Did the Sombra and Roadhog reworks work? Both kill less and win more

Three days after the Season 5 reworks went live, an r/Competitiveoverwatch thread asked whether they were a success. The replies split it into two questions: did each rework remove what made the hero miserable to play against, and is the hero now the right strength.

On the record

strength/weakness can be fixed, but you can't fix bad design

Two full weeks have closed since, so here are both questions with numbers. I make Counterwatch; the data is from its users' matches. It is 5v5, ranked and unranked, all ranks, the weeks of Oct 12 and 19 against the seven weeks before the patch. Match data can't see a Hack or a one-shot, but it can see who dies while the two heroes are in the same fight.

Sombra is a support now, so she should kill less, and she does against everyone: 57% less often against damage heroes and 37% less against tanks. Against supports the fall is the largest, two thirds, and she now loses more of those fights than she wins. Before the rework she took 61.4% of the kills between her and an enemy support; now she takes 47.9%.

Roadhog kills supports 21% less often than before and damage heroes 16% less often, over 52,728 and 82,105 kills both ways after the rework. Against tanks he barely changed. That is the shape you'd expect if what went was the one-shot on a squishy, and the brawl stayed.

Roadhog went from 46.2% to 48.2% over 27,739 matches, picked by 8.9% of teams against 6.6%. Sombra went from 49.0% to 51.5% over 62,898, while the share of teams picking her went from 4.7% to 19.9%. That much new play usually drags a win rate down.

The October 13 hotfix cut Cyberspace damage and buffed Roadhog's survivability. In the week after it Sombra was at 51.1% and Roadhog at 48.7%, so neither change reversed the step. By rank, Sombra's rise holds from Gold to Diamond, 2.5 to 3.9 points, and Roadhog's shows in Gold and Platinum.

Sombra's biggest gains are against heroes she now kills less: her share of the kills against Wrecking Ball fell from 48.8% to 31.0%, so she wins those matches some other way than the duel. Wrecking Ball himself did not move, 51.1% before and 50.2% after.

Roadhog's gains are mostly against tanks: Mauga, 49.5% to 56.3% over 2,351 matches, then D.Mon and Junker Queen, with Baptiste and Jetpack Cat beside them. Against Mauga his share of the kills between them rose too, 59.8% to 63.4%, so that one he does win in the fight.