Overwatch: Uprising is now live and runs through May 1 – here’s the patch notes

By Stephany Nunneley

The latest event for Overwatch, Uprising, has kicked off. Time to patch your game.

You’ll be able to participate in the Uprising event for Overwatch starting today and through May 1.

Uprising is around 1.5GB in size and features a new, four-player PvE game mode that takes place on the King’s Row map. You get to play as either Reinhardt, Tracer, Torbjorn, or Mercy in a wave-based, survival mode against Omnic robots.

As previously reported through leaks, Uprising takes place in the past, during Tracer’s first mission as a member of Overwatch team.

Along with new skins there will be new emotes, intros, sprays and other fun things. These are included in the Uprising Loot Boxes and include Genji’s Blackwatch skin, Talon Widowmaker, Blackwatch McCree, Combat Medic Ziegler, Tracer’s Cadet Oxton skin, and more. There are over 100 cosmetic items are available. As usual, once unlocked, the items are the player’s to keep using forever.

You can get a look at highlight intros over on the Overwatch event page.

Here’s the event details, posted by Blizzard:

“Experience a pivotal moment in history from before the fall of Overwatch. Join a strike team of Overwatch agents—including the newest recruit, Tracer—as they undertake a vital mission to stop an omnic uprising in King’s Row. Drop into the action and play as one of the four charged with completing this critical objective.

“As always, your efforts will be rewarded. You’ll earn Uprising Loot Boxes as you play, unlocking new cosmetic skins, highlights, emotes, and sprays themed after key moments from throughout the history of Overwatch. Uprising Loot boxes are also available for purchase—but hurry, they get re-encrypted and filed away in the archives come May 1.”

And here’s the storyline, which you already know about considering the trailer leaked earlier:

Relive Tracer’s First Mission: Journey seven years into the past and join a group of Overwatch agents fighting through the streets of King’s Row to quell an uprising led by Null Sector, a rogue group of omnics. Team up with your friends and play as Tracer, Torbjörn, Reinhardt, or Mercy to defeat the robots and liberate the city. There are no reinforcements. Failure is not an option. The future depends on you.”

In short, players will play as either Tracer, Reinhardt, Mercy or Torbjorn in Uprising PvE mode, and in the other, players can choose any of the 24 characters available. It’s basically the same mode, and was based on player feedback received from Halloween Terror’s cooperative mode Junkenstein’s Revenge, which was a fan-favorite.

Both will modes also feature achievements and rewards, as usual.

You can have a look at the patch notes for the update accompanying the event below. You’ll find information on the previously announced changes to Lucio, and changes to the Eichenwalde map.

Most of this will be familiar to you already, especially if you are a PTR participant.

Overwatch: Uprising Patch Notes

General Updates

  • Details about each hero’s unique backstory, along with information about some of their lore-inspired skins, have been added to the Hero Gallery
  • [PC] The Player Report system has been redesigned, adding new reporting options and activity examples to better capture the reason for each report
  • In-game voice conversations for the Overwatch Uprising event can now be displayed as subtitles. This can be enabled under the “Sound” tab in the “Options” menu

Competitive Play

  • A tracking system has been added to Assault and Assault/Escort Maps that will allow us to break ties based on the progress that was made toward capturing the objective.

Developer Comments: To mitigate draws in Competitive Play, we’re implementing a system that tracks each team’s progress on the objective. This will work similarly to the system that’s already in place for Escort and Assault/Escort maps, which grants a win to the team that pushes the payload the furthest. Now, even if neither team successfully captures the objective, a winner can be determined based on which team captured the largest portion.

Custom Games and Game Browser

  • Custom Game settings can now be saved as a preset from the game’s details page. This can be accessed by right-clicking on the map image from the Create Game page, right-clicking a game name from inside the Game Browser, or via the save button on the settings page.
  • Players can now change weapon clip and magazine size or grant unlimited ammunition when creating a custom game.

Maps: A new route has been added to Eichenwalde that connects the attacking team’s spawn area to the capture point.

Hero Updates – Lucio

Sonic Amplifier

  • Damage increased by 25%
  • Projectile speed increased from 40 to 50
  • Alternate fire now considers vertical orientation when knocking targets back

Crossfade

  • Area of effect radius has been decreased from 30 meters to 10 meters
  • Heal Song
  • Healing-per-second has been increased by 30% (also applies to Lúcio’s Amp It Up ability)
  • Self-healing has been reduced by 25%

Wall Ride

  • Movement speed increased by 20% when wall riding
  • Lúcio now receives a burst of speed when leaping off a wall

Developer Comments: Lúcio has often felt like a must-pick due to his raw healing output and the versatility of providing a speed bonus to your entire team. The goal of these changes is to keep those elements feeling strong, but making them harder to apply to everyone on your team at all times. The end result is that he should feel stronger with teams that he can stay close to but not as strong when on teams with heroes that are often spread out (such as Pharah, Widow, Genji, etc). Much of Lúcio’s character power was tied up in his large passive auras, which caused other elements of his kit to be weakened over time in an attempt to balance him. Now that his auras are more focused it will allow them to be much stronger and allow Lúcio to be more active in his role.

Hero Updates – Orisa: The size of Orisa’s head hitbox has been decreased by 15%

Bug Fixes

General: Fixed an issue preventing voice lines from being played on Control maps

Competitive Play

  • Fixed an issue that was preventing Top 500 icons from appearing until after completing a competitive match
  • Fixed a bug preventing achievements from being unlocked during off-season competitive matches
  • Fixed a bug that forced Play of the Game highlights to be drawn from the last round of play

Custom Games and Game Browser

  • Fixed an issue allowing empty player slots to be displayed even when disabled (e.g. in 6v1 games)
  • Fixed a bug preventing the pause feature from working properly after the original host has left the match
  • Fixed a bug that allowed extremely long team names
  • Removed unnecessary customization options (e.g. cooldown options for abilities with no cooldown)

Heroes

  • Ana no longer cocks her rifle after throwing a grenade
  • The brightness on Bastion’s golden gun has been toned down when the BlizzCon skin is equipped
  • Fixed a bug causing Mei’s pinky to bend awkwardly in some poses when her Chang’e and Luna skins were equipped

Maps

  • Fixed a bug on Eichenwalde that allowed enemy player outlines to be seen through a pile of dirt at the castle gate
  • Fixed an issue on Eichenwalde that allowed players to become trapped in the broken castle doors
  • Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra to reach unintended locations on King’s Row
  • Fixed a bug that allowed players to reach unintended areas on the Capture the Flag version of Lijiang Tower
  • Fixed a bug that allowed Symmetra to hide turrets in unintended locations on Oasis

Overwatch: Uprising and the latest patch are live now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

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