Overwatch 2 Season 4: Heroes of Busan Update Live on Aug. 11 via Patch 4.34/1.000.098

Yuna Lee has spent years defending Busan from inside her mech, Beast. Now it’s your turn! The long-awaited MEKA pilot steps out of the story and into your hands as D.Mon, a new Tank who leads from the front. Cut through enemy lines with her Plasma Saber, take one for your team with a strategic Power Barrier, get moving with Propulsors, and then trade close-range pressure for the reach of a Fusion Repeater. You’ll be at your best when the whole team moves with you, so MEKA Squad up with D.Mon and bring out the Hero in each other!

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Three familiar battlegrounds get revitalized and updated for a fresh feel. Busan bears the scars of the Junker assault and Talon’s attack on the MEKA base, with new spaces, summer scenery, and mementos from D.Mon’s life tucked throughout. Paraíso is getting ready to party despite Domina looming over the city, while Lúcio has plans of his own. Eichenwalde rounds things out with new routes and traversal options designed to keep its classic fight flowing.

A more flexible and player-friendly update to the Battle Pass experience—letting players choose which rewards to pursue first, swap one Battle Pass skin for a curated skin from the seasonal Swap Pool and engage with a refreshed UI that makes progression feel clearer and more rewarding.

• Choose your path through the Battle Pass. You no longer need to unlock every reward in a fixed linear order.  You can choose which rewards you want to pursue first and can change tracks anytime after completion of the Intro track.
• Swap for a skin you want more. Once per Battle Pass, swap one Battle Pass skin for a curated skin from the seasonal Swap Pool.
• A more modern Battle Pass experience. A brand refreshed UI helps modernize Battle Pass progression and immerse you in the world of Overwatch with custom theming and appearance.
• More flexibility, same seasonal value. Battle Pass Revamp keeps the core reward chase intact while giving you more agency over how to progress and what to prioritize.

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Support Your MEKA Faves On A Global Stage!

• The MEKA Squad have long been the pride of South Korea and the city of Busan, and now their stars are on the rise!
• Choose a MEKA Squad member to support! Gain access to their Rewards pass that includes themed cosmetics, loot boxes, and more!
• Completing a reward pass for a MEKA pilot contributes a Vote for them on the Global Leaderboard. At the end of the event, a special Player Card will unlock, gifted to all players who participated in the Event, and featuring the pilot who obtained the most votes
• Complete all five of the MEKA Squad pilots’ reward passes to unlock a bonus sixth reward pass!
• Tune into Shooting Star: My MEKA Mania and make your vote count from August 11–31!

Complete Challenges & Collect Cheer

• Play matches to earn Cheers through completing challenges from Sept 1st to Sept 14th.
• Check out the World Cup Cheer Rally event page where you can Cheer for your favorite Conference: AMER, ASIA, or EMEA. Each Conference has their own rewards to earn as a thank you for supporting them – lootboxes, Battle Pass XP, and awesome cosmetics!
• At the end of the event the Conference with the most Cheers will be declared the global winner. The winning Conference will unlock a themed weapon charm for anyone who participated in the event. Look out for a special easter egg in future maps!

• Team Status Indicator: A new counter above the Kill Feed shows how many teammates and enemies are alive on the battlefield. For allies, a progress bar shows when they are respawning after being eliminated. This feature can be disabled under Gameplay -> HUD -> Show Team Status Indicator.  This feature also has an experimental setting that’s set to “Respawn Time” by default called “Walkback Calculation Progress Bar”. If you’re feeling adventurous, try changing this setting to “Dynamic”, which includes an estimate of how long it will take your allies to get back to the fight. Be sure to let us know what you think!
• New Stat – Protects: Added a new stat to the game similar to Saves which tracks when a player has mitigated significant damage near allies. Players will be notified with a new Activity Feed callout when they successfully Protect (or are Protected by) a teammate. Additionally, there will be a new Daily Challenge centered around Protects.
• Updated Stat – Saves: We’ve included additional abilities and situations as Saves that were not previously tracked. Clutch overhealth from abilities will now count towards a save if it prevents a teammate from being eliminated. Jetpack Cat can also score a Save with a last-second tether after a teammate has been pushed off a cliff. Additionally, we are reducing the Daily Challenge requirement for Saves from 12 to 10.
• Healing and Status HUD visual updates: Made some improvements to how healing and player status are displayed on the HUD. Improved VFX for healing, status effect icons, and critical damage will give players a much clearer indication of when their health is being affected by healing and abilities. Improved health bar VFX for supports will give them a better indication of how their healing and abilities are aiding allies.
• Multi-Kill celebration: Added new callouts and new VO to celebrate when anyone scores a multi-kill (from 2x upwards). New icons will display in the Activity Feed and in the Kill Feed.
• Percentage Damage Dealt: Brought back an indicator on the Activity Feed which tells you what % of the damage you contributed to an elimination.

