Summary

Blizzard has released the patch notes for the Season 7 update forOverwatch 2. Season 7 officially arrives on Tuesday, October 10, bringing with it the start of Halloween Terror 2023, the Samoa Control map, and Sombra’s rework. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. The upcomingOverwatch 2patch also features a significant new system for grouping players during respawn, altered penalties for leaving unranked games, and a diverse range of hero balance changes.

Season 6 ofOverwatch 2is just one day away from ending.Overwatch 2and its first seasonofficially launched on July 27, 2025, with each subsequent season lasting around two months. EveryOverwatch 2season has started with a patch making substantial balance changes, adding a new battle pass, and at times adding new heroes, maps, and events. Season 7 won’t be changing things up. There’s no new hero, unfortunately, but Season 7 will hopefully make it up toOverwatch 2players in other ways.

Perhaps the most substantial change toOverwatch 2in Season 7 is its new Group Respawn system for Quick Play. Going forward, heroes that die within 5 seconds of each other will now respawn together. That means some players will respawn faster or later than normal. Blizzard says that the goal of this change is to increase team cohesion and to lessen stomps that result from heroes failing to group up. This change is limited to Quick Play right now.Overwatch 2’s Competitive modeswill continue to have firm 10-second respawns.

When it comes to hero balance changes inOverwatch 2’s Season 7,Sombra being reworkedis certainly the biggest change. Her Stealth is now a passive, replaced by the new Virus ability that throws a damaging projectile. Sombra isn’t the only character receiving changes, though. Orisa will now be slightly less tanky when using Fortify, Mei’s Endothermic Blaster now slows immediately and doesn’t rely on Deep Chill for damage, and Illari’s secondary healing beam now does less healing per second as Blizzard continues to try and balance the newestOverwatch 2support.

Blizzard also made big changes to how it punishes players for leaving unranked games. Firstly, Blizzard is removingthe 75% battle pass XP penalty inOverwatch 2, which it felt hurt players in a way that wasn’t intended. Instead, players will be suspended from queuing after leaving a certain threshold of games. This will hurt those who repeatedly leave, while not punishing those who may have to leave a match due to time limitations occasionally.

There are a significant number of other changes and additions included in the Season 7 patch notes forOverwatch 2. One area of focus is quality of life changes forOverwatch 2heroes, allowing for additional input options. Improvements have also been made to the Hero Mastery mode and certain hero challenges.Overwatch 2will hopefully feel fresh and exciting again in Season 7.

Overwatch 2 Season 7 Patch Notes

HALLOWEEN TERROR 2023

Get ready for the spookiest event of the year as Overwatch 2 transforms into a haunted battleground. Halloween Terror is back with your favorite game modes—Junkenstein’s Revenge, Wrath of the Bride, and Trials of Sanctuary, a new Blizzard crossover game mode. Team up with the heroes of Sanctuary, power up their abilities, and defeat powerful bosses, including Butcher Roadhog, Azmodan Wrecking Ball, and Lilith Moira.

NEW MAP - SAMOA

Samoa is a new Control map where you’ll fight on a tropical beach, a gleaming city, and inside a volcano! Watch out for deadly pitfalls, or you might just be swimming in lava! Samoa will be available to play right away in a dedicated Arcade card and will appear in Quick Play and other unranked modes starting on October 10 with it appearing in Competitive Play later in the season.

HERO REWORK – SOMBRA

We approached the Sombra Rework by identifying key goals to guide decisions throughout the design iteration process: make Sombra more committal when engaging, increase the active feel in her ability kit, and uphold the current Hacker fantasy. With these goals, there were multiple angles to tackle around her existing kit. Naturally, many ideas were also meant to address frustrations playing against the character, ensuring there is proper counterplay for enemies.

