Overwatch game designer details how to counter Sigma

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Overwatch‘s associate game designer Joshua Noh has finally explained the perfect way to counter compositions around Sigma. The developer’s team has been hard at work to make sure the game’s newest hero is another great character to play with or against, Noh said in an interview with Polygon.

Sigma is an anchor tank that can help shield allies and push his team ahead with some good crowd control and damage abilities. His experimental barrier can help protect squishier targets from aerial projectiles and flanks while pushing an objective, while his Accretion ability has a big enough area-of-effect to lock down a prime target for the team to focus.

His ultimate is a gamechanger too—Sigma gains the ability to fly for a brief moment, lift enemies up in a targeted area, and slams them to the ground. It is a perfect tool used to disrupt a group of clustered enemies while also setting up combos with other heroes.

Now, how are you supposed to fight back against such a powerful new character? Noh says that you have to engage him in some close-quarter combat with heroes like Doomfist and Reaper. He doesn’t have a lot of movement in his kit except for his ultimate, so if a mobile close-range hero gets in his face, he can’t get away too easily.

“He doesn’t have a lot of defenses against beam-type weapons either, so like Zarya, Symmetra, and Winston all kind of bypass his damage blocking from Kinetic Grasp, and they’re high damage in close range,” Noh said.

It will be interesting to see how people play around Sigma, especially in the new 2-2-2 role lock compositions. The new hero could be released as early as the week of Monday, August 12, but only if Blizzard follows its usual release cycle for new heroes.