We wanted to provide a set of visual updates with the goal of helping players better understand the current game state, and to celebrate high-impact moments.  With these changes, you should have a better idea of what is going on during and after team fights, which should allow you to make better decisions in the moment.

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Ping System Refactor

• The ping system has undergone a major technical refactor under the hood that makes the system approximately 1.5x more efficient on average, but up to 30x more efficient in some edge cases, while also using considerably less memory.

Over the years the ping system had slowly become our most expensive script for memory usage as its complexity increased.  With this update, some new bugs will occur (several that we’re planning to fix in the mid-season patch), but please still let us know if you see any new bugs or loss of functionality that we missed!

Challenges Updates

• The requirements for the Daily Challenge “Untouchable” have been reduced to 5 eliminations instead of 10.

Movie Player Updates

• Various movie players (including the narrative viewer) now have the ability to seek.
• With a mouse, you can seek to any point in a movie, and with controller/keyboard you can skip +- 10s.
• Many movie players will also now remember your progress after leaving and returning to the same video.

Competitive Play Updates

New Skill Tier – Emerald (Ranks Redistributed)

• A new Rank has been added between Platinum and Diamond called Emerald. As we’ve shown in the past, the majority of our players are in Gold and Platinum, so adding a new Rank closer to the middle of the skill curve gives many players a better sense of Rank identity, a new goal to achieve, and increases fidelity in assessing skill for many players.
• Titles and Weapon Charms for Emerald have been added.
• This Rank Redistribution primarily focuses on moving players that were Platinum and Diamond into Emerald, but the highest Divisions of Champion will now also be more exclusive.

Rank Distribution Indicator

• A new UI element has been added to the Competitive Overview that shows how your Rank compares to all other players in a given queue.

Team Drives (Experimental)

• Like Drives, Team Drives are limited-time events that award Competitive Points and a unique new visual reward! Unlike Drives, any time you win a match in a Team Drive, you’ll be automatically grouped with all winning players. Why stay chained to the other gladiators and not just leave the group? Because each consecutive win as a team grants a big increasing bonus to Fame (similar to Drive Score) that will launch you through the Gladiator Ranks toward completion. You’ll keep your individual bonus if you leave the group to queue again solo, but you won’t benefit from the bonuses of all the other winners you just played with. You can also create your own full stacks and play only with friends if you want. There’s also an option found under Social → General → Groups called “Enable Auto-Grouping on Team Drive Wins” that you can turn Off if you prefer to avoid grouping altogether, but the event will be much harder to complete solo since you won’t benefit from other winners nearly as often.
• While Gladiator Ranks are very similar to Checkpoints from Drives, a Team Drive can only be completed by passing The Trail, requiring players to win 3 out of their last 4 matches.
• Instead of awarding Signatures that attach to your name plate, Team Drives award Player Card Frames that are visible where your Player Card is visible.
• The first 10,000 players to complete the Team Drive by finishing The Trial will unlock a temporary dynamic title showing the order that they completed the event in. Can your stack be the #1 Gladiators? These titles will be unlocked at the end of the Team Drive.
• The first Team Drive will take place September 4th 11 AM PT – September 7th 11 AM PT, in the days leading up to the mid-season patch.

Team Drives are shorter than regular Drives in an effort to be less disruptive to Competitive Play. We’ll be listening to player feedback around the event, but this system is an example of how we want to focus on adding more social elements to the game over time.

Challenger Score Tuning

• Grandmaster 2 – Increased from 175 to 200
• Grandmaster 1 – Increased from 200 to 250
• Champion 5 – Increased from 250 to 350
• Champion 4 – Increased from 300 to 450
• Champion 3 – Increased from 400 to 550
• Champion 2 – Increased from 550 to 700
• Champion 1- Increased from 700 to 900

This tuning makes winning at our highest ranks more rewarding, but we’ve heard the community feedback that the Challenger System has more foundational problems that can’t be addressed by tuning. We’re discussing potential solutions to address this feedback now.

For the hero changes, check out the breakdown from Blizzard.

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