When Overwatch introduced mad scientist tank Sigma back in 2019, he was immediately a powerful shakeup of the meta. His placeable shield was more flexible than Reinhardt or Orisa’s, and his primary rock-throwing weapon did can do damage and disrupt in equal measure. On top of this, his ultimate ability, Gravitic Flux, which lifts enemies within its radius off the ground, slams them down, and cuts their health by half its base health, is still one of the most powerful ones in the game. For some reason, with Overwatch 2’s mid-season patch, Blizzard decided that Sigma’s ultimate needed a huge buff. Naturally, it’s now very broken.

Gravitic Flux is an area-of-effect ability signified by a dark circle on the ground that appears as its cast. There’s a darker center within this circle, and before this patch, a character had to be in the circle’s line of sight to be caught in the telekinetic slam. This is why characters like Mei or Lifeweaver were able to counter this ultimate by building an Ice Wall or Tree of Life that blocked teammates from being caught in the attack. This new patch removes that requirement, so now, if you’re in the circle at all, Sigma is giving you uppies. However, as some players have discovered, taking out the line of sight requirement means it can work through walls, even if Sigma can’t see those enemies.

Blizzard explicitly notes that this change was made because there’s a lot of counterplay against the Gravitic Flux, so perhaps this was the intention. But now all I can think about is how Sigma’s suddenly made for stealthy plays. Is your enemy team sitting on the payload in Dorado? Go into one of the buildings surrounding it and cast Gravitic Flux just on the edge of the room. You’re bound to catch at least one of them by surprise. This shit’s busted.

The full patch notes for Overwatch 2’s mid-season update are as follows:

COMPETITIVE PLAY UPDATES

Demotion Protection Modifier

• The Demotion Protection modifier has been moved from below the Rank Progress bar into the bar itself to improve visibility when a player is in a Demotion Protection state.
• When Demotion Protection occurs, you will not be told when your progress is below that skill division’s range. If you lose your Demotion match, the Skill Rank adjustment will show only the adjustment from that match, instead of the net total of that match and the adjustment of the previous match.

New - Pressure Competitive Modifier

• This rank modifier appears for players who are at the far ends of the overall skill distribution.
• For players who are very high ranked (like Champion), this modifier will show when you don’t earn as much progress from winning a match or drop more progress for losing a match.
• For players who are very low ranked (like low Bronze), this modifier will show when you earn more progress for winning a match or drop less progress for losing a match.

Developer comments: This new modifier was added to show how our highest and lowest-skill players are being pushed toward a more average Rank. Competitive Play already calculates this Modifier to your Skill Rank adjustment, but it wasn’t visible until now. Very high or very low-ranked players will see this Modifier after every match while they continue to maintain a Rank at the outer limits of the ranked spectrum. Climbing to the highest skill tiers like Grand Masters or Champions is not intended to be easy, and overcoming Pressure to reach the top is no longer a hidden challenge that players must face.

Grouping Restrictions

The Skill Tier legend was updated to show the changes to grouping restrictions that were applied in a previous update. The grouping restriction changes we applied are the following:

• Grand Master can now group within 3 divisions to be considered a narrow group.
• Champion can now group within 1 division to be considered a narrow group.

Developer comment: While the Season 10 changes to grouping up with friends have contributed to a large improvement in match quality for most players, we’re still looking to reduce queue times for players and groups, especially for higher ranks.

MATCHMAKING UPDATES

• When a player is currently on a loss streak, the matchmaker will try to avoid putting the player on a team that is statistically calculated to have a lower chance of winning.

Developer comments: Loss streaks never feel good. Before each match, we make a prediction about which team will win the game, based on the information we have about the players on both teams. This is how modifiers such as Consolation, Reversal, Uphill Battle, and Expected give or take additional Rank Progress after each Competitive Play match. Since most matches will have a team that has a slightly higher chance of winning, placing a player on the team with the higher chance who is currently on a losing streak is aimed at helping them have a fair chance of breaking that streak. While this won’t guarantee they’ll win, it does provide a helping advantage.

HERO UPDATES

• Armor health has been reverted to provide a flat damage reduction of 5 per projectile, up to a maximum of 50% damage reduction.
• Out-of-combat health regeneration changed from 20 health per second to 10 health per second + 5% of maximum health.

