A new and massive patch to Overwatch yesterday has made a couple of characters changes and added the Junkertown map: a stretch of post-nuclear Australian wasteland that was introduced during last month’s Gamescom. Junkertown is also the hometown of both Roadhog and Junkrat.
In Blizzard’s patch notes, Junkertown’s description reads: “Junkertown is located in the harsh and unforgiving Australian Outback. Constructed from the remains of a destroyed omnium, it’s now the home to a band of lawless scavengers known as the Junkers, led by their cutthroat Queen. When they aren’t pillaging the omnium’s skeleton for anything of value, the Junkers blow off steam in the Scrapyard—a massive gladiatorial arena whose combatants fight for glory, riches… and to survive.”
Mercy and D.Va received balance updates in the patch as well. Mercy has a new ultimate ability: Valkyrie, which gives her unlimited flight and infinite ammo. According to the patch notes, “Valkyrie unleashes the full power of Mercy’s Valkyrie suit, enhancing her weapons and abilities for 20 seconds.” Mercy’s old ultimate ability, Resurrect, is now a regular ability with which Mercy can target a single player rather than every player within a certain radius.
D.Va’s Defense Matrix, which developers felt was too powerful, has been tweaked so that it now depletes twice as quickly. In addition, D.Va has a new ability called Micro Missiles, described in the patch notes as: “D.Va fires a barrage of small rockets that detonate on impact, dealing damage in a limited radius around each explosion. These can be fired while D.Va is using any other ability or firing her Fusion Cannons.” Lastly, D.Va’s Fusion Cannons can now be fired while in flight.
For another general update, Blizzard has taken a step towards stemming player toxicity on the Xbox One. Blizzard has previously stated that player toxicity, and the ensuing work of containing it, was slowing development of Overwatch updates. Now, players with bad reputations on Xbox Live will have their in-game voice chat disabled. According to the patch notes, “Players whose Xbox Live reputation has been downgraded to “Avoid Me” will remain in the same matchmaking pool as other Overwatch players. However, they will no longer be able to use the in-game voice communication.”
For the full patch notes, see Blizzard’s post to the Overwatch forums here.