This week, Ubisoft released a statement addressing what might generously be called a “controversy” about the upcoming Assassin’s Creed game, Shadows. Let’s be real, though. It’s just the latest salvo from a reactionary hate movement. You can read our thoughts on that, the terrific texture of Yakuza 0, the missteps of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, the amazing sound design of the Riven remake, and more, in the pages ahead.
Kotaku Staff
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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:
Demotion Protection Modifier
New – Pressure Competitive Modifier
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:
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
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.
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.
Role Passive
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.
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
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
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
Piledriver
Minefield
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
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
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
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
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
GENERAL
MAPS
Eichenwalde
Samoa
Shambali
HEROES
Mercy
Venture
Kenneth Shepard
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It’s time for more Overwatch 2 Twitch drops! This time it’s in celebration of the spooky season. Twitch viewers will have a chance at earning two cosmetics starting October 25, plus a couple others later in November. As with all Twitch drops, you’ll need to link your Battle.net account to your Twitch account, plus a few other important details. So let’s go over it.
According to Blizzard’s blog covering the details, the Halloween-themed Overwatch 2 Twitch drops start on October 25 at 2 p.m. ET through to November 6 at 2 p.m.
After the candy corn season is behind us, another Twitch drop with cosmetics for Reinhardt and Brigitte will start on November 15 at 2 p.m. ET through to November 30 at 2 p.m.
As is customary with Twitch drops, you’ll need to log some hours watching Overwatch 2. But it doesn’t need to be all at once or the same channel. You’re free to check out different channels at different times to earn progress toward your drops.
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To start, you’ll need to watch two hours of Overwatch 2 on Twitch for the Werewolf spray. Then, watch an additional four hours (six total) for the Werewolf Winston Legendary skin. You can watch any channel in the Overwatch 2 category on Twitch.
Past experience has told us it pays to be sure a streamer is offering drops. Any channel in the game’s category should qualify, but double-check the title of the stream as many streamers include “Twitch drops” or “drops enabled” (or similar language) to indicate their channel is participating. There may also be a bot in the streamer’s chat indicating that drops are enabled. Or, you could always ask in the chat.
You must link your Battle.net and Twitch accounts. Even if you’ve done it before and have participated in previous Twitch drops, you don’t want to log half-a-dozen hours of Overwatch viewing for nothing. Visit the connections page on your Battle.net account and follow the link to connect your Twitch account. Follow all the instructions on Twitch’s side and you’ll be set.
If you’ve done it right, it should look something like this (with your Twitch avatar and username):
Watching Twitch on game consoles and smart TV apps DO NOT count. You must watch Twitch on a computer’s web browser or the Android/iOS Twitch app to get your drops!
In-game rewards from Twitch drops don’t appear in your game automatically. Once you’ve cleared the necessary watch-time, head on over to the Drops Inventory menu on Twitch to claim your reward(s). Claimed drops will expire after 14 days if your Battle.net account isn’t linked. Claimed items can also take up to 24 hours to appear in your game, so practice a little bit of patience.
If you stream and want to make sure viewers can participate, a couple of clicks will enable drops on your channel. To make sure your stream will deal out Overwatch 2 Twitch drops, head on over to your “Creator Dashboard.” Under “Viewer Rewards” you’ll see “Drops.” On that page, you’ll click the slider next to “Enable Drops” so it has a purple check mark and you’re good to go!
After November 6, you’ll have another opportunity to earn some Twitch Drop-exclusive cosmetics. This time, you can grab the Reinhardt Mug Souvenir after watching two-hours worth of Overwatch 2 on Twitch. Following that, you can earn the Brigitte Kitten Weapon Charm after three additional (five total) hours.
As mentioned above, these drops will be available from November 15 at 12 p.m. ET through to November 30 at 2 p.m.
I hear you loud and clear. Sadly, I’ve no screenshots or time slots to share for that problem. But if you’re new to Overwatch 2 and are looking for some basic tips to get started, check out our beginner’s guide. And if you’re looking to knock out your timed season challenges, we’ve broken those down so you can get to grinding.
Claire Jackson
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