Overwatch 2 Season 5 Mid-Season Patch: Release Date, Hero Balance Changes, More

Overwatch 2 Season 5 was released on 13^th June with a swanky new battle pass, plenty of hero changes, and other exciting details like the upcoming annual event, Summer Games 2023, which is very popular across the community.

Season 5 which is roughly two months long is about to reach its halfway mark and Overwatch 2 is gearing up to release the mid-season patch.

The developers already seem to have selected which heroes will be undergoing balance changes, Aaron Keller - Game Director of Overwatch 2, expands on this in the latest edition of Director's Take released on 30^th June.

Overwatch 2 Season 5 Mid-Season Patch: Complete Details

The current meta of the game has two heroes in almost every lineup, Junker Queen leading from the front playing the role of an out-of-control unkillable tank hero and Zenyatta dishing out an insane amount of damage from the back lines.

In a patch released on 28^th June, three heroes, Cassidy, Mei, and Lifeweaver, underwent changes to balance them out to keep them in line with their respective roles with a slight tinker here and there.

Now, a few more heroes are going under the hammer in the mid-season patch which is expected to arrive for Overwatch 2 around 11^th July, Tuesday, which is when the weekly shop reset will also be taking place.

For all those that want to see the important hero changes that will be rolled out along with it, here is an early peek at what they might be.

Torbjörn and Symmetra

The two Damage heroes are highly dependent on the usage of their mechanical devices which dish out plenty of damage on their behalf, holding the opposition at bay, and creating a lot of space for others to operate.

Torbjörn - Deploy Turret

Symmetra - Sentry Turret

Developers have planned to switch things up by taking away this dependency on their turrets and buffing other parts of their respective kits. In this way, the downtime while their abilities come off cooldown will be greatly reduced, making them more viable on the battlefield.

Sojourn

A good Damage hero that has fallen off quite a bit is Sojourn and developers want to give her a necessary buff to increase her pick rate.

Sojourn has great mobility that allows her to quickly reposition herself and bounce around the battlefield. Along with this, she can hit the enemy team with concentrated suppressive fire, while hunting down the backline with her charged railgun shots.

Developers aim to improve the control over Sojourn’s Railgun primary fire spread, allowing her to hit more shots on target when tap firing and maybe even making it easier to spray down enemies in mid to close range.

Reinhardt and Orisa

The two popular Tank heroes, Reinhardt and Orisa, have not faced a lot of game time due to the dominance of Junker Queen, coupled with the rising popularity of D.Va and Winston.

However, the developers have planned some changes for these frontline heroes, that love to stay right in heart of all the action and soak in all the damage to setup the counter-offence for their side.

Reinhardt and Orisa will see their front-line capabilities getting a good buff, making them more viable in the second half of the season.

Zenyatta

This hero might be labeled as a Support but we all know the insane damage output it can churn out from the backlines with his negative debuff, Orb of Discord, coupled with those deadly volley of orbs, Orbs of Destruction, especially when alt fired that rain down like a fully automatic on drugs.

The developers are finally going to take a look at this and will be making slight adjustments to weaken Zenyatta's Orb of Discord ability.

These are some of the heroes that will be undergoing significant changes, either buff or nerf, amongst others that might be slightly tinkered with to bring them in or out of action. Are you excited for the upcoming Overwatch 2 Season 5 mid-season patch?