Overwatch 2 undoubtedly suffered quite the blow when game director Jeff Kaplan announced his departure from Blizzard last month, though as they say, the show must go on. With Blizzard’s Aaron Keller stepping into the role as the new game director development on the title is continuing to progress, with Blizzard recently revealing that the game’s PvP modes will consist of five players instead of six.

As revealed in the recently released Overwatch 2 developer PvP livestream, teams will now consist of a total of five players instead of six. For standard PvP game modes, that will mean that each team will consist of one tank, two damage units, and two supports. According to Aaron Keller, the change is to help adjust the flow of battle specifically for tanks, allowing them more in-your-face moments rather than simply sitting back and protecting the team.

Blizzard is also implementing Role Passives into Overwatch 2 to help justify the shift to 5-person teams. These passives will operate as one would likely expect them to depending on role: damage units move a bit faster than other roles, tanks have knockback reduction and provide less ultimate charge when hit by opponents, and support heroes regenerate health automatically after being out of combat for a short period.

It’ll be interesting to see how these changes look when Overwatch 2 eventually releases. Between the new Role Passives and the drop down to 5-person teams, tanks will have an even greater role in meta and will as such be significantly more impactful, for better or worse.

Overwatch 2 is currently in development.

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