New Overwatch patch introduces replay sharing and balance changes

Ever wanted to share your Overwatch replays with friends, or perhaps a coach? As of today, you can do that without recording it separately. A new patch is live that includes replay improvements, replay sharing, balance changes, and bug fixes.

Replay updates

While players have been able to watch their replays for a while now, they will now also be able to share them with others. Players can pin up to 10 replays to keep until the next Overwatch patch, at which time replays will be deleted. They can share these replays with a six-digit alphanumeric code.

Time changes

Blizzard is attempting to make matches faster by reducing the amount of time to pick a hero from 35 to 30 seconds. Assault, Payload, and Hybrid maps are also getting a big change relating to time. If both teams have more than two minutes remaining in the time bank after the first two rounds, an equal amount of time will be subtracted from both teams until the lowest team has 2:00 minutes remaining.

Hero changes

Overwatch players can breathe a small sigh of relief, because Mei is finally seeing a nerf. The cooldown of her Ice Wall is being increased by three seconds, and all heroes can fit through the gaps. This will make it easier to play around her wall. She will likely still be a great pick, but this will give more opportunity for counterplay.

On the tank front, D.Va is seeing a small one-second cooldown increase to her Boosters. Meanwhile, Orisa is seeing a one-damage increase to her primary fire. These small changes should help keep Orisa in line with D.Va in terms of strength.

Baptiste, Soldier 76, and Sombra are all receiving minor buffs. Baptiste charges his Exo Boots faster, and his Regenerative Burst cooldown is being lowered by two seconds. Soldier 76’s Helix Rockets will be on a two-second shorter cooldown. Sombra’s primary fire is going to be more accurate, with a 10% decreased spread.

There doesn’t seem to be anything mentioned about Torbjorn’s turret bug, so it looks like that won’t be fixed until a later date. Be sure to stay tuned for more Overwatch updates!