Overwatch 2 Teases Brand New Perks to Improve Gameplay In Season 16

Alec Dawson teased five heroes getting updates to their Perks:

Sombra

• New Major Perk – Viral Replication
  • Enables the Virus to spread to nearby enemies
  • Replaces Stack Overflow (Increased hack silence, but shorter hack range)
  • Stack Overflow doubled down on what Sombra is good at instead of transforming gameplay.

Mercy

• New Minor Perk – Angelic Resurrection
  • Grants 100 Overhealth to Mercy when using Resurrect.
  • Replaces Angelic Recovery (Granted Mercy healing when her beam was attached to full health allies)
  • Angelic Recovery was too passive, and Angelic Resurrection tasks Mercy players with deciding if the increased Overhealth will allow her to get a risky Resurrection.

Juno

• New Major Perk – Locked On
  • Reduces Pulsar Torpedo cooldown for each enemy hit
  • Replacing Re-boots (Increased Glide Duration and a Reset of Double Jump)
  • Re-boots are replacing Hyper Boost (Glide Boosting Through Hyper Ring pushed Juno forward) as a Minor Perk
  • Locked On enables a more aggressive playstyle.

Tracer

• • Flashback Major Perk – receiving nerfs
    • Likely have reduced blink gained from recall

Mei

• Will have a way to freeze enemies again outside of Blizzard

Final Thoughts

The above updates are only a fraction of the changes coming to Perks in Season 16 of Overwatch 2. It bodes well for future updates. The Developers are willing to remove underwhelming Perks or Perks that do not add value to a hero’s kit. Refreshes to the Perk system will also make it feel new every season, adding new ways to play a character.

One hesitation with the announced changes is Mei’s ability to freeze enemies again. The Freeze in Overwatch 1 was a highly debated topic, and it continued when Blizzard gave Mei a slow with her Passive Deep Chill, which later got removed. The hope is that this rendition of Freeze in Mei’s kit is less painful than the previous iterations. Besides Mei’s Freeze, the hype for new Perks in Season 16 is astronomically high.