Heroes

This article is about playable characters. For the animated short, see Hero.

The hero roster, as of Overwatch's fourth anniversary

Heroes are the playable characters in Overwatch and Overwatch 2. There are currently 40 heroes available.

Overview

Every hero wields a unique weapon, which is their main way of dealing damage and/or healing. Weapons may have an alternate fire, and some heroes may have multiple weapons, which can be switched using the number keys 1 and 2 by default. Generally, heroes have at least two normal Abilities, which are bound by default to 'Shift' and 'E', and an Ultimate ability, bound to 'Q'. Abilities are capable of dealing damage or healing and can provide impactful utility.

Heroes have health, usually referred to as "HP" or "hit points," which represents the amount of damage the hero can take before they are eliminated. The amount of hit points that different heroes have ranges from 175 to 800, sometimes dependent upon their role. If a hero has taken damage, they start regenerating their lost health at a rate of 20 HP/s after 5 seconds of not taking damage (except for Support heroes, who start regenerating lost health after 2.5 seconds).

Heroes move at a base speed of 5.5 m/s (except Genji and Tracer, who have a base speed of 6 m/s). Walking backwards reduces move speed by 10%, and crouching reduces move speed to 3 m/s in every direction. Additionally, all heroes can jump at a height of 0.98 meters under normal gravity.

Each hero offers a unique style of play, and is classified under one of three roles: Tank, Damage, or Support. In Role Queue, the standard game mode, each team is restricted to two Support heroes, two Damage heroes, and one Tank. However, there are various other game modes that have no role limits. Players can switch between heroes in the spawn room.

Heroes come from a variety of national/ethnic backgrounds, and occasionally speak in their native languages. During matches, heroes exchange specific dialogue with each other based on their character history and background.

New heroes are added to the game over time via updates. Currently, players are required to unlock new heroes by leveling up the Battle Pass to a certain level during the season they were added. Heroes can also be unlocked by purchasing the premium Battle Pass for that season, or by completing a set of hero challenges after the season ends. As of Season 10, heroes will not require purchase, and will be available from the outset upon release. However, players must still complete the first-time user experience to unlock heroes.

List of Heroes by release date

There were originally 21 heroes at the launch of the game. Since then, 19 additional heroes have been added. In Overwatch, new heroes were released roughly every four months; typically in March, July, and November, with the November reveal taking place during the opening ceremony of BlizzCon.

In Overwatch 2, new heroes are expected to arrive every other season, starting in Season 2. This means that every evenly numbered season is expected to release with a new hero.

No.	Hero		Role	Nationality		Reveal Date	Release Date
01		Tracer	Damage1		United Kingdom	7 November 2014 (Overwatch announced)	24 May 2016 (Overwatch released)
02		Reaper	Damage1		United States
03		Widowmaker	Damage2		France
04		Pharah	Damage1		Egypt
05		Reinhardt	Tank		Germany
06		Mercy	Support		Switzerland
07		Torbjörn	Damage2		Sweden
08		Hanzo	Damage2		Japan
09		Winston	Tank	N/A
10		Zenyatta	Support		Nepal
11		Bastion	Damage2	N/A
12		Symmetra	Damage3		India
13		Zarya	Tank		Russia	6 March 2015
14		Cassidy	Damage1		United States
15		Soldier: 76	Damage1		United States	7 July 2015
16		Lúcio	Support		Brazil	5 August 2015
17		Roadhog	Tank		Australia	22 September 2015
18		Junkrat	Damage2		Australia
19		D.Va	Tank		South Korea	6 November 2015
20		Mei	Damage2		China
21		Genji	Damage1		Japan
22		Ana	Support		Egypt	12 July 2016	19 July 2016
23		Sombra	Damage2		Mexico	4 November 2016	15 November 2016
24		Orisa	Tank		Numbani	2 March 2017	21 March 2017
25		Doomfist	Tank4, 1		Nigeria		27 July 2017
26		Moira	Support		Ireland	3 November 2017	16 November 2017
27		Brigitte	Support		Sweden	28 February 2018	20 March 2018
28		Wrecking Ball	Tank	N/A		28 June 2018	24 July 2018
29		Ashe	Damage		United States	2 November 2018	13 November 2018
30		Baptiste	Support		Haiti	25 February 2019	19 March 2019
31		Sigma	Tank		Netherlands	22 July 2019	13 August 2019
32		Echo	Damage		Singapore	18 March 2020	14 April 2020
33		Sojourn	Damage		Canada	1 November 2019 (Overwatch 2 announced)	26 April 2022 (Overwatch 2 PvP Beta #1)
34		Junker Queen	Tank		Australia	12 June 2022	28 June 2022 (Overwatch 2 PvP Beta #2)
35		Kiriko	Support		Japan	15 September 2022	4 October 2022 (Overwatch 2 released)
36		Ramattra	Tank		Nepal	4 November 2022	6 December 2022
37		Lifeweaver	Support		Thailand	3 April 2023	11 April 2023
38		Illari	Support		Peru	16 May 2023	10 August 2023
39		Mauga	Tank		Samoa		5 December 2023
40		Venture	Damage		Canada	3 November 2023	16 April 2024
41		"Space Ranger"	Support	N/A

