Overwatch 2 Season 7: The Rise of Darkness brings us the all-new Sombra rework and a commentary from Andre Abrahamian, of the Overwatch 2 Hero Design Team for their motivations and driving goals for the updated hacker.

Sombra Rework Abilities

Firstly, Opportunist has been removed. Her invisibility is now a passive that automatically activates when Sombra is not taking damage, dealing damage, or using abilities. Her Translocator now instantly teleports her. The Sombra rework introduces a skill shot into her kit: Virus, which deals damage over time to the hit target. For Hacked targets, Virus deals double impact damage and deals the damage over time at the faster rate. Her Machine Pistol, Hack, and EMP are all getting minor tweaks and tuning.

“Our goal is to allow Sombra to be more committed to the targets she engages with and have a more active feel to her kit, all the while maintaining her character identity and playstyle as the world’s greatest hacker.”

The Sombra rework goes live on Overwatch 2 Season 7: The Rise of Darkness, expected on October 10, 2023.

Machine Pistol – Primary

  • Damage increased from 7.5 to 8.
  • Minimum Spread reduced from 0.5 to 0.
  • Number of shots until max spread has been increased from 3 to 6 shots.
  • Reload time reduced from 1.4 seconds to 1.2 seconds.

Hack

  • Cast time reduced from 0.75 seconds to 0.65 seconds.
  • Now cancels Stealth when hacking an enemy hero.
  • Cooldown increased from 4 to 6 seconds.
  • Hack has a reduced cooldown of 3 seconds if Hack is interrupted or if a non-hero enemy is hacked.
  • The “Hacked” warning text will now only appear while you are silenced and not for the remainder duration of the hack debuff.

Opportunist

  • Removed.

Stealth – Passive

  • Ability reworked to be a passive. Sombra automatically becomes invisible after 3.5 seconds while not shooting, using a damaging ability, or receiving damage.
  • Stealth movement speed bonus reduced from 60% to 45%.
  • Fade Out duration into Stealth reduced from 0.375 seconds to 0.25 seconds.
  • Fade In duration from Stealth reduced from 0.5 seconds to 0.375 seconds.
  • Updated the UI messaging to the Sombra player when hacking Health Packs to “Revealed” instead of “Detected”. Now the message “Detected” is only used when an enemy player is in the detection radius.

Virus

  • This is a new ability assigned to Ability 1 by default.
  • Fire a projectile that damages an enemy over time. Damage is dealt faster on Hacked enemies.
  • Impact Damage: 10 (20 on hacked target).
  • Damage over time: 100 over 4 seconds (100 over 2 seconds on hacked target).

Translocator

  • Can no longer be manually activated. Translocator will now automatically teleport Sombra after 0.25 seconds from being thrown or when impacting the environment.
  • Reduces the Stealth passive cooldown after teleporting.
  • Projectile speed increased from 25 to 72.
  • Cooldown reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. Cooldown now begins after Sombra teleports to the location of the Transponder.
  • Projectile launch initial vertical offset removed.

EMP – Ultimate

  • Ultimate charge cost increased by 15%.
  • Health percent damage decreased from 40% to 30%

Overwatch Hero Designer on Sombra Rework: “Sombra did not have the correct building blocks.”

Apart from the detailed look at Sombra's all-new kit, a commentary from Andre Abrahamian from the Overwatch 2 Hero Design Team was also published by Blizzard.

“Each [Overwatch] hero should have clear strengths and weaknesses that can be tuned accordingly. A hero's impact on a match should be felt by you, your team, and the enemy team. That impact should be clear enough to inform counterplay so that enemies infer how to respond to a particular hero or their abilities,” said Abrahamian. “With these points in mind, we felt that Sombra did not have the correct building blocks for her long-term place in the game, and that is what started our latest approach to the rework.”

There were multiple key goals for the Sombra rework that drove the design team's decisions. The goals were to make Sombra commit more to the fight and increase the “active” feel to her kit, all while retaining her “Hacker” identity and play fantasy.

To keep the game balanced, Abrahamian and his team also had to make sure there were sufficient counterplay to Sombra. The first ability that took the hit was Translocator. “Due to the nature of Overwatch’s fast-paced gameplay, it’s not common to hunt for Sombra’s translocator as a form of counterplay. It's especially difficult to catch Sombra in Overwatch 2 due to the game-wide reduction to stun frequency. There were also common gameplay styles that leave the translocator in safe regions, such as near a health pack, and perform a rinse-and-repeat strategy of solo engaging enemies. While playing a lone wolf can sometimes be viable, we also want to still have moments of active cooperation with nearby allies.”

Her stealth mechanic also drew the eyes of the design team due to its difficulty in balancing in a hectic game like Overwatch. “We often discussed certain strengths around the stealth mechanic, such as the capability to Hack while using Stealth, to activate Stealth at any time the cooldown is available, and the infinite duration. We wanted to address each of these concerns during our iterations to see what we can learn from changing them.”

Hack has gone through many changes since Sombra's initial launch in late 2016. “We discussed this mechanic at great length since this was an opportunity to try new ideas and learn from them. Many different versions of hack were tried throughout the rework, and the most common discussion was about how hack could be used while invisible. We moved ahead with wanting to explore new hack debuff possibilities.”

These aspects of Sombra make her sound like an overtuned hero, but the design team did not want to be too hasty in lowering her numbers and silencing Sombra. “We didn't just want to nerf Sombra though. We wanted to make sure Sombra had more counterplay and could be even more engaging to use. This led to multiple iteration cycles of playtesting and reacting to internal feedback to find the best version of the Sombra rework that we are happy with. ”

Abrahamian discussed scrapped ideas for Sombra's rework, including an ability called “Cybernetic Wire” that deals damage in an arc, dealing bonus damage to enemies at low health. Cybernetic Wire was meant to help Sombra players secure and lock down kills, but felt too oppressive due to its AoE nature. This, however, led the team to develop her new skill shot ability, “Virus.”

This new ability felt more balanced, according to Abrahamian, as it gave enemies time to respond to the damage over time that it dealt. It also synergized well with Sombra's Machine Gun compared to Cybernetic Wire as the range was hard to perceive in first person for the scrapped ability. It incentivizes Sombra players to hack first before hitting them with Virus as this both makes the skill shot easier to hit and makes the DoT faster.

“Overall, we finished the rework with the changes you see starting in Season 7: a quick teleport version of Translocator for a more combinative and trackable Sombra, a passive stealth that gives enemies time to react to Sombra before she escapes, and the new Virus ability that gives Sombra more lethality. ”

Abrahamian closed off the Sombra rework with a positive outlook on the new kit:

“We hope this offers more insight into our development process behind hero reworks and our intentions for Sombra’s ability changes. These iterations are focused on making Sombra a more fun and exciting hero to play, and a less frustrating hero to fight against. We feel that this new version of Sombra will provide new combative playstyles and clearer experience for all players. We will continue to watch how Sombra performs going forward and will adjust balance when the time is right. As with all heroes in Overwatch, Sombra is very important to us, and we value the feedback of our amazing community. ”

The Sombra rework goes live on Overwatch 2 Season 7: The Rise of Darkness, expected on October 10, 2023.