Unless the meta shifts out of nowhere without any nerfs to dive / Zarya then Sigma needs help, he gets countered way too harshly.
He always was countered hard by dive without Orisa’s help but people were so obsessed about double barrier to notice.
Buffing Sigma is hard though because of the nature of his kit, he’s an hybrid tank and balancing him as he is can easily break the game if not done properly.
Right now you either have to play perfectly to get value or just switch the hero against dive comps (The worst being Zarya Winston), beams counter him too hard and he can’t do anything against it, him having the lowest tank HP pool doesn’t help either.
What I’d rather see is some balancing around his kit, less damage but more sustain, in an ideal world for me they’d make him more of a main tank by reducing his dps and increasing his tanking abilities but that’s my opinion.
I love Sigma and playing him is always fun, he’s THE tank that made me even consider playing the role but now I’m sad that I get more value out of a hero I don’t play like D.Va than with my go to tank who I spent hours playing (And have an objectively better skill level with).
He would somehow need to be able to sustain against dive then because with less damage he loses survivability against dive and needs his tank partner or dps to help peel for him. He would need KG to absorb everything because dive (and Zarya in general) just ignores his barriers.
I think if he’d become a main tank then either his defensive abilities would need to be buffed or straight up buff his HP pool (By giving more HP or armor).
The idea is to nerf his consistent damage but keep a burst potential like other main tanks, trade some damage from his spheres for more power into accretion.
You could also nerf the range of the spheres, there’s plenty of ways to balance him you just have to settle on one.
I honestly don’t think Sigma is that bad so I wouldn’t tool around with him too much, but Sigma performs worse when he is swarmed so if we want to give him any buffs it should be slight and to accretion or KG if we want to round out his weaknesses or remove the 1 second delay on shield deployment so he can shield flash. I prefer Sigma to be an all-rounder at mid range and have a distinct weakness at close range if he misuses accretion.
The meta is dive and won’t change unless something rather big happens, Winston and Zarya won’t become bad out of nowhere.
Right now Sigma is basically unplayable if they’re running these heroes (And they often are), I’m not saying getting rid of his weakness because that’s a good thing he has one but making it more bearable might be a good idea.
I don’t think Winston and Zarya need tuning down, helping Sigma a little bit to fight both would be good if these two don’t get changes.
Outside of that Sigma is definitely good, his weakness to dive is just too important right now imo.
I think they should just re-work him to be a genuine off-tank instead of having him sit in the hybrid role he is at now. He was SUPPOSED to be a main-tank, but then they kind of changed their minds and chipped away at all his defenses without changing his offense at all.
Sure, he was over-tuned.
Now he needs something, and tweaking his defenses back up is just asking for a return to double shield.
That’s why I proposed the idea that he should get bonus damage for direct hits on hypersphere rebounds.
It’s one of the most unique parts of his kit, and rewarding bank-shots would massively raise his skill ceiling. It wouldn’t be unbalancing for him to pump out more single target damage based on high-difficulty shots, especially if it happens without raising his splash damage, since his splash is why he already does a lot of damage in teamfights.
I also think they should reward long-distance accretion hits again. Not with longer stun/knockdown, but with extra damage once it goes past a certain distance. Maybe just direct impacts, but maybe splash too. It would be nice if it was a little more comparable to fire-strike instead of being just a stun-shot.
I’d rather they beef up his offenses like that and then narrow the kinetic grasp range, shorten the duration, and finally make his shield have less health but deploy a little faster.
Sigma is hard to balance because unlike Rein he can both defend and attack at the same time and unlike Orisa he has hard CC and isnt the size of a truck with an enormous crit box
Problem with Sigma is his over all kit is just to good. All his ability are great. In fact they are all something taken from other heroes and made better.
He really doesn’t have any weakness when it comes to his abilities and he’s got good damage too. I don’t see them being able to do anything to him without making him OP again.