January 24 update has arrived for Overwatch 2, and here’s everything added and changed with this patch. The game’s community isn’t satisfied with the game’s updates because they’re usually late. The updates also generally don’t contain the balance changes or new features we expected. Yes, the game was released only a few months ago; but it was in the beta process for years. The game’s first versions weren’t failed, but Blizzard was missing the after-release updates. As big expectations exist, we want to see the changes we wanted months before. Here’s everything about the Overwatch 2 update released on January 24 and its patch notes.
Overwatch 2 January 24 Update Patch Notes
Hero Updates
Tank
Orisa
- Fortify
- Health bonus reduced from 125 to 75
Roadhog
- Chain Hook
- Impact damage reduced from 30 to 5
- The enemy’s final position distance from Roadhog after being pulled increased from 3 to 4 meters
- Scrap Gun
- Damage per pellet reduced from 6.6 to 6
- Recovery time reduced from 0.85 to 0.8 seconds
- Reload time reduced from 2 to 1.75 seconds
- Maximum ammo increased from 5 to 6
- Developer comments: These changes aim to reduce the frustration of dying in one shot immediately after being hooked and pulled by Roadhog. Chain Hook is still a powerful utility to forcibly reposition enemy players, so it will still often lead to eliminations. Its effectiveness will now depend more on specific hero matchups and how the hooked target can respond.
Damage
Sojourn
- Railgun
- Energy gain is no longer based on damage done by primary fire. Each primary fire hit against an enemy player now grants 5 energy
- Primary fire damage per projectile reduced from 10 to 9
Developer comments: The energy gain adjustment will help smooth out Sojourn’s average Railgun charge time to kill because it won’t benefit as much from critical damage or damage boost abilities. Hitting armored targets or other sources of damage reduction will result in quicker energy gains than before.
Previously, damage boosts and critical damage had an amplified effect for Sojourn since it reduced the time to build energy and lowered the threshold at which her Railgun secondary fire became lethal. The reduction to primary fire damage will further slow that down as well.
Support
Kiriko
- Healing Ofuda
- Recovery time increased from 0.85 to 1 second
Developer comments: Despite Kiriko’s healing projectiles being slow-moving and single target, her average healing output per match is higher than we’d like. We’ve seen players tend to get overly focused on maximizing her healing potential and only use primary fire for extended periods of time. Rather than reduce the amount of healing per projectile, which may lead to feeling locked into focusing on primary fire even more, we’re increasing the recovery time before she can start firing the Healing Ofuda. Increasing recovery times opens the opportunity to weave in secondary fire Kunai more freely.
- Railgun
As you see, some changes are also supported by the comments. That’s because players need to reconsider their strategies, and those changes made to the characters should be explained. There are no new features with this update, though we didn’t expect them. Don’t forget to install the update before you dive in; the update sizes could be a few gigabytes, even with only a few changes. Overwatch 2 is available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, and Xbox Series. For more information regarding this patch, please visit the official Overwatch 2 site.