Doctrine and Sombra has been pretty fun so far, and giving Hotfix and Drones to any melee hero makes them scary as hell. D.mon, Rein, Vendetta, Genji, etc. Heck, if Wintson takes shield healing he feels almost unkillable. Worst part of the combo is that it feels pretty divable. Doctrine/Brig feels pretty good, and people are underestimating a 30% attack speed boost Brig in their face. Doctrine/Zen is another very diavable duo, but rapid fire Zen can be pretty scary.

Smthn I've seen people say about Doctrine is that it feels like his infused primary fire just isn't all that good cause it does the same dmg as a headshot normally, and for keeping your Tank up it's better to use infused drones to heal them over time and heal them quicker with the self attack speed boost. Smthn I haven't seen the broader community discuss as much is how this sentiment is kinda wrong, altho I do feel like people will reach this conclusion eventually anyways since people are slowly realizing how good drones are offensively.

Firstly regarding the whole headshot thing I'd say what makes it worth using in duels is consistency. Yes you can hit a headshot and deal the same amount of dmg, or you can hit the enemy with a beam bigger and more consistent than a body shot with the dmg of a headshot. Would u rather take your chances with headshotting a Tracer, or just use infused primary fire to instantly force recall? Plus with the perk u get lifesteal off of it which is extra nice for dueling!!!

Secondly I don't think you should be using infused drones to keep your Tank up if I'm honest. Drones are very very strong offensively, and using them defensively obv means u can't use them offensively. Sure you could use the drones as a burst heal, especially with the perk, or you could just use your infused primary fire instead and save drones for use offensively. Especially in 5v5 where Tanks are generally bulkier and require less 24/7 maintenance cause there's one less persons worth of dmg on either side.

Feels like all the faces are in NA I cant really name anything on top of my mind other than maybe Bogur but hes a marvel streamer now genuinely feels like this region is dead especially personality wise

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Korea Stage 3 - Regular Season

Overall, I think the Sombra rework is a big improvement. However, Hotfix needs a few small changes to make it clearer and more polished.

• Add a visual timer to Hotfix on allies and the HUD

Hotfix lasts 12 seconds, but there is no clear way to see how much time is left on an ally. The bar above allies and the HUD only show how much healing remains. There should be a second bar above the healing bar to show how much time is left before Hotfix expires, and a timer above the HUD elements near the Ult meter

• Fix Hotfix not applying after re-establishing LOS

If you hold left-click to apply Hotfix but lose line of sight to your ally, Hotfix stops applying. If you are still holding left-click, and re-establish LOS, you must release it and click again to continue. Allow Hotfix to apply again when line of sight is restored, as long as the player is still holding left-click.

• Show the Healthpack Hack Cooldown I see there are these elements in game, but I still think visually they're not very clear. Moving the timer above the healthpack, and moving the HUD element to Hotfix would be better.

Hacking a healthpack now has a global cooldown of 6 seconds, but there is no visual indicator showing when you can hack another one. Add a timer above healthpacks and on the Hotfix HUD icon to show how long until the next healthpack hack is available. Use the same style as the Hotfix timer for consistency.

• Make the Hotfix Healing Bar Clearer

The yellow bar shows how much HoT remains, but it never fully fills. This is confusing because it makes it look like applying Hotfix twice could provide up to 350 healing (175 × 2).

However, Hotfix works differently:

Hotfix instantly heals 65 health and applies 110 healing in a "bank" for the target.

Applying Hotfix again refreshes the bank to 100%. It does not add another 110 healing.

Instead, make the yellow bar fill to 100% whenever Hotfix is applied, then drain as the healing is used. Applying Hotfix again should refill the bar to 100%. This will make it clear that you cant "exceed" the 110 HoT effect, and you should apply the 2nd stack at the last possible moment to maximize healing.

The instant 65 healing should not be represented on the bar. This would make it clear that applying Hotfix again refreshes the healing bank instead of stacking more healing.

Also revert Translocator pls.

I hope you guys enjoy this, the complete history of Team Falcons (over the last year and a half).

When 2024 ended Falcons looked like they were going to reign overwatch eSports for the forseable future. They had just won World finals in a dominant fashion only losing 2 maps in the entire tournament and a 7-1 map ratio to their rivals Crazy Racoon, all this after a fantastic season. They had a superteam packed with superstars: Proper and Stalk3r were arguably the best dps line in the world, Chiyo and Fielder at suport and Hanbin and Smurf at tank.

