Hero Bans in Overwatch 2 Lead to Changes for Sombra, Zarya, and Others

Okay, so here’s the thing. Blizzard Entertainment dropped this hero ban feature for Overwatch 2 in April, right? And if you’ve been messing around in competitive play during season 16, you’ve probably noticed—well, who am I kidding—you definitely noticed, heroes like Sombra, Zarya, the usual suspects like Symmetra, Ana, Mercy, they keep getting the boot. Blizzard just released some data about this and yeah, turns out, everyone and their cat are banning these heroes. No surprise there. But what’s next, huh? Blizzard might tweak them or—wait, should I say “rebalance”? Nah, sounds too fancy. Anyway, they might change them up because of all this banning madness.

So check this out—Sombra’s sitting at a whopping 85% ban rate on PCs. Like, she’s not even getting a chance to show up! Zarya and Doomfist aren’t far behind either. But here’s the kicker: On consoles, Sombra’s even deeper in the ban bin at 93%. Wild, right? Zarya’s still there too and Symmetra’s knocking around at 23%. It’s a whole scene, really.

Now, Gavin Winter—he’s a senior systems designer or something at Blizzard. Cool title, huh? He says they’re gonna use this ban data to, you know, maybe change things up. Heroes being banned all the time might need to turn more general or something. Kind of like, if they work well on a specific map and always get banned, do we make them just kind of okay everywhere? I dunno, seems like a whole thing. But nothing’s set in stone yet. So, don’t hold your breath on those changes.

Anyway, what does this mean for heroes like Zarya and Symmetra? Honestly, who knows. But if you can’t even play Sombra in like, most of your games, why invest in her? It’s like buying a ticket to a concert and never seeing the band because they just don’t show up. Frustrating, right?

But, I guess Blizzard’s mostly okay with how this hero ban thing is going. Winter mentioned that aside from a few decision quirks (I think that means bugs, but who knows), they’re happy with it. They reckon it’s doing what they wanted, and they’re kinda pumped to see how this all shakes out. Oh, they’re gonna start releasing more data on Hero win rates and pick rates soon too. Yay, more numbers!

Moving forward to season 17, set to drop in June, they’re giving players more say with a new map-voting feature. Hopefully, it makes everyone a bit happier. Or not. We’ll see.