Overwatch Halloween Terror patch makes a big change to Ultimate charges and interruptions

News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor

Published on Oct. 11, 2017

With the arrival of Overwatch's Halloween Terror event comes a new patch.

The patch was made available to Overwatch players on PC, PS4, and Xbox One yesterday. The highlight is, of course, the new endless mode for Junkenstein’s Revenge, and some really good skins for select few heroes.

However, not all exciting additions are in the form of skins. The patch makes a big change to Ultimate meters. Previously, triggering an Ultimate would cause your Ult bar to be drained based on its duration. It was this way because Blizzard didn't want players to feel cheated out of their Ult if they died right after triggering it.

On the other hand, this made it unfair to opposing players who manage to kill the player who just Ulted, preventing further damage. Now, the Ultimate bar depletes instantly, meaning that if you die as soon as you pop your Ult, it's over.

As a result of this major change, Blizzard made a few tweaks to a few of the heroes' Ultimates. See all the changes below:

Hero updates

-General

Ultimate charge is now immediately expended when a hero's ultimate ability is activated, instead of depleting over a short period of time

-D.Va

An option to manually hold down D.Va’s boosters rather than toggling them has been added under Options > Controls > D.Va

-Genji

Dragonblade is no longer interrupted when Genji is stunned or hacked

-Orisa

Supercharger can now be interrupted when Orisa is stunned or hacked

-Sombra

Hack now interrupts the following ultimate abilities during their cast time: Ana's Nano Boost, Orisa's Supercharger, Mei's Blizzard, Reinhardt's Earthshatter, and D.Va's Call Mech

UI updates

-Assault maps

When capturing an objective, the progress bar is now broken into three segments that will fill in with the team’s color that is capturing it (as each segment fills, it will trigger an animation and audio cue)
The number of defenders currently on the objective will now be displayed in addition to the number of attackers, just below the progress bar

Bug fixes

-General

Fixed a bug that allowed muted players to become unmuted after leaving and rejoining the same match

-AI

Fixed a bug that caused bots to get trapped in a movement loop after taking the tunnel under the capture point in the University section of Oasis

-Competitive Play

Fixed an issue that caused matches to end in a draw when both teams won their first attacking rounds in overtime on Hanamura, Horizon Lunar Colony, Temple of Anubis, and Volskaya Industries

-Custom games and game browser

Fixed a bug that prevented the Capture Speed Modifier setting from being applied in custom games
Fixed a bug that prevented D.Va’s Projectile Speed slider from appearing in Custom Game settings

-Heroes

Fixed a bug that prevented D.Va’s Micro Missles from producing rumble feedback when using a controller with vibration enabled
Fixed a bug that caused Lúcio’s soccer ball to fly off in the wrong direction when activating his Juggle emote at 30 FPS
Fixed a bug that caused Mercy to maintain forward momentum after canceling Guardian Angel mid-flight
Fixed a bug that could cause heroes to respawn as a different hero after being resurrected by Mercy
Fixed a bug that caused Roadhog’s chest to deflate when his Tuckered Out emote was activated while the Mako or Sharkbait skins were equipped
Fixed a bug that prevented the sound effects on Symmetra’s turrets from being heard by teammates
Fixed a bug that prevented Torbjörn’s weapon-draw animation from being played when turret placement was canceled

-Maps

Fixed a bug on Junkertown that allowed some heroes to get stuck behind a barrel near the final point
Fixed a bug on King’s Row that caused a dark box to appear if you stared into the robot city for too long
Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra to reach unintended locations on Volskaya Industries
Fixed a bug affecting Ilios, Lijang Tower, Nepal, and Oasis that prevented overtime progress from resetting when the point had been flipped after both teams’ progress bars reached 99%

-UI