Overwatch 2 introduced a new permanent game mode on Sept. 7—Hero Mastery. It’s a set of courses designed to test your skills with specific heroes. The game mode comes with a set of permanent and limited-time rewards for players to grind for.
I tried out the mode, and have some thoughts about it. Keep in mind that I’m a casual who only plays the game occasionally and for fun.
What is Hero Mastery?
The event itself is quite simple. There are three heroes available at the moment: Reinhardt, Tracer, and Mercy. For each hero, there are maps to play that focus on how you are using the hero’s abilities.
There are three difficulties for every hero: Recruit, Agent, and Veteran. For each, you can get up to a five-star rating by eliminating new types of bots, collecting Mastery tokens, and completing the course as fast as possible to get a time multiplier. Do that, complete challenges, and earn rewards.
It’s a bummer that the game mode launched with only three heroes available. Even though two more (Winston and Sojourn) will become available later in the season, it’s quite disappointing.
The way of the hammer (Reinhardt)
The Reinhardt course started a bit tough for me. I barely ever play Reinhardt so it took me a couple of tries to get the Recruit and Agent course right. At the same time, it was fun and engaging to try and learn the basics of heroes other than Widowmaker.
These courses focused a lot on using Reinhardt’s Charge skill to throw bots off the edge. You have to choose the right angle and then time the skill to not fly off yourself.
What confused me more was the payload mechanic. To get the bonus score you can escort a friendly bot to its destination. But unlike the payload in the actual game, the friendly bot can be eliminated (it’s extremely squishy) and it always moves, even if you are not close to it, so you’ve got to spin a lot of plates to get the highest score.
Faster than the speed of light (Tracer)
Tracer is the first hero I tried the Hero Mastery event with. I’m not nearly what you would call a “decent” Tracer player, but I’ve always loved her fast-paced gameplay.
Her Hero Mastery course is more focused on her Blink ability. You will mostly be using it to reach a far platform or to get behind the Tank bot. The Tank bot is the Reinhardt of Bots. It has a shield in front of it and it will slowly rotate to face you. But in truth, you don’t have to use Blink. I just walked through the shield and shot it in the face.
The Agent and Veteran difficulties are where things actually become fun. A lot of bots firing at you, places to jump to, and pitfalls to avoid. I also got to use Rewind more often to cover more ground and save myself when falling off the map.
A literal Guardian Angel (Mercy)
Mercy’s course is the most intricate one. Almost everything is built around the Guardian Angel ability. There’s a lot of movement and parkour involved.
I quickly came to realize you can use her Guardian Angel ability to reach inaccessible places. I also found out that you can boost yourself upward when using it (tells you how much I play Mercy).
What I didn’t realize is that the bots you can revive are actually meant to be damage-buffed. Then they start shooting and get rid of enemies way quicker.
Is Overwatch 2’s Hero Mastery worth the grind?
The mode doesn’t really tell you how to complete each course. You’ll need to take some time to figure out the most optimal path on your own. It makes you think about new ways of using your hero’s abilities, which will be helpful to new or more casual Overwatch players, like myself.
The game also doesn’t tell you that you can increase your score by having high Critical Hit accuracy or completing character-specific objectives like dealing damage in Mercy’s ultimate.
Is it worth grinding out the challenges for the rewards? The event rewards are made of a souvenir, charm, and a spray (neither of those I ever use), and the permanent rewards include a name card and a player icon with the hero you completed the challenges for.
I didn’t really care for the rewards because I knew I wouldn’t use them. It was more about the fun factor. And I must say, Hero Mastery is an incredibly fun mode to play when you have some spare time to kill. Especially with a variety of new bots added, from annoying snipers to brainless bombers.
There isn’t that much content yet with only three heroes, but according to Blizzard, more and more will be added as time goes on. For now, this serves as a beginner-friendly introduction to the mode that isn’t too overwhelming, so I’d recommend you give it a try.
