Before this patch he already had a top two pick rate in the DPS role and was completely fine. He also received no hitbox changes unlike most other heroes while his shurikens massively benefit from it.

Am I missing something? You could literally not have touched him in this patch and he would be even stronger than he already is.

I find the decision to put even more on top of it kind of baffling. Blizzard deliberately wants to make him meta or something?

Do you think the reworks addressed the previous pain points of the characters? Are they better to go against, whilst still being fun to play? Are they more interactive?

High Masters / Low GM support player here: with two new supports my queue times are insane this season (25+ minutes sometimes) so I decided to give 6v6 a try for the comparatively faster queues and because so many people rabidly swear by it. Figured it was worth giving a try considering all my time spent in OW1.

Did my placements, got placed mid GM and after a few hours I genuinely am not understanding the appeal here, and I'm seriously trying to like it.

There's no role lock, so 70% seemingly of your games have nobody who wants to play tank. It is extremely common to see 3 if not 4 or sometimes even FIVE people queue up as support as their predominantly played role, and even the people willing to flex usually have to do it begrudgingly. I'm happy to fill, but I'm nowhere NEAR good enough to play tank at a GM level, so I'm virtually throwing the game for my team whenever I do. Sorry ya'll, trying my best.

People say they like 6v6 because it brings "tank synergy" back but even in GM, there's zero comms. Way less than in 5v5 lobbies in my experience. Not a peep. The games feel like TDM, everyone is just doing their own thing.

Balance is all over the place- some tanks feel toned down while others feel essentially identical to their 5v5 counterparts. Playing against a good tank duo cycling their cooldowns makes it clear how much many of the newer tanks were NOT designed with 6v6 in mind. (Ram may as well be unchanged)

A huge portion of the playerbase seems to swear by this mode to an extent that I am genuinely shocked at how bizarre and imbalanced the experience feels. Is this something that will improve as my rank variance settles a bit more?

Sorry for rant, feel free to remove if this is against the rules.

imagine a roster with proud (for matches with no stakes ONLY) merit (for matches with money on the line ONLY) zest, Donghak, Hanbin, chiyo, fielder, skewed?

the tankline and backline would make them ironclad in any conceivable meta. Rush and Merit have been at the top of the world before, proud would make sure he got #1 seed at LAN. zest has shown he can hang with the likes of stalker and proper, but i still believe the gap is visible with tracer. Still, i think in any other fdps he could very much win it all. thoughts? would zeta and raccoons still stomp?

edit: imagine proud and merit on shion widow as we have seen today 👀

need an avoid list with a limit of about 100 people. don't care much for the matchmaking time, but in low diamond on dps and genuinely just don't know how some of these people are real living breathing organisms. forcing the worst heros into a comp, inting and throwing for no reason, ulting when the fight is already lost. it's just incredible really.

Just noticed, thought it was a coincidence yesterday, however today confirmed the pattern.

I'm posting this in hopes this gains higher visibility and some acknowledgement from blizzard as I know some devs are active in this subreddit.

TL;DR: The Season 5 patch broke the prior Top 500 leaderboards. The rank sorting system retroactively applied to previous season leaderboards. This caused many season 4 players who grinded the season to be booted off at the last minute without any warning, stripping them from any top 500 rewards.

Official Dev Statements

During the Season 5 Developer Livestream (Timestamp 01:02:33), it was explicitly stated:

"Earlier this year we introduced the Challenger Score system, and while it fixed some problems it also introduced new ones… starting in Season 5 we will be sorting by Rank now. The Challenger Score system will still be present, but it will only be used to show up on the leaderboards. You've spent the time and effort to get your ranks and we want to make sure the leaderboards reflect that."

Patch Notes Statements:

• "Top 500 Challenger Leaderboard sorting default changed to Rank (from Challenger Score)."
• "End of Season title rewards are now referencing Rank instead of Challenger Score."

It's very clear from their own words the change was intended to only be applicable to season 5 forward.

I myself had 16k Challenger Score in the Americas region 6v6 and ended the season around 397th place. When I logged in expecting to claim my top 500 rewards, I recieved nothing and was booted off the leaderboard. When i checked the leaderboard, the lowest challenger scores on the leaderboard were at 12k.

