What do these three have in common? Well they are the least riskiest heroes to play of their archetype. Yet they are also some of the most complained about heroes currently.
So I wanted to ask: In your opinion, do you feel heroes who are too safe to play bad for the game?
Personally I feel they are good for newer players to get their footing but should never be the best pick. Their safety should be balanced out by the amount of potential they have.
Sombra, least riskiest?
Yeah if the whole enemy is distracted and you have space, but than most heroes are quite safe
Getting a “safe” kill is rare
Her invisibility makes her the safest flanker to play because she does not have to worry about getting spotted or even taking too long to flank.
Even her escape is safer than other flankers.
That is such an oversimplification
Good positioning from the enemy and it’s hard to get into a good position to attack and move out safely, while you have to dodge shots and abilities and don’t screw up your timing.
Next, her damage is not that great. The moment your target gets healed, you are at a big disadvantage.
Plenty of targets you can duel, plenty of heroes who have enough survivability to make it risky
When she teleports out, she can be easily tracked and kept visible.
Not to mention that you are entirely dependent on virus to get some burst in.
Hacking first is usually not viable, because the enemy gets too much time to react to you.
If you don’t have the space, which is more common than you think, you likely will die.
The games I have where 2 or 3 people chasing me across the map, while my team dies 4v2/3 is far too high
EDIT: Average solokills: 1.7
Sombra is not a safe pick at all. She’s actually a rather risky pick. Yes she’s annoying. No, she’s not safe. She’s also a bit hard to play well. Not as hard as Tracer or Echo but a lot harder than many DPS.
And I would say that Soldier and Orisa are more tied together by being basic than safe.
Orisa is currently meta because of how much CC and burst damage is in the game. She just holds up better than other tanks. It’s not so much that she’s safe, but that she’s durable and easy.
Soldier isn’t meta, but he’s incredibly simple to play because every skill you need to play him transfers well from other games you’ve played before. He’s not really safe exactly just easy and relatively strong. Sojourn is meta. She’s just a better Soldier with a higher skill ceiling.
Orisa is also meta because of ease of use.
She is extremely easy to play, you know to press which button in which situation, and each of her ability is basically “get out of Jail for free” card.
She has a toolkit against everything, she is the swiss army knife of tanks
However even good positioning can be broken a part during combat. Even for other flankers, if the enemy is not paying attention to the back it is a perfect opportunity to strike.
Yet this can be said about all flankers except Tracer with pulse bomb. However her single target damage is still good when fighting one opponent.
Well every hero has their counters, Sombra too.
Though this will become mute once she turns invisible again.
Virus is not hard to hit, especially since as Sombra you are able to strike first.
I feel this applies more to old Sombra than her new form.
There are cases where you should not hack first but Sombra gains bonus damage from hack. Meaning if you don’t hack first than you lose out on DPS.
If the target is completely isolated and has no chance of fighting back than hacking first is always the better option.
Which is true for most flankers.
Sorry to hear, but I have had this happen to me too sometimes.
So, buff Sombra?
Outside of that he is not really that complex to begin with.
Honestly well said, I am going to use this one.
Personally would you say Sombra is more simple to play as oppose to safe? Or that does not really apply either?
Oh I totally agree here. He’s easy.
I don’t think she’s simple or safe. She’s just frustrating. It’s a reasonably simple gameplay loop, but it’s not easy to execute properly. It’s very easy to get no value on Sombra if you don’t know what you are doing. It’s hard to get no value on Soldier.
I’ll admit, that is indeed true. It just seems to me Soldier can always be useful.
add moira and mauga.
Moira I can understand, but why Mauga if you don’t mind me asking?
Disclaimer: I have 169 hours on Sombra alone since she got released and usually keep a positive WR, even if she falls below 50WR, around plat level
If you are cloaked and if not cloaked you aren’t focused, if you have the space, if your team didn’t already lost someone because you waited in stealth
You need a ton of game sense with Sombra
Assassinating someone is difficult, which is reflected in her solo kill statistics
Tracer can keep up the pressure till the enemy line breaks and she can kill someone, has blink and recall
Genji can poke and go for the kill with swift strike, has double jump and deflect
But she is on equal footing with some heroes, but not at advantage.
Zen is basically the only safe target, if not healed.
Her biggest counter is awareness and lack of space.
