OverwatchOverwatch Sigma Guide and Overview

With the ability to control gravity, Sigma crushes every enemy in his path. Sigma's power to control the tempo and positioning of team fights is nearly unmatched in the Tank category. Being able to simultaneously mitigate enemy projectiles while dealing tons of his own damage has made Sigma consistent across different types of metas. Unless he is nerfed into the ground, there are never scenarios where Sigma feels useless. 

Sigma's AoE poke damage rapidly boosts his ultimate charge and keeps the enemy teams consistently low on HP which gives his team an influx of opportunities for playmaking. The way he can contest space is not by standing directly in the enemy's way, but through dishing out high levels of damage whilst taking very low damage himself.

The ideal range for Sigma to play in is made obvious by his primary fire, so he is always looking for ways to rotate and maintain his perfect distance. When facing a team with huge amounts of poke damage, no other tank can deal with a ranged onslaught better than this astrophysicist. 

TLDR

Playing As

• Position at mid-range poke distances to maximize Hyperspheres damage while keeping yourself outside of the enemy's optimal range.
• Use Experimental Barrier to the enemy Supports damage and healing from reaching their Tank or your team.
• Track escape abilities like Fade before activating Gravitic Flux or else the enemy will easily avoid its AoE.

Playing Against

• Force Sigma off his optimal mid-range poke angles by pressuring him with dive or flank threats, exploiting his lack of mobility.
• Beam heroes are strong against Sigma because they can burn through his shield and Kinetic Grasp doesn't absorb beams.
• Stun him out of Gravitic Flux to immediately cancel his ult before he has a chance to activate.

Strengths

High AoE damage output

At the end of games, Sigma will often lead the scoreboard with total damage dealt. Especially against teams that play grouped near their tank, Sigma's direct impact damage on one enemy plus splash damage on multiple enemies quickly racks up. Additionally, the ricochet effect of Hyperspheres makes Sigma extremely powerful at controlling tight spaces like hallways and choke points.

Movable shield

There are many shield abilities in OW2 but Sigma alone has the ability to constantly redeploy his shield and set it anywhere he pleases. No other shield can be left floating in mid-air, perfectly blocking an enemy hero's LoS. Saving shield health and using it to react to specific ability usages, splitting off a target from the rest of their team or simply soaking up the full 700 HP of damage can all be great uses of his shield.

Survivability

Even when Sigma's team has lost heroes during a team fight, it is never over if he is still alive. Excellent use of cover between shots of Hyperspheres, Barrier and Grasp combine to allow Sigma to take very little damage and require little to no resources from his supports to stay alive. Accretion also works as a great anti-dive CC tool to shut down enemy movement abilities or give Sigma and his allies time to escape.

Weaknesses

No mobility abilities

Sigma's greatest and most exploitable weakness comes in his complete lack of mobility tools. Other than during his ultimate, Sigma has no way to speed himself up or move vertically and is technically the only Tank without any way to do so. Positioning is extremely important for Sigma because he is essentially stuck wherever he is currently standing. The poor mobility also makes him weak against high mobility and dive comps.

Difficulty solo confirming elims

Sigma's highest burst combo (Accretion → Hyperspheres → melee) only deals 230 dmg leaving the standard 250 HP hero the chance to live, escape and keep fighting. Even though his ult combo (Flux → Hyperspheres → slam) can eliminate a single target, there are multiple abilities that counter Gravitic Flux and enable enemies to survive the combo. While he has high overall high damage output, the damage tends to be too slow or inconsistent to consistently confirm elims without team assistance.

Slow primary fire projectile speed and fire rate

The speed of Hyperspheres is slow and requires a good deal of leading your shots in order to land direct hits. The small gap between each one of the two orbs in his double shots is also just large enough to make it difficult to land a direct hit with both orbs. Top all that off with the slow rate of fire and consistently hitting small hurtbox heroes like Tracer and Kiriko becomes very challenging for Sigma players.

Coming Soon!

Minor Perks

Kinetic Cycle

• Decent when struggling to maintain distance for dive and brawl Tanks. Otherwise, take the other.

Hyper Regeneration

• Barrier health is very important, and Sigma deals a lot of damage from his primary fire. Your team gains a significant amount of increased shielding, and in turn, everyone has an easier time staying alive.

Major Perks

Hyper Strike

• Interesting ability that is pretty good at countering any enemy with a primarily close-ranged kit. Send them floating and out of their optimal range.

Levitation

• Very good as it gives Sigma the one thing he is missing, mobility.
• Best use is to traverse between high ground areas where your poke pressure can dominate.