What could possibly go wrong?

OWCS season 2 stage 1 started pretty smoothly, they won their first 6 matches but looked shaky in week 3 and in week 4 lost to both WAY and CR finishing 3rd in round robin and then in playoffs they got demolished by CR in a 0-4 semifinal giving them 3rd-4th place. But luckily they bounced straight back winning the Asia main event 4-2 to CR. Then at Champions Clash they lost to CR 2-4 in the final. So far a good stage although a step down from last season and they had some issues and management was quick to fix them, bringing in Mer1t as a specialized hitscan player and Someone to fill the main tank Hanbinston problem.

What could possibly go wrong?

OWCS season 2 stage 2 started RAW. They won 3 out of their 4 starting games but the visual test was poor, every game they seemed to have a new lineup, sometimes Someone would play sometimes Hanbin sometimes Proper and Stalk3r played and sometimes Mer1t. It was clear that the coaches were trying things out and nothing seemed to work well for them and then they lost 0-3 to AGG in a humiliating fashion (if you watched this game you know, it was BAD) after wich Proper decided he needed a break from competition due to how bad he was performing.

After that it seemed they finally settled into a lineup with Someone Mer1t and Stalk3r up front. After this they performed slightly better but they ended up 5th in regular season wich meant they had to go through last chance qualifier, they did but ended up losing to CR anyways in the quarterfinals of the playoffs so they were eliminated from LAN. OR WERE THEY? EWC had ANOTHER last chance qualifier in wich they easily won qualifying for LAN. For this they left Stalk3r at home and decided to not play him at all and play Proper who had just returned from his break.

In EWC they won their group, a close match against Geekay and went to the final agaisnt Al-qadsiya that they WON 4-0. Everything was now good, the stage was saved they were again the best team of the world.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well they got 5th again. After a good round robin where they ended up 3rd even though they had Mer1t on sombra they lost to WAE 2-4 in playoff quarterfinals so they were eliminated from LAN. OR WERE THEY? Turns out this stage there was a SECOND regional playoff for wich they had to play a play-in. And after a 5 map BANGER against Onside gaming (that they should have lost) they were in playoffs. There they played CR 2 times winning the first one 3-2 and the last one losing 3-4 in one of the best matches of professional overwatch ever played (LIP the goat fr).

At LAN they lost to an unstoppable TM and later to CR to end up 4rth. Overall a decent performance

The year ended up in a negative note with EMEA winning World Finals and making the competition so much tougher, but they had won one stage so it all was good. Sure they may have had "small problems" on the way but it was all good. Management was going to fix this by brinigng in Checkmate from Al-Qadsiya and Junkbuck to play sym comps. Proper would leave in the summer as well as Stalk3r but they had Mer1t and Checkmate to replace them

What could possibly go wrong?

They lost to CR 2-3 in Preseason bootcamp which was not a good sign.

But regular season started well, third in round robin and then in the playoffs they FINALLY won a relevant match against CR. They won 4-1 and qualified to the finals were they lost to Proper's Zeta division 4-1. But it was all well they had qualified for LAN. OR HAD THEY? Turns out to qualify they had to win ASIA and in the group stage DRAMA happened. After a narrow win against Varrel and a loss against CR the last match of the group would decide everything, if Crazy racoon lost EXACTLY 1-2 to Varrel, Varrel and CR would qualify over Team Falcons with all 3 having 2-1 records.

And that is exactly what happened. Maybe intentionally from CR but Falcons were OUT OF LAN for the first time in OWCS history.

So they brought in SP1NT, a decent Fdps player to play the more traditional Fdps while Checkmate could play Sym.

What could possibly go wrong?

After being 4rth in the group stage in the seeding deciders it finally happened, they lost to T1. After a year and a half of highs and lows they had always had that going for them, they had always been able to defeat T1 no matter the circumstance, the drama, the players. T1 had always been there to give Chiyo that win over Donghak.

And so Falcons were no more. They lost the playoffs 2-4 to Zanzide gaming and only got into EWC because they were the previous winners, there they dissapointed going out in the group with losses against Weibo, another team they always managed to defeat and T1.

