Overwatch January 16 patch notes: Lunar New Year, D.Va buffs, CTF, more

Patch 1.44 has just been released to Overwatch, marking the official beginning of the 2020 Lunar New Year event, making changes to role queue, custom game options and replay capabilities. Multiple changes to heroes like Baptiste, Doomfist, and others were made, as well.

Already leaked, and now confirmed, are the new hero skins to celebrate the latest Lunar New Year event. This includes the Ancient Bronze Winston, gold-fisted “Monk” Doomfist, the white-and-red floral patterned “Paper Cutting” Wrecking Ball and many more.

With a new event comes new brawls, as well, with Capture the Flag Blitz making its debut and Capture the Flag making its return. CTF Blitz features flags that are much closer together, with six captures needed instead of the original three.

New rewards from Weekly Challenges have also been added, with wins in Quick Play, Competitive Play and in Arcade going toward three sets of weekly rewards. Week one rewards include an icon, spray and Monk skin for Doomfist. Week two rewards an icon, spray and Ancient Bronze skin for Winston. Week threw rewards an icon, spray and Paper Cutting Wrecking Ball skin.

• Read more: Jeff Kaplan testing new variations of Overwatch role queue system

The Lunar New Year event runs from January 16 until February 3.

Players queueing together in a party can now use a new feature called “Party Flex,” which lets members of a party select multiple roles, rather than each player choosing individually. New options for hosting custom games were added, too, as were fixes and new hotkeys to spectator/replay modes.

Numerous heroes underwent changes, as well. Baptiste received duration and cooldown nerfs to Immortality Field, which was originally “too powerful.” Mei’s slowing effect on her primary blaster was also nerfed, as was Orisa’s damage reduction on Fortify. Hanzo and Doomfist likewise received nerfs.

D.Va saw a cooldown buff on her boosters, allowing her to increase her mobility. D.Va was the only character to receive a buff of some sorts in this patch’s Hero Updates. These are the same changes introduced in the PTR update on January 9, with the exception of Doomfists’s nerf, which was slightly altered.

• Read more: Overwatch pros explain why Doomfist nerfs are a ‘death sentence’

The full list of patch notes for patch 1.44 are as follows:

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
• Immortality Field cooldown increased from 20 to 25 seconds
• Amplification Matrix ultimate cost increased by 20%

Mei

• Endothermic Blaster 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

• Primary fire maximum projectile speed reduced from 125 to 110

Doomfist

• Uppercut recovery time increased from 0.2 to 0.35 seconds

BUG FIXES

General

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Fixed a bug that could cause Immortality Field to not deploy or get destroyed while deploying in some situations

Mercy

• 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