This past weekend the Overwatch League hosted its Grand Final match. As part of the event, not only did they give us our first look at a high-level match of Overwatch 2 on the brand new push mode, they also revealed the new reworks for Bastion and Sombra.

And while I hope for the best, I fear these changes will actually make these characters more annoying.

With Sombra and Bastion being two of the most hated characters from Overwatch 1, I expected them to make changes to these kits to make them less oppressive. But based on first impressions, the reworks for both characters kept the aspects of the characters that are must frustrating about them, while making things that were mostly fine even more annoying.

For Sombra, her new abilities include an 8-second long hack that will cancel enemies abilities for 1 second instead of the whole time, which is a little less frustrating than before. But now, for the 8-second duration of the hack, the target will be visible to enemies through walls, which sounds very annoying.

On top of that, she will have her hack more often (every 3 seconds) and she will be able to hack while remaining invisible now! As if that wasn't annoying enough, they buffed her ultimate, which will now do 40% damage to all targets, so it doesn't just cancel enemy ultimate and abilities, it now also will deal straight damage to their health pool and she does extra damage to hacked targets now.

Cool...

To me, all of this makes Sombra sound even more oppressive and frustrating to play against, not less. And since I already don't enjoy playing against a hero that can take away my abilities whenever she wants, I am not super stoked on this rework so far, since now she can do it while remaining invisible.

Bastion's rework is less offensive than Sombra's, I think, but I am still very skeptical about it. 

Starting off with the nerfs, Bastion can no long self-repair. This is a welcome change for those who felt like Bastion had too much self-sustain, though honestly I never felt like his self-repair was the big issue with him, so much as his insane damage output.

On the buff end of things, Bastion can no move in Sentry form.

Why?

The hero whose one weakness was that he isn't mobile is now going mobile, while keeping the same insane DPS capabilities he has always had. How is that more true to this character's design, or better for the game? I suppose this change is because he can no longer rely so heavily on tanks, but still, I don't want a stationary Bastion, much less a moving one!

Additionally, he gained a new sticky bomb ability that can also bounce off walls, as a boost to his utility, his recon mode gun is now completely hitscan, allowing him to hit shots from across the map like a sniper, and he has a new ultimate ability that drops 3 artillery strikes on the map based on where you chose to drop them, that appear to be one-hit kills for average DPS.

I get that Bastion isn't really viable at higher levels of the game right now, and with Overwatch 2 being more mobility-focused some rework was necessary, but it sounds like they took the already annoying turret form for Bastion, and without changing its deadliness, put it on wheels. 

Maybe I am wrong, and I hope I am. Overwatch 2 has time and balance reworks between now and the time it comes out. But for now, the changes to the two DPS I hate the most in the game are only making me hate them more.

I guess we'll have to wait and see though.