Overwatch 2 hit PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC last October and with the one year anniversary coming soon, Blizzard has announced its plans around the celebration. It will feature returning event game modes, new challenges, returning skins, and a brand new game mode called Hero Mastery.
The anniversary celebration starts later this month on September 19 and brings plenty of updates like hero tweaks, bug fixes, map changes, and more. But leading the celebration charge is the aforementioned Hero Mastery. Blizzard describes it as “a new, single-player game mode that allows players to test their skills with individual heroes on custom courses” and it’s available starting today. Each hero can be played on three unique courses of increasing difficulty, and you can unlock up to five stars on each course. Hero Mastery courses are scored based on time, eliminations, heals, escorts, and more. Plus, each individual hero has stat tracking as well.
Blizzard says players can collect all Mastery Emblems, but they’ll need to do so quickly because Hero Mastery is a limited-time event. It also includes exclusive rewards. Courses for Tracer, Reinhardt, and Mercy are available now with courses for Sojourn, Winston, and more going live in the coming weeks.
When the anniversary celebration goes live on September 19, it will bring with it returning modes like Battle for Olympus, Catch-A-Mari, Starwatch, and Mischief and Magic. It will also bring a ping system update that makes it so that “owned entities (such as Torbjorn’s Turret, Symmetra’s Teleporter, or Illari’s Healing Pylong) now have a lower priority as ping targets than enemy heroes.”
This update also includes a ton of changes to heroes like Zarya, Junker Queen, Orisa, Ashe, Bastion, and more, alongside tweaks to maps like Dorado, New Junk City, and Suravasa. Head to Blizzard’s patch notes blog post for a full breakdown of all the balance changes coming to the game’s heroes, maps, and more.
Hero Mastery is now live in Overwatch 2 and the one-year anniversary celebration begins later this month on September 19.
While waiting for the celebration to start, read Game Informer’s Overwatch 2 review and then check out this story about how the game is now available on Steam. Check out our hands-on impressions of Overwatch 2’s Invasion season after that.
Are you hopping into Hero Mastery? Let us know in the comments below!
