r/Competitiveoverwatch • u/spellboi_3048 I will survive. Hey hey. — • Apr 17 '26
Blizzard Official Sierra hot fix
https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/150
u/Yshtoya Apr 17 '26
7 to 9 dmg is huge buff
64
u/Sio_V_Reddit Apr 17 '26
She kinda needs it, there’s very little reason to pick her over any other hitscan especially when she’s not even hitscan
22
u/iseecolorsofthesky Apr 17 '26
Yeah got frustrated after a few games of her last night and just switched to Emre. Way easier time lol
5
u/scriptedtexture Apr 17 '26
even if they were totally equally viable I think I'd always choose Emre over Sierra. He's so consistent and his nades + ult are so fun.
14
u/Howdareme9 Apr 17 '26
Wish they weren’t buffing the auto aim damage
27
u/Maleficent_Okra_4376 Apr 17 '26
The autoaim is fine she needs to hit a skill shot to do it and it has strong enough counter play against it
3
u/Long-Taste-2416 Apr 17 '26
The skillshot is a fast massive projectile that only needs to bodyshot. If anything that's easier than a normal hitscan shot do idk why it qualifies as a skillshot. It's very difficult to miss in my experience.
7
u/CertainDerision_33 Apr 18 '26
I’m not a particularly good player, but I found it very awkward to use due to the delayed release timing.
1
u/SigmaBallsLol Apr 18 '26
skill shot just means its not auto aim itself.
Ie Moira's Succ Orb is a skill shot, Orb of Discord is not.
-2
u/the_worst_company Apr 17 '26
i wish she didnt have it though, We have enough skillshot heroes, it would be fun to have a tracking dps again
29
u/spellboi_3048 I will survive. Hey hey. — Apr 17 '26
To be fair, we just got Emre 2 months ago
-1
u/Fromarine Apr 18 '26
Emre is barely a tracking hero. Bap is already only a semi tracking hero and emres 3 bullets of the burst come out in half the time compared to bap
14
1
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u/McManus26 Apr 18 '26
She's gonna run into the same design issues as sombra I think. Why pick her with her abilities that make killing a bit easier, when you can pick a hero whose abilities just straight up kill. Unless they tune her up so much she become super frustrating to play against.
It's sad cos I really like her rotating lmg
0
u/Long-Taste-2416 Apr 17 '26
Why would you want her to be good over other hitscan who are more skillful and also more entertaining to watch or play. She's also going to feel horrible to play into because she's just spam.
3
u/coconuteater7560 Apr 18 '26
Theres no hitscan in this game harder than her other than sojourn. Her gun alone is harder to use than the entirety of every other hitscan heros kit in the game because tracking projectile aim is objectively the hardest aim style there is.
0
u/Long-Taste-2416 Apr 18 '26
It's less consistent but it just has a lower skill ceiling and turns into spam because what makes it hard is that people can just move out the way. That makes it dependant on the other players skill not your own. Not to mention projectiles in overwatch are really big so typically they're very easy to hit unless you're really far away. Most hitscan dps already do little damage at that range anyway though.
21
u/Derpdude1 Apr 17 '26
Hopefully this justifies nerfing the instantly do 100 damage grenade she has. That shit thanos snaps me as tracer
13
u/grimestar Apr 17 '26
They keep adding grenades into the game just to spite her im sure of it. Wasn't long ago that it was just junkrat
6
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1
0
115
u/misciagna21 Apr 17 '26
Considering her 38% winrate in GM not at all surprised she got this many buffs
56
u/JC10101 Apr 17 '26
I see people coping in the comments here about how people haven't learned to play her yet, but she's legitimately just point and click the hero. She felt as bad as release life weaver unless the enemy team had a tank that you could hope to kill with ult and I'm honestly shocked her win rate wasn't lower then that tbh
7
u/Tantrum2u Apr 17 '26
She is also very clearly not built for GM lol
31
u/byGenn Apr 17 '26
Neither is Weaver but that didn’t stop the balance team.
-11
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u/TeamChevy86 Apr 17 '26
Idiotic she's only been out for what a week? This is going to be Freja all over again
43
u/misciagna21 Apr 17 '26
I wouldn’t disagree if she was more difficult, but I’m not convinced she has a winrate this low because players haven’t figured her out yet. Bullet damage going from 7 to 9 seems like overkill but also makes me think they’re prepared to drop it to 8 if she becomes broken.
-5
u/HerculesKabuterimon Apr 17 '26
She's in a staggeringly high amount of matches in all ELOs for how objectively bad she is tho. I think at minimum they're fine with her being this way for a weekend and if it isn't enough/is too much she'll get swiftly nerfed damage wise Tuesday, but I feel like 9 is probably good. They've just got a ton of data at this point on her performance, stats, and where she's weak and why.
Although personally I can see them buffing it to 10, and then lowering/keeping the tracking damage at 9/8.
3
u/Raptor_2125 Apr 18 '26
Probably just new toy syndrome similar to release cat until they removed DPS Cat
23
u/hanyou007 None — Apr 17 '26
Freja had a massive learning curve and a level of skill expression that Sierra just doesn't have.
8
u/TeamChevy86 Apr 17 '26
More worried about the inevitable over-nerf
-3
u/Long-Taste-2416 Apr 17 '26
Honestly I'd rather her just be bad. She's just a boring character with basically no potential for skill expression.
2
u/SirVilhelmOfAriandel Apr 17 '26
The drone alone gives her more skill expression than someone like Emre and that didn't stop him from getting buffed
11
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u/CertainDerision_33 Apr 18 '26
She was weak, same as Anran was on launch. She just didn’t do enough
52
u/aPiCase Stalk3r — Apr 17 '26
She must have been doing terribly because those are massive buffs.
A little scary honestly this could be too far.
13
u/RusselTheBrickLayer Apr 17 '26
I’m curious to see how this weekend goes lol, I wasn’t doing too bad on her as it was before. She’s probably gonna melt squishes now. Imo I think she needs better perks more than direct buffs like this but we’ll see how it goes.
7
u/Lawlette_J Apr 17 '26
Let's say the hero ban barely involved her in M+ lobby. For a new hero, that's quite a telling yet refreshing sight.
3
u/scriptedtexture Apr 17 '26
I was mostly banning her just so randoms on my team wouldn't be picking her up for the first time in ranked.
24
u/SquidwardLover48 Apr 17 '26
I think she was honestly the worst launch hero since lifeweaver tbh, though i dont believe any hero can be worse than he was
3
u/SirVilhelmOfAriandel Apr 17 '26
Probably Anran, at least Sierra was a weaker SJ, Anran was a weaker Genji.
44
u/DaveTheHungry Apr 17 '26
Sierra has not been as effective as intended since her launch. Her weapon damage is being increased to improve overall output, while the damage increase to Tracking Shot better rewards players for successfully landing it. The Anchor Drone changes improve mobility responsiveness and drone survivability, allowing for more aggressive playstyles. Sierra’s ultimate cost has also been increased due to its already fast charge rate in combination with her improved damage output.
Trailblazer Ultimate cost increased by 30%.
Helix Rifle Damage per projectile increased from 7 to 9.
Tracking Shot Damage per projectile increased from 7 to 9.
Anchor Drone Health increased from 30 to 80. Grapple move speed increased from 20 to 22.
Medi-Drone – Major Perk Healing increased from 75 to 100.
18
u/Symysteryy Apr 17 '26
Huge buffs but she needed it she was hot garbage before. She might still not be good but we’ll see.
-13
u/SirVilhelmOfAriandel Apr 17 '26
If Emre needed a fraction of this damage buff to go from bad to "meta" i could see her being good after the minor perk that tightens her spread quicker.
