At last, the long-awaited 15th season of Overwatch has arrived on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch! This new season brings about a significant change to the gameplay with the introduction of Hero Perks – one of the most substantial alterations in Overwatch’s history.
In Overwatch, you’ll find an exciting innovation called Hero Perks, which grant additional abilities for heroes during gameplay. Some extraordinary perks have been added in Season 15, including the return of Orisa’s Protective Barrier and Echo’s capability to restart her flight after a takedown.
Beyond Hero Abilities, gamers get to reap the benefits of loot crates again, which offer free cosmetic items. For those who are more competitive, climbing the leaderboard remains the way to go, as a new rank reset ensures fairness by flattening the playing field once more.
Biggest changes in Overwatch 2 February 18 patch
During gameplay, Hero Enhancements provide an opportunity for players to boost their hero’s skills on the fly, enabling them to select fresh abilities for their characters as they accumulate experience points during a match. These enhancements are earned through various means such as securing kills, healing teammates, and inflicting damage on opponents.
Advancing hero abilities may require some initial patience, but the pace of advancement towards new skills will pick up as the game unfolds. Changing heroes will wipe your current abilities, but progress on previously unlocked abilities will remain for characters you’ve already used. This means that if Mercy reaches Level 3 but you switch to Kiriko, Mercy will still be at Level 3 when you switch back to her.
Due to the introduction of Hero Perks in this update, you won’t see any changes to hero balancing in this particular patch. However, the developers intend to fine-tune both heroes and perks after release, should they prove to be either excessively powerful or weak.
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Overwatch 2 2025 Valentine’s Day event: All challenges & rewards
Participants have the opportunity to win up to ten loot boxes, as well as a complimentary legendary Mercy skin, simply by completing challenges related to Perks. For a comprehensive understanding of each hero and their unique Perks, check out the detailed information available here.
Full Overwatch 2 February 18 patch notes
New Mythic Skin – Pixiu Zenyatta
The Mythic Zenyatta skin, modeled after the auspicious golden dragon Pixiu, blends divine elegance with distinctive personalizations. As you advance, this skin undergoes changes, boasting four stages of development, thematic sound effects, and an additional Gilded Aspect that can be activated if desired.
Loot Boxes Are Back
In Overwatch 2, Loot Boxes are back as rewards you can gain by playing the game or participating in events. There are more than 100 of these prizes available during this season.
- Starting in Season 15, you can earn up to three Loot Boxes every week by completing up to 27 games each week with wins counting as double.
- Starting in Season 15, you can earn a free Legendary Loot Box in the free track of the Battle Pass and an additional two Legendary Loot Boxes in the Premium Track of the Battle Pass.
Loot Box
- Every Loot Box draws from a curated collection of Overwatch and Overwatch 2 cosmetic items.
- Each box will drop four items when opened. The items you get are now randomly selected at the time of box opening.
- Loot Boxes will prioritize giving you items you don’t already own.
- If a Loot Box can’t avoid giving you any items you already own, the loot box will instead grant progress towards a bonus Loot Box.
- At the start of each season, any unopened boxes from previous seasons will be automatically opened and all items dropped from them are added to your collection.
Drop Rates
On average, each rarity has the following chances of dropping per one Loot Box opened.
- Legendary: 5.1%
- Epic: 21.93%
- Rare: 96.26%
- Common: 97.97%
Guaranteed Drops
- A Legendary item is guaranteed to drop within 20 consecutive box openings.
- An Epic item is guaranteed to drop within five consecutive box openings.
- At least one Rare item or better is guaranteed to drop in every box.
Legendary Loot Box
Each Legendary Loot Box is guaranteed to contain at least one Legendary item.
Drops Rates
On average, each rarity has the following chances of dropping per one Legendary Box opened.
- Legendary: 100%
- Epic: 21.93%
- Rare: 96.26%
- Common: 97.97%
Competitive Play Updates
Skill Rank Reset
- The highest Ranks (Master, Grandmaster, and Champion) have been tuned to include a higher percentage of the player population once players are well calibrated.
- Given the addition of Perks and the tuning of higher Tiers, this reset is designed to put players on an even playing field and give them a chance to climb even higher than ever before.
- All ranks in Role Queue and Open Queue in Competitive Play have been reset to Unranked and all players will need to complete their respective 10 placement matches for each role.
Competitive Rewards
- Galactic Weapon Variants can now be unlocked with Competitive Points, allowing you to reach for the stars while you rank up.
- Jade Weapon Variants join Gold Weapon Variants as Legacy Rewards.
- Legacy Rewards can be purchased with Legacy Competitive Points.
- Competitive Weapon Charms will be awarded to players in Platinum and above in Season 16 based on your performance in Season 15.
- End-of-season titles for Competitive Role Queue now include the role the rank was achieved in. Examples include Champion Tank, Champion Support, Champion Damage, and Open Queue Champion.
Competitive Point Conversion
- All Competitive Points earned in the 2024 Competitive Year have been converted into Legacy Competitive Points.
- Competitive Points can now be manually converted into Legacy Competitive Points when purchasing Weapon Variants.
Ranks on Portraits
- Competitive Hero Portraits return to Competitive Play with Overwatch 2’s Rank icons, giving players that share their gameplay new opportunities to show off their skill.
Map Pool
- Clash Maps Hanaoka and Throne of Anubis are removed from the Competitive Play pool.
- All players can still play on all Escort, Hybrid, Control, Push, and Flashpoint maps.
General Updates
Voice Lines
- Refactored ultimate voice lines to allow custom player-specific voice lines instead also being heard by opponents.
- Mode-specific ultimate lines are now enabled to play game-wide for players with relevant skins equipped (ex. Warlock Ashe, Greek Gods skins, etc).
- Custom ultimate lines are now enabled for several Mythic skins, with more to come in future patches.
- Previously unused custom ultimate lines are now available for several other skins.
Emotes
- Emotes can now be cancelled mid-animation shortly after they are activated.
Bug Fixes
General
- Fixed a bug where players were unable to rename highlights when saving them.
- Fixes a bug where Voice Line Icons would sometimes appear over prestige tiers in the battle pass.
- Fixed a bug where the Drives Signature VFX would sometimes extend off the nametag.
- Fixed a bug where the final score would sometimes not appear in ranked games.
Heroes
- Fixed a bug where Hazard’s Jagged Wall projectiles would not respect barrier.
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2025-02-18 23:21