Overwatch Season 17 Has Dropped, Bringing With It Zenyatta’s Terrifying Final Form

Overwatch 2’s latest gameplay season is now live, with a fresh battle pass offering, fresh new arcade-styled skins and some fresh faces in the game’s Stadium mode.

I mentioned a little while back that Stadium mode was far more than just a gimmick – it was an entirely different beast, revivifying the Overwatch experience and quickly garnering a very solid following for players – but the guest list for Stadium didn’t include every hero from the Overwatch 2 roster. The developers promised to add more characters each seasonal drop to keep the mode growing and to provide adequate time to test the madcap nature of character builds.

With this in mind, Season 17 has brought Sigma, Zenyatta, and Junkrat to the select screen – with many dreading the chaos that a powered up Junkrat might bring.

However, the dark zen-like horse of this tale is an unexpected one.

It is Zenyatta who is kicking ass and taking names.

The mild-mannered monk has a bounty of oddly offensive upgrades within the mode, changing him from a floating healing platform into a hornets nest of pain. Long time players of the Stadium game mode jumped into matches post update and were shocked to discover that when you mess with Zen, he will absolutely retaliate. It is endlessly funny.

One upgrade changes Zenyatta’s snap-kick into an airborne foot-guided missile, shooting him forwards to kick enemies and knock them into walls, stunning them. That is effectively Doomfist’s signature move. Another upgrade allows his charge attack to change even more projectiles.  A different one causes these charged projectiles to home in on low health enemy targets. Someone on the development team clearly has a vision for Zenyatta, and it aint passive healing.

It is a spectacular state of affairs when the most passive and chill robo-bloke on the roster is capable of turning into a floating minigun, and I am absolutely here for it.

Of course, there is more to the season 17 release – such as a new series of hacked gameplay types, a new Mythic quality skin for D.Va and Mythic quality guns for Reaper, but those have been massively overshadowed by bloodthirsty Zenyatta.

Jump on in and check it out for yourself, Overwatch 2 Season 17: Powered Up is live right now.

Are you a long time player of Zenyatta enjoying his latest power arc? Are you one of his latest victims? Tell us all about it in the comments or on social media.