Overwatch – 1.44 Patch Notes | FEBRUARY 2020 UPDATED**

February Update:

HERO UPDATES

Brigitte Repair Pack

Armor over-heal reduced from 75 armor to 50 armor
HPS decreased from 60 to 55

Developer Comment: On top of the high utility Brigitte brings to her team, she also dishes out a ton of healing and armor. We’re reducing some of this healing and armor to help keep her in line with the other healers. Symmetra Photon Projector (Secondary Fire)

Damage increased from 120 to 140

Developer Comment: Increasing Photon Projectors max damage allows Symmetra to play more effectively at a safer range when necessary. Widowmaker Widow’s Kiss

Full charge time for scoped shots increased from 0.75 sec to 0.9 sec

Developer Comment: Widowmaker has become stronger over time following changes to other heroes, such as power reductions to barriers. This change is intended to slow down her shots, reducing her overall DPS. Wrecking Ball Piledriver

Affected players’ loss of air control reduced from 1 second to 0.5 seconds

Developer Comment: This change allows Wrecking Ball’s enemies to regain control of their movement more quickly to try and avoid attacks, making Piledriver combos a bit less deadly.

1.44.0.1 Patch Notes

HERO UPDATES

Hanzo Storm Arrows

Damage reduced from 70 to 60

McCree Deadeye

Firing Deadeye no longer locks the player’s aim

Reaper The Reaping (Passive)

Healing amount reduced from 40% to 30% of damage dealt

Orisa Fusion Driver (Primary Fire)

Damage reduced from 11 to 10

Fortify

Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds

Halt!

Snare duration reduced from 1 to 0.65 seconds

Sigma Gravitic Flux

Can now be interrupted before targets begin falling
Impact slow duration reduced from 0.9 to 0.6 seconds

Accretion

Explosion damage reduced from 60 to 40

Baptiste Biotic Launcher (Primary Fire)

Recovery time increased from 0.35 to 0.45 seconds

Biotic Launcher (Secondary Fire)

Heal explosion reduced from 60 to 50

BUG FIXES

General

Fixed an issue that prevented Find Group from working when using a controller
Fixed an issue that could cause mispredicted movement (rubber banding) for fast movement abilities
Fixed an issue that could cause spawn doors on multiple maps to not behave as intended
Fixed an issue that prevented the “Year of the Rat” spray from being included in Lunar New Year event loot boxes

Lúcio

Fixed an issue that caused Lúcio's eyebrows to appear disconnected from his head while wearing his "Samul Nori" Lunar New Year skin

1.44 Patch Notes

LUNAR NEW YEAR 2020

Get ready to celebrate the Year of the Rat! This year, we’re celebrating Lunar New Year with new seasonal items including legendary skins like Face Changer Sombra, Mask Dancer Moira, Samul Nori Lúcio, and Opera Brigitte. Experience the third competitive season of our Capture the Flag mode, in addition to a brand new game mode called Blitz CTF. To learn more about the new mode, click here.

GENERAL UPDATES

Feature Update: Party Flex for Role Queue Unsure of which role you want to play? Now, party members who queue for any game mode with Role Queue enabled can select multiple roles, indicating what they're willing to play in the next game. Your other party members' role choices and Competitive Play skill ratings may affect which roles you are eligible to choose, or which role you can play. For example, if you selected all three roles (Tank, Damage, Healing) to indicate your willingness to play any of them, and then two other party members choose Support, you will not get to play Support in the next game. Custom Game Options The Lobby section of Custom Game Settings has a new option “Data Center Preference”. This option provides the game creator with more control over where the game will be hosted. The default “Best Available” choice automatically provides the creator with the best quality connection available to them. We only suggest choosing a specific datacenter if no single datacenter can simultaneously provide the best connection to all players. This is usually only the case when the players participating in the custom game are located in different geographic regions of the world. Spectate and Replay Updates

Added a new hotkey, "Spectate toggle 3P camera side", which changes the shoulder you're looking over for the player you're spectating while using the simple third-person spectator camera option
Added a new hotkey, "Toggle normal / simple 3P spectator camera", which toggles between the two third-person camera modes while spectating
Updated the death camera to quickly shift from where you were looking to where your killer is, to make it easier to see if you were killed by someone behind you or to your side
Updated the simple third-person spectator camera position for several heroes to have them cover less of the screen
Fixed an issue that caused zooming in and out while in the simple third-person camera to appear choppy
Transitioning into or out of first person no longer causes the camera to clip inside the hero's head
Fixed several camera smoothness and popping issues

HERO UPDATES

Baptiste Immortality Field

Maximum duration reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
Cooldown increased from 20 to 25 seconds

Amplification Matrix

Ultimate cost increased by 20%

Developer Comment: Immortality Field ended up being too powerful when placed in locations that were safe from enemy fire, such as around corners. Reducing its uptime will help address this case while remaining strong at saving teammates out in the open. Mei Endothermic Blaster (Primary Fire)

Slowing effect now reduces enemy movement speed from 20-70%, down from 30-90%
Slowing effect duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.0 second

Developer Comment: The slowing effect of Mei's primary fire can sometimes feel too difficult to escape. Lowering the amount it slows by and the duration it lasts for will make it easier to react to. The time required to completely freeze a target remains the same. D.Va Boosters

Cooldown decreased from 5 to 3 seconds

Developer Comment: The lower cooldown on her mobility will enable D.Va to more readily swap between playing offensively and defensively. Orisa Fortify

Damage reduction reduced from 50% to 40%

Developer Comment: Orisa has been a little too difficult to deal with while Fortify is active, so we're reducing the amount of damage reduction to give enemies more effective damage during this time. Hanzo Storm Bow (Primary Fire)

Maximum projectile speed reduced from 125 to 110

Developer Comment: The increased projectile speed Hanzo received in his rework ended up making his arrows too good at longer ranges. Decreasing the speed will reduce his sniping capability while still keeping him strong at mid-range. Doomfist Rising Uppercut

Recovery time increased from 0.2 to 0.35 seconds

Developer Comment: Rising Uppercut followed immediately by his primary fire is a little too effective of a combo on its own, so we're increasing the time enemies have to react to it.

BUG FIXES

General

Fixed a bug that caused toggle crouch to work inconsistently when high precision mouse input is enabled
Fixed a bug that caused a small number of games containing very high-skill players to have greatly reduced SR gains and losses
Workshop
- Fixed an issue preventing Go To Assemble Heroes from working in Assault and Hybrid
- Fixed an issue preventing Sombra Dummy Bots from being able to hack health packs

Maps Temple of Anubis

Fixed a bug where some heroes could get stuck behind one of the rocks outside of point B

Eichenwalde

Fixed a bug that could cause Wrecking Ball to become temporarily stuck when using his Piledriver in a specific location
Fixed a location where Doomfist could get stuck

Junkertown

Fixed a bug that allowed some players to stand on a wall near the final checkpoint
Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra's Translocator and Baptiste's Immortality Field to land in an unintended place between the stairs and wall near point A

Dorado