Overwatch 2.81 is now rolling out on PS4, PC and Xbox One. According to the official Overwatch 2.81 patch notes, the latest update added the new Lunar New Year 2020 Event – “Year of the Rat”. Apart from this, the Overwatch patch 2.81 also brings performance improvements on all platforms.
Previously, the last major update was released with the Winter Wonderland 2019 event. Unfortunately, many players are experiencing a number of issues while playing the game. Today’s Overwatch version 2.82 is expected to fix a few of these issues. Check out more details below.
Table of Contents
Overwatch 2.81 patch notes
LUNAR NEW YEAR 2019
Get ready to celebrate the Year of the Rat!
This year, we’re celebrating Lunar New Year with new seasonal items including legendary skins like Face Changer Sombra, Mask Dancer Moira, Samul Nori Lúcio, and Opera Brigitte. Experience the third competitive season of our Capture the Flag mode, in addition to a brand new game mode called Blitz CTF.
GENERAL UPDATES
Feature Update: Party Flex for Role Queue
Unsure of which role you want to play? Now, party members who queue for any game mode with Role Queue enabled can select multiple roles, indicating what they’re willing to play in the next game.
Your other party members’ role choices and Competitive Play skill ratings may affect which roles you are eligible to choose, or which role you can play. For example, if you selected all three roles (Tank, Damage, Healing) to indicate your willingness to play any of them, and then two other party members choose Support, you will not get to play Support in the next game.
Custom Game Options
The Lobby section of Custom Game Settings has a new option “Data Center Preference”. This option provides the game creator with more control over where the game will be hosted. The default “Best Available” choice automatically provides the creator with the best quality connection available to them. We only suggest choosing a specific datacenter if no single datacenter can simultaneously provide the best connection to all players. This is usually only the case when the players participating in the custom game are located in different geographic regions of the world.
Spectate and Replay Updates
- Added a new hotkey, “Spectate toggle 3P camera side”, which changes the shoulder you’re looking over for the player you’re spectating while using the simple third-person spectator camera option
- Added a new hotkey, “Toggle normal / simple 3P spectator camera”, which toggles between the two third-person camera modes while spectating
- Updated the death camera to quickly shift from where you were looking to where your killer is, to make it easier to see if you were killed by someone behind you or to your side
- Updated the simple third-person spectator camera position for several heroes to have them cover less of the screen
- Fixed an issue that caused zooming in and out while in the simple third-person camera to appear choppy
- Transitioning into or out of first person no longer causes the camera to clip inside the hero’s head
- Fixed several camera smoothness and popping issues
HERO UPDATES
Baptiste
Immortality Field
- Maximum duration reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
- Cooldown increased from 20 to 25 seconds
Amplification Matrix
- Ultimate cost increased by 20%
Mei
Endothermic Blaster (Primary Fire)
- Slowing effect now reduces enemy movement speed from 20-70%, down from 30-90%
- Slowing effect duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.0 second
D.Va
Boosters
- Cooldown decreased from 5 to 3 seconds
Orisa
Fortify
- Damage reduction reduced from 50% to 40%
Hanzo
Storm Bow (Primary Fire)
- Maximum projectile speed reduced from 125 to 110
Doomfist
Rising Uppercut
- Recovery time increased from 0.2 to 0.35 seconds
BUG FIXES
General
- Overwatch update 2.81 fixed a bug that caused toggle crouch to work inconsistently when high precision mouse input is enabled
- Fixed a bug that caused a small number of games containing very high-skill players to have greatly reduced SR gains and losses
- Workshop
- Fixed an issue preventing Go To Assemble Heroes from working in Assault and Hybrid
- Fixed an issue preventing Sombra Dummy Bots from being able to hack health packs
Maps
Temple of Anubis
- Fixed a bug where some heroes could get stuck behind one of the rocks outside of point B
Eichenwalde
- Overwatch version 2.81 fixed a bug that could cause Wrecking Ball to become temporarily stuck when using his Piledriver in a specific location
- Fixed a location where Doomfist could get stuck
Junkertown
- Fixed a bug that allowed some players to stand on a wall near the final checkpoint
- Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra’s Translocator and Baptiste’s Immortality Field to land in an unintended place between the stairs and wall near point A
Dorado
- Overwatch update 2.81 fixed a bug that caused the ivy growing on the wall between points A and B to block projectiles
Rialto
- Fixed a bug that could cause Winston and Sigma to become stuck between the wall, bridge, and gondola outside of Point A
Watchpoint: Gibraltar
- Fixed a bug that caused Baptiste’s Immortality Field to disappear when thrown in a specific spot outside of the first Attacker’s spawn
Heroes
Baptiste
- Overwatch 2.81 fixed a bug that could cause Immortality Field to not deploy or get destroyed while deploying in some situations
Mercy
- Overwatch 2.81 fixed a bug that caused Mercy’s gold staff and pistol to disappear while using Valkyrie when viewing in 3rd person
Tracer
- Fixed a bug allowing players to swap heroes while using Recall
Sigma
- Fixed a bug that could cause Sigma’s shield to fail to deploy
Symmetra
- Fixed a bug where destroying Symmetra’s teleporter during construction briefly allowed her to make another without going on cooldown
Overwatch 2.81 for PS4 and Xbox One is now available fo download.
