After spending a surprisingly short amount of time on the PTR, the much-needed buffs to Sombra, Mei and Doomfist have now arrived onto the live servers! Doomfist's 'fingernail gun' now regenerates ammo slightly faster, Mei uses less ammunition for her alternate fire and her slowing effect lingers for slightly longer, while Sombra has been pushed away from a supportive role towards a more disruption/assassination based playstyle.

You can learn more about these changes by checking out the most recent Developer Update right below. If you don't feel like watching the video and just want the short version, however, I'll also include all of the major patch notes. Have a look:

Doomfist 

• Hand Cannon

- Ammo recovery rate increased from 0.8 seconds to 0.65 seconds per bullet 

Developer Comment: This change will help Doomfist more consistently be able to use his weapon as part of his combos. 

Mei 

• Endothermic Blaster

- Freeze (slow) duration increased from 1 second to 1.5 seconds

- Weapon alternate fire ammo cost reduced from 25 to 20 

Developer Comment: Increasing Mei’s slow duration helps her freeze targets that are particularly elusive such as Genji or Lúcio. Lowering her alternate fire ammo cost allows her to more safely use it without costing her the ability to freeze enemies. 

Sombra 

• EMP

- No longer blocked by small objects (e.g. sign posts)

• Hack

- No longer gains ultimate charge from health pack healing

- Cast time reduced from 0.8 seconds to 0.65 seconds

- Now disables the following abilities:

Genji—Cyber-agility

Hanzo—Wall Climb

Pharah—Hover Jets

Lúcio—Healing Boost and Speed Boost (turns off current song entirely), Wall Ride

Mercy—Angelic Descent

• Machine Pistol

- Machine Pistol spread reduced from 3 to 2.7

• Opportunist

- Now activates when enemies’ health bars are at less than 100%, up from 50% health

• Translocator

- Duration increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds 

Developer Comment: The goal of these changes for Sombra is to remove the necessity for her teammates to take damage and heal themselves with her hacked heath packs to try to get her ultimate charged up quickly. Her ultimate will now come up less often, but there are more abilities that are disabled by Hack so it is more effective when used. Previously, Opportunist would only activate when an enemy’s health bar dipped below 50% but now the passive will reveal all damaged enemies which should help Sombra identify targets to pick off. Overall these changes should make her more effective and less reliant on her ultimate.

While I am very glad that Sombra has finally been introduced into the game, I am also slightly frightened about the weapon buff. A good Sombra is already nigh-invincible, even more so than Tracer, so it's going to be quite interesting to see what happens when Sombra can dish out some reliable deal damage as well. The one thing I know for certain, however, is that I won't be picking much of Zenyatta for the next few weeks!

No matter which way this improved Sombra ends up panning out, I fully support the new approach towards balancing. It's better to have multiple smaller updates every couple of weeks than a single major patch every couple of months. This way, even if something gets horribly out of control we won't have to wait for around five months before it finally gets fixed! Most importantly, it also means that some of the least popular and least powerful heroes in the game are finally getting the attention they deserve, which is well worth all of the trouble in my eyes.