Director’s Take – Looking ahead into Season 7 and BlizzCon

news.blizzard.com:

Hi everyone! We've had guest writers for the last two Director's Takes, but I'm back this week looking at Season 7 - how it started, how it's going, and what we can look forward to as it progresses.

This season marked the release of our latest Sombra rework. The hero keeps the same hacker fantasy that she's always had, but her playstyle is more active and engaged than it was previously. She also received a new ability, Virus. We've seen a lot of different takes on the rework and her new kit online - from dramatically overpowered to dramatically underpowered. But when you look at the data, she's trending in a great direction. Sombra's win rate quickly jumped 4-5%, with it being slightly higher at lower tiers and bottoming out in Masters and above around 46-47%. People are also still playing her quite a bit. Something we always observe with reworks or hero releases is a big spike, then folks go back to their mains. Sombra looks stickier initially and hasn’t been followed by the same drop-off. Perhaps she’s become a new main for players? We’re mostly happy with where she’s at as players get accustomed to her, but we are looking at the effectiveness of EMP and the frequency of her cooldowns..

We're also going to be releasing an update to Roadhog this season, including a reworked primary fire, changes to Take a Breather, and adding an all-new ability! Based on quite a few last-minute tweaks to the kit, he won't make our midseason patch, but instead will be coming later in the season.

We're happy with the overall state of balance in Season 7, but let's get into a little more detail based off our stats and community feedback. We have seen a lot of talk around supports and their rising power level in the meta. We're making a series