The Overwatch 2 development team through recent Q&A segments as well as announcements have revealed more changes coming to the second beta. Starting on June 28, instead of the speed boost passive that damage players got, its replaced with keeping part of the players ultimate charge when swapping heroes. Along with that change, the Push game mode now features longer matches. The team also confirmed that, unlike their original intentions, Overwatch 2 will replace Overwatch online. Lastly, on top of confirmed support changes, the second beta includes a partially competitive mode.
Push extended, supports getting changes
While a hit with players ever since its release, the Push game mode still had its faults. Players who played the mode saw that early momentum would almost always carry a team to victory. So, to counter that, the team has extended the time of each Push map from eight minutes to ten. This has led to more variability between Overwatch League teams, giving teams more time to fight back.
The team hasn’t forgotten about the community outcry over the support role in Overwatch 2, either. In a previous blog, the team talked more about this issue, confirming there would at least be significant changes to Moira during the second beta.
Damage players get a new passive
This new change was confirmed in a recent blog post before the second beta begins. Now, instead of giving damage players a speed boost, they can keep up to 30% of their ultimate charge when swapping between heroes. This replaces the movement speed, making all DPS heroes slower. However, now swapping heroes to counter enemy compositions is incentivized. Before, if a team would want to swap composition mid-game, they would have to get rid of their ultimate charge. With this change, at least the DPS heroes can take some of that charge and apply it to a new hero.
One of the issues the community brought up with this idea is that not all ultimates are valued the same or build at the same speed. For example, building a Tracer ultimate can be quick under the right circumstances, and swapping off to a Mei to get a big impact ultimate like Blizzard might not be balanced. Either way, the beta is the right place to test something like this out.
Competitive mode in its early stages
For more committed Overwatch 2 fans, the lack of a ranked mode made the first beta stagnant over time. During the break between the first and second beta, the dev team heard this criticism and recently provided their answer.
Despite redesigning the competitive game mode and releasing it at launch, there will be one in the second beta. Yet, this competitive mode will be partially competitive due to the development of the new mode. One of the key ways to make it less serious but still keep the competitiveness is to introduce backfill capabilities, which they are. Last but not least, with console players joining the beta, the team confirmed that they will have more servers dedicated to the beta.
The second Overwatch 2 beta begins on June 28, with signups open now. Players who played in the first beta will not have guaranteed access to the second one — they will need to sign up again on the Overwatch 2 website. Fans can also purchase guaranteed access to this second beta with the recent Watchpoint Pack.
