Is it time for yet another Sombra rework?

Sombra has long been one of Overwatch’s most divisive heroes, beloved by stealth enthusiasts but despised by those who find her gameplay frustrating. Since her 2016 debut, she has undergone multiple reworks, yet she remains a balancing nightmare. 

In Overwatch 2, her latest kit adjustments made her stronger but also more polarising, leaving behind her utility and moving into an assassin archetype. Her near-permanent ban status in competitive shows that the community is done with her. So the question arises: does Sombra need another rework? 

Arriving in Overwatch on November 15, 2016, Sombra’s introduction was unlike any other hero’s. Blizzard teased her with cryptic ARG puzzles, including hidden skybox messages on Dorado and encrypted messages, before her grand reveal at BlizzCon 2016 with the Infiltration cinematic. Yet, despite the hype, her launch was rough. 

Her first iteration had an on-demand stealth called Thermoptic Camo that lasted six seconds and allowed her to contest objectives. Her signature Hack also lasted six seconds on a six-second cooldown, meaning she could keep a target permanently silenced.  

As a utility-based disruptor, she struggled with clunky mechanics, low damage, and an overreliance on teamwork. Even in pro play, her debut was underwhelming. Esca of Lunatic-Hai famously tried her in competition, only to confirm she was, at the time, a liability.

Early on, Sombra found niche use on 2CP (Assault) maps, where players exploited her Hack for fast EMP charge on maps like Anubis’ second point. Blizzard removed that interaction on February 2018.  To compensate, they tightened her weapon spread, reducing the cast time on Hack, and buffed her Opportunist passive so she can see enemy health bars below full.

Then, in July 2018, she received a major buff: Stealth and Translocator became infinite, allowing her to lurk unseen indefinitely. Developers justified this as giving her time to pick and choose engagements, but this was the start of her problematic feast-or-famine design.

Despite her rocky start, Sombra carved out a place in pro play. Rascal (Kongdoo Panthera) was the first to showcase how effective she can be against tank-heavy team compositions. Shanghai Dragons swept the Overwatch League 2021 with their variation of GOATs comp, earning Sombra a championship skin for LIP’s masterclass performance.

Element Mystic pioneered “Hackfist” solely on the skill of SP9RK1E’s Doomfist and Doha’s Sombra to win in Contenders Korea. Los Angeles Valiant would run a triple DPS comp that includes Sombra to break the Vancouver Titans’ 19 win streak. Sombra was the most influential hero in Stage 3 of the 2019 Overwatch League, so pros embraced her, yet ladder players rarely did.

Sombra received another rework on Overwatch 2’s beta in April 2022. The important bits to these changes are further reducing the spread on her Machine Pistol, reducing the ability lockout on Hack from 5 seconds to 1 second, and allowing her to use Hack while invisible. 

She would also deal additional damage to hacked targets from her Opportunist passive. With these changes, Sombra has traded off her support and utility for lethality, making her a proper flanker who can find more solo kills. 

Blizzard would go on to make multiple rounds of tuning for Sombra, including buffing the Hack lockout to 1.75 seconds before settling on 1.5 seconds. A big nerf to Sombra removed her ability to rehack targets who are currently silenced, removing her ability to keep problematic heroes like Wrecking Ball and Doomfist in check. Other changes like increasing EMP’s ultimate cost and reducing the damage on Hacked targets saw her at her lowest.

On October 10, 2023, Sombra received yet another rework for Overwatch 2’s seventh season. Sombra’s Stealth was reworked into a passive, automatically cloaking her a few seconds out of combat. Opportunist was completely removed. Additionally, Translocator now teleports the player after throwing it, which means that players can no longer leave a device as a quick escape. 

Her biggest change was the introduction of Virus, a new ability that damages enemies over time, quicker on hacked targets. Her divisive changes officially killed her identity as an infiltrating, stealthy disruptor in favour of a hyper-mobile DPS akin to Tracer. The designer’s thoughts behind the rework were to make her more active and committed to the fight, hoping to make her fun to play and less frustrating to play against. 

