New hero Sigma makes his big debut in OWL Stage 4 playoffs

Sigma has made his debut at the Overwatch League Stage 4 playoffs.

Both the Chengdu Hunters and Guangzhou Charge busted out the new tank hero in the first map of the first match of the Season 2 playoffs. The crowd cheered as the two teams rushed to the control point in Ilios with a Sigma on their team. 

On the first point, it became clear what meta was viable thanks to the addition of Sigma. Both teams were playing double barrier, which implements Orisa’s Protective Barrier and Sigma’s Experimental Barrier. Hong-joon “HOTBA” Choi flexed his skills on the new hero immediately, while Hunters switched off Sigma once they lost control of the first point. 

While Luo “Elsa” Wenjie’s switch back to D.Va seemed to help the team take control of the first point, Charge’s Ou “Eileen” Yiliang easily took back the point on Doomfist. At one point he even isolated the Hunters’ Mercy and eliminated her with a Rising Uppercut. 

One eye-popping moment was when HOTBA used Sigma’s ultimate to save himself after he was pushed off the stage by the Hunters. By using Gravitic Flux, HOTBA was able to “take flight,” allowing him to make his way back to the point instead of facing an environmental death. 

On the second point, the Hunters took control with the double barrier composition once again. They also ran Symmetra, who has been seeing a lot of play lately. But that didn’t last long thanks to Eileen’s Doomfist, who took out Menghan “Ameng” Ding on Orisa. To everyone’s surprise, the Hunters took control of the point once again. The Charge fought hard, going into overtime with both teams at 99%, but the Hunters took it in the end. 

As the two teams began to fight for the third and final point, Wells, Hotba used Sigma’s Accretion ability to obliterate Ameng’s Wrecking Ball. The Hunters began to panic over Charge’s mastery of double barrier, leading Zhang “YangXiaoLong” Zhihao to switch to Sombra. The move paid off, with her EMP rendering the two tanks useless without their barrier abilities. 

But even though the Hunters were able to take back the third point as the Charge reached 73%, Eileen was able to take it back once he switched to Sombra as well. A final EMP allowed the Charge to take the third and final point, winning them the first match. 

Sigma enters the Overwatch meta

While the outcome was expected, the intrigue of this first map of the day was seeing Sigma implemented in the OWL for the first time. Sigma seemed to be almost exclusively paired with Orisa, making double barriers a popular new meta.

This went against what Shanghai Dragons predicted last weekend, when they told WIN.gg that Sigma would make teams steer away from Orisa. The team was hoping for less shields so they could utilize Hanzo and Widowmaker more efficiently. No snipers were used for the entirety of the map. 

The Charge would go on to defeat the Hunters 4-1 in the series.