We have two back-to-back PTR patches today, the first one featuring Hero 31 arriving for testing, endorsements coming to many alternative modes, Role Queue improvements and some more Workshop additions. The second patch brought several Hero changes, from D.Va's pilot ult cost reduction, to Symmetra's Teleporter cooldown decrease and more!

PTR July 23 (source)

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

New Hero: Sigma

Sigma is an eccentric astrophysicist and volatile tank who gained the power to control gravity in an orbital experiment gone wrong. Manipulated by Talon and deployed as a living weapon, Sigma’s presence on the battlefield cannot be ignored. Sigma launches two Hyperspheres (gravitic charges), which bounce off walls and implode after a short duration, damaging enemies within a sizable radius. Using Experimental Barrier, he propels a floating barrier to a location of his choosing and he can dismiss the barrier at any time. With Kinetic Grasp Sigma freezes incoming projectiles in midair, converting them into shields. Accretion allows Sigma to gather a mass of debris and flings it at an enemy to knock them down. Unleashing his full powers with Gravitic Flux, Sigma takes flight, lifts enemies in a targeted area, and launches them into the sky before slamming them back down. Learn more about Sigma on his hero page 2.

GENERAL UPDATES

Role Queue

Updated the end of match screen so that players are sorted by role. Fixed a bug that made it difficult to see which Role Card was in focus when using a controller. Quick Play (with Role Queue Enabled) Feature Update: Endorsements

Players can now endorse each other in the following game modes: Mystery Heroes No Limits Deathmatch Total Mayhem Low Grav All the PVE Event game modes (Uprising, Retribution, Storm Rising) Game Mode

Mystery Heroes - On Control maps, Heroes are now reset between rounds. Workshop

New Events:

Player Dealt Healing Player Received Healing Player Joined Match Player Left Match New Actions:

Start Transforming Throttle Stop Transforming Throttle New Values:

Healer Healee Event Healing Host Player Developer Comment: A commonly requested feature for the Workshop is the ability to track healing, so we’ve added two new Event types and three new Values to make this possible. We’ve also added Events to make it easier to detect players joining and leaving matches. To support the creation of admin-style privileges for custom games, the owner of the game can now be detected using Host Player. Finally, we’ve added the ability to scale, invert, and rotate a player’s input throttle to make controlling characters in third person easier.

BUG FIXES

General

Custom Game: The Presets UI in Custom Game is now displayed in the proper order. Heroes

Brigitte

Fix for Brigitte heal throws that were too loud. Zenyatta

Fixed a delay in Zenyatta’s first person quick melee animation when interrupting primary fire. Orisa

Fixed a bug that caused some VFX to stop playing upon successive viewings of Orisa’s “Oh!” highlight intro in Hero Gallery. Genji

Fixed a bug where Genji could fail to deal damage if he rapidly used Swift Strike on a single target (PTR bug only). Sombra

Fixed an animation issue with EMP (PTR bug only).



PTR July 24th (source)

GENERAL UPDATES

Practice Range

Practice Range has been temporarily disabled on PTR-only. For players looking to try out Sigma’s abilities in a solo setting, private Custom Games can still be made in the Game Browser. Role Queue

Fixed a bug that caused the Ready button to be displayed when no roles had been selected, when using a controller. Fixed a bug that could cause players to be on multiple regional leaderboards at the same time. Fixed a bug that could cause players to appear on the Top 500 All leaderboard when 1 or more roles are still in placement matches. Fixed a bug that caused players who allow the "Waiting on you to select role" timer to expire, to get into an unusable state if they were grouped in LFG. Fixed a bug that prevented players from interacting with the role selection invite using a gamepad if inside the Play menu. Fixed a bug where queue time wasn’t displayed properly while in skirmish. HERO UPDATES

D.Va

D.Va Pilot ultimate cost reduced by 12% Sombra

EMP

(Reworded from previous patch notes for clarity) Activation time increased from 0.2 to 0.35 seconds. Symmetra

Teleporter

Cooldown decreased from 15 seconds to 12 seconds Teleport re-use time decreased from 1.5 seconds to 1 second Wrecking Ball

Minefield

Decreased projectile speed from 13 to 12. BUG FIXES

General

Fixed a bug that prevented Competitive groups being found in LFG Fix rare instances of ‘avoid as teammate’ not working Heroes

Sigma

Fixed a bug where Gravitic Flux would do ground impact damage to training bots before they hit the ground. Fixed a bug that allowed Sigma to fire more than two Hyperspheres at once. Fixed a bug that cause Sigma’s “Hello” voice line to not play.