No, it doesn’t
You throw your trans loc and the enemy spams at the trans loc and guess track where you are. If the enemy is half decent he will hit, even 1 damage is enough to get you out of stealth and you loose your speed boost
It’s very easy to pull off and I do it nearly every time I play against Sombra.
Yes, but her DPS is not great and even Zen heal is enough to turn put you at a server disadvantage, not to mention the other countless survivability abilities in the game
Don’t know if the numbers really changed, but you were faster to kill someone without hacking first, according to Fitzy
The initial burst is nice, but again, you loose the moment of surprise.
Finding a completely isolated target is rare, usually it’s a straggler
Genji and Tracer can poke quite effectively. A good Tracer is an utter nightmare
Mayhaps.
She is in a weird spot.
The game is tank dependent, your possible impact on DPS is dependent on your tank. There is a lot less agency for DPS after S9 changes and Sombra especially suffers from this.
Her role is to be an assassin, but she can’t play her role without the necessary space, provided by tank
Thank you, yet I am no stranger to Sombra myself.
I am sorry but I do not follow what you mean by this.
Are you alright with sharing with me these stats so I may exam them myself?
So while Tracer and Genji are also at a disadvantage when there is healing, these two can still apply pressure which Sombra cannot do?
What about Widowmaker as well? She tends to do very poorly when fighting Sombra.
And corners
True, healing can negate a lot of damage, personally I blame healing creep on that. Yet without any backup healing I find it pretty good still.
It kind of depends what you want or need in that situation. I do know that new Sombra incentives hacking first to target stragglers which is how Blizzard is balancing her.
I agree with Genji, but aren’t Tracer’s weapons too short to poke with?
And tank sadly happens to be the most inconsistent role so far.
I know I’m not the one you asked. But Mauga is a really basic tank. He’s probably the worst designed tank in the game. Higher skilled tanks like Doom, D.Va, or Ball tend to focus on movement, trading backlines, peel, there’s a lot going on.
With Mauga, he’s just a tank buster tank. You basically point at the enemy tank and hold M1+M2 and get to cover when low. His big problem is that he encourages just shooting big hitboxes because that’s how you get value from him. He’s all about the tank trade. He doesn’t require much skill or decision making relative to what’s needed by other tanks to be successful. Honestly, even Orisa takes more skill because of more complexity in cool down management.
If you want to go for a clean stealth kill while the enemy focus is on your team/tank a lot of things has to fall in place
The enemy has to be properly occupied with your team, otherwise someone will react to your target and stop you.
While you are in stealth waiting your team is 4v5 hard engaged. It is a huge risk
You then have to pick a target that is a) isolated b) doesn’t have a sustain ability
If you are uncloaked and fighting, you can drop behind the enemy backline easily, you will be focused hard
What Sombra usually does is annoy the enemy and draw away resources and when their is advantage she strikes.
You have little influence on that scenario
Average Sombra. Overbuff is not 100% reliable, but decent enough
https://www.overbuff.com/heroes/sombra?platform=pc&gameMode=quickplay&hero=sombra&skillTier=platinum
Exactly. If you don’t have space as Sombra you basically play Sombra76
She can be an easy target, but oftentimes she has Mercy
If she is on small high ground perch, you can’t port in without being detected and you are fighting 1v2.
Widow without Mercy pocket is usually an easy target
Ash is als easier
Hanzo is difficult. His DPS is much higher than yours.
I think they were still quite effective at 13m and then strong spread up to 20m. She can usually flank and use cover and still be in range to deal decent damage.
Yep, they basically packed the impact of two tanks in one
I’m currently on a crusade to break Quickplay with Ram, 73% over 45 games
That should not be happening
I have yet to play him, but a tank also being a tank buster does not sound like a good design concept, nor does endlessly shooting.
So she is more like a pest than an actual threat?
Personally my opinion on Overbuff is that it is good for a general idea but not anything concrete. That being said I feel it is perfectly fine to use Overbuff for this instance.
I won’t lie to you, that is all too relatable.
True, though I personally do not see many Mercy players pocketing their Widow. Maybe they find that playstyle too boring.
Word
That is a very good point, that is a little harder to do on Sombra because there is a delay when going out of invisibility.
Never say never, anything is possible.
Also I wish you luck, you are going to need it.