Intro
I make these threads before every season to list what is and is not known about the upcoming season and to allow us to speculate about the unknown.
Dates
Season 13 starts on Tuesday, October 15th, if that feels sooner than expected it’s because Season 12 was shorter than usual. If season lasts the normal 9 weeks, then it will end on December 17th, however I wouldn’t be surprised if it got cut shorter since they may not want to start a season so close to the holidays.
Major Content
Season 13 will not introduce any new heroes or maps. It is somewhat unfortunate, but makes sense since we just got 2 maps and a hero this season. Season 13 will however include multiple map reworks. 4 maps have been confirmed so far:
- Numbani
- Circuit Royale
- Dorado
- Havana
Some changes mentioned include making spawns harder to spawn camp, making some sniper perches weaker, making certain flank routes shorter (e.g. the staircase behind the dorado church), and making the Circuit Royale hill less extreme. There may or may not be more maps in addition to these 4.
Season theme and cosmetics
The theme for season 13 is most likely to be Witches. There is a small chance that theme is for season 14 instead, but that seems unlikely since Witches fits with the Halloween time of year and season 14 would be exceedingly far from when the witch theme was teased.
In terms of cosmetics, “witches” is quite broad as it could refer to more occult type broom and cauldron witches but it can also be used for all kinds of other fictional magic users, though I’d assume it’ll veer towards the former since the more Halloweeny type of witch would be fitting for the time of year. That would be a rather constrictive theme, though they haven’t been doing many themed skins in general the past few seasons so maybe they really will just make witch mercy for 4 other heroes and call it a day
It’s also worth noting that a developer mentioned we’d be getting a cool Venture skin in season 14 so I really wouldn’t expect any cosmetics for Venture or probably even Juno this season.
Mythics
Mythics do not have any set pattern for how they’re released, but it has been a very long time since a tank has received a mythic skin (not since last year), so that makes it seem like the most likely role. Of the tanks that haven’t received a mythic, I think the likely candidates are Rammatra, who wields a sort of wizard’s scepter already, and D.va, who they could make a lot of money doing a cutesy pandering skin like Witch Kiriko for (and also a magic powered mech could be kinda cool)
As for the mythic weapon, dps is the only role the doesn’t have one yet so they seem like a likely candidate. The first mythic weapon didn’t match the season theme, but the newest one does, so we’ll have to see if that trend continues. If it is witch themed, I personally think mei is a good candidate just because she already has an elemental based gun so it’d be easy to make that mystical. I could maybe also see them ignoring dps and doing one for mercy just because witch mercy is one of the like top 3 iconic overwatch skins
Events
The annual halloween terror event will presumably start on the first day of the season and last 3 weeks ending in early November. This event will probably see the return of the PvE modes: Junkenstein’s Revenge, Junkenstein’s Revenge 2, and possibly the Diablo themed Trials of Sanctuary mode. Maybe we’ll get a new event based on the Witch theme, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up since they seem to have given up on new events lately
A my hero academia collab will start a few days into the season from october 17th to 30th. The earnable rewards will only be sprays and a weapon charm. The shop will have the following 5 legendary skins:
- All-might Reinhardt
- Uravity Juno
- Deku Tracer
- Himiko Toga Kiriko
- Tomura Shigaraki Reaper
Season 14 is getting a new tank hero, so we will probably have a reveal of this hero’s design and kit as well a test weekend towards the end of this season. All we’ve seen of the hero is an early version of their hero select icon. It appears to be a male with bright green hair and some sort of turtle shell on his back, but again it was a small icon of a rough sketch so it’s hard to say for sure. Maybe it’ll be some kind of poison user?
It’s also likely we get at least one quick play hacked event in season 13. Specifically in an interview they mentioned wanting to experiment with some game formats that are somewhere between open and role queue in terms of flexibility.
Balance
Clash is receiving a set of changes in season 13 designed around making the mode more fair and understandable. The blog specifically mentioned changes to points B and D designed to remove the scenarios where you feel like you are at a disadvantage for winning objectives early in the match. Reducing stomps and incentivizing attackers to push the final points are other objectives they had for clash
Reaper is at some point getting a rework which includes significant changes to the Shadow Step ability, but we have no information on the date of this rework.
