Overwatch 2 received a huge update recently that finally introduced Mauga to the game to mark the beginning of "Season 8: Call of the Hunt." Alongside the new tank hero are some changes to MMR Decay, as well as the introduction of weapon skins.
Mauga Joins the Fray
After initial concerns about his survivability, Mauga is now officially available in Overwatch 2 with some noteworthy changes. For one, he now has armor that gets depleted before his HP, allowing him to take more hits before getting eliminated.
Unlike other tank heroes in the game, Mauga is more of a hybrid tank that deals considerably more damage than Sigma or Orisa, for example. Anyway, his trusty weapons, "Gunny" and "Cha-Cha," now work better than before.
Gunny's automatic fire now ignites enemies on repeated hits. Cha-Cha, Mauga's Volatile Chaingun, capitalizes on that by dealing critical damage to burning enemies. These are great changes, especially for players who do not have good aim.
In addition, Overrun now makes Mauga unstoppable when charging forward, though it's worth noting that moving sideways is fairly limited during this time.
To improve the new tank hero's ultimate, "Cage Fight" now provides Mauga with unlimited ammo to decimate any hero who is unfortunate enough to get caught by the chains.
Read Also: Overwatch 2: Roadhog Gets a Much-Needed Rework in the Game's Recent Update
Hello Weapon Skins
The latest update has finally introduced weapon skins to Overwatch 2. This allows players to change the appearance of their favorite hero's weapons, though the feature is fairly limited for the time being.
Right now, the first batch of weapon skins called "Hard Light" is only available to select heroes, including Reinhardt, Reaper, and Mercy. Hopefully, Blizzard releases the weapon skins to other heroes in the near future because the Hard Light skins look pretty cool!
MMR Decay Adjustments
Overwatch 2 employs a system where ranked players who have not played in a while will start to lose their matchmaking ratings (aka MMR), and ultimately, their current rank. This was not well-received by the community, so Blizzard made significant changes to MMR Decay in this update.
According to the company, MMR Decay only occurs at the start of a new season. On top of that, the decay is not applied to those who qualify for a rank, so players who were able to get a competitive update will not decay by the end of the season.
However, unranked players who won games but did not get a competitive update will start to experience MMR Decay at the end of the season. Conversely, ranked players can just play one match in the season to keep their standing for the next season.
General Updates
HERO MASTERY
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A new set of five Hero Mastery courses for Lucio, Mei, D.va, Echo and Genji have been added.
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Lucio's courses will unlock on January 2nd, and a new course for a new hero will be available every week for the next four weeks.
REPLAY BOOKMARKS
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Replay Bookmarks can be enabled from the Replay Viewer at any time. Once enabled, players can instantly skip to important moments during a run.
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A list of bookmarks, course runs and records is shown on the left side of the screen. Players can quickly choose bookmarks from here, or by tapping the indicators on the replay skimmer.
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A new leaderboard for Hero Mastery courses released in Season 6 has been added. The previous leaderboard will return in a future patch for players to view any time.
RETICLE CHANGES
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Extra reticle settings have been added for specific Heroes with multiple Weapon Modes. Players can now customize the modes separately or keep them in sync. The following Heroes have access to the new options:
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Ana
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Ashe
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Bastion
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Lifeweaver
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Mercy
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Ramattra
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Widowmaker
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Now that Mauga is available to play in Overwatch 2, will you be using him anytime soon? Also, what can you say about the adjustments made to the MMR Decay system?
Related Article: Devs Explain Why Overwatch 2 Won't Reset MMR
