The Overwatch 2 development team is shaking things up in Season 18, and not just with a fresh face in Wuyang. During their latest livestream, Blizzard dropped the curtain on some of the meaty perk reworks and new entries that’ll hit the game starting this upcoming season. And if you love experimenting with builds in Hero Mastery Mode, you’re gonna want to dig into this.
Season 18 comes with a massive perk overhaul. According to the devs, a whopping 60 new perks are on the way, with every hero in the game set to receive at least one. That’s a big ol’ reset button for some unpopular legacy perks too: they’re being replaced with more impactful and entertaining options. Let’s take a closer look at what each hero, across Tank, Damage, and Support roles, is getting in this power-packed update.
Tank Heroes: Becoming Even Harder to Kill
Ramattra
- New Minor Perk – Relentless Form (Replaces Prolonged Barrier): While Nemesis Form is active, eliminations extend its duration by 1 second. If you’re in Annihilation mode, the extension is halved.
Junker Queen
- New Minor Perk – Rampant Charge (Replaces Rending Recall): Using Rampage now grants Unstoppable and resets all cooldowns. Yeah, total mayhem territory.
- New Major Perk – Willy Willy (Replaces Deep Wounds): When pulling back Jagged Blade, its radius increases by 100%, and it hits with an extra 30 impact damage.
Wrecking Ball
- New Major Perk – Adaptive Barrier (Replaces Transfer Efficiency): Activating Adaptive Shield gives you a 1.5-second barrier, consuming 50 overhealth. Timing this right? Could be clutch.
Damage Heroes: Pure Chaos, But Smarter
Echo
- New Minor Perk – Partial Scan (Replaces Enhanced Duplication): Duplicated enemies start with 50% ult charge. More ults, more problems—for your enemies.
- New Minor Perk – Focused Rush (Replaces Friendly Imaging): Focusing Beam gets an extra 4 meters of range, and Echo gains a 10% speed boost while beaming.
- Perk Change – Full Salvo: The previous damage reduction on each projectile? Gone.
Junkrat
- New Minor Perk – Mine Recycling (Replaces Aluminium Frame): Scored a killing blow with Concussion Mine? You get another one. Boom, repeat.
- New Major Perk – Bomb Voyage (Replaces Tick Tock): After launching via Concussion Mine, Junkrat’s attack speed spikes by 35% for 3 seconds.
Venture
- New Minor Perk – Deep Burrow (Replaces Seismic Sense): Drill Dash distance increases by 50% while burrowed, letting you cover even more ground underground.
- New Major Perk – Smart Extender (Replaces Smart-R Excavator): Tapping your alt-fire key empowers the SMART Excavator, doubling its max projectile range for 4 seconds, triggering Venture’s passive and reloading your ammo.
Support Heroes: Healers With Bite
Ana
- New Minor Perk – Speed Serum (Replaces Biotic Bounce): Nano Boost now grants a 40% movement speed increase to both Ana and whoever she boosts. For chasing or escaping, that speed can be make-or-break.
- New Major Perk – Biotic Bounce (Replaces Shrike): It keeps the same core function as the old minor perk, but bumps the damage and healing from 25 to 60. Huge numbers for quick bursts.
Moira
- New Minor Perk – Destruction’s Divide (Replaces Vanish): Channel Coalescence between pure healing and pure damage modes, with either effect cranked up by 25%.
- New Minor Perk – Ethical Nourishment (Replaces Uprush): This one’s been bumped down to Minor, now supplying 30 burst healing instead of 50.
- New Major Perk – Phantom Step (Replaces Contamination): Combines the fade time boost from Vanish and jump height increase from Uprush. Fade now lasts 0.5 seconds longer, and Moira leaps like a frog on caffeine.
- New Major Perk – Reversal (Replaces Ethical Nourishment): Biotic Orb can be reactivated to reverse direction. Handy for pulling orbs back through key chokeholds or giving your team one last heal on retreat.
Looking ahead: What Season 18 means for Hero Mastery and Competitive Play
This perk overhaul is more than just cool buffs: it’s a clever way of breathing fresh life into characters that may have grown stale over past updates. And with every hero getting attention, there’s plenty of room for new metas to form, both in casual and comp play.
Also worth noting? While these changes are built for Hero Mastery Mode, their synergistic mechanics could impact scrims and even ladder play indirectly, especially in Custom Games or arcade setups that run perk-based builds. If you’ve been sleeping on some heroes, now’s the time to revisit your favorites—every Overwatch 2 hero just got sharper, stronger, and significantly more fun.
Overwatch 2 Season 18 is shaping up to be a perk-lover’s dream. And hey, Wuyang’s about to debut too, so keep your aim tight and your cooldowns tighter.