Overwatch Update: New Hero Brigitte Released, Sombra Nerfed

Overwatch's roster of heroes has grown once again, and it now stands at 27. Brigitte, the newest Support character, has arrived on PC, PS4, and Xbox One through the new update Blizzard has released for the game. In addition to her, there are also some other changes and fixes made--most notably, a nerf to Sombra--as outlined in the full patch notes.

Before Brigitte's reveal, game director Jeff Kaplan had described the new character as someone who was "very needed." She carries the Rocket Flail, which she swings in an arc in front of her and can hit multiple enemies. She can heal nearby allies over time (as she deals damage) and knock back distant enemies, and she carries a shield that protects her and teammates located behind her. Brigitte also has a charge ability that can stun enemies, and her Ultimate--Rally--allows her to move faster and provide armor to her nearby allies.

In short, Brigitte is essentially a mixture of Reinhardt and Torbjorn (her father) with the ability to heal. She's been available on the PTR in recent weeks but will now get into the hands of everyone for the first time. She launches with a variety of alternate looks; you can see all the Brigitte skins in our gallery.

The other big change in this update involves Sombra, who's being nerfed. As recently announced, Blizzard is addressing frustrations with her by putting Hack on a two-second cooldown when it's interrupted by damage. Additionally, the game should now deal with her line-of-sight being broken while casting Hack.

"We're also removing the 0.1 second window of time during a hack where it couldn't be canceled via line of sight or with other abilities including Tracer's Recall and Zarya's Particle Barrier, which was originally put in place so the hack wouldn't be interrupted by small objects such as light posts. We've implemented a separate fix for that issue, so she should still be unaffected by those small objects."

The free update is out now on all platforms. Aside from what's outlined above, Blizzard primarily makes a round of bug fixes, although one small feature is that the team info screen will show how close teammates are to having their Ultimate. The full patch notes can be seen on Blizzard's website.