Overwatch 2’s new hero bans probably mean changes for Sombra, Zarya, and others

Blizzard Entertainment rolled out its hero ban feature for Overwatch 2 in April, and if you’ve been playing any competitive games during season 16, you’ve probably noticed that certain heroes (e.g., Sombra, Zarya, Symmetra, Ana, Mercy) are among the most consistently banned characters. Newly published data from Blizzard shows that to be the case, with some qualifications, and it seems the frequency of banning those heroes will ultimately have some consequences. Some heroes may get rebalanced or more substantially changed, the developer says, partly as a result of their consistent bans.

“Sombra leads the PC pack with an impressive 85% ban rate, followed by Zarya at 59% and Doomfist at 43%,” Blizzard said in a blog post. “On consoles, Sombra is banned even more, with a 93% rate. She’s followed by Zarya at 57% and Symmetra at 23%.”

Gavin Winter, a senior systems designer at Blizzard, says that the past month’s worth of hero ban data will be used “to help inform balance changes” in Overwatch 2. “Heroes that are more niche or map specific may need to become more generalized if they’re always banned where they perform well,” Winter said. “Heroes that are very unpopular might see more adjustments regardless of performance. Ultimately though, there aren’t any specific changes in the works based on this data yet, and Hero Ban data alone would never dictate how Heroes are balanced.”

Exactly what that means for characters like Zarya and Symmetra is obviously unclear, but if a character like Sombra is unavailable to play in 85% of competitive games of Overwatch 2 because players hate facing her, that’s a big problem. What’s the point of investing in a character if you can only play them competitively so rarely?

That said, minus some tie-breaking decision-making quirks in the hero ban system, Blizzard is “happy with how it works overall.” Winter said, “We believe the system is meeting most of its goals, and we’re excited to see how Hero Bans evolve over time, especially once we start releasing more data about our Hero win rates and pick rates in the future!”

Blizzard will give players more control over how matches play in season 17, due in late June, when it rolls out a new map-voting feature.