Overwatch 2’s eighth season begins today, and Mauga, the hero shooter’s latest tank, isn’t the only major addition in season eight’s accompanying patch.

The patch notes on the Overwatch 2 website highlight Mauga, including several previously announced changes from feedback after his test period during BlizzCon. Mauga was available to play for a few days in November, and feedback largely centered around his survivability compared to most Overwatch 2 tanks. These characters are all about disruption and defense, and while Mauga had abilities in his kit that could theoretically allow him to inhabit that role, the numbers weren’t where they needed to be to sustain him or his teammates. Now that Mauga is finally in the game, it looks like a lot of care was taken to make him more powerful than a wet napkin, such as giving him armor for a defensive boost and making the hitbox on his head smaller to avoid critical shots.

Beyond Mauga buffs, the patch notes also outline upcoming events, from the Battle of the Beasts PvPvE mode to the upcoming Winter Wonderland. Other updates include the addition of buyable weapon skins, some tweaks to Competitive MMR decay, and a new wave of Hero Mastery courses launching on January 4.

The full patch notes read as follows:

NEW HERO: MAUGA

Introducing Mauga, a long-awaited tank hero who comes with a rapid-fire personality, massive stature, and brawl-centric abilities

MAUGA

• Mauga has been added to the lineup.
• Incendiary Chaingun (Primary Fire)
• Automatic weapon that ignites enemies on repeated impacts.
• Volatile Chaingun (Secondary Fire)
• Automatic weapon that deals critical damage to burning enemies.
• Overrun (Ability 1)
• Charge forward and stomp to launch enemies. You are unstoppable while charging.
• Cardiac Overdrive (Ability 2)
• Nearby allies take reduced damage and heal by dealing damage.
• Cage Fight (Ultimate)
• Deploy a barrier that traps yourself and enemies. Gain unlimited ammo while inside.
• Berserker (Passive)
• Gain temporary health when dealing critical damage.

BATTLE OF THE BEASTS

Fight in a powerful brawl with epic and powerful Grand Beasts in a fun 4v4 PvPvE game mode: The Battle of the Beasts. In a clash of Grand Beasts, protect yours while coordinating with your team to defeat the enemy beast. You’ll be able to play Mauga for free as the only tank to play in this mode, or try your hand as one of many other hunter-themed heroes and tear through the Grand Beast’s health while trying to avoid powerful abilities. May the best hunters win.

WINTER WONDERLAND 2023

Ring in the holidays with the Winter Wonderland event! Check out our heroes celebrating in style with all-new Holiday skins. Beat challenges and unlock one free legendary skin of your choice – choose from the stylish Formalwear skins for Cassidy or Baptiste, or the cozy Winter Jammies Illari skin. Dive into the action with returning fan-favorite event modes like Mei’s Snowball Offensive and Yeti Hunt, with new challenges and rewards. Winter Wonderland launches on Tuesday, December 19.

INTRODUCING WEAPON SKINS

Introducing Weapon Skins – a new way to customize your heroes. We’re kicking things off with the Hard Light theme for Rein, Reaper, and Mercy. These sleek designs with custom visual and sound effects can be equipped with any of these heroes’ skins. Look out for other Weapon Skins coming in future seasons. We’re excited about weapon customization, and this is just the first step. As we create more Weapon Skins, we want to hear about what you love about the skins. Your feedback is key as we evolve Weapon Skins and introduce new looks and more ways to customize your heroes.

GENERAL UPDATES

Endorsements

• Endorsement Score required to reach level 5 reduced.
• Endorsement Score decay at level 4 reduced slightly.
• Endorsement Score decay at level 5 reduced.

Hero Mastery

• Next wave of Hero Mastery courses will launch starting on January 2, 2024, in a five-week event featuring a new course each week with new challenges and cosmetic rewards to earn.
• A new set of five Hero Mastery courses for Lucio, Mei, D.va, Echo and Genji have been added.
• Lucio’s courses will unlock on January 2nd, and a new course for a new hero will be available every week for the next four weeks.
• An exciting new way to view Hero Mastery replays is now available, Replay Bookmarks!
• Replay Bookmarks can be enabled from the Replay Viewer at any time. Once enabled, players can instantly skip to important moments during a run.
• A list of bookmarks, course runs and records is shown on the left side of the screen. Players can quickly choose bookmarks from here, or by tapping the indicators on the replay skimmer.
• A new leaderboard for Hero Mastery courses released in Season 6 has been added. The previous leaderboard will return in a future patch for players to view any time.

