Blizzard is tinkering with Overwatch 2 6v6 in Season 14, but only as a test

Blizzard teased Overwatch 2 6v6’s return in a recent developer blog, and director Aaron Keller said it’s finally happening in Season 14 of the multiplayer game

Activision Blizzard

Blizzard teased Overwatch 2 6v6’s return in a recent developer blog, and director Aaron Keller said it’s finally happening in Season 14 of the multiplayer game. For a little bit, as a test, so don’t get too attached.

Keller said in a new director's take blog that the first test, which will launch one week after Overwatch 2 Season 14 goes live in December 2024, is a variation on open queue “to not only judge our player’s appetite for larger team sizes, but for us to explore different ways that we might implement a change without running into the same problems we had previously.” It follows a “Min 1, Max 3” rule, where each team must have at least one of each role and can have no more than three heroes in a given role. Keller said this initial test will also help the team see how Overwatch 2’s heroes function in a 6v6 match.

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Blizzard will hold the second 6v6 test in the middle of Season 14, a standard 2-2-2 setup where both teams have two heroes from each role. Keller said it’ll mostly resemble the original Overwatch, but with some of Overwatch 2’s features, such as crowd control and hero reworks.

Overwatch 2 6v6 is its own mode and won’t replace others, nor will it be available to play in ranked matches.

Overwatch started live as a 6v6 game, where each team had two tanks, two damage-dealers, and two healers, but Blizzard axed the extra tank when Overwatch 2 launched. The rationale was that removing the second tank would help matches move more quickly and keep them from getting bogged down when both teams’ tanks and their dedicated healers were forcing a stalemate. The change wasn’t popular at the time, and Blizzard has done little to convince players that it improved Overwatch. 

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Even Keller recognized in the post that first teased Overwatch 2’s 6v6 that players are unhappy with how most roles have skewed toward dealing damage instead of fulfilling role duties. Kiriko and Illari, for example, are built equally for damage and healing, whereas older heroes such as Lucio are primarily designed for support.