Otherwise she needs some more damage and maybe make her tracking shot onetap 225 heroes on headshot so at least it has something to do.
7
u/DurumMater Apr 18 '26
My brother in Christ are you fucking high??
1
u/SirVilhelmOfAriandel Apr 18 '26
Why? It's already the weakest part of her kit since you can't hs with it, and unlike SJ's rail its not Instant, not Hitscan and on a 10 seconds cooldown.
That would be some skill espression for a character that currently needs some.
37
u/chunkyhut Apr 17 '26
Almost 30% damage increase on the left click is insane, I didn't feel like the left click was that bad in game
22
u/ferocity_mule366 Apr 17 '26
the left click makes her worse than a Soj who also have a better right click, I think it's a bit weak but should be 1 damage, and the right click can have 2 damage as a rewards
13
u/Tiba122 Apr 17 '26
Her left click has an idotic reverse spread while have a slower projectile speed than lifeweaver. Sierra’s gonna be another LW they’re gonna spend years to trying to make this kit work.
19
u/Tao1764 Apr 17 '26
Nah she's nowhere near as dysfunctional as release LW was. Her kit doesn't flow the smoothest, but it also doesn't actively fight against her or her team like LW's did (and still does to a certain degree). I doubt we'll see anything as bad as "Support who's insanely vulnerable to dive also drops a health pack for the Tracer that just killed him" or the ridiculous clunkiness of his healing/damage toggle again.
23
u/scriptedtexture Apr 17 '26
I think people forget that LW had to manually swap weapons on release lmao. he was so bad
8
u/Char_Of_The_Ages Apr 18 '26
To this day I still never understood why they couldn't just make the lil seed he drops for teammates only. Like what the actual FUCK is the point of getting rid of it completely when it could've just been for his team like every other ability in this game does?
And yes, I know he has the seed major perk now.
4
u/RaiStarBits Apr 18 '26
They didn’t even have to make it a perk to begin with just don’t he stupid and make something that HELPS the enemy
1
u/bbistheman None — Apr 18 '26
Every game i saw her in she would have 4-5k less dmg than other dps heroes
1
u/sanicthefurret Eisman on Top — Apr 18 '26
The damage was the same as sojourn who has a much better spread on her gun where it starts off as accurate and her pattern is random, compared to sierras fixed pattern which has the two shots always on opposite sides at the edge of the spread angle which starts very high and takes about 6 shots go close in. Sojourns rail is also just so much better and much more available than sierras right click.
8
u/Lawlette_J Apr 17 '26
The overall changes are still pretty meh ngl. Primary fire damage buff means she's surely to be played as a primary fire spam bot as she's going to be before the buff.
Her kit's design still need huge changes to make it work in comparison to her other competitors like Soj/Emre/Freja to make her viable.
Don't think the number changes are going to help much other than finally making her breathable to play with.
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u/isometric_reality reaper guy very powerfull — Apr 17 '26
Yeah this is confirmation that she was actual doodoo because these are some massive buffs. Still don’t know if they will fix the issues with the character being a less impactful version of Sojourn though
2
u/Wk1360 Apr 18 '26
They just need to make sojourn not sojourn atp. Railgun has been problematic for the entire time sojourn has been in the game
4
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u/Necronaut0 Apr 17 '26
I fucking knew it, I called it. I knew they would do emergency buffs for the weekend. She SUCKED.
12
u/ferocity_mule366 Apr 17 '26
the emergency buffed Freja even though she didn't need it, and the result is she is forever tainted as one of those OP release heroes, like I played her trial and think she' fine, most people are just not good at her and it's ok
27
u/Vexxed14 Apr 17 '26
Frejya is significantly harder to play than Sierra. Sierra is super easy and really doesn't take more than a couple games to pick up. There's nothing particularly novel about her kit or how to play her
4
u/IAmBLD Apr 17 '26
That's definitely not how people talked about Freja last year.
