Overwatch’s Season 1: Reign of Talon is over, but the next chapter in that year-long story arc is just beginning. Blizzard’s reinvigorated hero shooter saw a surge of players last season, and the devs are following that up with a series of meaningful changes for Season 2: Summit. We’re getting a new hero and new cosmetics, but the real wins are changes to map voting and the return of a fan-favorite system from the game’s past. And Nintendo Switch 2 owners can finally get in on the action.
Here’s your cheat sheet for Overwatch season 2.
Season 2 start time
Season 2 launches at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT on Tuesday, April 14.
New hero: Sierra
The first hero after the surprise drop of five new playable characters is Sierra, a damage hero with ties to Overwatch’s supersoldier program, whose former members include Soldier: 76 and Reaper. Sierra wields a helix rifle with a unique spiraling pattern, plus a drone named Dorothy. She slots into the Recon subrole, and her perks offer upgrades to her drone and helix rifle.
Soldier: 76 and Genji mythic cosmetics
These members of the original lineup are getting new mythic cosmetics in season 2. Soldier: 76, the gets a new Volted Overdrive skin themed around the supersoldier’s cybernetics.
Genji is getting a weapon skin called Sumi-ichimonji, which fuses together the cyborg ninja’s dragon themes with traditional Japanese calligraphy.
Post-match accolades
If you played Overwatch back when it launched in 2016, you may remember the old end-of-match voting cards that displayed select stats and allowed people to upvote a particularly impressive performance from either team. That system is being revived and updated in season 2: After watching the play of the game, you’ll have a chance to vote for the game’s MVP to give the winner a special animation.
If you’re especially brave, you can jump into a brief voice chat with both teams to pass along your sincere respect and appreciation for your competitors. As Associate Game Director Alec Dawson reminded everyone in a blog post last week: “This will be entirely optional, and we encourage everyone to remember that voice chat is monitored for safety.”
Map voting changes
Maybe my favorite change of the new season: Overwatch’s map voting feature is getting a small rework. Now, if an “undeniable majority” of players votes for a particular map, that map will be automatically chosen, instead of the system rolling to determine the map based on the number of votes. That should mean one or two people can no longer luck their way into dodging what the rest of the lobby wants to play. And if you don’t like any of the three map options, you can vote for a random map instead.
Season 2 is also introducing a change where players will lose fewer competitive points for playing newer or reworked maps — but competitive gains will remain unchanged. Dawson wrote “that these maps are an unknown quantity; it’s understandable that you’d rather hedge your Competitive bets on a map you know instead of one you’ve never tried.” The new system is designed to give people a stronger incentive to learn these new maps with less risk.
Here’s another image of Genji’s mythic weapon effects because I can’t get over how cool this looks.
Changes to perks and Antarctica map
Back in season 15, Overwatch added perks as upgrades to hero abilities that you unlock over the course of a match. A year later, a few heroes are having some perks moved into their base kits in season 2 after the dev team determined that they needed a little help keeping up with other heroes. Reaper and Mercy are among the heroes receiving these updates and are getting new perks to replace the ones becoming part of their standard abilities.
The map Antarctica is also returning to the map pool after a rework. The season 2 blog post says the changes are designed to “create cleaner engagements, smooth out team pushes, and make meaningful flank routes throughout the arctic tundra.”
Overwatch is free to play on PC, Xbox, PS5 and now Switch 2.