Developer comment: Armor is being reverted to its original functionality to better resistance rapid fire damage and shotgun-type weapons. Out- of- combat health regeneration has been a positive but subtle addition to the game, but had a much smaller impact for tank heroes due to their massive health pools, so we’re adjusting it to heal for a percentage of maximum health.

TANKS

Role Passive

• Tanks now have 25% damage reduction against critical headshot damage.
• Knockback resistance increased from 30% to 50%

Developer Comment: Although armor health will now be more effective in some of the more difficult matchups, it will also be losing potency against the typically slower, higher damage instances. To help reduce the feeling of tanks being taken out too quickly by high bursts of damage, the role-wide passive now provides improved defense against critical headshot damage.

JUNKER QUEEN

Developer Comment: Junker Queen being able to activate Commanding Shout while swinging her axe or during her Ultimate ability will make it more responsive for when an additional burst of health or movement speed is needed.

Commanding Shout

• Can now be activated while using other abilities.
• Cooldown reduced from 14 to 12 seconds.

SIGMA

Developer Comment: Similar to how Graviton Surge functions, Gravitic Flux no longer needs line of sight to affect enemy targets in its area. There are a fair amount of counterplay options to deal with this ultimate so we’re making it more reliable to grab enemy targets within its area of effect.

Gravitic Flux

• No longer requires line of sight to the center of the effect.

WRECKING BALL

Developer Comment: Wrecking Ball has been performing much better after his recent update and these tuning changes will help his abilities feel more impactful.

Grappling Claw

• Impact damage increased from 50 to 60.

Piledriver

• Movement lockout duration for enemies increased from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds.

Minefield

• Damage increased from 130 to 165.
• Explosion knockback increased from 5 to 10.

ZARYA

Developer Comment: We have been increasing the value of some tank ultimate abilities to account for the increased health pools and it helps to make the decision of when to counter-swap more of an interesting tradeoff. Graviton Surge was still very useful to set up combos with other ultimate abilities but we want to makes sure it’s powerful enough on its own.

Graviton Surge

• Radius increased from 6 to 7 meters.
• Duration increased from 3.5 to 4 seconds

DAMAGE

JUNKRAT

Developer Comment: Junkrat’s weapon has great damage output but is unreliable outside of close range due to its slow projectile speed, which is an intended drawback to its high output. The Season 9 health changes affected Junkrat more than most other heroes since it now requires one more shot to secure an elimination. We’re increasing the damage on direct impacts to return to 2 direct hits for an elimination, without making his combo with Concussion Mine as deadly as before since that one is much easier to execute.

Frag Launcher

• Impact damage increased from 40 to 45 (Total damage increased from 120 to 125).

ECHO

Developer Comment: While the main benefit of Duplicate is a second health pool and the utility of another hero’s abilities, it was often too difficult to charge an ultimate in the Duplicate time limit so we’re increasing the bonus multiplier slightly.

Duplicate

• Ultimate gain multiplier while transformed increased from 4 to 4.5.

HANZO

Developer Comment: The Dragonstrike ultimate hasn’t been very effective outside of being used in a combo with other abilities that restrict enemy movement, so we’re increasing its speed to help position it as less of a zoning tool and more likely to deal some damage.

Speed increased from 12 to 15 meters per second.

Dragonstrike

• Speed increased from 12 to 15 meters per second.

SUPPORT

BRIGITTE

Developer Comment: Resetting the Shield Bash cooldown on ultimate activation was too much potential burst damage for Brigitte when the average maximum health of everyone was lower, but it’s much more reasonable now that it won’t be as lethal.

Rally

• Now resets Shield Bash cooldown upon activation.

BUG FIXES

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug with Mirrorwatch not generating stats in Game Reports.
• Fixed a bug with Competitive Progress not incrementing correctly.

MAPS

• General bug fixes and improvements were performed on multiple maps.

Eichenwalde

• Fixed an area that could cause players to temporarily become stuck.

Samoa

• Fixed a spot on the map that players could become temporarily stuck in.

Shambali

• Fixed a location where players could become stuck for a period of time.

HEROES

Mercy

• Vengeance Skin - Fixed a bug with the feathers on the skin not being properly aligned.

Venture

• Fixed a bug with Tectonic Shock that counted turrets and other non-player targets as valid for the Excavation Annihilation challenge.
• Fixed an issue that could occur with Burrow where Venture could remain burrowed above the ground.