GENERAL UPDATES

GROUP RESPAWN

Developer Comments: We think that team fights are some of the most enjoyable moments in our game, but we’ve all been in matches where team cohesion–or lack thereof–makes these moments a rarity. These matches often turn into stomps for the team that can’t group up, and preventing stomps is a high priority for us. As such, this season, we’re modifying how heroes respawn for Quick Play. Heroes that die within 5 seconds of each other will be respawned in a wave together. This means that respawn times will sometimes change in order for heroes to respawn together. If a hero dies further apart than 5 seconds from another death on their team, they’ll still respawn in 10 seconds as they would have in the past.

We’ll be listening closely to feedback on this new system, and depending on the response and making any changes, we will consider adding these adjustments to Competitive Play in a later season.

UNRANKED LEAVER PENALTIES

Developer Comments: Previously, if players left too many games, we would apply a 75% penalty to their Battle Pass XP that is gained. We found this had very little impact on those who leave deliberately and severely impacted those who don’t have much time to play but want to earn the rewards in our season Battle Pass. We’re changing this to make it more difficult for players who leave games to be disruptive while not applying too much impact to those who don’t intend on ruining the experience for others.

Replays

PLAYER PROGRESSION

Developer comments: All heroes share the Time Played and Wins sub-badges. This change is intended to highlight each hero’s unique sub-badges to better reflect individual playstyle.

Orisa

Fortify

Developer Comments: We are further readjusting Orisa’s survivability, which was originally increased due to the armor-damage reduction stacking change we made several patches ago. This particular change is relatively light as we still want her to be an effective pick against teams that lean on crowd control.

Ramattra

Nemesis Form

Developer Comments: This change lets Ramattra project his influence more frequently with Nemesis Form, which translates into increased survivability and damage. The flexibility also makes it less punishing if he swaps back to Omnic Form early to use the Void Barrier.

Wrecking Ball

Quad Cannons

Developer Comments: This change lets Wrecking Ball finish off enemies a bit more reliably when he’s outside of point-blank range and makes him less reliant on his Piledriver combos.

Zarya

Projected Barrier

Developer Comments: Zarya is using the barrier on her allies more often to peel or initiate combination plays, which makes the ability more team-oriented and less self-serving. This change preserves that interesting choice by keeping the cooldown reduced when used on an ally while targeting her energy sustain instead, which has increased significantly with the bonuses to the barrier health and size.

Cassidy

Combat Roll

Developer Comments: Most damage mitigation from Combat Roll feels incidental, as the ability is used more for mobility or reloading. This adjustment allows Cassidy to be more intentional with his rolls to avoid large amounts of damage with correct timing.

Deep Chill

Endothermic Blaster

Developer Comment: We liked the one-two combo that Deep Chill provided, as it added an interesting layer for hero mastery. However, in practice, it increased the amount of crowd control suffered by enemy players while also reducing Mei’s effectiveness. Rather than further increasing the slow or increasing cumulative combo damage, both of which would lead to a more frustrating experience for the opposing player, we are reverting Mei back to her balance prior to adding the Deep Chill passive.

Rivet Gun

Overload

Developer Comments: Torbjorn’s Rivet Gun can feel overwhelming with how quickly it shoots. This change reduces the firing cadence and makes it more manageable on the receiving end. Overload provides too much defensive value, so we are lowering the overhealth bonus.

Brigitte

Whip Shot

Developer Comment: This change increases her proficiency at protecting her allies by rewarding accuracy with her most aim-focused ability.

Illari

Solar Rifle

Developer Comments: Illari’s burst healing output is still a little too high, so we are lowering the effectiveness of the Solar Rifle secondary fire to bring her more in line with other support heroes.

HERO OPTION AND INPUT UPDATES

In addition to the hero balance adjustments in this update, we are implementing additional quality-of-life settings and additional input options for several hero abilities to give you the ability to custom-tailor your experience of playing your favorite heroes.

MAP UPDATES

ROUTE 66 DESIGN CHANGES

There are now additional places for the attacking team to take cover around their initial spawn. The doors on the first checkpoint will now only close one of the two doors after the payload passes by giving attackers more options to work through the difficult choke points. There will also be fewer places to take cover in the later parts of the map.

Sigma

Symmetra

Overwatch 2is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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