Reticle Changes

• Extra reticle settings have been added for specific Heroes with multiple Weapon Modes. Players can now customize the modes separately or keep them in sync. The following Heroes have access to the new options:
• Ana
• Ashe
• Bastion
• Lifeweaver
• Mercy
• Ramattra
• Widowmaker
• A new option for the Reticle’s Outline Color has been added, and the Outline Opacity has been separated from the main Opacity. Players who have previously hidden their Dot by setting its Opacity to zero will now need to set the Dot’s Size to zero instead.

COMPETITIVE PLAY UPDATES

• MMR Decay now only occurs for Competitive Play at the start of a new season.
• MMR Decay is not applied to roles that qualify for a rank.
• Example: A player that won five games and got a Competitive Update will not decay at the end of a season.
• If a player does not have a rank already who won three games and did not get a Competitive Update, that player will decay at the end of that season.
• If the player does have a rank, they only need to play one match in the season to keep their rank for the next season.

HERO UPDATES

• Maximum ultimate charge preserved on hero swap reduced from 25 to 15%.
• Added Hero-Specific Options to every character to adjust the rumble strength of each of their abilities.
• Developer Comments: Swapping heroes is fundamental to the gameplay of Overwatch, and this ultimate charge refund mechanic has done a great job of decreasing friction there. It has helped matches feel less one-sided as it functions as a soft comeback mechanic.
• However, it also helped reinforce the perception that it’s most always an advantage to counter-swap upon dying, which ideally isn’t always true and requires some consideration due to how powerful ultimate abilities can be.

TANK

DOOMFIST

Developer Comments: One of the most effective uses for an ultimate ability like Meteor Strike is to save it as an escape in order to grab a health pack instead of using it against his foes. Doomfist will now recover health during the targeting phase so that it can be used more offensively.

Meteor Strike

• Now regenerates 75 health per second while in the air.
• Ultimate cost increased 16%.

JUNKER QUEEN

Developer Comments: Tightening the spread on Junker Queen’s Scattergun will make it more effective at range against small targets and give her slightly more team fight presence before fully committing to getting in close to the enemy team.

Scattergun

MAUGA

Developer Comments: We got a lot of constructive feedback from players when Mauga was available to try during his free preview weekend, so we’ve adjusted his kit for his official launch to give him the ability to last longer in a fight.

• Base health reduced from 500 to 350.
• Base armor increased from 0 to 150.
• Head hit volume reduced 15%.
• Incendiary and Volatile Chainguns
• Spread for firing both guns reduced 15%.
• Fire rate multiplier for firing both guns reduced from 25% to 0%.
• Damage per shot increased from 4.5 to 5.
• Damage falloff range increased from 25 to 30 meters.
• Max ammo increased from 300 to 350.
• Movement speed penalty reduced from 20% to 15% per gun.

Overrun

• Can no longer be interrupted by Hack.
• Damage reduction increased from 30 to 50%.

Cardiac Overdrive

• Lifesteal increased from 60 to 70%.

Berserker

• Overhealth conversion rate increased from 40% to 50%.

RAMATTRA

Developer Comments: Ramattra is quite powerful during his Nemesis Form though his base Omnic Form may be too easy to ignore for a tank hero. We’re adding some power there to even out the tradeoffs between the two forms, with the Omnic Form having even better ranged damage while Nemesis Form’s Pummel can pierce enemy defenses.

• Base health reduced from 300 to 200.
• Base armor increased from 0 to 100.

Void Accelerator

• Projectile size increased from 0.075 to 0.1 meters.
• Damage increased from 4.5 to 5.

SIGMA

Developer Comments: Sigma has very effective defensive options between his Experimental Barrier and Kinetic Grasp. The barrier regeneration rate is being reduced in order to create more opportunity to attack Sigma directly.

Experimental Barrier

• Regeneration rate reduced from 100 to 85 health per second.

WINSTON

Tesla Cannon

• Now ignores armor damage reduction.

DAMAGE

MEI

Developer Comments: We’re reducing the maximum ammo to limit how long Mei is able to continuously slow an enemy target now that the primary fire deals more damage.

Endothermic Blaster

• Maximum ammo reduced from 150 to 120.

SOLDIER: 76

Biotic Field

• Cooldown increased from 15 to 18 seconds.

SOMBRA

Developer Comments: The 1.5 second lockout duration didn’t feel impactful enough for an ultimate ability but generally EMP is more interesting and effective when it’s focused on the disabling aspect rather than the damage.

EMP

• Ability lockout duration increased from 1.5 to 3 seconds.
• Damage reduced from 30 to 25% of current health.