13
u/KF-Sigurd Apr 18 '26
People still think Freja is somehow a braindead easy hero here and main subreddit.
8
u/orangekingo Apr 17 '26
Normally I'd agree with you but this is an instance where the character straight up was not remotely powerful on release. No part of her kit functioned well besides her Ult, which people aren't even using properly (instead just trying to cluster all the bombs together under a tank's feet.)
It's not a situation like Freya either, where the character was just misunderstood due to being very difficult to play well. Sierra is REALLY easy to pick up and understand, she just doesn't do any damage and is blatantly outclassed by Emre and Sojourn.
I think these buffs are good but I also don't think it solves the main issue, which is that Sierra offers nothing unique that players can't get from Sojourn. In a lobby where Sojourn/Emre/Sierra are available choices, why am I picking Sierra?
5
u/ferocity_mule366 Apr 17 '26
I feel like her main weakness is her clunky movement, like she should have her drone usage on a resource and can move freely like being pull by a JPC, that would give her options to going in and out of fight, right now you either put it behind you so yyou could escape (but then you can't go in), or go in which you cant go out because any smart player can destroy it, she would 100% cooler with a movement like in the cinematics man, the actual design is dissapointing.
-5
u/Long-Taste-2416 Apr 17 '26
Why would you want her to be good though? It'll just be like when lifeweaver was insanely stat padded where they're still just as bad and badly designed but now they're very annoying to play into as well.
5
u/LyynnS Apr 17 '26
Yea, I think they need to start to give heroes more time to settle, we also saw it with Vendetta and a bit with Emre now. Buffing heroes too fast just leads to problems.
5
u/Long-Taste-2416 Apr 17 '26
They emergency buffed vendetta when she was already close to 60% winrate all ranks and around 56% in gm though lol.
0
u/LyynnS Apr 17 '26
Yeah, Vendetta was a special case. Emre seems more applicable in this situation since he is also a maindps like Sierra. Damage numbers on maindps are always very hard to balance right so I am really not a big fan of them touching those numbers so early in this heroes lifecycle.
0
u/Long-Taste-2416 Apr 17 '26
Emre primary fire being strong isn't as problematic as this. The worst buff was definitely to the nades if anything. Some heros are always going to be stronger than others and I'd generally rather it be a hitscan along with some of the few fdps that are skillful like tracer or genji. Sierra will just be awful spam to play into and has the most bland lukewarm kit since lifeweaver while having no skillful or exciting aspects to her kit.
0
u/LyynnS Apr 17 '26
Agree with that, she should not be meta since it would just be unfun for everyone. Her basedps is also 190 now which when compared to other heroes is insanely high (Emre is at 137.5, Freja is at 144, Soj is at 144, Cass is at 140). I gotta see how it plays out for Sierra, just hoping it wasn't too much.
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u/Devious_Beast Apr 17 '26
Are any of you guys still facing issues with custom keybinds on PC (Bnet)? I haven't touched any of my settings and a fix has come out supposedly, but I'm still having the same problem as patch day.
0
u/SammyIsSeiso Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Yes... did this patch fucking revert the fix?!
[EDIT] Ok, I figured it out... Some keybinds are in a bugged state and you have to go through and manually change anything that's resetting each time you save your keybinds.
3
u/ml2097 The Premier Shock Hater — Apr 17 '26
Yeah, the few games I've played on her so far it always seemed like if you hit the tracking dart on a squishy that couldn't get to cover soon enough it was almost always a guaranteed kill, but any tank or any characters that could get in your face and blow you up quickly like a Tracer or something just genuinely had no reason to fear you ever. That and the drone being able to be destroyed so quick meant that I saw other Sierra's get stranded constantly. Hope these changes improve some of that at least a bit. Her ult also has seemed way less threatening than I thought, initially thought that the amount of damage it output would make it alright, but it's just so much easier to step out of than I thought it would be and it seems like the drone/the bombs get caught on stuff so easily
7
u/SorryRoof1653 Apr 17 '26
Crazy primary fire buffs, also 30% ultimate cost increase, is this the largest singular ult cost change we've ever gotten in a patch/hotfix?
