Perhaps it’s not the point you were getting at, but it does bring up an interesting perspective on bans - that adding the ability to ban counters to a planned strategy would allow niche heroes to be made exceptionally powerful in their own niche. It would finally let the developers make Sombra, Symmetra, et al. oppressively strong against certain heroes and comps (while remaining weak against others) without anyone feeling like the game is broken by it. Want to run those heroes or comps? Ban the hard counter.
That doesn’t appear to be the direction they want to take the game in, and may well create problems of its own, but it would solve some issues for niche heroes.
I can see and agree with aspects of both sides of this disagreement. I want to get more into it but frankly I’d be here all day if I did. I might come back and do an edit later.
I can agree and as a case in point, look at Hanzo. He has consistently been good, a tidal wave of complaints resulted in a promised “nerf” that only left him stronger and even as the most picked dps he sees wrist slap nerfs.
As somebody who actually advocates for smaller changes at a time, I’m not saying that he should be gutted by any patch. But it’s apparent that there are different levels of consideration at play when other characters routinely have pianos dropped on them.
I say this admittedly as somebody who likes playing Brigitte and Dva and the feeling of watching them get devastated without a concern for how badly and apparently they are being devastated while Hanzo gets nerfs his own players say will change nothing harkens back to the feelings I experienced playing wow, where warriors were allowed, nay expected to be a free lunch for anyone with CC and yet frost mages had to be protected like they were a cross between a Ming vase and the baby Jesus.
For the longest time the devs seemed to have this mentality of: “We can’t touch Tracer, she’s the face of Overwatch” and even made statements like “Tracer is the character we balance everything else around.”. I don’t see this sort of thing from other games I play. They might have balance problems because of budgetary restrictions or something, but it’s rarely a clear cut case of favoritism. I don’t pick up King of Fighters and find that Terry Bogard is far and away the best fighter just because he’s the face of SNK.
No offense to Blizzard, and I’m sure they will deny it but it’s obvious that they do play favorites. It may not even be a deliberate thing but it happens none the less.
She’s balanced, which means no one in High Masters, GM, T500, or OWL will pick her unless:
They’re really stubborn.
She can give more value than the META, which by definition, she can’t.
Most Effective / Efficient Tactic Available
If Sombra is not abusable, she’s not going to be picked in high elo save be for 1).
Tracer is still EXTREMELY strong. She, in my opinion, is still way overtuned. However, so many characters are more abusable (while being easier to play) and grant more value that she isn’t played.
Like how in Dive, it evolved from Tracer/Genji to being Tracer/Widow or Genji/Widow depending on your Support lineup.
Like how in GOATs, Sombra took D.Va’s spot. It wasn’t because of balance updates, certain teams could gain more value from Sombra in certain situations so they used her in place of D.Va.
I’m not for hero bans but the fact they are even mentioned shows the complete lack of balance by the devs. The only players left at this stage are the hardcores, a huge balance mix up every month would be welcome, as it stands you wait three months at the earliest for either a drastic change that annoys half the base or a minimal one that does nothing, just admit the game is hard to balance and in doing so make changes that force a new meta each month…
Bans straight up remove a hero (or heroes) from that match. Nerfs of our favorite heroes or buffs of their counters make us feel like our hero is ineffective. But that’s just subjective and bias. Fact is, we still have the choice to play our hero(es) while a ban removes that choice. Ban ≠ nerf.
It doesn’t just make you “feel”, that feeling is confirmed by stats. But sure - if you want to have almost certain defeat, or being reported for unrelated reasons by whole team, then go ahead, try it.
I think the state of Sombra along with some other heros who are “tier 2” is simply because Blizzard hasn’t put in as much effort as they could have to balance the game…ever. In the past they have stated balance to not be one of their top priorities.
Hearing that balance will become a much bigger priority than it was in the past gives me some hope.
I just hope their idea of balance involves making abilities fun to use while also not being something that is basically guaranteed to land because it takes no skill to pull off what so ever…
I want to say this is untrue but it’s kind of sad that it is.
I’d love to play Ana/Zenyatta more, but between the amount of barriers, doomfists, reapers, Meis, and idiot Tracers/D.vas waking up my sleeps, it’s pretty unbearable right now.
Hero bans honestly feel like a white flag of sorts.
“Ok we can’t be bothered to actually balance the game and fix what’s broken so instead we’ll just let you ban what’s broken so you have less of a reason to complain about us not doing anything to make the game bearable”
Sombra being OWL staple pick and being oppressive might have something to do with each other but then again no-one actually interested in playing Sombra could ever admit that nerfing her was the right choice even though it went just a bit too far
Because Sombra isn’t game-winning hero on her own. She can be good addition, that turns already competent team into more difficult opponent, but she isn’t going to turn average or below average team into good.
I’m not saying she isn’t in a bad spot. I’m saying hero bans aren’t equivalent to hero nerfs. Just because she’s in a state that you & others don’t want to play her doesn’t mean you can’t play her. She’s still playable. Someone new to the game that has no prior experience with OW or her may actually enjoy her… but then get bent out of shape when she gets altered in any way. But a ban prevents her or any hero selected from being played. A nerf doesn’t put the power over what you play in the other team’s hands. Anyway, this isn’t about the viability of any particular hero, this is about correcting an error in judgement and misinformation that the devs are hypocritical because they won’t pursue hero bans yet supposedly nerf heroes into obscurity. Again, ban ≠ nerf. That’s all I’m saying. Apples & oranges
That doesn’t matter though because balance considers only high tier gameplay which translates into the former in a general sense. Like I said they went a bit overboard with the nerfs, but they were definitely the correct thing to do for the reasons that they explained
Staple pick omegalul. As soon as 2-2-2 was introduced in OWL and goats couldnt be played anymore Sombra was dropped immediately before the patch even went live which nerfed her.
The devs directly admitted in the patch notes to the hack nerf, that the main reason was to make it “feel less oppressive”
Sombra
Hack
Duration on enemy players reduced from 6 seconds to 5
EMP
Activation time increased from 0.5 seconds to 0.65
Developer Comment: Hack is a potent disable with a long duration. Reducing the duration slightly will make it feel less oppressive as the hacked player without reducing its effectiveness too greatly. The increased cast time on EMP allows for more time to react and opens up more counterplay for the opposing team.
but then again no-one actually interested in playing Sombra could ever admit that nerfing her was the right choice even though it went just a bit too far 
