August 9, 2018 Patch

Introduction
Get ready to kick it, the Summer Games are back!

This year Lúcioball makes its way to Busan Stadium, and your heroes are ready to soak in the sun with some new skins! Over the last few months I’ve had the pleasure of working with professional artists around the world to bring these seasonal skins to life.

It’s a really fun process. It starts with our concept artists sharing their ideas early, which helps hype us up as we start to think of all of the possibilities and details we can add to the models and textures for the final skins, such as making the propellers on the back of D.Va’s Waverunner mech spin faster when she uses her Boosters ability. The 3D artists then choose which skins they want to create and are encouraged to voice their opinions and ideas during the development process so we can help them turn their vision into a reality. Once they have collaborated with us on the digital sculpture and the final in-game model, we then finalize the skins and give them an extra coat of polish in-house with our rigging and skinning, visual effects, audio, and quality assurance testing teams to make sure that they work in-game. The entire effort can take weeks to create a legendary skin, but the end result is always worth it!

This event was especially memorable for me since I got to work with and help train a new artist on our art pipeline. In addition to keeping the process organized and efficient, I also got to get my hands dirty by creating Hana’s model for the D.Va Waverunner skin.

Part of the excitement during the creation process is imagining how fans will receive our artwork—we really hope that you love these skins, and we’re looking forward to reading and hearing what you have to say about them and Summer Games!


 * —John Gotch, Senior Character Artist Supervisor

Patch Highlights
The Summer Games return for more fun in the sun! This year, we're celebrating the spirit of competition with a new Lúcioball arena, Season 2 of Copa Lúcioball, and a smörgåsbord of loot. Unlock over 50 new seasonal items—including legendary skins like Waveracer D.Va, Fastball Zenyatta, and Cabana Ana—alongside our growing collection of summer gear from previous years.
 * Summer Games 2018

To learn more about Summer Games, click here.

General Updates

 * General
 * Changed the name of Junkrat’s Buccaneer skin to Bilgerat
 * Added under attack voice lines for Zenyatta, Lúcio, and Moria
 * All Overwatch League skins now include the name of the team’s city or state


 * Looking for Group
 * Settings will be saved after changing filters on the Looking for Group browse screen


 * Hero Gallery
 * Added a What’s New option that displays new unlockable content

Hero Updates

 * Developer Comments: These changes remove the need to immediately reload after certain long duration ultimates.


 * General
 * Some ultimate abilities now restore ammunition after completion for some heroes
 * Abilities affected: Genji’s Dragonblade, Junkrat’s RIP-Tire, Pharah’s Barrage, Roadhog’s Whole Hog, and Zenyatta’s Transcendence, Winston’s Primal Rage

Ana
 * Developer Comments These changes help Ana’s Nano Boost be usable in more situations. Previously it was almost entirely used to combo with other allies’ ultimates, just before they use them. With this change Nano Boost can now alternatively be used to save an ally from near death in the middle of a big fight.


 * Nano Boost
 * Now also instantly heals the target for 300 health
 * Range increased from 30 to 40 meters

Brigitte
 * Developer Comments Brigitte’s Shield Bash is one of her strongest abilities, and its short cooldown can make it difficult to play against. Slightly increasing its cooldown will give her opponents more opportunity to play around it. We’ve also added an option to control Brigitte’s Repair Pack targeting sensitivity which will allow players to reduce the width of the search angle for the ability. This is useful for trying to target specific allies in the middle of a fight at the cost of making it a bit harder to target allies in general.


 * Shield Bash
 * Cooldown increased from 6 to 7 seconds
 * Repair Pack
 * An option to control Brigitte’s Repair Pack targeting sensitivity has been added under Options > Controls > Brigitte

Doomfist
 * Developer Comments These changes are just quality of life improvements for how Doomfist interacts with Symmetra’s placed objects.


 * Rocket Punch
 * No longer impacts Symmetra’s teleporter
 * Now destroys Symmetra’s sentry turrets without stopping his movement

Hanzo
 * Developer Comments Hanzo’s Lunge ability allows him to be a bit too evasive, so we’re increasing the cooldown to make him easier to catch.


 * Lunge
 * Cooldown increased from 4 to 5 seconds

Lúcio
 * Developer Comments Increasing the amount of shield health gained from Lúcio’s Sound Barrier should make it more effective against incoming burst damage. As part of his last rework, Crossfade’s radius was heavily reduced, but its potency was increased to compensate. While the change was better for him overall, the radius was small enough that it was often difficult to keep his allies in range during a fight, even if they felt reasonably close together. The increased radius should help in these situations.


 * Crossfade
 * Aura radius increase from 10 to 12 meters
 * Sound Barrier
 * Temporary shields granted increased from 500 to 750

Mercy
 * Developer Comments Mercy’s previous healing output made her nearly irreplaceable in any team composition. Even after this change she will still be able to deliver more healing over the course of a match than any other support hero, but it should allow for other healers to be more viable.


 * Caduceus Staff
 * Healing beam reduced from 60 healing per second to 50 healing per second

Moira
 * Developer Comments This change should help Moira in situations where there are no enemies within reach but your team still requires a lot of healing. She will still need to drain enemies to be fully effective, but this just helps her a bit in the rare cases where there is an extended long-range fight that she can’t reasonably take part in.


