Some Overwatch Players Take Issue With One of Sojourn's Abilities

By Tanner Dedmon

Blizzard showed off Overwatch 2's Sojourn this week to preview what the new hero is capable of. That included a gameplay trailer, a stream, and in-depth talks about Sojourn's abilities the DPS hero will use when she's added to the franchise. One of those abilities, the "Disruptor Shot" move, allows Sojourn to fire off an energy-based projectile which slows enemies down. This move's reveal has resulted in some frustration within parts of the Overwatch and Overwatch 2 community from those who hoped that crowd control would have less of a presence in the next game.

Replies like the one below can be found in response to Blizzard's tweets about Sojourn where people question the idea of adding a crowd control (CC) ability to a DPS hero. It's also inspired posts on the game's forums and on Reddit where players looked back at previous statements from the developers and wondered where this CC came from.

Part of these frustrations appear to come from differences in opinion when it comes to what crowd control actually means. Broadly, crowd control refers to anything which impairs a player's movement, so that encompasses stuns, knockbacks, slows, sleep, and more. However, there's both "hard" and "soft" crowd control, too. Hard CC includes things like stuns and other moves that completely stop actions while soft CC include slows which inhibit movement but still leave some room for response. Complicating that is the fact that some players instead refer to soft CC moves as "debuffs."

Blizzard has indeed talked about CC in Overwatch and Overwatch 2 numerous times in the past. In a Q&A from October 2021, Geoff Goodman, the lead hero designer on the Overwatch series, said changes for Brigitte's stun and Ana's sleep were made in efforts to "chill out crowd control effects" in the games. It's worth pointing out that both of those are Support heroes, not DPS.

Goodman said years ago that the team was "looking carefully at the amount of crowd control abilities" in Overwatch while specifying stuns and knockbacks that impair mid-air movements as two examples. Some of those changes like Brigitte's stun being removed and Mei's ice slowing but not stunning show those goals in action. In more drastic cases, reworks like the one for Doomfist have moved the CC-filled hero to the Tank role instead of DPS in Overwatch 2, though that's the only example of a role swap that we know of so far.

So, what are players to expect from Blizzard's stance on CC in Overwatch 2? It's evident from the comments that the goal is to indeed reduce its presence on non-Tank heroes at least, but based on some of the examples shared by the developers, it does seem like hard CC is a more pressing concern as far as reworks and other changes go. Sojourn's ability could've easily had a gravitational effect –it sure looked like it did from the teaser – or a stun, but a slow isn't quite so bad in comparison.

The Overwatch 2 beta will begin towards the end of the month, so players will be able to try out Sojourn for the first time then to see just how agreeable the DPS hero's CC is.

Trending Now: