The Overwatch 2 devs have given Sombra a new buff and have used a new “rapid balance update” feature to roll it out.
Season 13 of Overwatch 2 has been a struggle for Sombra mains with the Talon DPS hero being largely nerfed with her latest rework that incorporates her invisibility mechanic into her Translocator.
As of the rework, the hero only enters invisibility after using her Translocator – an ability that previously served primarily as a disengage and escape tool.
The balance changes have been panned by the community, but Sombra haters have been enjoying the hacker hero’s fall given how annoyingly powerful her kit can be in the right hands.
On October 21, the devs decided to help Sombra players out with a small hotfix patch that reduced the cooldown on Translocator from seven seconds to six.
While this minor buff is unlikely to shift the meta in any meaningful way, the devs explained after the fact that this was done to test a new feature they’d been working on to make balance patches easier.
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A day after the patch, Lead Gameplay Engineer Daniel Razza provided some insights into the update and why it was so small, but teased that big things could be coming in the future.
We're testing some new Rapid Balance Update tech with yesterday's Sombra Translocator cooldown change, which is why it's a smaller set of changes compared to our usual balance updates. We'll be monitoring how this new tech performs and exploring how we can use it in the future.
— Daniel Razza (@DanielRazza1) October 22, 2024
“We’re testing some new Rapid Balance Update tech with yesterday’s Sombra Translocator cooldown change, which is why it’s a smaller set of changes compared to our usual balance updates,” he said.
“We’ll be monitoring how this new tech performs and exploring how we can use it in the future.”
This is good news for fans who want faster balance changes, especially when one hero is dominating the meta or other issues arise, like a character being far too weak.
Although Sombra remains quite the hot topic in the competitive ranked community for her recent changes, it’s clear that the devs have their eye on the controversial hacker hero and may be implementing more upgrades to her kit as time goes on using this new technology.