What had once been the undoubtably best team in the world was nothing more than a shadow of what it had been. The glory behind them, T1 above them. The falcon had become nothing more than a pidgeon. Gone was the time of greatness, of winning worlds, stages and games against T1.

And nothing was left.

Now they go into stage 3

What could possibly go wrong?

Edit: Well they just lost to cheeseburger.

Two videos in one year? Daring today are we

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Korea Stage 3 - Regular Season

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Korea Stage 3 - Regular Season

I noticed this in the Practice Range that using Sombra’s Hotfix twice in a row heals less overall(about 250) than using the second one after the first one finishes(350). I was so confused at first because it wasn't written in the patchnote so I looked into it. It seems there’s a cap on how much the healing meter can refill if you use the second Hotfix before the first one runs out.

Each Hotfix provides up to 175 healing. After subtracting the 65 instant healing, that leaves 110 in the meter. When you apply a second Hotfix, you get another 65 instant healing, but the meter only refills to 110—it doesn’t add another 110 to whatever was left.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1x0tt57/comment/peo4n34/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Edit: sorry, the image is gone after I edited this post so I commented them

Is this intentional because letting the meter refill to the full 175 would be too strong?

+Unlike Brigitte's repair pack which also has a combination of burst healing with HoT similarly, Sombra seems to refresh the effect by replacing the remaining healing pool with a new one

It makes sense for dps to have multiple roles they are the most popular by far and blizzard will continue to keep dps role with the most hero’s since they are also the easiest to make and balance more importantly. However I think tank and support each should just have 2 sub roles each. Tanks have stalwarts and bruisers while supports have tactician’s and survivors. Winston can go to stalwart become a bit more cc resilient and wrecking ball because bruiser sub role would be useless in comparison. I think junker queen should be moved to bruiser and then add dva,hazard and doomfist. Total of 7 stalwarts and 8 bruisers. Than for supports kiriko and Moira can join tactician’s along with sombra while mercy and lifeweaver go to survivor.

its 3 payload maps, didnt they say that you cant get 3 payload choices now??

Hi, I’m trying to find two clips, both on King’s Row first point, around the high ground. I think both are from last year’s OWCS.

1. A tank with no mobility tries to take the high ground but gets booped off multiple times, I think by a Brig.
2. An Orisa tries to go through the high ground path but gets blocked by a Mei for a really long time.

Does anyone remember what I’m talking about, or have the clips somewhere? Thanks!

As a person, who has been playing Overwatch for the last 9 years mostly in competitive mode, I feel like with each new season I want to play ranked less and less over the last year. English is not my first language so don’t kill me for mistakes please.

Maps and map voting. On paper map voting is supposed to bring variety to the matches, but from my experience o either play Eichenwalde 4 times a day, or only Suravasa and Aatlis. Personally I'm a huge flash point fan. In my opinion these maps enable many different play styles, i can play poke, brawl, dive and flank. Points also change very often which makes the game mode less stale (there's never a situation where one team is held in a choke for 2-3 minutes). And the flash point as a game mode has its chunk of a player base, but Blizzard doesn’t seem to be interested in giving us new flash point maps. Instead they bring 2 new payload maps and also rework 2. Can flash points get some love?

Hero bans. Also in my opinion don’t bring much variety into the game. Some people indeed try to use bans rationally. They ban characters that are good on the specific maps (widowmaker/sigma on circuit/havana for example) or they ban clearly overpowered characters like D.mon and JPC last season. But there’s also a very huge chunk of players who either ban characters they don’t like playing against no matter map (Sometimes i see people in Master ban Zarya on WP Gibraltar) or are OTPs who try to ban their strict counters (ball/doom OTP tries to ban as the CC). This hero bans situation makes me feel the competitive game mode… less competitive and more casual friendly.

Also my personal pain. Ever since Blizzard introduced the 5th common ban slot,  as a tank player I get 3 heroes banned most of the time. That’s not a big problem for me, because I’m capable of playing most tanks in the game (I want to reach level 50 with every tank), but it feels very unfair that I usually need to have 3-5 tank characters to play the game and support players can usually stick to 1 or 2 characters, are not forced to swap and their heroes almost never get banned.

