The Sigma of Tanks
Over the years, there’s one thing you all probably know about me. I’m a support main. My name is literally Medic on here. I spent years calling myself The Medic on SPUF, and it was also my Steam username for years. Heck, I have two email addresses with the word “Medic” in them. I have ALWAYS gravitated to support characters because I’m a scaredy-cat and I like hiding behind big strong people who run face first into danger. This has carried on into Overwatch. While I don’t enjoy playing Mercy at all (which is weird because she plays a lot like Medic), I do enjoy playing other supports, including more oddball ones like Jetpack Cat. However, almost at a whim, I decided to play tank one day.
When it comes to tanks, I don’t really know what to do. Tanks go against my cautious and panicky playstyle. I am the sort to hide behind corners and stuff. Being out there at the front is not what I normally do at all. Still, I can’t always play support. Gotta try and expand my horizons.
Anyway, the tank I picked, almost at random, was Sigma. Something about him made me gravitate towards him. I considered Reinhardt and Winston, the classic tanks I remember, but something about Sigma appealed to me. Maybe it was because he’s a crazy Dutch scientist, the same way Medic is a crazy German doctor. But either way, even though I lost my first few matches, something about Sigma clicked. I found myself enjoying playing as a tank. But since I was playing 5v5 at the time and that game mode was restricted to one tank only, I found myself relinquishing the role and going back to my support ways. We needed a decent tank and I wasn’t it.
Later on though, aabicus and I switched to 6v6. And, after a streak of 10 losses in a row in 5v5, 6v6 was a chaotic breath of fresh air. Also, it meant I could play tank. So I picked Sigma again. And guess what? I started kicking ass. I found a tank I enjoyed. Sure, Sigma isn’t always the optimal pick, but he has a set of abilities which means he’s always useful in some way. Whereas I find that other tanks sometimes just don’t work at all, because there’s either no room to initiate a fight and you’re burst down and stunned too quickly (like Doomfist) or you aren’t creating enough pressure on the enemy team (like a more passive Reinhardt). Sigma doesn’t provide huge damage but he is disruptive enough and also tanky enough and also supporty enough that he’s rarely a bad choice.
In fact, I got my first ever play of the game as Sigma. It was an alright one, I guess. Better than my second ever play of the game.
Now, if this was an article by aabicus, he’d tell you how to play the character and what you should pick and what strategies you should take. I ain’t gonna do that, because, in all honesty, I still don’t REALLY know what I’m doing.
That being said, I will give you some suggestions. Because there are times where I think I’m on to something. And mostly, that’s throwing out Sigma’s shield to see how many people are down a hallway. People enjoy shooting Sigma’s shield because it cracks nicely and doesn’t have much health. It’s also a good indicator as to how much of a clusterfuck is around the corner. There is a delay to recasting the shield when you recall it but it’s shorter than the cooldown when the shield is destroyed.
I will tell you though that I never ever pick the level 3 perk that makes your melee levitate people, because, well, I never ever melee people. Sigma IS a tanky character but I feel like meleeing people doesn’t make much sense, because I’m not quite close enough to melee people. Sigma’s best position is mid-range. You shoot too slowly and your melee is too slow and cumbersome to be comfortable in melee range. The level 2 perk, it depends on how much you use your shield. The thing is, experimental shield has 600 health, and your cute little hyperspheres do 120 damage. 30% of that is 40 health, which doesn’t do much to, well, heal your shield. I always go for Kinetic Cycle though because more rock is always a good thing.
Also, rock funny. Rock does stuns but also does knockback damage. I’ve gotten environmental kills with it. It’s also a projectile though and people can easily block it with shields or, well, just shoot it. I tend to try and throw it past the tank towards the backliners, but sometimes it’s worth throwing it at a tank to block a charge or an attack. That being said, it doesn’t always seem to stop things like Reinhardt charges.
But really, I think everyone really underestimates Kinetic Grasp. You can just stand there and absorb so much shit thrown your way. I haven’t worked out what can’t be absorbed by it, and there is a lot of stuff that slips though (Mei’s ice thrower, Winston’s railgun thing and basically any laser will cause you problems) but you can absorb sooooo much. You can even fuck up some ults with it. I think that’s what I did in this play of the game? No idea. This was a good match but, weirdly, it didn’t consider my triple kill and well-placed ult at the end of the game while I capped as POTG-worthy.
The saddest thing is though, I didn’t use the free mythical token on Sigma. I discovered I liked Sigma literally a few days after I spent the token on the Moira skin. Which I don’t even particularly like. Oh well. There are other skins. I just unlocked the New Empire skin for Sigma, and I shall use that since it covers up his exposed little feetsies.
As to why I enjoy Sigma? I have no idea. None of his kit matches with anything I normally play in PvP games. I’m normally a backline support, I don’t play tanks, I prefer bullet hoses over slow single-shot projectiles, and I dislike stuns as a mechanic. Heck, the ONLY thing that sorta matches is Experimental Shield, which I could compare to Volt’s Electric Shield in Warframe, but those shields work very differently. Somehow though, Sigma just clicked with me. And there are definitely times where I feel like I should have died ten times over, but somehow, I’m still alive, because I used Kinetic Grasp by accident or I landed a decent rock.
I don’t know. He just works.
But yeah. I am now a Sigma main. And he’s fun. Would recommend. If only so you can throw rocks at people.