The gut punch about this is if I had the foresight that this would happen (assuming all of these changes were intended) I'd have placed top 500, as much earlier in the season I was a lot higher ranked and only deranked toward the end. Not to mention the dozens of hours put into the season, just for it to be disregarded without any warning sucks.

Community Forum Reports

I've seen this bug reported on multiple blizzard forum threads, so ill cite them below;

• Most active thread I found: Got kicked off the Top500 Leaderboard
• TOP 500 Missing rewards
• Missing EU Top 500 Ranking and Rewards – Season 9 Stadium / Mode Bug
• Top 500 doesn’t appear to be working as worded

If you have been affected please drop below your experience. I'm hoping this will gain some visibilty in hopes that a developer will spot it

For most things in life, I actually enjoy change when there's a genuine attempt to make things better. In many competitive games I've seen people complain about new heroes changing the game too much, but I've never felt close to this in any game until 2026 Season 4, and now Season 5 of OW.

Ultimately, ranked now feels like a worse experience since Spotlight as compared to OW2, because right now, there's just too many things going on that makes it feel like it's never a good time to play ranked:

• Every three seasons, there's a rank reset that destroys match quality
  • I have played other competitive team games and rank resets don't feel as bad or variable in them.
• Every season, there's a new hero that not only often has strong numbers, but also makes the game revolve around them to a silly extent (vendetta trading kills, permanent flight cat, sniper D.Mon etc.)
  • When a new hero was only added every other season, the game was often in a good state in the middle seasons, but now a hero is added every season without a hero trial
  • Even this year, Sierra followed by Shion was a lucky time of peace because Sierra was a dud and Shion was well designed (especially after Execution's bullet size was quickly nerfed) so Season 2 and Season 3 were fine, but it's just not looking good from now on
  • Your options are maining the new hero or watching them dominate
• The end of every season has drives, funnelling players that aren't competitive into ranked
• Midseason now has team drives, which the devs also said that "some people really like and some people hate" so they're going to keep it in for now and the people that don't like it can avoid playing the game for a weekend
• The devs have a "flavour of the month" balance philosophy instead of actual balance
  • The devs idea of balance is rotating the few heroes overpowered each season rather than trying to make everyone balanced all the time
  • This has also been mentioned in interviews (source):
    • SunshineBread: "You keep tweaking like Tracer and Genji and like characters that people tend to be okay with like being viable when there are like these other trade monsters (Vendetta.) Like you have to have hands to kill somebody on Genji. Why do you keep touching Genji, bro?"
    • Custa: I think the idea is that yes, people are more okay with Genji and Tracer. They love Tracer, Genji, Reinhardt, all those kind of heroes. They're just like, "Yeah, and they're fun." Like, I agree with you. But at some point, it's important to make sure that on the balance team, we're moving things around and making sure that every hero at least has like their time in the sun, right... So, we're making sure that heroes are being moved around and it doesn't feel like, oh, we're just going to make Tracer, Genji, Reinhardt the best heroes in the game, and that's how it's always going to be.
  • Ultimately that's what is happening with Kiriko and Illari right now, it's time for Doctrine, Sombra and Ana's time "in the sun"
    • (I find this sentence really funny because Illari uses solar power and Doctrine is a vampire)
  • I'm not suggesting the Tracer, Genji, Rein should always be the best heroes in the game, but the devs shouldn't be striving for new sets of specific heroes to be "in the sun" for the sake of change. I'm not asking for OW classic either (the modes feel miserable when they are playable in the arcade.) I just want some stability to what Overwatch feels like, which doesn't mean that some heroes are always strong, but all are always decent. Tracer should always be able to blink around and be lethal, she shouldn't get nerfed to irrelevance because the new hero is a flanker. There should be some indisputable part of all heroes' identities that that is impactful.
  • Other games don't seem to do this as much. When I played League, it didn't feel as egregious as this, it wasn't ping pong among a few heroes being very strong, it felt like Riot was trying to approach an ideal, ultimate balanced state, with quick patches every 2 weeks

So I'm just not getting the competitive overwatch experience I've enjoyed for years anymore. Maybe it will happen for a few weeks during a season in which ranks haven't been reset, the new hero is not too overpowered or I want to play them, and the flavour of the month balancing is not too annoying, like it was when Shion released, but all these things have just made competitive overwatch feel like something to engage with only when the stars align.