 * Biotic Grasp
 * Passive energy regeneration rate increased from 2 per second to 2.4 per second

Reinhardt
 * Developer Comments By smoothing out Reinhardt’s Barrier Field, he now will be able to consistently block enemy abilities and projectiles that could sometimes unintentionally sneak through (e.g. Junkrat’s grenades).


 * Barrier Field
 * Decorative insignia no longer protrudes from the shield’s surface

Sombra
 * Developer Comments The head changes are mostly a bug fix, as her head hit volume was abnormally large, especially from behind. Previously if you fired at her from behind near her upper spine, you could land a head shot. Now her head volume is much more accurate.


 * General
 * Reduced the size of Sombra’s head hit volume

Symmetra
 * Developer Comments Symmetra’s primary fire has huge damage potential but it is too difficult to charge because of its low range and slow charge rate. We’re increasing the range to see how it plays out, giving her more opportunities to use it, especially against enemy barriers.


 * Photon Projector
 * Primary fire range increased from 10 to 12

Widowmaker
 * Developer Comments The increased cooldown of Widowmaker's Grappling Hook will slightly reduce the frequency that she can reposition herself. This allows her to be threatened more easily by agile enemy heroes such as Winston and Genji.


 * Grappling Hook
 * Cooldown increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds

Zarya
 * Developer Comments The smaller radius on Graviton Surge makes it more reasonable for her enemies to try countering it by staying spread out, as well as putting more focus on Zarya to position the ultimate correctly to impact the most players possible. However, the intent of these changes isn’t to lessen Zarya’s overall power significantly so we’re reducing her energy drain rate, which should keep her energy higher on average resulting in more damage and quicker ultimate charge times. Overall, this takes some power out of her ultimate and distributes it else ware to add more counter play against her.


 * Energy
 * Drain rate reduced from 2 energy per second to 1.6 energy per second
 * Graviton Surge
 * Radius reduced from 8 to 6 meters

Game Browser and Custom Games

 * Heroes
 * Brigitte’s Repair Pack now has a minimum cooldown time of 1.5 seconds regardless of custom game settings

Bug Fixes

 * General
 * Fixed a bug that displayed an inaccurate AFK countdown timer before removing players from a match if they were flagged as AFK more than once
 * Fixed a bug that caused the player camera to display an odd location before switching to the first-person view of the selected hero after Assemble Your Team phase ends


 * AI
 * Fixed a bug that caused Torbjörn bot to fire his gun endlessly if his turret is teleported by a Symmetra player


 * Competitive Play
 * Fixed a bug that could cause players to lose an endorsement level if they exited before a match completes, but after the return timer for a leaving player has expired

Brigitte
 * Heroes
 * Fixed a bug that allowed projectiles and splash damage to penetrate Brigitte’s Barrier Shield while dashing with the ability

D.Va
 * Fixed a bug that caused D.Va’s Light Gun to disappear if Roadhog used Chain Hook on her while she used an emote

Genji
 * Fixed a visual issue that prevented Genji’s Shuriken ammunition from displaying the correct number briefly after activating Dragonblade
 * Fixed a bug that caused Genji’s arms to detach from his body if he looked straight down a wall while climbing over edges

Hanzo
 * Fixed a bug that caused Hanzo’s arms to detach from his body if he looked straight down a wall while climbing over edges

Junkrat
 * Fixed a bug that refilled Junkrat’s ammo if RIP-Tire failed to cast
 * Fixed a bug that refilled Junkrat's ammo if he attempted to use RIP-Tire while airborne

Lúcio
 * Fixed a bug that allowed Lúcio to gain ultimate charge while Sound Barrier was active if he got hacked

Orisa
 * Fixed a bug that caused the health bar on Orisa’s Protective Barrier to disappear when she used Supercharger

Reinhardt
 * Fixed a bug that prevented cracks from appearing on Reinhardt’s Overwatch League Away skins when his Barrier Field takes damage

Roadhog
 * Fixed a bug that prevented Roadhog’s Chain Hook from retracting to his hand if he is interrupted mid-cast

Sombra
 * Fixed a bug that caused Sombra’s visual effects to display darker than intended
 * Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra to destroy her Translocator after teleporting to it
 * Fixed a bug that caused Sombra’s Translocator to bleed when struck by enemy players

Tracer
 * Fixed a bug that caused Tracer’s Pulse Bombs to stick onto the wrong side of shields when the targeted enemy moved quickly

Wrecking Ball
 * Fixed a bug that prevented Wrecking Ball from using sprays when in Roll form
 * Fixed a bug that allowed Piledriver to displace Mei while she is in Cryo-freeze

Zarya
 * Fixed a bug that caused Zarya’s Graviton Surge visual effects to extend beyond the ability’s radius


 * Hero Gallery
 * Fixed a bug that prevented rotating hero models while viewed in the Hero Gallery when equipped with Overwatch League skins
 * Fixed a bug that prevented the Communication Wheel from functioning when equipping a spray, voice line, or emote from a Loot Box


 * Looking for Group
 * Fixed a bug that caused some groups to be unable to queue for a game mode


 * Maps
 * Eichenwalde
 * Fixed a bug that caused Eichenwalde’s castle gate to falls into the ground when destroyed by the payload