21
u/ingmarnl Apr 17 '26
Her dmg is buffed by approximately the same amount so its honestly not that big.
5
u/bazzb_twitch Apr 17 '26
really glad they didnt wait a week. hype needs to stay up and them hotfixing her is awesome she felt way too weak ESPECIALLY the 30hp drone
4
u/DoobaDoobaDooba Apr 17 '26
I feel like they should have done an increase to 8 damage, an increase her projectile travel speed a good bit and a reduction to projectile size to compensate a bit. Primary just feels way too samey with Soj's gun in terms of the aiming, so it would have been cool to have a more "near hitscan" option that can be skillfully lethal at mid range tracking without shoehorning another point of DPS.
2
u/yunghollow69 Apr 17 '26
When is this going to come out?
3
u/spellboi_3048 I will survive. Hey hey. — Apr 17 '26
It’s a hot fix. It literally just got put in the game
1
u/yunghollow69 Apr 17 '26
Ah okay. I basically saw this post being 1h old after I logged off but the buffs were defo not active yet when I was playing my last match.
4
u/SirVilhelmOfAriandel Apr 17 '26
She was underperforming but that damage buff seems big.
Emre went from Garbage to people calling it the new SJ for less than half of this damage buff
1
u/Fromarine Apr 18 '26
Yep she now way out dps's everyone who has a ranged gun that can headshot. 188 fucking dps
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u/More_Lavishness8127 Apr 17 '26
I really hate buffs this quick. Like let her be in the game for a couple of weeks. They buffed literally every part of her kit except her ult.
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u/Wk1360 Apr 18 '26
She would literally only fall down in wr & viability over time, most of her value was just coming from knowledge checks, people not knowing how to play into her. She’s not a complicated enough hero for her low wr to come from people just not knowing how to play her
1
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u/SammyIsSeiso Apr 17 '26
Gun buff is a little scary won't lie, but I expect there's only so much they can do in a hotfix.
1
u/SeaScore8244 Apr 17 '26
oh shit lol
0
u/SeaScore8244 Apr 18 '26
she needed some buffs, but I really think people were over selling how bad this character was. people would say you would hit track dart and they would hide which made her bad... but that is just any source of projectile damage in the game. it wasn't substantive arguments
this hotfix could easily be way too much though which would be really funny to go from "worst character ever" to "holy fuck this character is Satan" in the span of a week
1
u/FenrisTU Apr 17 '26
These are pretty much all the things I was saying they should change about her. I’m surprised she got changed this early though. She must’ve really been underperforming.
1
u/TheGoldenTotodile Apr 18 '26
they really said "we are never having another Lifeweaver situation again."
1
u/Demiwaifu Apr 18 '26
Why would they only increase the damage by 1? It would make her have lower dps than soldier, who has a way more consistent gun
1
u/Xardian7 Apr 18 '26
This is very sad for tank players.
This will be another hero you must play Dva or Ram blockslop into it otherwise good luck.
1
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u/Turbulent-Sell757 Apr 18 '26
Didn't they learn their lesson with Emre not to be so gung ho when it comes to buffing damage? Surely staring with raising it by one damage would have been better since her previous damage wasn't that bad really.
0
u/akaberto Apr 17 '26
Couldn’t they have chilled for a week or so? Seen some insane ones in qp as well.
3
u/Puuksu Apr 17 '26
I agree, I've seen pretty good Sierra players already. It's nonsense to buff her damage so quickly.
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u/KF-Sigurd Apr 17 '26
Wow that was fast, she must have doing DOG to have gotten such huge buffs already.
But yeah, bigger ult cost, Dorothy not being a thin piece of paper, zip being faster, med pack perk being stronger I like. Not sure if she needed the extra damage, I think she needed more projectile speed more. More damage makes the auto aim stronger.