These changes were so polarising that high-level players couldn’t agree whether it was a net buff or nerf. This was the era when Sombra was despised by the community since her invisibility and burst damage led her to spawn camping supports.

Sombra remained relatively untouched throughout the year, receiving small adjustments to Virus and EMP. Regardless, Blizzard wasn’t satisfied because she received her fourth rework a year later in October 2024 for Season 13. Stealth was removed as a passive and activates with a five-second duration after using Translocator. Opportunist was added back in, increasing her damage against hacked targets. Lastly, hacking doesn’t remove her from stealth anymore.

Giving players agency on when to use stealth was a step in the right direction, but tying it to her repositioning tool makes it unintuitive to use. Instead of translocating around the fight like a discount Tracer, players would rather wait to engage at the tail end of their invisibility. It’s also clunky to hack an enemy in stealth, then wait to decloak to send Virus.

Every Sombra rework brings heated discourse, where one side would continually say that she’s fine and players should adapt, while some say she’s infuriating to go against, no matter how weak she becomes. Former Overwatch director, Jeff Kaplan, gave his thoughts on Sombra long ago, saying that the community and design team’s vision on Sombra isn’t aligned. 

They believed that “Sombra is a backline disruptor, not a vicious assassin”. Her unique identity as an infiltrator who was the core of setting up plays is replaced with the kit of a bursty flanker. But should preserving hero identity matter when the original design is flawed? Sombra has been the hot target of the newly introduced hero bans, and players will rarely see her in competitive play because of it.

The Overwatch 2 team does its best work when it’s allowed to design from the ground up, like with Orisa and Doomfist’s rework. Sombra needs the same drastic treatment if they want to see her in play again. Yes, Sombra needs another rework, one that doesn’t focus on tuning or rearranging her abilities, but impactful changes that target her pain points.

Sombra is inherently annoying to play against; that’s the role of a disruptor after all. But what makes her problematic when heroes like Tracer do the same job? Her kit is comprised of traditionally frustrating mechanics in competitive multiplayer games, all packaged in one hero.

Her stealth, quick escape, ability lockout, and burst damage all work in tandem to play the game on her favourable terms, which makes every engagement against her feel like a downhill battle. Virus is a mistake that nobody asked for in the first place. 

Putting most of her damage into this ability means that she’ll commit to the easy kill when she lands it and disengage when she doesn’t. There’s also nothing she can do against targets who receive any amount of healing since it’s a damage-over-time effect.

Hack’s ability lockout is the biggest point of contention for the hero. Although Hack is interruptible, it’s not a skillshot and can be cast from stealth. But the extremely short ability lockout time is almost irrelevant and only good for interrupting channelled abilities or amplifying Sombra’s combo. One potential rework to keep its potency as a disable while making it interactive for the enemy is to make it work like Silencer’s Last Word from Dota 2. 

Applying Hack doesn’t immediately lock out abilities, but starts a countdown that silences enemies after it ends or after they cast an ability. To make things more interesting, casting an ability while under this effect could damage them or apply another debuff. This change allows Sombra to have more power over Hack since it gives the enemies ample time to play around it, while still being advantageous for Sombra.

Another wild idea is reworking Sombra into a support, and Overwatch is no stranger to reworking kits for different roles. There have been glimpses of Sombra working as a support. It’s been experimented on with Mirrorwatch, where hacking allies increases their attack speed and overhealth, and with her White Hack perk, where hacking allies heals them over time. If Blizzard can’t find a sweet spot for Sombra in their nth rework for the character, then enabling her team as a support could be a better alternative.

Sombra remains a thorn in Blizzard’s side, where no matter what they do, a large part of the community is outraged. Sombra has garnered so much ill will throughout the years that there’s an almost impossible task of making the community perceive her as healthy and fair.

Overwatch 2’s design team is too caught up in preserving Sombra’s hero identity that they should first ask themselves why before drafting up a new rework. With hero bans, the community made it loud and clear how they feel about Sombra, and it’s up to Blizzard now to respond.