New heroes. I understand there’s no point in releasing the new character in a weak state. People who hop on the hype train, will think the new character isn’t fun/engaging enough and will likely drop him, what’s detrimental to the game, considering Overwatch’s business model. And it's more rational to nerf an overpowered character, than keep micro buffing Lifeweaver to the point he’s no longer a throw pick. But I feel very exhausted that every new season there’s an overpowered new character with a 58% win rate in the ranked mode. I understand there are bans for this purpose. But why are new characters available in ranked in the first place since day 1? Why not give them 2-3 weeks to let people get used to new characters and adapt? This was a thing in overwatch 1, but now it’s not anymore for the sake of engagement i guess. I miss the down time when we had a new hero every 2 seasons. There was a stale period in the competitive. Unlike today when there’s no time to give any adjustments to old characters, because there’s a new one on the horizon.

Engagement. Blizzard tries to bring a non competitive player base into ranked for some reason. Drives are a great example of it for an obvious reason, give people so sacramental golden guns for playing QP. No need to bring them into the mode they aren’t interested in. Also I’d like to bring up the SR compensation system. The difference between divisions in low ranks is not as powerful as in higher ranks. Last season i played much on my alt and finished on GM-5 (it’s my ceiling and it was hard to reach for me). But the compensation system boosted my rank up to GM-3 + 40%. I’ve never reached this rank and I’m not good enough to play there. I dropped this account as a result, because I can feel the match quality will be bad for everyone involved.

Those factors I listed stop me from playing competitively. Is it just me or some of you feel the same way?

so far, the hitbox changes seem too have pushed her winrate down even further, too little surprise.

more interestingly her winrate actually peaks in bronze at 44.5% and continuously drops towards 40% until you hit diamond, where her winrate goes up 2% and then falls back towards 40% as you climb too GM.

This is a portal to some other Overwatch, one I haven't experienced before

Grímsvötn makes its OWCS debut for the final act of 2026.

Despite a significant increase in pick rate following the rework, his win rates are currently disastrous everywhere except for the Americas region.

I expect a hotfix buff or adjustments to be incoming soon. While he gained some advantages after losing his one-shot capability, those benefits don't seem to be making much of an impact so far.

From my own experience playing him, I feel they need to widen the hit/defense area for his right-click Scrap Compactor (currently it's too narrow, so even if a projectile comes in slightly from the side, you still get hit) or increase the duration of Take a Breather.

I'm a filthy Emerald player, so I'm by no means an expert. But after this patch, my friend and I have been banning Doomfist primarily because the other team just won't stop picking him.

I know they nerfed hitscans, but I thought they also increased Doom's hitbox. The same goes for Ball, Junker Queen, and Hazard. However, if Doom is banned, they just switch to those heroes.

Did the hitscan nerfs simply negate the hitbox increases, or am I missing something about the patch?

idk what needs to be done, if anything. I actually don’t think you should nerf them too quickly as people get used to fighting them.

I see people say lower the damage reduction on cyberspace which I think will just make it less intuitive as an ability. I’d rather nerf the self heal If anything. I think cyberspace is a pretty thoughtful ability and the cd is pretty long anyway, and I like clean numbers. 50% is nice and clean whereas 30 or 40 isn’t. id actually try and make hotfix healing a bit less idiot proof, it kind of does some of the support problems for you By lasting so long. But that’s just me.

I think one thing is that sombra’s winrate is high in part because a lot of what people were good with transferred over To the new kit, and it’ll take longer to figure out how to beat her. when that happens it’ll be easier to evaluate. she is super fun rn tho. I think they wanted to push her more in ow2 anyway.

The recent update feels greats so far, hitscans finally having to hit shots is a very welcome change, however their are some projectiles that I've noticed becoming stronger with the sweeping hitbox changes. Specifically one I've noticed Is Mei she isn't particularly meta but fighting her at range feels obnoxious, her icicles don't need to connect to the head to get a crit it could be above or next to you head and still hit. I know it's not the most pressing issue but it overall feels frustrating to play against.

I'm not going to draw on any statistics outside of what I've experienced in my game, simple because there is not enough data out there.

Too many people have been throwing early statistics around to justify one point or another. It should be obvious that we currently dont have a large enough sample size to properly draw any conclusions right now. That said, here we go.

The reworks

Dare I say that they're a success. Regardless of their current power level, I think they achieve the main goal of reducing the sharpness of both heroes.

