Overwatch 2 Season 13 introduces yet one more main rework to DPS Hero Sombra that makes her a lot more durable to make use of and proves that she’s (sadly) not possible to steadiness correctly.
Balancing Heroes is arguably essentially the most thankless job that Blizzard faces in Overwatch 2. For each small tweak, there are millions of gamers asking why they butchered their valuable foremost, whereas others name for even greater modifications.
Nowhere is that this clearer than with Sombra, one of the crucial distinctive and controversial characters within the OW roster. The DPS Hero has turn out to be a divisive determine in the neighborhood attributable to talents like Stealth, which turns her invisible, and Hack, which stops the goal from utilizing their very own expertise briefly.
Within the palms of a talented participant, she will completely terrorize a workforce’s backline. Showing from nowhere to soften your Assist’s well being bar earlier than utilizing Translocate to fade into skinny air earlier than they know what’s hit them.
Nevertheless, with the Season 13 replace, Sombra has been made tougher to make use of than ever earlier than. Her Stealth has been tied to her Translocate skill, which has additionally been given an extended cooldown, that means she’ll spend much less time invisible and is rather more susceptible to counters.
BlizzardAs anticipated, this has been met with a fairly blended response. There are these rejoicing concerning the change who need the character to actually disappear from the meta, whereas Sombra mains concern that this rework will utterly “kill” their favourite Hero and make her unusable.
This isn’t the primary time that she’s obtained a significant overhaul, both. In September 2023, she was reworked to maneuver Stealth to a passive and take away Opportunist, which was introduced again simply over a yr later.
All of this goes to indicate that Sombra and characters like her are almost not possible to get proper, because the devs themselves admitted in a Reddit Q&A. Skills like invisibility and teleporting are inherently irritating to play in opposition to, so in the event you make them too highly effective, anybody who isn’t enjoying as that character will likely be determined to see them gone.
I do know I’ve spent quite a lot of matches cursing each Sombra and Tracer’s names as they decide off my lonely Zenyatta after all of the sudden showing behind him. As somebody with out the persistence (or talent) to play as that form of character, the concept of them being nerfed into the bottom does admittedly come as a little bit of a reduction.
BlizzardNevertheless, on the similar time, I acknowledge they’ve an essential function to play within the circulation of Overwatch matches. Heroes like Sombra drive you to remain in your toes and punish groups with tunnel imaginative and prescient that need to sit and deal harm from afar.
However the place is the candy spot? This newest nerf is prone to drive the favored DPS out of the meta utterly, however one other buff in the other way may see her dominating matches like she was earlier than.
The one surefire strategy to clear up the difficulty is with a whole overhaul of her equipment, one which introduces new talents which might be much less polarizing to start with. However then you definately run the danger of dropping the id of one in every of Overwatch’s most distinct characters, which gamers have invested a whole bunch of hours into mastering.
It’s a difficult scenario with out a one-size-fits-all resolution, however one factor is nearly sure — this gained’t be the final time that Sombra is given a makeover.