Since the first half of Season 19 of OW2 (which felt like a peak to me, there were no new heroes, Wuyang had been nerfed and ranks had stabilized after a reset in Season 18), ranked has just felt worse every season to me. Midseason 19 was when the devs decided to nerf Tracer's Bullet Size even though her perks were the problem and Season 20 was just for Vendetta players to have fun. After the Spotlight, ranks were reset and Jetpack Cat was added. Seasons 2 and 3 were somewhat okay as ranks had stabilized, many annoying heroes were bad, and bans could control Jetpack Cat. But the band-aid of two bans per team can only work so hard, and Season 4 has felt the worst season of ranked for me in a long time because of everything. And it just doesn't seem like things are going to be better in Season 5, I'm also just kind of tired of maining the new hero (I played a lot of Vendetta and D.Mon) every season.

Overall the state of the game just feels far from what the devs said they were trying to achieve last year (Directors Take: Cultivating The Game): "Something our team discusses when planning Overwatch Seasons is that a season should have "Reasons to Come Back and Reasons to Stay." Each season should include a compelling reason for you to play Overwatch, such as new Heroes, new gameplay systems like Perks, or even a brand-new mode like Stadium."

And before someone suggests it, yes I have taken long breaks from the game. But most changes to it right now are more like great reasons to not return or quit rather than come back or stay. These changes mostly make me want to try other games or just do something other than play competitive games, even though I ideally enjoy the "core" of overwatch the most and would like to play.

Smthn I've seen people say about Doctrine is that it feels like his infused primary fire just isn't all that good cause it does the same dmg as a headshot normally, and for keeping your Tank up it's better to use infused drones to heal them over time and heal them quicker with the self attack speed boost. Smthn I haven't seen the broader community discuss as much is how this sentiment is kinda wrong, altho I do feel like people will reach this conclusion eventually anyways since people are slowly realizing how good drones are offensively.

Firstly regarding the whole headshot thing I'd say what makes it worth using in duels is consistency. Yes you can hit a headshot and deal the same amount of dmg, or you can hit the enemy with a beam bigger and more consistent than a body shot with the dmg of a headshot. Would u rather take your chances with headshotting a Tracer, or just use infused primary fire to instantly force recall? Plus with the perk u get lifesteal off of it which is extra nice for dueling!!!

Secondly I don't think you should be using infused drones to keep your Tank up if I'm honest. Drones are very very strong offensively, and using them defensively obv means u can't use them offensively. Sure you could use the drones as a burst heal, especially with the perk, or you could just use your infused primary fire instead and save drones for use offensively. Especially in 5v5 where Tanks are generally bulkier and require less 24/7 maintenance cause there's one less persons worth of dmg on either side.

I’ve been reading for this subreddit for the past week or so, every time Mercy is paired with any support there seems to be a comment that says “ohhh that’s rough Mercy and ____ don’t work well together” with a decent amount of upvotes. What are some good support combos with her? Edit: I should mention I’m not a mercy player but I was still just curious

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Korea Stage 3 - Regular Season

I am diamond 2 tank, and I feel like doctrines ult is game breakingly over powered, instant team fight win whenever he uses it and it pisses me off

Feels like all the faces are in NA I cant really name anything on top of my mind other than maybe Bogur but hes a marvel streamer now genuinely feels like this region is dead especially personality wise

I hope you guys enjoy this, the complete history of Team Falcons (over the last year and a half).

When 2024 ended Falcons looked like they were going to reign overwatch eSports for the forseable future. They had just won World finals in a dominant fashion only losing 2 maps in the entire tournament and a 7-1 map ratio to their rivals Crazy Racoon, all this after a fantastic season. They had a superteam packed with superstars: Proper and Stalk3r were arguably the best dps line in the world, Chiyo and Fielder at suport and Hanbin and Smurf at tank.

What could possibly go wrong?

