Overwatch New Patch Buffs Mercy and Lucio

Blizzard isn't slowing down tuning and adjusting Overwatch's heroes, even after the major Halloween event update. Now Mercy's aerial healing abilities have been extended while in Guardian Angel mode and Luvio will gain a 65% boost after completing a wall ride.

Here is the complete list of changes:

Social

Players can now set their social status to Online, Away, Busy, or Appear Offline (Note: appearing offline does not prevent friends from seeing you if you are placed into the same match). This option can be found under the social menu

HERO UPDATES

Lúcio

Wall Ride

The speed boost that Lúcio receives after completing a wall ride has been increased by 65%

Developer Comments: A recent bug fix slowed Lúcio’s Wall Ride. This change compensates for the reduced speed.

Mercy

Guardian Angel

Players can now glide past a targeted ally using the jump key

Cooldown no longer resets when Resurrect is activated

Valkyrie

No longer resets or reduces Resurrection’s cooldown

Now gives players a bonus resurrection charge

Developer Comment: Valkyrie no longer resets or reduces Resurrect’s cooldown. Instead, it now provides an extra 'charge,' allowing you to revive an ally even if it is still on cooldown. If the bonus charge hasn’t been spent when Valkyrie ends, it will be removed.

This method makes Resurrect more flexible when used with Valkyrie. For example, in the past if you wanted to resurrect two teammates, you had to revive the first target, then activate Valkyrie (causing the Resurrect’s cooldown to reset), and then revive the other target. With this change, you can now activate Valkyrie and fly in quickly to resurrect both targets instantly.

However, this still reduces the overall number of Resurrects that Mercy can provide, since Valkyrie no longer reduces its cooldown.

Zenyatta

Added a number of additional voicelines for Cultist Zenyatta

BUG FIXES

Heroes

Fixed a bug preventing Mercy’s momentum from slowing down correctly when Guardian Angel was canceled

Fixed a bug preventing the visual effects on Sombra’s Pumpkinette victory pose from displaying correctly

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

New Seasonal Event: Overwatch Halloween Terror 2017

The fright for the future returns!

For a limited time, explore the haunted streets of Eichenwalde and Hollywood, expand your collection of spooky seasonal cosmetics, and team up to fight evil incarnate once more in not one, but two Junkenstein's Revenge-themed brawls! We're also re-opening our crypt so players can unlock their favorite Halloween-themed items from last year along with over 50 new tantalizing treats, including legendary skins like Corsair Ana, Van Helsing McCree, Dragon Symmetra, Cultist Zenyatta, and more.

To learn more about Overwatch Halloween Terror, click here.

New Epic Skin: BlizzCon 2017 Winston

Through the power of science, Winston has traveled with his trusty jump pack from his base in Gibraltar all the way to Anaheim, California for BlizzCon 2017. We’ve given him a special souvenir to mark the curious occasion and he’d like to share it with you. Starting today, this new skin is available in-game for all BlizzCon Virtual Ticket holders—click here to learn more.

GENERAL UPDATES

Overwatch Halloween Terror Victory Pose Updates

We've made a few changes to this year's selection of seasonal victory poses. To learn more about this change, click here.

HERO UPDATES

General

Ultimate charge is now immediately expended when a hero's ultimate ability is activated, instead of depleting over a short period of time

Developer Comments: One of the most common pieces of feedback we receive revolves around the way Overwatch handles ultimate interruptions. Players often feel frustrated when they’re able to prevent an enemy from using an ultimate, only to see that same enemy use it again immediately after respawning

Until now, many ultimates drained the meter quickly over time, instead of instantly setting the meter to zero when the button was pressed. We originally designed it this way to ensure that players had the chance to use (at the very least) a little of their ultimate every time. However, we now feel that it causes too much frustration without adding many benefits.

With this patch, ultimate abilities will instantly set a hero’s meter to zero when the button is pressed, which means stopping an enemy ultimate at any point after it’s activated will ensure that it has been spent.

Another piece of feedback we often hear is that it’s difficult to understand which abilities are interruptible and which are not. For clarity, most of Overwatch’s ultimates fall into three basic categories:

Transformation Ultimates:

These add significant passive benefits to your heroes, while allowing the use of weapons and abilities.

Ultimates in this category: Bastion's Configuration: Tank, Genji's Dragonblade, Mercy's Valkyrie, Soldier: 76's Tactical Visor, Torbjörn's Molten Core, and Widowmaker's Infra-Sight.
 

