Haitian healer will be able to keep his team – and himself – topped off two seconds faster than he would in the last update.

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Soldier 76 also received a major buff with Helix Rocket’s cooldown going from eight to six seconds. This is massive because Helix is 76’s go-to ability to burst down enemies so having that more often may be able to bring him back to the frontlines of meta play.

Additionally, there was a drastic change to how Assault and Hybrid time banks work. Now, when both teams complete a round and have more than two minutes remaining.

This change should result in matches ending a lot quicker and it’s likely that those long 6-6 2CP matches keep plaguing the ranked environment.

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It will be interesting to see how the community takes to these major game mode changes.

Full patch notes:

OVERWATCH ARCHIVES 2020

Experience story-driven co-op missions from pivotal moments in Overwatch history. While the event is active, earn Archives Loot Boxes containing skins, highlight intros, emotes, and sprays inspired by moments from Overwatch’s past. And, new this year, demonstrate your tactical finesse with weekly Challenge Missions. Challenge Missions allow you to play Uprising, Retribution, and Storm Rising with new gameplay twists.

GENERAL UPDATES

New Feature: Share Replays

Players can now share their in-game replays with others!

A replay is shared via an alphanumeric code typically 6 characters long. The code can be shared however you want: in game, on forums, over social media. Another player can input that code and watch your replay. Codes are valid until the next patch.

The replay system has also received several improvements:

• Pin up to 10 replays to keep until the next patch. Unpin a replay to make room for a different replay
• Track your 10 most recently imported replay codes, allowing you to watch the same imported replay again without retyping the code
• Add notes or descriptions to each replay entry using the new note field

General Updates

• In game friend requests will now only display in game once per session
• RealID friend requests will only show RealID names in game if you have recently played with that player
• The initial Assemble Heroes timer for games using the Assault, Hybrid, Control, and Payload game modes has been further reduced from 35 to 30 seconds
• In the Assault, Payload, and Hybrid game modes for Competitive Play, when both teams complete a round of offense and have more than 2 minutes of time bank then each team’s time bank is equally reduced until one of the teams has a 2 minutes remaining
  • Example: If Team A completes a round of offense on Volskaya with 4:37 remaining in their time bank, and Team B completes their round on offense with 2:50 remaining, then 50 seconds is removed from each team’s timebank. This leaves the teams tied 2-2 and Team A with 3:47 remaining and Team B with 2:00 remaining

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

Season 3 of Competitive 6v6 Lockout Elimination has begun!

HERO UPDATES

Baptiste

Exo Boots

• Charge time reduced from 1 to 0.7 seconds

Regenerative Burst

• Cooldown lowered from 15 to 13 seconds

D.Va

Boosters

• Cooldown increased from 3 to 4 seconds

Mei

Ice Wall

• Cooldown increased from 10 to 13 seconds
• Player collision now allows large heroes to fit through 1 pillar gaps

Orisa

Fusion Driver (Primary Fire)

• Damage increased from 10 to 11

Sigma

Gravitic Flux

• Ultimate cost reduced 10%
• Flight speed increased 30%

Soldier: 76

Helix Rockets

• Cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds

Sombra

Machine Pistol (Primary Fire)

• Spread decreased by 10%

BUG FIXES

General

• Fixed a bug that could cause the “New” tag to remain on the “Player Icon” menu tab even after viewing the new icon(s)
• Fixed a UI bug that could cause both teams to show 100% at the end of a Control Point map
• Fixed a bug that could cause friend request “toasts” to be permanently displayed on screen when getting more than one request at a time
• Fixed a bug that could cause several heroes’ ultimate sounds to be silent when observing in third-person
• Fixed an issue preventing replays from recording in Custom Games that start immediately
• Fixed a bug that caused hero portraits in the Hero Select screen to appear blurry / low resolution
• Fixed a bug where Slept or Knocked Down heroes could not be walked over by enemies

Maps

Numbani

• Fixed a bug that allowed players to stand in an unintended location near the final checkpoint

Heroes

Bastion

• Brick Skin: Fixed a bug that caused Bastion’s brick bullets to grow in size after shooting through a Mei Icewall

Orisa

• Fixed an issue where Orisa’s supercharger placed on Petra’s breakable floors was not properly being destroyed along with the floor

Reinhardt

• Fixed a bug that resulted in assisted or environment kills not being counted in Reinhardt’s Charge Kills stat, if the killed player was first knocked back by Reinhardt’s charge

Sigma

• Fixed a bug where Sigma’s Gravitic Flux animation would play even if he was slept or stunned

Sombra

• Fixed a bug where Sombra’s translocator placed on Petra’s breakable floors was not properly being destroyed along with the floor

Zarya

• Fixed a bug where Zarya’s Projected Barriers could prevent mutual knockdowns from happening between charging heroes

Workshop

• Fixed an issue causing Player Joined Message to trigger multiple times when a player joined the match
• Fixed an issue preventing Set Team Score/Modify Team Score from working in Assault, Hybrid, and Payload
• Fixed an issue causing the editor to eat the last character of a unicode string when pasting in text
• Fixed an issue preventing “Is Firing Primary” from returning true when Doomfist shoots his last bullet
• Fixed an issue causing “Disallow Button” to fail to disable Reaper’s Shadow Step
• Renamed “Spectators” to “Non-Team Spectators” in Create HUD Text and Create In-World Text for clarity
• Fixed an issue preventing the Non-Team Spectators option from working properly in Create HUD Text and Create In-World Text