Overwatch 2 competitive rework: Ultimate rank, emerald weapons, and rank reset

Blizzard announced an upcoming Overwatch 2 competitive rework during BlizzCon 2023. Read on for details and what to expect in the near future regarding Overwatch 2 placements, the new Ultimate rank, rank resets, emerald weapons, and more!

According to Blizzard, Overwatch 2 Season 9 will get a rework in terms of its competitive mode. The Overwatch 2 competitive rework will remove the requirement to get five wins or 15 loses. In its place will be the new Competitive Overview page that will make ranking more transparent than ever.

This new Overwatch 2 competitive system will update a player's rank after every match as well. There will be a progress bar showing how much a player's rank changed after a match.

"When you win a game and it hits Plat 5, you immediately rank up to Plat 5," game director Aaron Keller said, referring to the Platinum 5 rank. "You're not waiting extra games to do something like that. It just happens."

"When we launch Season 9, we'll also be resetting ranks and bringing placements back to Overwatch 2. So this isn't a full MMR reset, but it will give you a chance to make a big change to your rank because your placement games will account for a lot more," Overwatch 2 senior systems designer Gavin Winter said. "We wanna do that every year along with some big changes to our systems and hero balance."

Winter noted that the Overwatch 2 team wants to give everyone a chance to earn a new rank as well. This will happen through the redistribution of players at all ranks.

"As part of this redistribution, we're also adding a new rank above Grandmaster called Ultimate," Winter added. We wanna give out competitive rewards every year, too. So in Season 9, we'll be adding emerald weapons."

The artwork above is not final, but it gives an idea of the types of rewards that the Overwatch 2 team wants to add each new year. Winter then explained how to unlock emerald weapons.

"So when we add emerald weapons, we'll convert all of our current competitive points into a legacy currency that you can still spend on gold weapons if you want. But to show these off, you'll need to earn competitive points in the new season," he said.

In addition to this competitive rework, Overwatch 2 had a bunch of other announcements during BlizzCon 2023. These announcements included the arrival of new heroes, the Hero Mastery: Gauntlet mode, new Hero Mastery courses, the Hanaoka map, and Clash game mode.

That's all for now. Stay tuned on esports.gg for more news and updates!