The Overwatch 2 Season 7 patch notes outline a slew of changes to heroes as Blizzard continues adjusting the multiplayer game’s balance. Sombra is this season’s biggest change, though a comparatively small number of heroes get a range of nerfs and buffs as well. Most of them aren’t serious enough to affect the game, save for a few exceptions with Mei and Ramattra.
Season 7 adds a round of Halloween events, a controversial new Moira skin, and a brand-new Control map, and Blizzard even opened up about a behind-the-scenes feature that affects your battle pass XP.
Here’s everything new and changed in Overwatch 2 Season 7.
Sombra rework
The big hero change headlining Season 7 is the rework for Sombra. It’s a pretty big one as well.
Sombra’s invisibility is now a passive that activates when she isn’t taking damage or attacking. Her translocator cannot be placed on the field anymore. Instead, it instantly transports her to the location where you throw it.
Sombra now has Virus, a new ability that implants a bug in a targeted enemy that deals 100 damage over four seconds or 100 damage over two seconds if the enemy is hacked.
Here’s what that all looks like in practice.
Machine Pistol
- Damage increased from 7.5 to 8.
- Minimum Spread reduced from 0.5 to 0.
- Number of shots until max spread has been increased from 3 to 6 shots.
- Reload time reduced from 1.4 seconds to 1.2 seconds.
Hack
- Cast time reduced from 0.75 seconds to 0.65 seconds.
- Now cancels Stealth when hacking an enemy hero.
- Cooldown increased from 4 to 6 seconds.
- Hack has a reduced cooldown of 3 seconds if Hack is interrupted or if a non-hero enemy is hacked.
- The “Hacked” warning text will now only appear while you are silenced and not for the remainder duration of the hack debuff.
Opportunist
- Removed.
Stealth
- Ability reworked to be a passive. Sombra automatically becomes invisible after 3.5 seconds while not shooting, using a damaging ability, or receiving damage.
- Stealth movement speed bonus reduced from 60% to 45%.
- Fade Out duration into Stealth reduced from 0.375 seconds to 0.25 seconds.
- Fade In duration from Stealth reduced from 0.5 seconds to 0.375 seconds.
- Updated the UI messaging to the Sombra player when hacking Health Packs to “Revealed” instead of “Detected”. Now the message “Detected” is only used when an enemy player is in the detection radius.
Translocator
- Can no longer can be manually activated. Translocator will now automatically teleport Sombra after 0.25 seconds from being thrown or when impacting the environment.
- Reduces the Stealth passive cooldown after teleporting.
- Projectile speed increased from 25 to 72.
- Cooldown reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. Cooldown now begins after
- Sombra teleports to the location of the Transponder.
- Projectile launch initial vertical offset removed.
EMP
- Ultimate charge cost increased by 15%.
- Health percent damage decreased from 40% to 30%.
Virus
- This is a new ability assigned to Ability 1 by default.
- Fire a projectile that damages an enemy over time. Damage is dealt faster on Hacked enemies.
- Impact Damage: 10 (20 on hacked target).
- Damage over time: 100 over 4 seconds (100 over 2 seconds on hacked target).
Orisa nerf
Orisa gets a small nerf to her damage reduction, which is down to 45 percent from its previous 50 percent.
Ramattra buff
Ramattra had his Nemesis Mode cooldown dropped by a second, from eight down to seven. Blizzard hopes this change will help him survive and be more useful.
Wrecking Ball buff
Wrecking Ball finally gets a nice buff to his spread. It takes 30 shots to reach max spread now, instead of 20, so you can deal more damage before your accuracy goes down the drain.
Zarya nerf
Season 7 shrinks Zarya’s projected barrier down to the same size as her particle barrier and drops the health to 200. Blizzard said the idea is to combine its intended use – raising her energy – with the way people are using it to set up combos.
Cassidy buff
Cassidy gets a slight buff this time. His damage reduction during the dodge roll skill is now 75 percent instead of 50 percent.
Mei reset and buff
Whether this is a nerf probably depends on your perspective, but Blizzard removed the Deep Chill passive that slowed enemies over time. Mei functions the same as before now and inflicts a slow debuff on enemies with her blaster.
That blaster hits a bit harder now at 100 damage per second, up from 70.
Torbjorn nerfs
Torbjorn takes a fraction of a second longer to recover from his primary fire now, and he only gets 75 overhealth from his self-buff now, instead of 100.
Brigitte buff
Blizzard’s tinkered with Brigitte in nearly every season, and this one is no exception. Season 7 raises her flail damage from 70 per hit to 80.
Illari nerf
Illari gets a slight nerf for her first round of hero updates. Her healing beam will heal 105 per second instead of 120.
Season 7 changes - Leaving penalties explained
Blizzard finally explained how one aspect of the game works: penalties applied for leaving games. If you leave a certain number of games within a set of 20, you gradually incur penalties to your battle pass XP and may even be unable to queue for new matches.
Here’s how it works:
- The penalty thresholds have not changed, but the mechanics have also never been completely explained. The last 20 games played a player participated in are recorded. Leaving four of these 20 games activates the first penalty threshold. Leaving six of these 20 games activates the second penalty threshold.
- Queuing for most game modes is now suspended when a player leaves a match inside a penalty threshold.
- Players that reach the first penalty threshold will be suspended for 10 minutes.
- Players that reach the second penalty threshold will be suspended for 30 minutes.
- The queue suspension will reapply each time a player leaves a game when they are above the first penalty threshold but not when they complete their games.
- Consecutive Match XP bonus has been renamed to Endurance Bonus.
- Endurance Bonus is XP granted when finishing matches without leaving the previous match.
Overwatch 2 Season 7 map: Samoa
Season 7 also introduces a new Control map: Samoa. The three regions include a resort area on the beach, an underground facility surrounded by lava, and the middle of a futuristic city. Samoa is available as its own mode in the Arcade section during the season’s opening weeks, and it’ll turn up at a later point in competitive ranked matches.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
