Overwatch League commissioner Nate Nanzer has confirmed the upcoming patch for the first stage of the next Overwatch League season.

The changes that will go into the live patch include changes to Reaper, D.Va, Brigitte, and overall armor across the entire cast. The specific changes are as follows:

General

  • Damage reduction from armor reduced from -5 to -3
  • Developer comments: Before this change armor reduced all incoming damage by up to 5, maxing at half of the normal amount. This change reduces the damage reduction to 3, while still capping at half. This change will be mostly noticeable on heroes that fire quickly or in a burst of shots (such as shotguns), and which do more than 6 damage per shot. For example, Soldier: 76’s Heavy Pulse Rifle will now do 16 damage per shot to armor, up from 14, an increase of 15%. Armor was a bit too strong overall, especially when being healed quickly and often. This change will help more heroes fight against higher armored enemies.

Brigitte

  • Rally now has a maximum duration of 30 seconds
  • Developer comments: Sometimes Rally could cause a snowballing effect where it was too difficult to deal with the increased health of Brigitte’s allies before she built up another one. This change puts a cap on how long her Rally effect can last to make it a bit more manageable in those situations.

D.Va

  • Defense matrix cooldown has been increased from 1 second to 2 seconds
  • Developer comments: This change allows D.Va’s enemies to try to play around her Defense Matrix by increasing its downtime between uses.

Reaper

  • The Reaping life steal increased from 30% to 50% of damage dealt
  • Developer comments: Reaper’s passive is one of the main tools he has which allow him to play aggressively when near his enemies. This change allows him to keep the pressure up as long as he can stay near his enemies enough to keep dealing damage. This change is particularly effective versus tanks, as they tend to do less damage than damage heroes, and also take more damage from his Hellfire Shotguns due to their larger hit volumes.

The second Overwatch League season begins on February 14 with a grand finals rematch between the Philadelphia Fusion Philadelphia Fusion OWL Rank # AimGod Min-seok Kwon flex support MN3 Yoon Jae-hee dps ZEST Kim Hyun-woo (김현우) dps Belosrea tank FiXa Kwon Young Hoon (권영훈) support and the London Spitfire London Spitfire OWL Rank # Landon flex support SparkR William Andersson dps Backbone Jamie O'Neill dps Hadi Daniel Bleinagel tank Admiral Oliver Vahar support .