Overwatch's new hero Ashe and her best buddy B.O.B. are now live
Overwatch patch 1.30—the one with Ashe—is now live, meaning that the new, white-haired gunslinger is off the PTR and playable by everyone. That is the good news—the bad news is that this is the major update that Blizzard warned last week will require a full reinstallation of the game. Because of that, Blizzard shared some tips in the Overwatch forums to help ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible.
The update can run up to 20GB in size, although it will apparently be less if you have the PTR installed. You don't need to uninstall Overwatch before grabbing the update, but you do need to have patience: Blizzard said that the download speed indicator could go to 0 KB/s for "several seconds," but that's normal and okay and everything is working like it's supposed to, so do not stop the installation unless you want to have to start everything all over again for no reason.
There may also be a queue to get into the game once the update is complete, so please be patient about that too, and you might want to avoid Competitive for awhile, until the initial rush is done. As usual with new heroes, Ashe won't be available in Competitive Play for two weeks anyway, so if you want to see what all the fuss is about, stick with the Quick.
Ashe's primary weapon is a lever-action rifle with semi-automatic and slower ADS firing modes called the Viper, while her Coach Gun is a short-range, high-impact sidearm that can knock back enemies or Ashe herself, when she needs a burst of hastened mobility. She throws dynamite, which detonates after a delay for area-of-effect damage that sets enemies on fire; she can also shoot it to set it off early. And her ultimate is big, bad B.O.B., a heavy-duty Omnic with a knack for plowing into, and through, crowds of enemies.
Mercy, Reaper, Roadhog, and Symmetra have all been updated in 1.30 as well. Mercy's ultimate was found to be charging too slowly after her base healing was nerfed in the last update, so its cost has been reduced by 15 percent and it will now provide 60 healing per second instead of 50. Reaper's Hellfire shotgun spread has been tightened up and made more consistent, and his Life Steal ability has been boosted from 20 percent to 30 percent, while Symmetra's Photon Projector primary beam will charge up 20 percent faster.
Roadhog got the biggest rework of the bunch: "Roadhog is receiving several large changes to make his abilities more consistent. His Chain Hook had issues with breaking when enemy targets jumped or fell behind environment collision. It will now slow them down in the air more when the hook lands, and wait less time before it starts reeling them in. Since Chain Hook’s cooldown now begins immediately upon use, it no longer varies based on Roadhog’s distance to the hook target," Blizzard explained.
"We’ve also moved some of the projectiles closer to the center of the spread pattern on his Scrap Gun, which gives him a more consistent damage output for its primary and alternate fire. Previously, there was a long-standing bug that caused close-range targets to fly much further than expected. After this bug was fixed, we still wanted to keep some of the knockback burst it provided, so we’ve increased the overall velocity cap to maintain some of that functionality."
The update also reduces the setup timer for Assault, Escort, and Assault/Escort maps from 60 to 45 seconds, increases the Assemble Your Team timer on those maps from 10 to 25 seconds, removes the "Unlock All" option from the Hero Gallery, and makes various other bug fixes and minor tweaks. Full details are available in the 1.30 patch notes at playoverwatch.com.
