Overwatch 2 Hero Mastery Gauntlet courses are to be shutdown at the end of this season, about three months after they made their debut. When Season 11 begins, these challenge modes and the leaderboards associated with them will be gone for good. The solo courses will remain and have more heroes added to them in the future.
The Overwatch 2 Hero Mastery Gauntlet news comes via a forum post by community manager Kaedi. They said that the mode hasn’t “resonated” with players as they hoped, or in other words, hardly anyone had been playing it. Honestly, that’s not too surprising to us, considering that we always thought of the solo courses in Hero Mastery. The Gauntlet version is a cooperative experience that we can’t remember anyone talking about ever.
What does this mean going forward?
Losing more content in Overwatch 2 should sound like bad news, but we’re not exactly heartbroken over this. Hopefully, the people working on the Hero Mastery modes can push out more heroes faster for the solo courses in the future. However, we also thought that PvE, in general, was going to be more successful with more focus on it, but we don’t trust Blizzard to expand the game in that way anymore.
You have until Season 10 ends in a few weeks to play the Overwatch 2 Hero Mastery Gauntlet mode. If you get good enough either with other people or AI, you can earn battle pass experience, a Mercy or Reinhardt Victory Pose, and some other small rewards for completing the more challenging aspects of the mode. However, if this is your first time hearing about it, you might just let it fade into obscurity like before.
Luckily, Blizzard still seems committed to bringing new modes to Overwatch 2 either through events or other means, so we don’t imagine this to have a long-term negative effect on the game.