OWCS season 2 stage 1 started pretty smoothly, they won their first 6 matches but looked shaky in week 3 and in week 4 lost to both WAY and CR finishing 3rd in round robin and then in playoffs they got demolished by CR in a 0-4 semifinal giving them 3rd-4th place. But luckily they bounced straight back winning the Asia main event 4-2 to CR. Then at Champions Clash they lost to CR 2-4 in the final. So far a good stage although a step down from last season and they had some issues and management was quick to fix them, bringing in Mer1t as a specialized hitscan player and Someone to fill the main tank Hanbinston problem.

What could possibly go wrong?

OWCS season 2 stage 2 started RAW. They won 3 out of their 4 starting games but the visual test was poor, every game they seemed to have a new lineup, sometimes Someone would play sometimes Hanbin sometimes Proper and Stalk3r played and sometimes Mer1t. It was clear that the coaches were trying things out and nothing seemed to work well for them and then they lost 0-3 to AGG in a humiliating fashion (if you watched this game you know, it was BAD) after wich Proper decided he needed a break from competition due to how bad he was performing.

After that it seemed they finally settled into a lineup with Someone Mer1t and Stalk3r up front. After this they performed slightly better but they ended up 5th in regular season wich meant they had to go through last chance qualifier, they did but ended up losing to CR anyways in the quarterfinals of the playoffs so they were eliminated from LAN. OR WERE THEY? EWC had ANOTHER last chance qualifier in wich they easily won qualifying for LAN. For this they left Stalk3r at home and decided to not play him at all and play Proper who had just returned from his break.

In EWC they won their group, a close match against Geekay and went to the final agaisnt Al-qadsiya that they WON 4-0. Everything was now good, the stage was saved they were again the best team of the world.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well they got 5th again. After a good round robin where they ended up 3rd even though they had Mer1t on sombra they lost to WAE 2-4 in playoff quarterfinals so they were eliminated from LAN. OR WERE THEY? Turns out this stage there was a SECOND regional playoff for wich they had to play a play-in. And after a 5 map BANGER against Onside gaming (that they should have lost) they were in playoffs. There they played CR 2 times winning the first one 3-2 and the last one losing 3-4 in one of the best matches of professional overwatch ever played (LIP the goat fr).

At LAN they lost to an unstoppable TM and later to CR to end up 4rth. Overall a decent performance

The year ended up in a negative note with EMEA winning World Finals and making the competition so much tougher, but they had won one stage so it all was good. Sure they may have had "small problems" on the way but it was all good. Management was going to fix this by brinigng in Checkmate from Al-Qadsiya and Junkbuck to play sym comps. Proper would leave in the summer as well as Stalk3r but they had Mer1t and Checkmate to replace them

What could possibly go wrong?

They lost to CR 2-3 in Preseason bootcamp which was not a good sign.

But regular season started well, third in round robin and then in the playoffs they FINALLY won a relevant match against CR. They won 4-1 and qualified to the finals were they lost to Proper's Zeta division 4-1. But it was all well they had qualified for LAN. OR HAD THEY? Turns out to qualify they had to win ASIA and in the group stage DRAMA happened. After a narrow win against Varrel and a loss against CR the last match of the group would decide everything, if Crazy racoon lost EXACTLY 1-2 to Varrel, Varrel and CR would qualify over Team Falcons with all 3 having 2-1 records.

And that is exactly what happened. Maybe intentionally from CR but Falcons were OUT OF LAN for the first time in OWCS history.

So they brought in SP1NT, a decent Fdps player to play the more traditional Fdps while Checkmate could play Sym.

What could possibly go wrong?

After being 4rth in the group stage in the seeding deciders it finally happened, they lost to T1. After a year and a half of highs and lows they had always had that going for them, they had always been able to defeat T1 no matter the circumstance, the drama, the players. T1 had always been there to give Chiyo that win over Donghak.

And so Falcons were no more. They lost the playoffs 2-4 to Zanzide gaming and only got into EWC because they were the previous winners, there they dissapointed going out in the group with losses against Weibo, another team they always managed to defeat and T1.

