Sombra
She has finally arrived! After months of rumors, hints, and waiting, Sombra has been added to Overwatch’s roster of heroes. A notorious hacker, she’s stepping out of the shadows to deliver some serious pain. Her abilities are as follows.
Machine Pistol – Sombra’s fully-automatic machine pistol fires in a short-range spread.
Hack – Sombra hacks enemies to temporarily stop them from using their abilities, or hacks first aid kits to make them useless to her opponents.
Thermoptic Camo – Sombra becomes invisible for a short period of time, during which her speed is boosted considerably. Attacking, using offensive abilities or taking damage disables her camouflage.
Translocator – Sombra tosses out a translocator beacon. She can instantly return to the beacon’s location while it is active (including when it’s in mid-flight).
EMP – Sombra discharges electromagnetic energy in a wide radius, destroying enemy barriers and shields and hacking all opponents caught in the blast.
The Arcade
If you enjoy playing Overwatch but have been looking for a way to mix things up from the standard game rules, then the addition of the Arcade is going to be a welcome one for you. The Arcade houses a variety of different and regularly rotating game modes, maps, and rulesets that don’t fit into the Quick Play or Competitive Play modes. You’ll earn experience the exact same way as you normally do, but there are Arcade-specific rewards up for grabs, too.
Some of the different game modes you might find in the Arcade include 1-on-1 duels, 3-vs-3 skirmishes, mystery heroes, and elimination-style games.
New Map
With a new Hero and a bunch of new game modes, the update wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t include a new map for us to try it all out on. Overwatch’s 2.0 update adds Ecopoint: Antartica, a small Arena map that can also be played in the Arcade. Here’s the official description and background story for the map:
“Bundle up for a journey to Ecopoint: Antarctica, the former Overwatch installation where climatologist Mei-Ling Zhou was once stationed. While researching severe weather anomalies in the region, the station was hit by an intense polar storm. Running out of options and low on supplies, the team decided to cryogenically freeze themselves until the storm passed. They believed that it would only be for a few months, but Mei awoke nearly a decade later.”
Competitive Play Season 3
As the second season of Overwatch’s competitive play is due to come to an end on Nov. 23, update 2.0 makes some adjustments before season three begins on Nov. 30. According to the patch notes, adjustments have been made to the skill rating system: “Players will be distributed more broadly across the skill tiers, which means that your season 3 rating will probably be lower than the previous season.”
Update 2.0 brings these adjustments as a result of the high number of players in the Gold and Platinum tiers of competitive mode at the start of season two. At BlizzCon 2016, the team noted that the bell curve of rankings was unintentionally narrow. This resulted in the skill level varying too widely for players within these tiers. An adjustment to the system should see closer matches and narrower margins of skill level in each tier.
Tweaks, Bug Fixes, and More
Overwatch’s 2.0 update also brings with it a ton of tweaks, bug fixes, balancing issues, and other general refinements. One of the standout inclusions for those who have recently picked up a PS4 Pro is that the update does, in fact, bring PS4 Pro support. Though unfortunately, no details have been included as to how the extra power has been utilized. There have also been a couple of background tweaks which should result in the game loading faster and reducing the amount of room the game takes up on your system.
As for balancing, Overwatch’s 2.0 update makes a number of changes to Hero balancing. First off, dealing damage to anything that isn’t another player will no longer charge your Ultimate, and Ultimate costs have been increased by 25% across the board. 10 heroes have also seen buffs or nerfs as part of update 2.0, too, allowing for more balanced matches going forward.
You can check out all of the intricate details to the Hero balancing, as well as all of the bug fixes included in Overwatch’s 2.0 update here.
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