Which Overwatch 2 Characters are Getting Reworked?

With news of both the upcoming Overwatch 2 beta and hero reworks going up sometime in late April, many fans are looking forward to seeing all the tweaks and improvements. Changes for new heroes like Sojourn, to the huge reworks to Orissa, Sombra, Bastion, and Doomfist.

Add that to the fact that Overwatch 2 promises to let you keep all your cool gear and skins, it's safe to say that Overwatch 2 is going to be one of the biggest launches of 2022. But there needs to be some clear divide on what is pure speculation, and what has been confirmed as a fact.

So here is the full list of all confirmed hero reworks, along with a few of the more popular speculations.

Overwatch 2 Character Rework

1. Sombra

Starting off with the two heroes that have had full-on videos attached to their rework, Sombra and Bastion. Sombra's hack ability has been drastically retooled, with her overall hack lasting around eight seconds. But the main change comes from her ability lockout being reduced to one second, requiring more skill and planning to utilize successfully. The rest of her hack allows her and her teammates to see through enemy walls, along with the ability to do more damage against hack enemies. Other tweaks include the ability to hack while in stealth mode, along with its greatly reduced cooldown. This makes Sombra's hacking more fast-paced and fluid.

Finally, her ultimate simply deals damage to enemy teammates and removes the former ability to drain all in-game shields.

2. Bastion

Bastion is currently the hero with the most reworked abilities. Literally, every element has changed in some way. First off, the self-repair has been completely removed, the ad has been replaced with high damage dealing grenade launcher that can bounce off walls, and stick to enemies, sort of like TF2's Demoman. His main gun has been changed to have a drastically slower fire rate, but a much more accurate spread. This gives him more of a marksman rifle rather than an SMG from the previous game. His ultimate has become combined with his sentry mode, as now Bastion can move around in tank form and fire his mini gun while driving around. His new ultimate has become an artillery mode, where the player can pick three targets and rain a barrage of shells on them. Finally, and most importantly, he has a hat now.

3. Orisa

While Orisa has been confirmed for the beta reworks, nothing of note has really been revealed, and is mostly just speculation. Fans have suggested giving her a more aggressive, and thus useful, role as opposed to her defensives style, but other than that, her details remain unknown.

4. Doomfist

Doomfist is in the same boat as Orisa, with very few details available. However, there were details revealed from an old Reddit post from head designer Geoff Goodman, where he stated his desire to switch Doomfist over to a tank role, due to his arsenal of crowd control abilities. Though he did express some difficulties with allowing Doomfist to feel like a Tank character with only passive defensive abilities, which Goodman stated they were working on.

5. Brigitte

Brigitte's main rework stems around her shield bash, which has lost its stun ability, but has its damage and range buffed, giving her more offensive, damage-dealing options while also allowing her to stay protected from enemy fire. In addition, the shield bash can now activate her healing aura, boosting her support abilities even in mid-combat, as well as allowing it to go through shields like Reinhardt's barrier, and Winston's bubble.

6. Mercy

Mercy has little to no information regarding her changes, at least ones that are confirmed as factual by Blizzard. However, an inside leak (that has not been confirmed as factual and is purely speculation as of right now) from the Twitter account EeVeea has claimed that her old ultimate has been switched to an ability called Angelic Blessing, which is a movement-based ability that allows her to transport allies low on health to a safe distance away. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, but is certainly an interesting idea.

7. Winston

With Winston being a bit of a bottom pick despite his lovely personality, it makes sense as to why Blizzard would want to give him some new buffs, and make him more viable. In a video published on the official Overwatch account, Winston has been revealed to have a new railgun ability slapped on top of his present Tesla gun, giving him some decent ranged attacks that don't require him to be within reaching distance of his enemies before being able to deal damage. Hopefully, this will boost him up from being the worst tank pick in Overwatch.

8. Mei

In the same video that revealed Winston's new railgun, Mei was given a brand new ice blaster, that drastically changes how the character is played. Replacing the old blaster which saw her being able to freeze an enemy solid, for basically a free kill, now it has been reduced to merely slowing an enemy's movement down, and dealing additional damage. This makes her far less frustrating compared to the controller breaking idea of making an enemy unable to move or react because they were caught off guard for a few seconds.

9. Reinhardt

To the joy of all Reinhardt mains, he was announced to have some major changes to the way he was going to be played, allowing him to be more offensive and mobile. His fire strikes have now been given two charges, giving him more ranged options and making it so he doesn't walk around holding up a shield for the whole match. Reinhardt was also granted a mobility increase by being able to move more efficiently.