Here’s what to expect in the upcoming reworks for Sombra and Roadhog.
Overwatch 2's lead hero designer, Alec Dawson, stepped in for game director Aaron Keller to share upcoming plans for the Sombra and Roadhog reworks. The informative post also went into the philosophy behind some balance changes.
Overwatch 2 will rework Sombra and Roadhog
Sombra's rework will arrive at the beginning of Overwatch 2 Season 7. A few goals of this rework include making her "more committal when engaging" and increasing the "active feel throughout her kit" while still upholding her hero identity and playstyle.
- Make Sombra more committal when engaging
- Increase the active feel throughout her kit
- Uphold her current hacker identity and playstyle
As for Roadhog, the post noted that the finishing touches will arrive in Season 7's mid-season patch. The goals for this rework include increasing Roadhog's ability to "protect his team and claim space," maintaining his identity and playstyle, and increasing his effectiveness beyond his one-shot potential.
- Increase his ability to protect his team and claim space
- Maintain his overall identity and playstyle
- Move some of his power around so that his effectiveness isn’t so tied to his one-shot potential
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Overwatch 2, hero launches, and balance
According to the post, the Illari's launch was all about being on the "safe side of strong." The Overwatch 2 team learned that impactful releases can change hero viability and create new team compositions.
"Making a new hero feel impactful on launch is challenging because we are asking you to choose between that hero and their overall potential versus picking the heroes that you may have hundreds or thousands of hours on," Dawson wrote.
"Players like to try new things, but players also like to win. To mitigate this friction, while you are learning the nuances of a hero, we generally will continue to aim for the “safe side of strong” with our hero releases and then tune them where necessary," he added.
In terms of balance changes, the post detailed the goal of avoiding number tweaks such as the ones players saw with Soldier: 76. Dawson also described a layering approach to balance. For example, Zarya players were incentivized to use bubbles on her teammates.
"While this strategy comes up against our overall complexity goals, layering allows us to have individual changes that work synergistically together without needing to have any particularly extreme individual changes," Dawson explained. This approach allows for flexibility in achieving desired outcomes, enabling the easy removal of smaller adjustments.
"For Zarya, we are going to be pulling back on the size of the ally bubble," he added.
That's all for now. Stay tuned on esports.gg for more Overwatch 2 news and updates.