¹ Originally Offense, ² Originally Defense, ³ Originally Support, ⁴ Originally Damage

Development

There are always a few heroes in development at any given time. Which hero's development gets priority is determined through the game's current state, and what hero has the best compatibility with it.

Design Process

Heroes are based off popular and recognizable archetypes. When a hero is pitched, a group of five developers examine gameplay, character concept, and character backstory to see if the idea is worth fleshing out. If that's in the affirmative, the team of five becomes a team of ten to 15, who are tasked with "finding the fun" in the hero and bringing out its "core." This includes work on art, design, engineering, audio and quality assurance. Once this is completed, the hero gains (or will have gained) 40 or more developers, who build its respective content (skins, emotes, voice lines, etc.). For early heroes, it was common to theme the hero mainly around their weapon (examples of this include Widowmaker and Pharah). How a hero is developed can vary; sometimes their look and feel inspire their abilities, and sometimes it’s the other way around.

After the hero is fully playable, a different team is brought in to build the hero's story; by this point, the total number of developers is about 80. These individuals work on material including origin story cinematics, comics, and animated shorts. After that, the hero then needs to be publicized. By this last stage, over 150 individuals will have worked on the hero in some form.

Cut Heroes

The following heroes have been cut during development of the game:

An early heroes pitch—some heroes are in the final version

• Brit
• Bruiser
• Firestarter
• Frost
• Helio
• Hivemind
• Huntress
• Jetpack Cat
• Luc
• Mama Hong
• McCloud
• Overmind
• Phreak
• Praetor
• Psyblade
• Rashi
• Recluse
• Rumble
• Shield Guy
• Troy
• Watcher
• Yetzi

Unnamed

• A hero wearing a hazmat suit was pitched during development, but did not progress beyond the initial concept.
• A female Russian hero that was pitched in the early days of development. She would be riding a bear and dual-wielding AK-47s. Her ultimate would be for the bear to also pull out dual AKs.

Heroes in Development

• On a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), Team 4 members stated that Esperança has hints of a new faction, and that the faction has ties to an unannounced hero. As terminals bearing The Collective name/insignia can be found on the map, it is speculated that The Collective may be the faction in question.
• At BlizzCon 2023, in addition to Mauga two future heroes were previewed: Venture, released in Season 10, and a support under working name "Space Ranger" who will be released later in 2024. Additionally, a placeholder icon of an unreleased Tank hero could also be seen in the preview footage.

Trivia

• The Overwatch development team added a dummy string very early on containing the name of a fake hero: Dying Breed. This was done to identify if the game's files were datamined and uploaded to the internet. They forgot to remove the string when the beta was shipped, and it created some confusion among the team members who discovered it for the first time. The string has long since been removed.
• Jeff Kaplan, the former game director of Overwatch and Overwatch 2, has not ruled out removing heroes from the roster in the future.
• The purpose of hero classes was to make it easier for new players to get into the game, and to better understand how each character would play.
• Hero releases stopped for a long period after the announcement of Overwatch 2. It was promised that multiple heroes were to be released at once with the release of Overwatch 2 and "at least" one new hero was expected to release before then. Echo was then released in March 2020, which ended up being the final hero release of Overwatch, and Overwatch 2 eventually released after more than two years with three new heroes: Sojourn, Junker Queen and Kiriko.
• In Overwatch, players immediately had access to new hero releases, without any requirements to unlock them.

See also

• Hit points
• Weapon
• Ability
• Passive ability
• Ultimate ability
• Movement speed