Overwatch’s Jan. 6 live patch reverted due to Hanzo bug

Turns out arrows going through shields doesn't make for a great experience.

Screengrab via Blizzard Entertainment

Overwatch developers have quickly reverted a Jan. 6 patch that was pushed to the live servers earlier today. The patch, which included buffs to heroes like Cassidy, Reinhardt, and Hanzo, was uploaded around 1:20pm CT, the normal time for the game’s updates. 

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A large part of the patch included a buff to Hanzo’s Storm Arrow ability, which allowed arrows to ricochet once after being fired. It was a slight return to Hanzo’s Scatter Arrow ability, which was replaced by Storm Arrow in his comprehensive 2018 rework.

Players immediately found that the newly-patched ability ignored shields, bouncing against the nearest hard surface.  

At 1:53pm CT, the original patch notes post was taken down and community manager AndyB posted an update about the Jan. 6 live patch. 

Screengrab via Blizzard Entertainment

“We are reverting today’s update so that we can fix an issue with Hanzo’s Storm Arrow not properly being blocked by shield abilities,” AndyB said on the Blizzard Entertainment forums. “At this time, we do not have an ETA on when the patch will be live again.” 

Update Jan. 6, 5:25pm CT: The Jan. 6 live patch has once again been pushed to live servers after the issues with Storm Arrow were repaired.

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Liz Richardson
Liz is a freelance writer and editor from Chicago. Her favorite thing is the Overwatch League; her second favorite thing is pretending iced coffee is a meal. She specializes in educational content, patch notes that (actually) make sense, and aggressively supporting Tier 2 Overwatch. When she's not writing, Liz is expressing hot takes on Twitter and making bad life choices at Target.