Overwatch Season 4: Heroes of Busan went live on August 11 with the largest change to the competitive ladder in some time: a new Emerald rank, and a redistribution that moves every rank below Diamond down by 500 skill rating.
Where Emerald sits
Emerald slots between Platinum and Diamond and carries five divisions, from Emerald 5 at the bottom to Emerald 1 at the top, Esports.gg reports. That takes the ladder to ten ranks, with Bronze through Champion each holding five divisions and the Top 500 Challenger rank reserved for the best players.
The shift below Diamond changes the numbers attached to existing ranks rather than the players in them. Platinum now spans 2,000 to 2,499 SR, down from 2,500 to 2,999, and Bronze now begins below 999 SR instead of 1,499.
The developers said the aim is a stronger sense of rank identity: with most competitive players sitting in Gold and Platinum, a rank closer to the middle of the curve is a more accurate description of where they actually are.
This rank redistribution primarily focuses on moving players that were Platinum and Diamond into Emerald, but the highest divisions of Champion will now also be more exclusive.
Team Drives, balance and the rest of the patch
Competitive also gains Team Drives, a limited-time event described by Dot Esports in which a match win groups a player with the team they won alongside, and consecutive wins with that group raise the event score toward player card frames. Players can form their own stacks or turn the feature off in social settings. The first Team Drive runs from September 4 at 1pm CT to September 7 at 1pm CT.
The season itself arrives with D.Mon as a playable tank, the My Meka Mania event, a battle pass overhaul and reworks of the Busan, Paraíso and Eichenwalde maps. Balance changes reach all three roles: Esports.gg lists buffs for Domina, Genji and Wuyang, nerfs for Mauga and Shion, and a significant change to Lifeweaver's pull, with further adjustments across Doomfist, Hazard, Orisa, Winston, Cassidy, Echo, Emre, Pharah, Tracer, Vendetta, Venture, Jetpack Cat, Juno, Mizuki and Zenyatta.
Several underused perks have been replaced — Heavy Javelin for Orisa, Focus Rush for Echo and Purrfect Form for Jetpack Cat among them — and ultimate costs have moved for Hazard, Winston, Emre, Genji and Venture. The Flanker subrole now gains 50 extra health from health packs rather than 75, which the developers attributed to small health packs having become too effective for that subrole.
Dot Esports also notes a set of interface changes, including a counter showing how many players on each team are alive, revised healing effects and an indicator for the share of damage a player contributed to an elimination.
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