TORBJÖRN

Developer Comments: The health decrease on Overload severely impacted Torbjorn’s overall effectiveness so we’re reverting that change.

Overload

• Overhealth increased from 75 to 100.

TRACER

Developer Comments: This damage value has been changed a few times over the course of Overwatch 2 and is now back to Tracer’s original damage. It was previously adjusted due to a couple of bugs with the Pulse Pistol falloff range and spread being much better than they should have.

Pulse Pistols

• Damage increased from 5.5 to 6.

SUPPORT

BAPTISTE

Developer Comments: Baptiste has a high amount of sustained damage in addition to his various survival tools. We would prefer to keep his long cooldown abilities feeling impactful so we’re going to be pulling back on some of his damage potential here.

Biotic Launcher

• Primary fire ammo reduced from 45 to 36.

BRIGITTE

Developer Comments: Brigitte ended up being the best performing support hero in the game by a fair margin since the last patch. It’s likely a result of more than just the damage breakpoint change that she received but it was a significant increase to her offense so we’re reverting it and will continue to evaluate further.

Whip Shot

• Damage reduced from 80 to 70.

KIRIKO

Developer Comments: Reducing the Protection Suzu invulnerability time further will help it feel less frustrating to play against but still enable it to have big play making moments although with a stricter timing requirement. To counterbalance that power loss we’re making Kiriko’s healing more reliable.

Healing Ofuda

• Projectile speed increased from 14 to 18 meters per second.

Protection Suzu

• Invulnerability duration reduced from 0.85 to 0.65 seconds.
• Healing explosion increased from 40 to 80 health.

MERCY

Developer Comments: This is just a small quality-of-life improvement to help keep Mercy healing or powering up her allies without penalty for activating her ultimate.

Valkyrie

• Activating Valkyrie no longer disconnects Caduceus Staff from its target.

MAP UPDATES

• New Holiday Variations
• New Holiday decorations have been added to the following maps!
• Paraíso
• New Queen Street
• Watchpoint: Gibraltar
• New Lighting Scenarios
• Antarctica Peninsula – Morning

BUG FIXES

GENERAL

Hero Mastery

• Fixed a case where Tracer would be unable to pick up ultimate canisters while blinking.
• Fixed a bug that could result in the Agent course remaining locked despite obtaining 3 stars in the Recruit course.

Story Missions

• Fixed a bug in the Rio Mission that could result in the Charger failing to charge valid targets.

Other Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused Rumble to be activated by other heroes in the match using their abilities.
• Fixed a bug with Rumble activating for other players’ actions when viewing Kill Cam.
• Fixed a bug in the Hero Gallery that could result in Heroes being incorrectly posed after interacting with the Random From Favorites system.
• Fixed a general issue where heroes could jitter when Frozen.

MAPS

Busan

• Fixed an area of the map that allowed some characters to escape the playable space.
• Fixed areas of the map where players could become stuck.

Horizon Lunar Colony

• Fixed an area of the floor that could prevent players from moving.

Nepal

• Fixed a drum that could cause players to become stuck on it.

Samoa

• Fixed some areas of the map where heroes could become stuck.

HEROES

Cassidy

• Fixed a bug that could cause the ‘Hindered’ text to remain on screen after having it cleansed.

Echo

• Fixed an interaction with Zarya and Echo’s Duplicate which could result in Zarya not being able to apply their own Particle Barrier for a few moments after being Duplicated.

Hanzo

• Resolved a bug that made it appear as though Sonic Arrow was not fully charged even if it was.

Illari

• Fixed a bug with Healing Pylon’s sound effects persisting after being destroyed.

Lifeweaver

• Fixed an interaction with Tree of Life applying overhealth to Mei in Cryo-Freeze.

Mauga

• Fixed a bug with burn DoT not being applied and still resetting progress.
• Fixed a bug with movement speed reduction not being applied when firing a single gun.

Orisa

• Fixed an interaction with Terra Surge and Bastion in Assault mode that resulted in Bastion not being pulled inwards during the ultimate.
• Fixed a bug with the Tip of the Spear achievement not activating correctly.

Roadhog

• Fixed a bug with Pig Pen where it would fail to damage some deployable items from others heroes (ex. Ice Wall, Tree of Life, Winston’s Barrier Projector, etc).
• Resolved a bug that allowed Pig Pen to be placed on basketballs.

Sombra

• Fixed an issue with Virus not being correctly Amplified by Baptiste’s Amplification Matrix.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Stealth overlay to cause the screen to be darker than intended.