Announced in a developer blog last night from game director Aaron Keller, Season 9 will introduce a passive self-heal for Damage and Tank heroes so they will slowly regain health after not taking damage for a certain amount of time. This is a change that leaves the Overwatch 2 community unsure about the impact that will have on the game. Supports already have this, but it seems the healing will be even slower for these characters.
In the blog, Keller states that this change is aimed at lessening the reliance you have on your teammates. Every Overwatch player has been in a game where members of their team are not holding up their end of the bargain, and this is an attempt to lessen the stress on that Ana who can’t get where you are as quickly or allow your Mercy to not dive into danger to save you as much if you can find a hiding place without the aid of a health pack.
After a vocal crowd began to voice outrage against the passive heal change, Aaron took to X to say that this is just one part of a package of big changes Overwatch 2 will see in Season 9. He didn’t go further into specifics, but the blog did say there is a second Quick Play Hacked event coming after the current one for even more testing on gameplay rules changes.
We are in the middle of how passive healing for everyone could affect the health of Overwatch 2. As we said, we expect it to be very slow and activate out of combat, not to affect when you are in battle, and it can add a new level of strategy in hiding to get your health back. That said, we think it would have been better to have this publicly tested for everyone before implementing it in the full game. Regardless, we are very curious to see all the changes the devs are looking at for Season 9. If you thought matches were getting stale in Overwatch 2, Blizzard is definitely looking at switching things up.