Much like the rest of the world, MGN is totally in the dark as to when Overwatch 2 will be dropping. However, with the increase in media coverage and information coming from Blizzard relating to the project, it’s safe to assume that we’re getting close to the announcement of a release date. However, even with a release date, it’s hard to see Blizzard fully committing and actually meeting this deadline considering the state of the company right now. But hey, stranger things have happened.
That aside, Blizzard has released details of how Sombra and Bastion will be reworked for the second title, and it appears that the changes to these two DPS heroes are pretty dramatic. The most obvious being that Sombra will genuinely be able to compete with the highest-tier damaging heroes in the game, and will be changing from a utility hero that can put out some damage, to a damage hero that also has some utility.
Sombra’s passive will now automatically give her a whopping 50% additional damage against targets that she’s hacked either through her ability or her ultimate. The footage from the recent Overwatch 2 showcase suggests that this change alone has made Sombra a top-tier damage-dealing force in the second game. Furthermore, her damage from each pistol shot has been reduced by one but has had the overall spread reduced by 20%.
Her ultimate ability EMP has overgone a damage-focused revamp also, with the ability now dealing a flat 40% of current HP damage as well as applying the effects of hacking to those hit. To balance this huge AoE damage, the developers have taken the ability’s effect of removing shields. Percentage-based damage is always really powerful, but will the removal of a second tank make this ability as potent as it seems on paper? We’ll have to wait and see, but with smaller health bars around, perhaps this ability isn’t as grotesquely powerful as it seems at first glance.
The castable hack ability itself has undergone some pretty dramatic changes as well. With the passive damage increase, you’re going to be able to apply those hacks much more liberally with the new 3-second cooldown. The effect of hacking will now also reveal the location of all hacked enemies to your entire team, even through walls, much like Sombra’s passive worked on low-health enemies in Overwatch 1. Wowsers.
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Been here all along…
To balance out this reduction in cooldown time, it won’t apply when used on a health-pack, and the duration of her health-pack hacks has been cut in half.
That’s not all, however, the list of Sombra’s power and potential grows even longer with the changes to her cloaking stealth ability. Sombra will have to keep her distance, with the detection radius increasing to 4 meters, but this is offset by a pretty huge buff: she will no longer lose her stealth when hacking. Yes, that’s right. Hacking will no longer break stealth.
Bastion has gone through quite a dramatic overhaul too. While the changes are not obviously better compared to his existing form as Sombra’s is, there is certainly a lot to like with many interesting and fun updates to his new kit. Although not listed, a key change is the fact that Bastion now has a hat, which makes his rework clearly the best of the bunch.
The one that is probably going to stick out the most, apart from his hat upgrade, is that Bastion no longer has the ability to self-heal in any of his forms. It’s being completely removed from his kit in Overwatch 2, so you’re going to have to rely on your healer buddies a lot more hereon in.
Moving to his recon form, the one that most Overwatch players will recognize as Bastion’s standing form, his weapon will no longer have weapon spread while shooting in this form. If you’ve aimed right, you’re hitting the target no matter how long you’ve held the button down. That’s a good buff for Bastion. The firing rate in this form is much slower now, however, having been reduced by a significant 50%.
The falloff range has increased though, and these changes make Bastion less of a spam-like hitscan, and moves towards rewarding patience and accuracy in recon form.
And now, Sentry form! Bastion can move! No longer is setting up the mini-gun going to make Bastion a sitting duck and projectile magnet, he can now just move away when things get too hot. This will have a cooldown, and less movement speed than in Recon form, but there will be movement nonetheless. Also, the Sentry form’s weapon will not require reloading in Overwatch 2, so you can fire away ’til everything is dead! Oh, and did I mention it’s getting a 40% damage boost? Yeah, Bastion’s going to bring the hurt.
Moving onto Bastion’s third and final form, his ultimate will no longer transform him into a tank, but into an artillery emplacement instead. Once activated, Bastion will latch himself onto the terrain and the player will designate three places on the map for Bastion to rain hell on.
And all that’s not even the fun part. The fun part of Bastion’s new kit comes in the form of his new active ability: Tactical Grenade. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s not some cookie-cutter generic FPS grenade. It’s a bouncy ball…OF DEATH! Its bounce mechanics work similarly to Hanzo’s now-dead Scatter Shot. Shoot off your grenade, wait for it to either stick it to an enemy or for the bouncing to end, and boom! Explodey goodness.
That just about wraps things up for our overview of the Sombra and Bastion reworks in Overwatch 2. Be sure to keep an eye out on MGN for more Overwatch 2 content.
If you have any suggestions or comments, we’d love to hear from you on the MGN.gg blog, our YouTube channel of course, the new MGN twitter @MGN_TV, and our Discord – links for all of which can be found within the description of the video overview.
Credits
| Program | Founding Writers |
| Author | Luke Cowling |
| YouTuber | Luke Cowling |
| Publisher | MGN |
| Game | Overwatch 2 |