Blizzard is making enormous changes to the ever-divisive Sombra in Overwatch Season 5, grabbing her from the DPS category and transforming her into a support hero instead, as game director Aaron Keller admits that she’s been considered “anti-fun” for some time now.
Sombra was added to Overwatch all the way back in 2016, and for 10 years she’s been one of the most frustrating heroes to face. Between her hacking abilities that prevent enemies from using their skills, the fact that she can turn invisible, teleport out of harm’s way, and generally cause chaos from a comfortable distance – away from her team, at that – it’s fair to say that she’s not everyone’s favorite.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ during an interview at Blizzcon, Keller admits that for anyone who’s been keeping up with Overwatch, “it’s probably apparent that we’ve had issues with Sombra for a while.” Poor Sombra ends up sounding like an unloved child the way Keller describes her though – even if he’s right on the money with what players have found frustrating, you can’t help but feel a bit bad for her when even her own creators are calling her unfun. But I suppose if the shoe fits…
“We’ve tried multiple reworks on her, and they’re all kind of centered around some of the same issues,” he explains. “You know, like she can be described as unfun to play against, or her mechanics are anti-fun. She takes away buttons, or agency from players. The way that she can escape, I think, a lot of times can be frustrating to play against, and the way that she’s sort of popping in and out or invisible for large portions of the match can be frustrating too. And it’s not that any one of these things is a problem in and of itself, but when you start getting a lot of these sharp mechanics all in one character, it really exacerbates the problem.”
Keller acknowledges that the frustration isn’t just limited to the team facing Sombra, but also anyone siding with her. After all, if you’re trying your hardest to push a payload and one of your allies is nowhere in sight, it can feel like they’re not being a proper team player.
“As Sombra is doing her Sombra things, even if she’s doing them well, sometimes your team might not realize it. She’s just not there enough, and you get that with some other heroes in the roster, but never to the degree with a Sombra,” Keller notes. “You know, like Tracer can disappear for a while, Wrecking Ball can disappear for a while, but they typically come back. Sombra will come back when she does her ult, you know, that’s the moment you kind of see it.”
This brings us to her latest rework, which will certainly offer the biggest changes to the hero we’ve seen so far. Keller tells us that the devs have tried to solve Sombra’s issues “in a lot of different ways because our goal is for her to keep her identity,” so it doesn’t sound like she’s going to be a complete shadow of her former self, though.
“We do want you to be able to do a lot of those same things with Sombra, and I think by moving her over to support, we’re able to still allow her to do a lot of that,” he continues. “It’s just for a much more limited amount of time.
“So, as you put heals on your team, it does give you that opportunity now to go stealth, hit the back line for a bit, do the Sombra things that you’re used to doing. But you have a limited duration to do it before you need to get back to your team, start supporting them with heals again, hopefully, for them to be happy with you as a teammate again.”
As an Overwatch support main, I’m personally really excited to see what Blizzard does with Sombra next season – she was always conceptually one of my favorites on the roster, but I was never able to click with her (and felt maybe that was for the best if I was just going to annoy everyone around me). Blizzard is also making more changes to Roadhog which we’ll see at the same time, alongside the introduction of new hero Doctrine.