On February 7, season 3 for Overwatch 2 is releasing, which will bring all new content and skins. This also includes a brand new map, various ways to earn more credits via the battle pass for free and various events.
The new season is based off Asian mythology and the new skins will reflect this, including the main Amaterasu Mythic skin for Kiriko which is available on the premium battle pass. As part of the new season, the battle pass will have new skins for Moira, Reaper and Junkrat, while the store will have various skins for D. Va, Zenyatta, Genji, Mei and Ashe, as well as BOB.
Loverwatch will also release as part of the update and will begin on February 13. This will be a dating sim available to play in a browser. By completing this, you will receive an intro for Hanzo to use in-game. In addition, Antarctic Peninsula is a brand new map which will be available to play in control. The snow themed map includes an ice breaker ship and an underground drilling station along with “tons of flank routes” and “high-ground advantage”.
As previously mentioned in a dev blog, Blizzard said they would make it easier to get credits in-game rather than having to grind and seeing little reward, so as part of the update, they will be “offering even more rewards”. This means 10 additional tiers of rewards on the free track and 1500 credits to earn and spend, with 500 credits also on the premium track. Almost all epic and legendary event hero skins from the original have been added (300 total) and will be available for 1500, rather than 1900.
Blizzard have announced they will be releasing the full patch notes for season 3 shortly however they have announced a short summary of the biggest changes:
- The health totals for all tanks will be lower when playing any game mode that does not have a role queue to address the relative power of those heroes in game modes where there can be multiple of the same hero on the same team. Health totals will remain the same for tanks when playing any Role Queue enabled game.
- Maximum ultimate charge retained when swapping heroes is reduced from 30 to 25%.
- Mercy is receiving nerfs, and most supports have received minor balance changes.
- Damaging enemies with Rammatra’s ultimate now slows the duration timer down instead of pausing it entirely.
As well as this, they have made a few quality-of-life changes:
- The matchmaker will be updated so that roles on both teams will be similarly ranked. For example, mirroring tanks should more often have similar ranks than before, and likewise, for each respective role.
- Your competitive rank will update with every 5 wins and 15 losses.
- In the mid-season patch for season three, we’ll be updating the UI so information about your progress towards a competitive update will always be viewable.
- Also, beginning with our mid-season patch, Top 500 Leaderboard players will see their Top 500 leaderboard rank updated after every match rather than every 5 wins and 15 losses.
