I’m Tired Of Overwatch Reworking Sombra For People Who Don’t Even Play Her

Being a Sombra player in Overwatch has been an everlasting hell that hasn’t really gotten any better. While Blizzard has broadly done a lot to bring the game back to its former glory, finding the sweet spot for the ex-Talon hacker character has been an elusive challenge for the team, which has reworked her multiple times over the years. Each time,  some of the core parts of her kit have been removed, resulting in a shift away from her original hit-and-run play style that let her get in, hack key foes, and then teleport away to safety. Later iterations made her more of a committed assassin character, only capable of teleporting short distances away from a scrap; then her consistent invisibility, which made it easier for her to sneak around, was taken away. 

Every time Blizzard has made significant changes to Sombra’s kit, I’ve adapted, because she’s one of my favorite characters in the game, both to play and as a compelling piece of Overwatch’s ongoing story. Now, Blizzard is fundamentally changing her—as the team likes to call it—“hero fantasy,” making her a Support hero in Season 5 after apparently being unhappy with her presence on the Damage roster for nearly a decade. Reactions out of Blizzcon have been mixed, with some acknowledging that her Support abilities are actually really useful and saying that she manages to carve out her own niche in the role, but there are so many types of interactions that have been gutted from the game with these changes that, as a long-time Sombra player, I feel like I’m in a state of mourning.

Blizzard doesn’t view it that way, though. During a Q&A at Blizzcon, Overwatch Hero Designer Scott Kennedy told Kotaku about how, to the team, Sombra’s hero fantasy is more than just her ability to freely hack her foes.

“[Sombra] has sort of these three pillars as a DPS hero with the invisibility, the ability lock, and damage that she can do,” he said. “When she’s been able to do all three at a high level, it becomes really problematic. So I think with this attempt, we are moving her into a Support role that allows you to sort of keep the core identity of the hero. The translocator is the same, the invisibility is the same, the ability lock still exists on the EMP, it’s less frequent, but it is still there, but if you move her into a Support role, she doesn’t need to do damage, she doesn’t need to be able to quickly execute oppositions. If you get to look at the abilities, you can heal your allies while still doing the things that make Sombra great. You heal your allies, you’re allowed to move around the battlefield invisibly, and then sort of interact with the opposition and your allies at the same time. So we’re really confident, and really happy with the way that the Support change came through.”

The problem is, Sombra’s reworks have rarely, if ever, felt like they were in response to the concerns of players who actually pick her in the Hero Select screen. Her Damage kit has been satisfying to play both because playing a sneaky, stealth-based hero capable of sabotaging enemies during a hectic firefight is cool and unlike playing anyone else on the roster, but also because her hacking abilities require a great deal of game sense to utilize well. Sombra’s hack ability has gone through multiple iterations, ranging from long-lasting hacks that could take down a shield user’s barrier long enough for your team to open fire, to a short, second-long off switch that, when utilized at the right time, could save your allies from a fight-ending Ultimate. Hacking a Sigma out of his Ult as he flies through the air exposed? Sublime. Shutting down a Cassidy’s High Noon as he’s about to unleash a barrage of headshots from high ground? Divine. Clipping Moira’s wings as she starts floating around and firing a beam of endless healing and damage around the battlefield? That’s what playing Sombra is all about. She’s sneaky, she’s deadly, and in the right hands, she can disrupt a game-changing play. 

However, Sombra, by doing exactly what she was designed to do as a saboteur character, has become a menace to the community. When the game instituted Hero Bans last year, Sombra was, far and away, the most banned hero, especially in lower ranks. Despite a number of what I would argue are flat nerfs to her utility, some Overwatch fans don’t know how to handle an invisible hero who can turn off their cooldowns, and rather than people getting good (just turn around when you hear her?), Blizzard has repeatedly altered her in service to people who seem steadfast in not learning how to counter her. As a Sombra player, I’ve met my match plenty of times, whether that be because of my poor positioning or because my opponents actually had the game sense to react when they heard me hacking them from behind.

The divide in reaction to Sombra turning into a Support character, no longer able to freely hack enemies and instead only having access to that utility when she casts her EMP Ultimate, feels pretty telling about who Blizzard made these changes for. Sombra became infamous for her troublemaking because that was what she was always designed to do. When she debuted at Blizzcon 2016, she did so by “hacking” into the event’s press conference and making an incredible entrance through her still-excellent intro cinematic. Voice actor Carolina Ravassa’s cocky delivery of Sombra’s “I thought this was supposed to be the most advanced security system on the planet,” a line which acted as her introduction to the Overwatch community, has become an iconic soundbite in and out of the fandom, and now, she can’t even hack into her enemies’ systems in battle.

Sombra’s Support kit has some interesting elements. Her new Cyberspace ability, which creates a small area of effect that heals allies and weakens the damage and healing output of enemies, is an interesting, bespoke mechanic that at least makes it feel like Sombra is still keeping a little bit of that saboteur spirit, but the fundamental role Sombra has occupied for 10 years is going away. Balancing a hero shooter means taking into account both how fun something is to play as and how fun it is to play against, but it feels like the latter has taken precedence for Sombra for years now. And I guess the detractors won. We’ll see if I can jive with this new Support Sombra when she makes the jump in Season 5, arriving in October.