Best Maps

Circuit Royal

• Watch any pro game and you’ll see Sigma is a must pick on Circuit Royal. For us normal folk, he is still the strongest Tank pick for this long range map. Circuit Royal is basically 3 long hallways that Sigma's abilities are all perfectly suited for. Barrier cuts off sight lines from enemies, and Kinetic Grasp only needs to absorb damage from one direction since flanking on this map is very uncommon. Narrow areas give Sigma an easier time landing his primary fire and he can use all the walls to help aim for direct hits as well.

Junkertown

• Most of the time you’ll be playing with and facing off against poke heavy team comps on Junkertown. Each of the three points are very open which can make it difficult to constantly land Hyperspheres, but Sigma's defensive options in these areas with long LoS is unmatched.

Midtown

• On Defense Sigma can focus on setting up strong position to hold and spam the choke points. On offense, Sigma can slowly work his way forward as he uses his defensive abilities and takes space for his team to move with him. Most of the defensive positions available to the enemy team keep targets within Sigma's range since most fights occur at a mid-range. There aren’t really any areas in the entire map where Sigma's lack of mobility hinders his ability to contribute to the fight.

Worst Maps

Watchpoint Gibraltar

• Every point on Gibraltar is loaded with strong high ground areas that Sigma cannot easily access and has a difficult time contesting enemies who are.

Ilios

• On Well, Sigma is very vulnerable to being CC’d into the Well and he doesn’t have a reliable means of counterplay. Ruins and Lighthouse both force fights to be at closer quarters than Sigma prefers and he has difficulty controlling the spacing.

Nepal

• Prepare to spend the entire match trying not to get run over by enemy aggression. Nepal has a few areas Sigma can play well in, but he needs to play nearly perfectly the entire game whereas a brawl or mobility tank only needs to make a few correct choices to win the maps against him. Even in Sanctum, where more long range engagements occur, Sigma tends to crumble as soon as the enemy breaks through his first line of defense.

Sigma is best suited for poke team comps. Sigma is really good at taking up enemy focus and resources which allows long range allies behind him to attack more freely. Shutting down enemy poke heroes is also an area Sigma excels in, so the odds are in his teammates' favor. The whole team can work together to chip away at enemy health and resources before the enemy ever has a chance to fully commit to their attack.

Ideal comp built around Sigma:

Sigma, Cassidy, Hanzo, Baptiste, Illari

Individual synergies with other heroes

Cassidy

• Cassidy's optimal range is very similar to Sigma's, and the two heroes become a duo front line following up on each other's high damage output. High Noon can be difficult to get kills with and often ends up being a zoning ultimate. Catch a few enemies in Gravitic Flux, however, and High Noon means certain death!

Echo

• Echo's poke damage and off-angling pairs really well with how and where Sigma wants to play. Her best synergy with Sigma is Focusing Beam to follow up on Accretion stuns and Flux targets. Flux at minimum puts its target at 50% HP which is exactly where Focusing Beam does maximum damage and allows Echo to constantly confirm kills off of Sigma's Ultimate.

Baptiste

• Baptiste's poke damage is one of the best utilities a Support can add to Sigma's kit. Amplification Matrix's damage boost applies to both Accretion and Hyperspheres which makes the two attacks a “one shot” combo against every non-Tank hero in the game. Additionally, the slow movement of Sigma makes him an easy target for Baptiste to heal.

Any time you are playing against a Sigma you want to figure out where he is trying to position, then track which of his abilities best counter yours. If you are playing Winston, you don’t need to pay any attention to Experimental Barrier or Kinetic Grasp, but Accretion can easily mean your death if he hits you out of a Jump Pack. Regardless of who you are playing, you’ll benefit from constantly repositioning to outplay his Barrier usage. Then focus on closing the distance to him and trying to get him stuck somewhere he is unable to retreat.

Specific Hero Counters

Zarya

• Zarya's a beam hero, which means every time Sigma uses Kinetic Grasp, she can nonstop blast him for two full seconds! When pressing forward into Sigma, Accretions can easily be reacted to with a Particle Barrier, preventing its CC effect and giving a burst of energy charge to Zarya.

Symmetra

• First off, her primary fire charges up insanely fast anytime Experimental Barrier is in front of her. Then, when it's down, the high charge beam melts Sigma. Secondly, Teleporter can reposition her entire team in a way Sigma has no hope of keeping up with or responding to. Symmetra vs Sigma is one of the hardest counters in all of OW2 when played correctly.

Lúcio

• On his own, Lúcio can wall ride around and be a nuisance to Sigma, who has difficulty tracking the speedy Support. The way Lúcio truly counters Sigma, however, is by speed boosting his immobile allies into the Sigma, who has no way of escaping without an ally's assistance. Many short-range heroes (Mei, Reinhardt, Symmetra, etc) are very strong against Sigma but only if they can close the distance on him. Lúcio gives them all a consistent way to do just that.