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About 30 seconds into the trailer for Overwatch’s new hero Sierra, she shoots a little pink dart into her target. It has no obvious effect on Emre, one of the recently introduced characters, as he slips behind cover to avoid her rifle shots. It almost looks like Sierra never learned how to aim until the dart blinks and her bullets curve back around and rain down on him.
I’m pretty confident that what we’re seeing is some kind of auto-aiming ability—which happens to line up with rumors that Sierra’s secondary fire will mark targets with that little pink dart. Soldier: 76 has to use a whole ultimate to legally cheat at the game, but it looks like Sierra will get to do it more frequently throughout a match.
I’ve played enough Overwatch—and shooters, frankly—to know how much people hate auto-aim weapons, or anything that homes in on its target. Symmetra used to have a beam weapon that would attach to her enemies and fry them until that got cut from her kit. And most of the complaints I see about Stadium, Overwatch’s MOBA-esque mode with over-the-top abilities and items, is how annoying it is to play against all the heroes who don’t have to aim.
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Sierra might take the jetpack cat’s throne as the most banned hero in the game’s competitive mode regardless of how strong the ability ends up being. Many players simply don’t like the idea that the person on the enemy team doesn’t have to line up their shots. Surely Blizzard will have balanced her power around this fact, but I expect there will be many arguments on whether or not it’s fair on principle.
Sierra’s other abilities don’t look anywhere as divisive: She can grapple onto her drone and swing into a new position and, according to the people who called her other abilities before the trailer came out, she can carpet bomb everything in front of her with her ultimate. She’ll also be able to mark enemies and make them visible through walls, which I would assume is a side-effect of sticking the dart into someone.
Not much else is known about her other than that she’s a member of the same security force as Pharah. She fails to stop Emre from stealing a special asset from an Overwatch base in the game’s futuristic version of The Grand Mesa. The fallout of that will likely be explored throughout season 2, and it’s possible the base will become a new map, too.
Unlike the previous heroes, Sierra won’t be playable for a weekend before her release. You’ll have to wait until April 14 to see how broken that little dart actually is.
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