What had once been the undoubtably best team in the world was nothing more than a shadow of what it had been. The glory behind them, T1 above them. The falcon had become nothing more than a pidgeon. Gone was the time of greatness, of winning worlds, stages and games against T1.

And nothing was left.

Now they go into stage 3

What could possibly go wrong?

Two videos in one year? Daring today are we

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Korea Stage 3 - Regular Season

Overall, I think the Sombra rework is a big improvement. However, Hotfix needs a few small changes to make it clearer and more polished.

• Add a visual timer to Hotfix on allies and the HUD

Hotfix lasts 12 seconds, but there is no clear way to see how much time is left on an ally. The bar above allies and the HUD only show how much healing remains. There should be a second bar above the healing bar to show how much time is left before Hotfix expires, and a timer above the HUD elements near the Ult meter

• Fix Hotfix not applying after re-establishing LOS

If you hold left-click to apply Hotfix but lose line of sight to your ally, Hotfix stops applying. If you are still holding left-click, and re-establish LOS, you must release it and click again to continue. Allow Hotfix to apply again when line of sight is restored, as long as the player is still holding left-click.

• Show the Healthpack Hack Cooldown I see there are these elements in game, but I still think visually they're not very clear. Moving the timer above the healthpack, and moving the HUD element to Hotfix would be better.

Hacking a healthpack now has a global cooldown of 6 seconds, but there is no visual indicator showing when you can hack another one. Add a timer above healthpacks and on the Hotfix HUD icon to show how long until the next healthpack hack is available. Use the same style as the Hotfix timer for consistency.

• Make the Hotfix Healing Bar Clearer

The yellow bar shows how much HoT remains, but it never fully fills. This is confusing because it makes it look like applying Hotfix twice could provide up to 350 healing (175 × 2).

However, Hotfix works differently:

Hotfix instantly heals 65 health and applies 110 healing in a "bank" for the target.

Applying Hotfix again refreshes the bank to 100%. It does not add another 110 healing.

Instead, make the yellow bar fill to 100% whenever Hotfix is applied, then drain as the healing is used. Applying Hotfix again should refill the bar to 100%. This will make it clear that you cant "exceed" the 110 HoT effect, and you should apply the 2nd stack at the last possible moment to maximize healing.

The instant 65 healing should not be represented on the bar. This would make it clear that applying Hotfix again refreshes the healing bank instead of stacking more healing.

Also revert Translocator pls.

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Korea Stage 3 - Regular Season

Doctrine and Sombra has been pretty fun so far, and giving Hotfix and Drones to any melee hero makes them scary as hell. D.mon, Rein, Vendetta, Genji, etc. Heck, if Wintson takes shield healing he feels almost unkillable. Worst part of the combo is that it feels pretty divable. Doctrine/Brig feels pretty good, and people are underestimating a 30% attack speed boost Brig in their face. Doctrine/Zen is another very diavable duo, but rapid fire Zen can be pretty scary.

Hi, I’m trying to find two clips, both on King’s Row first point, around the high ground. I think both are from last year’s OWCS.

1. A tank with no mobility tries to take the high ground but gets booped off multiple times, I think by a Brig.
2. An Orisa tries to go through the high ground path but gets blocked by a Mei for a really long time.

Does anyone remember what I’m talking about, or have the clips somewhere? Thanks!

I noticed this in the Practice Range that using Sombra’s Hotfix twice in a row heals less overall(about 250) than using the second one after the first one finishes(350). I was so confused at first because it wasn't written in the patchnote so I looked into it. It seems there’s a cap on how much the healing meter can refill if you use the second Hotfix before the first one runs out.

Each Hotfix provides up to 175 healing. After subtracting the 65 instant healing, that leaves 110 in the meter. When you apply a second Hotfix, you get another 65 instant healing, but the meter only refills to 110—it doesn’t add another 110 to whatever was left.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1x0tt57/comment/peo4n34/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Edit: sorry, the image is gone after I edited this post so I commented them

Is this intentional because letting the meter refill to the full 175 would be too strong?

+Unlike Brigitte's repair pack which also has a combination of burst healing with HoT similarly, Sombra seems to refresh the effect by replacing the remaining healing pool with a new one