How Good Are Ashe’s and Sombra’s Perks ACTUALLY?

With the release of Marvel Rivals shaking up the hero shooter genre, one thing has become immediately clear: Overwatch 2 finally has competition. Overwatch has been the ability-based hero shooter since it was crowned Game of the Year in 2016. While Overwatch 2 is by no means a bad game, unfortunately a lack of healthy competition has led to poor game decision making, with a distinct lack of innovation and creativity. Until now, that is.

With the beginning of Season 15, the largest gameplay update since launch is upon us, featuring the introduction of Hero Perks. In both quickplay and competitive modes, each hero has 4 unique perks - two minor and two major. As you damage, heal and secure eliminations, each hero will ‘level up’. At level 2, the hero can select one minor perk. At level 3, one of the two major perks can be selected. If switching heroes, the new hero starts at level one with no perks but does have faster experience gain to catch up to the pace of the match. With this change, many characters are likely to see resurgence, with these changes helping to cover weaknesses in their base kits, while helping to increase uptime of abilities, dealing more damage, or increasing survivability.

While it will take a while for these perks to settle in, including imminent balance patches in the future, I wanted to dive into how my Overwatch 2 mains Ashe and Sombra were impacted, detailing why I think these perks are either amazing, or leave something to be desired.

Ashe:

Ashe has always been a consistent choice for the Damage role, with a powerful aim down sights gun, decent safety with her coach gun launching herself and enemies away, and an incredible ultimate, B.O.B, who can deal significant damage and content objectives. Ashe’s perks may not give her anything particularly exciting, but they do significantly improve her weaknesses and help her use her ultimate more often.

Minor Perks:

Rapid Fire – Unscoped shots gain 30% increased attack speed but deal 15% less damage.

Sidewinder – Coach Gun pushes Ashe and enemies 20% farther.

The choice of minor perk depends on the opposing team’s composition and what playstyle you want to play. Are there lots of characters that can close the distance between themselves and Ashe? Then choose Sidewinder for additional safety by maintaining your distance. Want to get up close and personal? Choose Rapid Fire and gain additional attack speed, shooting down those tanky characters even faster. I see myself choosing Sidewinder more often, as it better compliments her best playstyle, sitting back and creating space by using your mid-to-long range. Both do have uses in whichever playstyle chosen though, making these perks great minor additions to her kit.

Major Perks:

Viper’s Sting – Hitting 2 consecutive scoped shots on a target deals 25 extra damage and reloads 2 ammo.

Airburst – Dynamite has a 40% increased detonation radius while airborne and refunds 3 ammo when thrown.

Viper’s Sting is an amazing perk as it covers Ashe’s biggest weakness; that her reload is slow and used frequently. Not only is 25 extra damage per consecutive shot hit great on an already powerful character. More importantly however, if Ashe can hit her shots (which is especially easy when firing on a tank), then she can have potentially infinite ammo.

Airburst initially doesn’t sound as good but incentivises good dynamite use and helps her build towards that all important B.O.B ultimate. If you manage to shoot Ashe’s dynamite before it automatically triggers, it will explode instantly, dealing damage over time. This is perfect for hitting multiple enemies at once, as it doesn’t give them a chance to leave the dynamite range. This perk gives dynamite a huge 40% range increase if triggered while in the air which makes those grouped up dynamite hits easier and more consistent, with the added benefit of gaining 3 extra bullets after each dynamite; for those times where you left your aim in the previous match.

Sombra:

Attempting to put my bias aside, Sombra is in a difficult spot right now. While her kit is much more dynamic for both teams than it used to be, it lacks the lethality needed to justify the recent changes to her survivability. With the power level of all heroes increasing, Sombra needed some perks to help her keep up and what she got…doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Minor Perks:

Viral Efficacy – Virus’ cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds when an enemy affected by Virus is eliminated.

CTRL ALT ESC – Teleporting with Translocator while at critical health initiates passive health regeneration.

Both perks sound great, with an option to deal more damage or increase survivability. Viral Efficacy allows you to use Sombra’s main damage-dealing ability sooner if someone dies while affected. Typically, Sombra will pick an isolated target, use virus, attack, then translocate away before she is dived upon by the rest of the team. Unfortunately, this perk does not really help Sombra in most situations, as by the time she kills her target, she almost always needs to leave.

CTRL ALT ESC allows Sombra to begin regenerating health as soon as translocator is used while at below 25% max health, typical for Sombra engagements. However, if she is translocating away, chances are she’s already safe, making this perk redundant. While it does allow you to stay around the fight a bit more, as the healing allows Sombra to forgo travelling to a nearby health pack, compared to other Minor Perks; it is very underwhelming.

Major Perks:

White Hat – Hack can be used on allies to restore 100 health over 2 seconds.

Stack Overflow – Hack’s silence duration is increased by 100%, but its range is decreased by 30%.

While I don’t think it is strong, White Hat is by far the most fun major perk introduced in this update. As of Season 15, Mercy heals 65 damage a second using her primary fire, which is only 15 more than Sombra can heal with White Hat. Sombra has always been a utility damage hero, so giving her a healing ability that incentivises her to stay with her team and heal when the supports are respawning or otherwise occupied is genuinely interesting. Critically however, it takes Sombra away from her engagement cycle, meaning she misses out on potentially defeating support heroes or dealing meaningful damage to tank or damage heroes. This hack can also be interrupted by damage, which is really an unnecessary element of this perk that should be removed. In general, this perk just feels like it doesn’t do quite enough to justify its place as a Major Perk.

Doubling Sombra’s silence duration with Stack Overflow is deadly. Currently, hack disables abilities from being used for 1 second, generally not long enough to kill an enemy character or similar. 2 seconds, however? That is a lot of time to secure an elimination with Sombra’s lethality. Unfortunately, a 30% range decrease is a significant trade-off. This makes cancelling hero ultimates like Moira and Sigma significantly harder, which is one of the best elements of Sombra’s kit. If Sombra was already a strong pick, I would understand this perk’s downside. But as a weak hero with a reputation for being annoying, this perk doesn’t hit the mark in bringing her in line with other characters’ strengths or reducing her ‘annoying’ characteristics.

UPDATE: As of the Midseason Patch, Sombra’s major perks have received some buffs, including an uninterruptible hack with White Hat, and halving the range reduction on Stack Overflow. These changes make her perks much more viable.

While there are certainly improvements to be made, the perk system, as well as the myriad of other changes announced for Season 16 and beyond, are a huge step in a positive direction. Giving players new content to look forward to and rewarding players that invest their time learning to play this extremely fun game not only ensures Overwatch 2’s continued survival, but also allows for positive community growth, something Overwatch 2 has lacked deeply for a long time.