Rebekah D. April 17, 2019
A new Overwatch patch has been released and is now available on all platforms. Patch 1.35 introduced the start of the latest seasonal event as well as a few hero changes.
Symmetra and Junkrat have received a minor update, while Reaper has received multiple adjustments to his Shadow Step ability.
Reaper’s teleporting ability now has a reduced cooldown time, having been shortened from seven seconds to just six. Another big adjustment to the ability is that it can now be used while Reaper is in mid-flight, allowing for some acrobatic maneuvers and increasing the hero’s maneuverability.
The timing to exit Shadow Step has been halved to only 0.5 seconds. Reaper will now also be invisible for the duration of his reappearance. To counter the buffs to this ability, it is now disabled while Reaper is caught in either Zarya’s Graviton Surge or Junkrat’s Steel Trap.
An adjustment has been made to the breakable railings across maps within the game such that they will no longer prevent teleportation from Reaper, allowing him to teleport cleanly from new and different angles. He can also land on railing without breaking it.
These changes will also be applied to Symmetra's Teleporter.
Junkrat’s primary rate of fire has been increased, allowing him to shoot his infamous bouncing grenades a lot faster. While the damage remains the same per shot, the grenades now bounce less before exploding.
Though only three heroes have received balance updates for this patch, console users were surprised to find out that the patch was a large 25GB. As many players were eager to play the new event, there was some discontent on social media over the patch’s unexpected size.
Overwatch developer Bill Warnecke was quick to explain why the patch was so large. He stated that the patch was a “remaster” release, designed to reduce storage space overall and to optimize the game’s memory usage. It also allows for bugs to be fixed on core assets that require redownloading once repaired.
The official Overwatch Twitter account shared this information while also hinting at future changes to the game. According to the official reply being sent to those asking about patch size, the update included “data format changes” required for upcoming content additions.