Making Overwatch 2's Sojourn was hard because 'railguns are kinda overpowered'

pcgamer.com:

Blizzard is pretty excited about Sojourn, Overwatch 2's first new hero that will be playable in the upcoming closed beta. The studio is eager to show her off not only because she's the first black woman on the hero roster after six years of updates, but also because she's packing a powerful FPS staple: the railgun.

Blizzard has been thinking about adding a railgun to the Overwatch weapon pool for a long time, but struggled with how to balance around such a powerful, precise weapon. The first prototype resembled a classic Quake 2 railgun with high damage, hitscan precision, low recoil, and no scope required. 

«It was kind of a catastrophe of balance,» as lead hero designer Geoff Goodman described in a Sojourn Q&A livestream today. «You could essentially fire Widow[maker] shots with no cooldown or anything, just constantly.» Goodman said it was important that it still feels like a railgun without becoming overwhelming. «Ultimately I think we found a solution we really like.»

A new blog post outlining Sojourn's abilities goes into detail on how her railgun works:

So, the railgun's primary fire is a rapid fire machinegun that shoots projectiles (in other words, not hitscan) and builds up energy to shoot a high damage charged beam. Senior hero designer Josh Noh describes her as a «mid-range hero that rewards accuracy» but still fun at any level of play. It's an interesting compromise—based on description alone, Sojourn kinda sounds like Soldier 76 on left-click and Widowmaker (minus the scope) on right-click. It's easy to see why Blizzard sees her as difficult to master. Depending on how slowly her energy builds up for a right-click, she might feel like a damage deficit if she's not landing railgun shots (not unlike a