Overwatch 2's Season 13 patch notes have covered a wide range of issues. There's changes to map layouts, the scoreboard, and, importantly, reworks for certain heroes who are either too strong or too weak. The last point is nothing new, but this time it looks like Sombra picked the short straw: Her reworks are pretty devastating.
"We are moving Stealth away from being a passive that activates on its own to instantly triggering every time you use Translocator," Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller says in a Director's Take. "It will now only stay active for five seconds after you translocate. This change moves away from allowing Sombra to take any position she wants but instead gives her a play loop that increases her lethality. Sombra is revealed briefly when she takes damage or uses her hack instead of losing the stealth entirely. Translocator also has a longer cooldown, so you will need to carefully plan how you attack your enemies or use the ability as an escape route."
But to replace Sombra's stealth passive, Blizzard is giving back the opportunist passive, which lets Sombra see targets who are critically injured through walls with additional weapon damage over time. "We’ve also reduced the Hack ability lockout to one second, which has been a frustrating part of her kit that opponents have had to deal with," Keller says. "We’ll be watching how you all adapt to these changes and what new strategies you deploy with this new play style."
The patch notes for Sombra's rework also go into more detail about the upcoming changes. The hack ability has taken a real kicking. Not only has the lockout effect duration been reduced to one second, but for BOB, it now only lasts for three seconds (which is down from 10 seconds). Sombra's translocator cooldown has been increased to seven seconds, and her ultimate cost has also been increased by 12%.
"This is a significant change to Sombra's playstyle in the hopes of making her more interactive for the opposing team and shifting some of her power from the utility of stealth and hack into increased lethality," one developer comments in the patch notes.
This isn't the end of the world for Sombra players, but this rework will take some getting used to, and in the meantime, it'll probably suck to play as her. It's also common for Blizzard devs to weaken a character after a rework because it's always easier to make them stronger in the next mid-season patch rather than have to work in a hotfix for a character that is far too strong at the beginning of the season. So while it certainly won't be any fun playing Sombra right now, it may get a bit better as Season 13 progresses.
