Sombra’s rework in Overwatch 2 proves she’s just impossible to balance

Overwatch 2 Season 13 introduces yet another major rework to DPS Hero Sombra that makes her much tougher to use and proves that she’s (sadly) impossible to balance properly.

Balancing Heroes is arguably the most thankless task that Blizzard faces in Overwatch 2. For every small tweak, there are thousands of players asking why they butchered their precious main, while others call for even bigger changes.

Nowhere is this clearer than with Sombra, one of the most unique and controversial characters in the OW roster. The DPS Hero has become a divisive figure in the community due to abilities like Stealth, which turns her invisible, and Hack, which stops the target from using their own skills temporarily.

In the hands of a skilled player, she can absolutely terrorize a team’s backline. Appearing from nowhere to melt your Support’s health bar before using Translocate to vanish into thin air before they know what’s hit them.

However, with the Season 13 update, Sombra has been made more difficult to use than ever before. Her Stealth has been tied to her Translocate ability, which has also been given a longer cooldown, meaning she’ll spend less time invisible and is much more vulnerable to counters.

Blizzard

As expected, this has been met with a pretty mixed reaction. There are those rejoicing about the change who want the character to literally disappear from the meta, while Sombra mains fear that this rework will completely “kill” their favorite Hero and make her unusable.

This isn’t the first time that she’s received a major overhaul, either. In September 2023, she was reworked to move Stealth to a passive and remove Opportunist, which was brought back just over a year later.

All of this goes to show that Sombra and characters like her are nearly impossible to get right, as the devs themselves admitted in a Reddit Q&A. Abilities like invisibility and teleporting are inherently frustrating to play against, so if you make them too powerful, anyone who isn’t playing as that character will be desperate to see them gone.

I know I’ve spent more than a few matches cursing both Sombra and Tracer’s names as they pick off my lonely Zenyatta after suddenly appearing behind him. As someone without the patience (or skill) to play as that kind of character, the idea of them being nerfed into the ground does admittedly come as a bit of a relief.

Blizzard

However, at the same time, I acknowledge they have an important role to play in the flow of Overwatch matches. Heroes like Sombra force you to stay on your toes and punish teams with tunnel vision that want to sit and deal damage from afar.

But where is the sweet spot? This latest nerf is likely to force the popular DPS out of the meta completely, but another buff in the opposite direction could see her dominating matches like she was before.

The only surefire way to solve the issue is with a complete overhaul of her kit, one that introduces new abilities that are less polarizing to begin with. But then you run the risk of losing the identity of one of Overwatch’s most distinct characters, which players have invested hundreds of hours into mastering.

It’s a tricky situation without a one-size-fits-all solution, but one thing is almost certain — this won’t be the last time that Sombra is given a makeover.