Overwatch Halloween Terror Event is live, Torbjorn rework is complete

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It's time to scoop up some seasonal goodies.

The Overwatch Halloween Terror event is live, bringing with it the return of the Junkenstein's Revenge PvE brawl, a bunch of new seasonal skins, and an opportunity to pick up some "spooky gear from previous years" that you may have missed the last time around. 

The Halloween Terror kickoff also marks the rollout of the latest patch, which completes the rework of Torbjörn that was detailed last month. "Torbjörn was initially designed to be a specialized hero, intended to be a strong defensive option due to his armor-generating capabilities and ability to control areas with his turret. However, the scrap collecting and Armor Pack mechanics have proven to cause problematic gameplay issues because of their feast or famine nature," Blizzard explained.

"To make him more flexible in a wide variety of situations, we’ve removed the scrap system, made the turret much easier to deploy, replaced the Armor Pack ability with Overload—a powerful self-buff—and transformed Molten Core into a powerful new area denial ultimate ability." 

The turret is now a thrown projectile that will build automatically over three seconds, even if Torbjorn is taken out, and no longer has multiple levels. It will have the same damage output as the previous level 2 turret, and 250 health instead of 300. The new Overload ability will grant 150 armor and a 30 percent increase in attack, movement, and reload speeds for five seconds with a 12 second cooldown, while the Molten Core ultimate will enable him to fire up to ten "molten globules" that will create damage pools where they land. Their base damage is 130, and is boosted to 190 against armored enemies. 

Brigitte, Doomfish, McCree, Pharah, Mei, Orisa, and Soldier: 76 have also been tweaked (although not nearly as dramatically), the setup timer for Assault, Escort, and Assault/Escort hybrid maps has been reduced from 1 minute to 45 seconds, and the Assemble Your Team timer for the second round on those maps has been boosted from 10 to 25 seconds. 

The full patch notes are available at playoverwatch.com, and if you'd rather just check out the new skins, we've got the full lineup for you right here. 

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.