Channeled Ultimates: These force your hero into a new mode and render your other abilities unusable while active. In most cases, these abilities can be interrupted at any point to cancel them.

Ultimates in this category: Doomfist’s Meteor Strike, McCree's Deadeye, Pharah’s Barrage, Reaper’s Death Blossom, Roadhog’s Whole Hog, and Zenyatta's Transcendence (though, Zenyatta’s ultimate renders him immune to interruptions).
 

Cast-Time Ultimates: These abilities require a small window of time to pass before they become effective. If they’re interrupted during this window, they are canceled.

Ultimates in this category: Ana's Nano Boost, D.Va’s Call Mech and Self-Destruct, Hanzo's Dragonstrike, Junkrat's Rip-Tire, Lúcio’s Sound Barrier, Mei's Blizzard, Orisa's Supercharger, Reinhardt's Earthshatter, Sombra's EMP, Symmetra's Shield Generator and Teleporter, Tracer's Pulse Bomb, and Zarya's Graviton Surge.

Most abilities fit neatly within these categories but we did make some changes to outliers such as Genji's Dragonblade and Orisa's Supercharger to make them more consistent. Additionally, any ultimate that can be interrupted by a stun (Channeled ultimates and Cast-Time ultimates) can now be interrupted by Sombra’s Hack as well. Overall these changes should make it much easier to understand the ultimate mechanics and how they interact in combat.

D.Va

Boosters

An option to manually hold down D.Va’s boosters rather than toggling them has been added under Options > Controls > D.Va

Genji

Dragonblade

No longer interrupted when Genji is stunned or hacked

Developer Comments: See the above developer comment on ultimate interruptions

Orisa

Supercharger

Can now be interrupted when Orisa is stunned or hacked

Developer Comments: See the above developer comment on ultimate interruptions

Sombra

Hack

Now interrupts the following ultimate abilities during their cast time: Ana's Nano Boost, Orisa's Supercharger, Mei's Blizzard, Reinhardt's Earthshatter, and D.Va's Call Mech

Developer Comments: See the above developer comment on ultimate interruptions

USER INTERFACE UPDATES

Assault Maps

When capturing an objective, the progress bar is now broken into three segments that will fill in with the team’s color that is capturing it (as each segment fills, it will trigger an animation and audio cue)

The number of defenders currently on the objective will now be displayed in addition to the number of attackers, just below the progress bar

BUG FIXES

General

Fixed a bug that allowed muted players to become unmuted after leaving and rejoining the same match

A.I.

Fixed a bug that caused bots to get trapped in a movement loop after taking the tunnel under the capture point in the University section of Oasis

Competitive Play

Fixed an issue that caused matches to end in a draw when both teams won their first attacking rounds in overtime on Hanamura, Horizon Lunar Colony, Temple of Anubis, and Volskaya Industries

Custom Games and Game Browser

Fixed a bug that prevented the Capture Speed Modifier setting from being applied in custom games

Fixed a bug that prevented D.Va’s Projectile Speed slider from appearing in Custom Game settings

Heroes

Fixed a bug that prevented D.Va’s Micro Missles from producing rumble feedback when using a controller with vibration enabled

Fixed a bug that caused Lúcio’s soccer ball to fly off in the wrong direction when activating his Juggle emote at 30 FPS

Fixed a bug that caused Mercy to maintain forward momentum after canceling Guardian Angel mid-flight

Fixed a bug that could cause heroes to respawn as a different hero after being resurrected by Mercy

Fixed a bug that caused Roadhog’s chest to deflate when his Tuckered Out emote was activated while the Mako or Sharkbait skins were equipped

Fixed a bug that prevented the sound effects on Symmetra’s turrets from being heard by teammates

Fixed a bug that prevented Torbjörn’s weapon-draw animation from being played when turret placement was canceled

Maps

Fixed a bug on Junkertown that allowed some heroes to get stuck behind a barrel near the final point

Fixed a bug on King’s Row that caused a dark box to appear if you stared into the robot city for too long

Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra to reach unintended locations on Volskaya Industries

Fixed a bug affecting Ilios, Lijang Tower, Nepal, and Oasis that prevented overtime progress from resetting when the point had been flipped after both teams’ progress bars reached 99%

UI

Fixed a bug that could cause Widowmaker’s scoped overlay to appear while spectating her from third person view

Overwatch is now available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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