[Update #2]: Overwatch 2 will be testing whether 6v6 is worth coming back to in Season 14.

[Update]: Overwatch 2's Season 10 will introduce Venture, unlock all Heroes, and make Mythic skins more accessible.

After struggling with balancing the heroes and roles for quite a while now, Blizzard has decided to undertake some drastic measures in Season 9. As such, not only has Competitive Play been made more transparent and... well, competitive, but the actual core design principles behind the various heroes have also been tweaked.

First and foremost, hero health has been increased by around 15-25% in an effort to prevent fights from devolving into who can one-shot who first. Then, in order to prevent healers from becoming too dominant with the increased health pools, Damage heroes have swapped their reload speed passive for one that reduces enemy healing by 20% for 2 seconds upon hitting an enemy.

Perhaps most importantly, Season 9 has also made it so most damage-dealing projectiles (and this includes actual projectiles like Zenyatta's orbs and hitscan ones like Soldier 76's bullets) are now slightly bigger. The end result, as you might imagine, is that dealing damage is a bit more consistent now, even when attempting to hit tiny, tiny characters like Kiriko at a distance.

But wait, there's more! In an effort to encourage aggressive strategies, hit & run tactics and more active support playstyles, Season 9 has also made it so all heroes now regenerate health after not taking damage for a couple of seconds. For Tank and Damage heroes this is after 5 seconds, while for Supports this is after 2.5 seconds. As such, you can now practically live behind enemy lines... if you're able to avoid pursuit, that is!

And the list goes on for a while. There's far too many individually important changes for me to even attempt to summarize, so if you're curious about all of the details behind Season 9 you can find what you seek over at the full patch notes. Or, if you prefer the visual version, here's the official video rundown of the main changes:

The final thing worth mentioning is that the hero balance, especially in Competitive Play, is currently a bit wacky. So if you do decide to dive in, I'd recommend not taking things too seriously as it's likely going to take a couple of months for Blizzard to finally get everything ironed out and at least somewhat stable.

Have fun with the new update, and here's to hoping this ends up being a positive new chapter for Overwatch 2!