Overwatch 2 kicks off its new season next week, ending the nine-month wait for Juno aka "Space Ranger" since she was first revealed in concept art at BlizzCon last year.
The new season brings a host of other changes -- including a new battle pass and mythic skin -- plus the debut of the Clash game mode and two Clash maps. Season 12 is shaping up to be the biggest set of changes since projectile sizes and hero health were changed in February. Here's why I'm excited (with one exception).
Season 12 starts on Tuesday, Aug. 20 -- new patches typically go through at 11 a.m. PT.
Trample your enemies with Juno's Hyper Ring ability.
BlizzardJuno finally lands
After being available for a brief test period last month, the new support hero Juno officially joins the roster in season 12. She's the biggest reason I'm excited about the new season. The Overwatch 2 roster is still woefully short on support heroes -- two support players will have 11 heroes to choose from when Juno joins, while both DPS get to choose among 18 options and the lone tank has 12 heroes to select from. Juno being a high-mobility hero with a hitscan weapon makes her immediately interesting to me, and I enjoyed playing her in the limited-time preview last month.
The new Throne of Anubis Clash map takes us deeper into a classic Overwatch map.
BlizzardNew game mode: Clash
One of the things that has most impressed me about Overwatch 2 is the developers' commitment to adding new game modes. Overwatch 2 launched with the new Push mode as a replacement for the now-removed Assault (2CP) mode, and we're up to four Push maps. Season 6 brought us Flashpoint, with two new maps. Season 12 will be the official debut of Clash, which was also previewed a few seasons back. That's three new game modes over the span of two years -- for context, Overwatch launched with four modes and didn't add any over the course of the game.
Clash is a sort of reimagined Assault where teams play tug-of-war throughout the map, capturing objective points and advancing or retreating to another. There are five points on a Clash map, and teams win by either capturing an enemy's base point or by accumulating five captures during the game. Clash will debut with two maps, Hanaoka and Throne of Anubis, which are reimagined versions of previous Assault maps.
Reaper is the latest hero to get a mythic skin.
BlizzardNew Anubis Reaper mythic skin and Midnight Sun weapon skin for Ana
Everyone's favorite Reaper guy gets a new special skin, which is honestly one of the best in the game -- you can pick up Anubis Reaper in the Mythic shop as part of Season 12's Egyptian mythology theme. If your immediate reaction is, "Shouldn't Ana Amari, the Eye of Horus herself, get something here," you are both intelligent and correct. Ana is getting the game's next weapon skin, following Reinhardt's Bound Demon mythic weapon skin from Season 11. Anubis Reaper and Ana's Midnight Sun weapon skin will be available for purchase with mythic prisms, which you can earn in the premium battle pass.
As an Ana main who was pretty underwhelmed by her mythic skin, I'm very excited that she's getting one of the first mythic weapons -- even though it feels a bit unfair to the two dozen heroes who have neither a mythic skin nor a mythic weapon yet.
Juno's speed boost should prove useful on the new Clash maps like Hanaoka.
BlizzardOther changes: Rank reset, Game Pass rewards
Have you almost finished grinding back your rank from before the season 9 rank reset? Join me in despair as ranks get reset again next week. This is the one change I'm disappointed in -- games have felt more uneven to me since the February rank reset, and if this one functions the same way, it's only going to exacerbate that problem. I understand the idea behind an occasional rank reset, but doing it twice a year adds a certain feeling of futility to the ranked grind.
On the other hand, Overwatch is also adding perks for Game Pass members, including 30 mythic prisms (worth $25 in the shop) and a handful of hero skins. These kinds of rewards felt inevitable after Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard last year, and they follow the partnership that Riot Games has with Xbox when you link your Game Pass account to League of Legends or Valorant.
Overwatch 2 is free to play on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.