Overwatch’s new season launched yesterday with a new hero and an underwhelming Soldier: 76 Mythic Skin. Now that players have had some time with Sierra, the new DPS character added to the roster this season, they’re finding that she’s pretty powerful , clogging up Damage queue times and also wrecking shop. Too powerful, maybe? That’s what fans are arguing about right now.
For context, a lot of Overwatch heroes come in hot with a lot of power and get tweaked over the course of a few patches. In some cases, like Lifeweaver or Anran, the character feels underpowered and needs buffs to make them more viable. In cases like Sierra, players argue that a hero is too strong and needs some kind of nerf.
Sometimes these balance debates feel like they’re the result of players not knowing how to counter a new character, but after playing a few matches against Sierra, I can see the argument. Her ultimate ability is called Trailblazer, and with it she sends a drone out in a straight line, dropping explosives as it flies above the battlefield. The explosives deal devastating damage and the cast time is so quick that there’s not really any time to dodge it once it’s out. There aren’t a ton of instant kill abilities in Overwatch, but when one does come along, it usually has some kind of tell that lets you react to it before you’re dead. Trailblazer is so quick that if Sierra catches you in a small corridor or chokepoint, it’s game over.
Sierra’s ult charge is also a concern, as its charge time is much lower than that of other damage heroes’ ults, requiring you to only gather 1800 points through damage output, which she can easily rack up thanks to one of her abilities allowing her to track an enemy and lock her shots on to them. For reference, several high-damage ultimates in Overwatch cost more than 2000 ultimate points to cast, such as Soldier: 76’s, Reaper’s, and Ashe’s. So not only is Sierra’s ult powerful, it’s relatively easy to set off multiple times in a match. However, Sierra’s enemy tracking isn’t that easy to pull off on its own. It first requires you to land a precise skill shot to track an enemy, then the gunfire that follows cannot hit headshots and is a projectile rather than a hitscan bullet, so it won’t hit enemies instantly and they have time to react.
I don’t see Sierra’s current build remaining intact for very long, as raising her ultimate cost on its own seems like a pretty substantial and easy fix. I’m curious to see if Blizzard does anything about the cast time because what is essentially a one-shot attack with very little signal to those on the other end is pretty crazy.
Overwatch’s second season will last until June, and is gradually introducing new story content as part of the game’s seasonal restructuring. This season has focused primarily on introducing Sierra, who is the daughter of the first “supersoldier” project that made Soldier: 76 and Reaper into the combatants they are today. Sierra joins Overwatch in search of answers about her mother, who went missing when she was a teenager.