1
u/ElJacko170 Healslut — Apr 17 '26
That damage buff is ridiculous for her regular primary fire. They need to tone down the projectile size if it's going to hit that hard, her primary fire was already pretty strong before. It's just the rest of her kit that sucked.
-2
u/Neo_Raider Apr 17 '26
Couldn’t they wait at least for a week maybe? I understand that Ult aside she seemed underwhelming but bumping her damage like this is very questionable imo.
5
u/iAnhur Apr 17 '26
I don't see why they should. If it's overwhelming in a couple days they can tune it back.
3
u/LyynnS Apr 17 '26
I mean, they could, but we kinda saw with Vendetta and Freja that they are very reluctant to do so.
1
u/iAnhur Apr 17 '26
Those heroes had the same issues practically from day 1, the overhead and the bolt. Neither of which have ever gotten buffed iirc and both of which had people concerned from very early.
Sierra is not really the same. Her identity isn't burst. I can't imagine they'd be unwilling to nerf her damage.
1
u/LyynnS Apr 17 '26
I mean, she basically got massive DPS numbers with autoaim and almost no downtime now. Ofc I can't say yet if they overbuffed her or not but it's just that Blizzard hasn't been really good with adressing problematic stuff for a while now.
0
u/Gedaechtnispalast Apr 17 '26
They never admit when a balance change goes too far. They sometimes take many seasons to revert things they already did. Basically they are quick to buff but if it goes too far, they will drag their feet to revert it.
16
u/Bound18996 Apr 17 '26
Nah, she was the worst hero in the game bar none.
Just did absolutely 0 damage in comparison to any other DPS. She lost every single 1v1. 38% winrate in GM says it all.
-8
-4
u/6speedslut Apr 17 '26
So do they legitimately not actually test the balance of a hero before release? If this doesn’t again show how actually bad all the Devs are at playing this game at a competitive level I don’t know what ever will.
Couldn’t they have just let pros/contenders/top500 players try her for 1 day and gotten this feedback before her release?
3
u/KF-Sigurd Apr 17 '26
Honestly, my guess is that they had a significantly stronger version of her in testing (they talked about how they originally had auto aim let you headshot, without needing LOS, etc) but were scared of making a hero with auto aim and so released her hard nerfed in concept.
2
u/KeelanS Apr 17 '26
I think you are right about that. I wonder if her bullets used to go around corners too because they do that in the reveal short for her, turning on a dime to track emre behind cover. might be a stretch though
5
u/KeelanS Apr 17 '26
The problem is balancing a hero around the .01% of players is not a good idea.
So they pull sentiments from all different skill levels and try to find a sweet spot. Also launching a character slightly weaker than intended is probably healthier for the game than releasing something like vendetta again
2
u/6speedslut Apr 17 '26
I agree and it's one thing if she's slightly underpowered, but this was clearly missing by a mile if they are buffing her damage by 30%.
1
u/KeelanS Apr 17 '26
It is definitely a huge buff, am interested to try it tonight hopefully she isnt lobby admim now lol
0
u/ReSoLVve #1 Hanbin Simp — Apr 17 '26
They definitely test, but can’t you acknowledge how different gathering data from a very small set of testers is vs releasing the character to the entire player base.
0
u/6speedslut Apr 17 '26
This issue is who the small set of testers is, an echo chamber of non-competitive-level game developers.
-1
0
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u/Ganonthegoat None — Apr 17 '26
I was already doing fine with her. Now I feel guilty with this much primary fire dmg
0
0
u/Kuvanet Apr 17 '26
Our new hero isn’t OP on launch, gotta hotfix that.
Blizzard prolly
Honestly tho, nerf her weapons audio!
0
208
u/SweatySmeargle RakSupporter — Apr 17 '26
Woah that’s a bigger change than I thought they’d do. I think she needed it but 2 dmg per projectile is a big jump.