Overwatch 2’s lead hero designer Alec Dawson finally addressed one of the biggest burning questions that fans have about upcoming hero balance changes coming to the game in season seven—what to do with Sombra?
In a blog post on the official Overwatch 2 website today, Dawson addressed the upcoming Sombra changes and gave players the most detail we’ve seen so far concerning her rework. The Overwatch team will be pushing Sombra into a “more committal” role when engaging enemies or a team fight, which could hint at a nerf to Stealth’s cooldown.
The team also plans on making the hero feel like she’s having a more active role in a match, as opposed to her current hit-and-run tactic her kit is forcing players to employ in order to be effective. Dawson says the team is trying to achieve these goals while “upholding her current hacker identity and playstyle.”
It’s unclear exactly what “more committal” means. One would expect that it means that Sombra’s Stealth and Translocator will be tweaked so that Sombra players can’t just stealth in and teleport out repeatedly in that annoying fashion—as they tend to do.
The Mexican hacker always seems to be a hot topic as far as balance is concerned, and it makes sense. She’s the only stealth hero in the game, and her hacking ability can be infuriating to play against at times.
Dawson, on record, has called Sombra the roster’s “problem child,” and since then, the devs confirmed a rework on her kit was coming in season seven, which begins this October. However, until now, no one has given players much in the way of details regarding the upcoming tuning.
We will learn more in the coming weeks when Dawson promises to give a deeper dive into at least one new ability that is coming to her kit, but until then the general ambiguity of Dawson’s notes on Sombra today leaves more questions than answers about what’s coming for the sneaky Talon member.
This isn’t the first time a dev has said that they plan on keeping Sombra’s “hacker” identity, and especially when reading about the “active feel throughout her kit,” it’s difficult to tell exactly what Blizzard is planning on doing when this rework goes live in a few weeks.
