2026 has been a massive year for Blizzard’s hero shooter, Overwatch. From a rebrand that dropped the accursed “2” to a year of interconnected seasonal storytelling, the game has changed a lot. Overwatch Season 5, A Grim Doctrine, could easily be considered one of the best of the five seasons to date of this new era.
In fact, it brings with it a significant amount of new content nearing the levels of said relaunch earlier this year. Even with one new hero, Doctrine, entering the Support lineup, many other significant evolutions have made the end of the Reign of Talon year of storytelling exciting.
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Doctrine brings a new type of healer to the Overwatch lineup.
First, there’s the new hero. Doctrine lives up to the vampiric, technofuturistic fantasy originally revealed at BlizzCon 2026. He’s flashy, packs a punch, and can easily turn the tide of battle. Doctrine is also quite tricky to get the hang of because of the keystone part of his kit, infusion. Without a proper alt-fire or secondary weapon ability, Doctrine instead empowers his primary abilities with the right click. Mastering how and when to infuse abilities introduces a fun learning curve that separates the okay Support players from the great ones.
For instance, empowering his healing drone also puts one on himself along with his target. Plus, because the healing drone also adds an attack speed boost to whoever it’s on, Doctrine’s long-range primary fire can quickly heal distant allies or pick off enemies across the objective. Alternatively, empowering the primary fire gives it more oomph along with piercing. With allies grouped together, Doctrine can quickly heal anyone in front of him.
Then, there is his ultimate, Deliverance. This ability can easily turn the tide of battle as well as open up an enemy defensive position to severe punishment. Deliverance summons a sphere of Doctrine’s bat-drones that slowly moves ahead of where you’re facing. Allies in its path get healing and overhealth. Enemies, on the other hand, take damage and lose max HP for a time, down to one half of their base health. The sheer amount of health taken away just by the ult pairs quite well with savvy damage or tank players who can capitalize on opportunities generated by a good Deliverance use.
Doctrine adds a new level of complexity that requires high skill but can easily turn the tide of battle.
Doctrine doesn’t replace any supports with similar abilities, like Ana. Instead, he adds a new level of complexity that requires high skill to truly enjoy this unique addition to the lineup. But he’s not the only shake-up to Support. Sombra has stopped hacking enemies and being a stealthy menace to now “hotfix” allies.
She is still a complete menace that juggles being a dive/flank healer who can dip in, damage some enemies, dip out, and patch up any allies while she causes mayhem. Plus, her new debuff is very broken. Weakening enemies with her shift ability reduces all healing and damage by half. All within a pretty sizeable AOE area that also heals friendly heroes within it. After playing a ton of Mizuki, having an alternative nimble healer that loves to poke down enemies is a complete win.
The last major hero change is Roadhog. He’s still a tank, but he does more protecting than before. Now, with a new suck ability tied to his right-click, he absorbs incoming fire and attacks and returns it. Plus, he is moddable with perks that let him heal nearby allies when he inhales his healing gas. Roadhog wasn’t a personal favorite in the Tank line-up. But after a couple of matches, changes to his weapon, ranged poke capacity, and the fact that he’s no longer just a giant punching bag constantly hooking out-of-position people for one-hit kills have made him a new addition to the list of frequent picks this past week.
Mystery Madness brings massive customization to a chaotic quick play mode.
But with Season 5, Blizzard has added a new game mode that is hard to stop queueing for. Mystery Madness has been added as part of the Halloween event, replacing Junkenstein’s Revenge and bringing the best of Stadium to a quick play-like game mode. With limited heroes and massive customization options, the game quickly turns to chaos as people rack up powers earned by playing well and only available after death. One hero could be eliminated and come back a beast.
Personal favorites so far have been a healing Reinhardt who heals allies with his shield, the snowball Mei, and the hitscan Domina who damage-amps allies with her projection barrier. Hopefully Mystery Mayhem becomes a new Arcade staple, with support for Stadium ending after the Halloween season is over—and maybe a hint at an evolution to the perk system in a coming season?
Finally, the new map is unique, with corridors and holes that make players rethink how they engage on a new push map. The team took the idea of a high-security futuristic prison and ran with it. Especially one as storied as Grímsvötn in Overwatch lore. Even friends who thought it looked bland changed their minds after playing several matches on it. Especially when you use all the different hallways and alternate pathways to get behind enemy lines or engage differently in team fights.
Overwatch Season 5: A Grim Doctrine could go down as one of the best seasons of Overwatch in quite some time.
A Grim Doctrine could go down as one of the best seasons of Overwatch in quite some time, and is easily a highlight of the game’s new era. Massive changes, hero reworks, a new fun mode, and so much more make it worth checking out right away. The positives easily outweigh the weaker decisions, like adding legacy battle passes with fewer items for the same price as a normal battle pass (or not even being able to get some currencies from a battle pass you bought but didn’t complete).
With great changes to Sombra and Roadhog, and an awesome new Support hero, Doctrine, it’s good to see the game, which went through lots of ups and downs, trying hard to end this first year on a high note.
Overwatch Season 5 is available now on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
