A massive season five competitive update to Overwatch 2 is taking a page out of the VALORANT playbook and introducing a limited-time five-stack-only queue that full stacks of five players can participate in.
The new mid-season competitive mode, named Team Queue, allows groups of five players—regardless of their skill rating—to play standard role-locked competitive matches of Overwatch 2 against other teams of five.
Even Grand Master players, who can only queue solo or in a party of two when playing competitively in role queue or open queue, can finally play with a stack of multiple GM players against similarly skilled opponents. For role queue or open queue, players between Bronze and Diamond can only group within two skill tiers, Masters players only within one skill tier, and Grandmaster players only within three skill divisions.
Related: Overwatch 2 ranks: Explaining the OW2 ranking system
But as mentioned above, the new Team Queue playlist will let five players of any skill tier team up, something VALORANT has been doing for some time now. In traditional competitive matches in VALORANT, a full five stack can play in ranked, but groups with high rank disparity will earn significantly less rank rating.
Riot then took it a step further with the introduction of Premier, a seasonal tournament mode where teams of five players could compete in weekly matches within their assigned skill division, with the goal of reaching the playoffs at the end of a season. The mode recently completed an open global beta test and is set to launch toward the end of this summer.
The language used by the Overwatch devs at Blizzard indicates that Team Queue will also serve as a test since the team is actively “exploring new ways to get friends together for a fun competitive experience.”
Related: Here are the Overwatch 2 season 5 patch notes
Overwatch 2 season five is set to officially launch today, June 13.
