Arriving on February 13th, Overwatch 2 Season 9 is the game’s biggest update to date. Not only will it feature a massive competitive rank reset, this will also be a rebase patch which will consolidate all patches into the core game. Players are recommended to have at least 38GB free space on their system, or uninstall the game client and reinstall it in full after February 13th if they don’t have enough space.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. From projectile size changes to passive healing for all heroes, here’s all the major gameplay reworks coming to Overwatch 2 Season 9.
Reintroducing Placement Matches & Rank Reset
The biggest change for Competitive Mode — everyone’s Skill Rank is being reset, and Placement Matches will be reintroduced. Players will now have to play 10 placement matches to determine their starting rank. While completing your Placement Matches, you’ll also get an idea of your predicted rank based on your progress so far.
Champion Is The New Rank Above Grandmaster
Overwatch 2 has introduced a brand new rank, and yes, it is pink. Champion is now the most prestigious competitive tier above Grandmaster, intended to showcase who is the best among the most skilled players in the game.
More Transparency For Rank Progression
Addressing one of the biggest player complaints in Competitive Mode, the game is reverting to a rank progression system similar to Overwatch 1. Moving forward, player ranks will be updated after every match, including a visible progress bar for how much progress you’ve gained or lost between matches. Modifiers will also be included to give players more context on why their rank has gone up or down.
New Competitive Rewards & Jade Weapons
Done unlocking all the Golden Weapon Variants? You can now unlock Jade Weapon Variants with new 2024 Competitive Points. Similar to the Golden Weapon Variants, this new colour can be unlocked by playing Competitive Mode and earning 3,000 Competitive Points.
When Season 9 starts, any unused Competitive Points will be converted to Legacy Competitive Points which can be used to unlock Golden Weapon Variants. Any unused Competitive Points at the end of 2024 will also be converted into Legacy Competitive Points at the start of 2025.
[UPDATE: Overwatch 2’s Game Director has stated on Twitter that players will be able to buy Golden Weapons using 2024 Legacy Competitive Points starting from Season 10, instead of waiting for the end of the year.]Overall Increase In Projectile Sizes
In an attempt to deliver a more consistent feel to firing and landing your shots on opponents, Overwatch 2 is making both damage-dealing hitscan and travel time projectiles larger. Heroes that have weapons or abilities that don’t benefit from any projectile size changes will receive additional balance changes in future updates.
Overall Increase In Health Pools
With the accuracy increase in nearly all heroes, there will be an overall increase in everyone’s maximum health to keep time-to-kill as similar as possible. Overwatch 2 has also balanced damage values, damage boosts, critical damage breakpoints, and other factors around 200-250 HP heroes, so the new health pools end up requiring at least one more hit from most heroes to eliminate an enemy.
Passive Healing For All Heroes & More Passives
To enable more critical decision-making among Damage and Support roles, all heroes will now be able to passively regenerate health at a rate of 20 healing per second after 5 seconds of not taking damage. Meanwhile, Support roles will have a stronger passive heal which kicks in after 2.5 seconds.
With the increase to health pools and addition of passive healing, Overwatch 2 is introducing a new Damage passive which reduces the target’s healing received by 20%. This new passive aims to empower Damage roles to secure eliminations, reduce in-combat healing, and potentially add an additional strategic layer to focus firing targets.
What are your thoughts on the new Overwatch 2 Season 9 reworks? Let us know in the comments below! For more information on each rework, visit the Overwatch 2 blog here.