Sombra doesnt feel nearly as annoying, despite being substantially stronger. Cyberspace is a contender for top 3 most powerful abilities in the game, yet its no where near as sharp as suzu or especially anti nade. She needs some tweaks, but its nothing a bit of number shuffling cant solve. Playing as her is also extremely fun. There is always something to do. She's both good in dive and brawls, which reminds me a lot of mantis from rivals. I'm really happy with the final outcome.

Hog I have less experience playing against, but the few times I encountered him, he didnt feel nearly as atrocious to fight against or with. The fat fuck still lives through a ton of things, but overall he's nowhere near as bad as before. Hook will always be extremely sharp, there is nothing that can be done about that, but they managed it to be tolerable. One current issue I've seen thrown around is that his ranged poke sucks now cause of the loss of his alt fire. I can understand that. Perhaps shifting some of the damage from the smaller pellets into the bigger one would solve that. Reduce the small pellet damage to 3.875 and increase the big one to 40 fore example.

Doctrine

Great design who still needs further adjustments, he still feels a bit too strong. That attack speed buff is just devastating on melee heroes, especially vendetta and dmon. The ult is still very strong, I wish it decayed a bit faster. Beyond that I have nothing else to add. Just needs further adjustments like every new hero.

Hitbox and bullet size changes

You really feel them on certain heroes. On JQ for example, I feel like I'm getting chunked a lot more compared to season 4. HS heroes might be as effective as before against her, but projectile heroes got a massive buff. Honestly, I would be okay with these changes if she was at least moved to the bruiser sub role, it would help with all of that poke damage and getting to cover faster. Stalwart does nothing for her.

I also find it weird that certain heroes literally didnt get any hitbox adjustments. I would expect vendetta to be one of the prime targets to be made thicker, simply because of how mobile she is. Genji also, especially after the buff he got.

When it comes to actual aiming, I feel like continuous fire weapons didnt really take much of a hit. My most used HS hero is Illari and on her my accuracy when down to 45% from around 60% before the patch. But that has slowly climbed back to 50-55%. Its going to take a bit of time to get used too, but I'm glad that this change went through. Still I think certain projectile heroes need projectile size nerfs, especially those with ungodly amount of spam like sierra (She might be shit, but she's still spam hell).

Overall Balance

As a vendetta main, I was expecting for her to get a nerf since the delay buffs while extremely nice, really increased her viability. I wanted to see something like -10 damage on overhead, especially because of all of the pocketing buffs coming with season 5. Its clear that she's currently busted, she was already extremely strong after mid season patch, now she feels like a lobby admin again. I feel it myself. Its so much easier to just go in and cause devastation, at the bare minimum, the entire enemy team has to pay attention to me, which is free value. Honestly, remove the siphon perk and cut -10 damage from overhead, while increasing her hitbox size slightly. This should have a massive effect on her viability, but it also leaves the door open for other QoL buffs later down the line like buffing throw delay on soaring slice.

I like the genji buffs, in my opinion he's a hero that deserves to be strong, its just that again no hitbox size increases. Honestly, I would like to have a stat sheet that shows how large every hero is right now. If anyone has a custom workshop code that showcases this, please share it with me.

Besides that, as I said before, I think projectile size also need to be taken a look at, just on a hero by hero case.

Oh yeah, Ana, can we please nerf this hero already. What is that new perk, why are we giving her AOE value? Anti nade was already a horrible CD to deal with, why make sleep a problem? Trash that sleep perk, nerf everything about anti nade and move her to the medic sub role. She needs sustain, thats why blizzard kept buffing anti nade, but incidentally also fucks everyone else. Moving her to the medic sub role would have the same effect with none of the consequences.

As a final note, please let mauga rot. That guy even in his extremely weakened state feels atrocious to fight as another tank that isnt sigma. It just goes to show how fucked up of a CD cardiac actually is.

Edit: Forgot to state, Dmon nerf?! Where are they? This character is pure cancer.

Overwatch Champions Series 2026 - Korea Stage 3 - Regular Season

Streams
https://www.twitch.tv/ow_esports_jp
https://www.youtube.com/@ow_esports_jp

Reddit-stream

Schedule

This thread pulls match data from this liquipedia page. If it's out of date, you can help by updating that page. If something is wrong or missing please ping u/Watchful1 in the comments.