Overwatch November 15 update early patch notes: Zarya, D.Va, Genji & more nerfed

The first-ever big Overwatch 2 balance patch will be going live on November 15 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. Here’s everything we know about the mid-season update.

The Overwatch 2 mid-season update will finally be deployed a little later than the developers would have liked, but it will finally see a magnitude of nerfs to many of the game’s strongest heroes.

In total, five heroes will be receiving nerfs, including the game’s newest support, Kiriko, who saw a lot of play in the Overwatch League Grand Finals that utilized the upcoming patch ahead of time.

Of note, Zarya’s barriers are being nerfed in terms of both their duration and cooldown, which should make eliminating the Russian tank a bit easier for teams.

Sombra is also on the chopping block with her Hack lasting a bit less, plus her damage multiplier is being heavily reduced from 40% to 25%.

Controversially, Genji is also getting nerfed while DPS threat Sojourn remains untouched. The cyborg ninja’s Shuriken damage and ammo are both being targeted, so building Dragon Blade will take a bit longer.

On the bug fix side, hopefully, Mei will finally see a return to play after a glitch with her Ice Wall enabled Kiriko to reach unintended locations.

There are also several other big exploits, such as an invincible Torbjorn turret trick that the devs could be working on in time for the mid-season update.

We also know from a conversation with the devs that more changes are planned for Season 2 with buffs planned for tank heroes like Doomfist, but that’s still a ways off on December 6.

Season 2 will also see the arrival of the new tank hero, Ramattra, and a brand new map, so the developers will have a lot to monitor in the weeks ahead of his launch.

Overwatch November 15 update early patch notes

Upcoming patch notes:

Sombra

• Hack ability lockout duration reduced from 1.75 to 1.5 seconds
• Hacked enemies are no longer valid targets for hacking for the duration of the effect
• Hacked damage multiplier reduced from 40 to 25%

Dev Comment: With Sombra’s rework, she gained a lot more damage to help account for the reduced ability lockout duration of Hack. This has proven to be too deadly for a flanker with easy access to the enemy backlines, and we’ve similarly had to address the damage output of heroes like Tracer, Reaper, and now, Genji, in the 5v5 format.

She can also no longer channel hack on an already hacked target as feedback indicated the reduced cooldown combined with hacking from stealth proved to be too frustrating for many players. This is essentially a per-target cooldown that enables Hack to keep its current 4 second cooldown for potentially hacking multiple targets.

Genji

• Maximum ammo reduced from 30 to 24
• Shuriken damage reduced from 29 to 27

Dev Comment: Genji is a Hero that has greatly benefited from the move to 5v5. Changing to a single Tank and the reduction of crowd control has meant Genji has had less obstacles in his way, however he hasn’t received tuning updates since he wasn’t actively in the meta until launch (something also informed by our general preference to avoid preemptive adjustments when possible). We also saw that, in early beta tests, other flanking Heroes such as Tracer and Reaper were also significantly more effective in OW2. These changes will bring Genji more in line with the other flanking damage heroes.

Zarya

• Barrier duration reduced from 2.5 to 2 seconds
• Barrier cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds

Dev Comment: Early player sentiment predicted Zarya as one of the weakest solo tanks in 5v5 though her high damage potential and barrier uptime have proven to be extremely effective. For opponents, feedback has indicated this can feel as though Zarya has very limited windows of vulnerability, which feels difficult to deal with when combined with her ramping damage potential.

These changes will reduce the barrier uptime, making it slightly more difficult for her to gain energy and will provide enemies with more time to deal damage to her.

D.va

• Fusion Cannon spread increased from 3.5 to 3.75
• Boosters impact damage reduced from 25 to 15

Dev Comment: D.va ended up feeling too deadly after the last round of changes given how resilient she can be with the improved Defense Matrix. Both our stats and high-level player feedback regarded her as not effective enough before that compared with other tanks, so this is a partial revert to establish some middle ground there.

Kiriko

• Swift Step invulnerability duration reduced from 0.4 to 0.25 seconds

Dev Comment: This invulnerability window is primarily intended to help avoid instantly dying to something unseen after teleporting through walls, but it ended up being a little too long and led to some confusion when shooting at Kiriko