Overwatch‘s latest event, the annual Lunar New Year celebration, is now live with the release of a new update on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. This event is modeled after Chinese culture, with references to important historical or cultural figures. The newly dubbed “Year of the Pig” will last through February 8.
The real star of any Overwatch event is the new cosmetic items, and this one is no different. The new skins largely pay homage to historical figures, especially Han dynasty generals: Lu Bu Reaper, Huang Zhong Hanzo, Guan Yu Reinhardt, and Zhang Fei Torbjorn. Others include Zhuge Liang Zenyatta and Hong Gildong Tracer, and the Epic skins Sanye Orisa and General Brigitte.
Past Lunar New Year skins are available again, along with other cosmetics like emotes and sprays. This year’s event also offers a festive take on the Busan map for a capture-the-flag mode.
This all comes alongside new patch notes and balance changes. While not a huge update, it does make changes to multiple characters, providing a buff to Reaper’s life steal and increasing the cooldown on D.Va’s Defense Matrix. Brigitte’s Rally also has a new cap–it can now only last a maximum of 30 seconds. Blizzard says this is because, “Sometimes Rally could cause a snowballing effect, making it too difficult to deal with the increased health of Brigitte’s allies before she built up another one.”
Alongside that adjustment, armor now works a bit differently; the damage reduction it now provides is -3, rather than -5. Blizzard explains: “Before this change, armor reduced all incoming damage by up to 5, maxing at half of the normal amount. This change reduces the damage reduction to 3, while still capping at half. This change will be most noticeable for heroes who fire quickly or in bursts, such as shotguns, and do more than 6 damage per shot. For example, Soldier: 76’s Heavy Pulse Rifle will now do 16 damage per shot to armored opponents, up from 14 (an increase close to 15%). Armor was a bit too strong overall, especially when heroes were being healed quickly and often. This change will help more heroes fight against higher-armored enemies.”
The most recent Overwatch happening was an Ana-focused mini-event consisting of a short story and a single skin. Blizzard hasn’t detailed how often it expects to do these smaller-scale events compares to the larger ones like the Lunar New Year and Winter Wonderland ones.
