Can Sombra please be reclassified as a Support?

100%. I will say for the general public many hammond’s are kept at bay because of some of these easy to use mechanics. It gets harder when he might start getting support such as like a zen orb, ana healing, or a zarya bubble. Especially zarya bubbles.

It’s not an outlandish idea. Sombra was once picked instead on a second support, back when she would gain ult charge from teammates using her hacked health packs, to quickly build emp and overrun the entrenched opposition.

Sombra has no way to directly give people healing during battles

Picking her would mean your team is solo healing in battles

I personally think every support needs at least some form of reliable healing. Even if it’s about as strong as harmony orb. There aren’t always healthpacks to use for current Sombra to be a support.

One ability does not make a support.

So heres the problem and its the same problem earlier iterations of Symmetra had. This game, despite calling it “support” falls more into the category of WoW’s healers, than it does, say, Heroes of the Storm’s supports.

This game, for better or worse, has so much raw damage, that it needs at times equally strong healing, or barriers. Barriers lost out to healing. And because of this, the concept of a genuine non-healing support (original torb technically, and symm) just doesn’t work most of the time, and likely won’t be seen again. We’ll just get more DPS characters with utility.

I’d rather the weird utility people go into the Support/Healer category, anyway. It’s not too hard to slap a passive on a Hero to add weird forms of healing. Or more creative without breaking the character’s core gimmicks (HAHAHA FUNNY SCI-FI HACKER MEME LADY or HAHAHA BEAM AND BUILD STUFF LADY).

EX: Sombra

  • Passive keeps name. Now increases healing/damage vs targets below 50% HP by a fat 25%. Hacked targets count as critical regardless of their HP%. Also her default movement speed is 6mps because she’s going to have to be very active/mobile.
  • Stealth reverts to Stealth v1.0. Contesting, speed, and all! Instead it has a 0.25 enter time and 0.5 sec exit time. Being damaged only reveals her for 0.5 sec, doesn’t knock her out of Stealth. It only lasts 3 sec max. CD is 6 sec. It heals allies around her by 35hps within 10m. She will now be running like a maniac while hacking to heal, because she’s just that good of a crazy sci-fi hacker. She cannot heal herself while doing this. She’s already doing a lot, dudes.
  • Hack disables enemy Passives/Currently Channeling Abilities/Ultimate for 3 sec. Totally disables turrets/etc for 6 sec. CD is 10 sec. Cast time is 0.5 sec. Damage doesn’t cancel it. No longer reveals if a character has Ultimate or not/wall hax them, because that’s powerful info imo.
  • Hack vs Healthpacks increases the grab range by 5m, requiring LoS and ignores enemy shields. Boosted healing applies if the ally/self = below 50% HP. CD is 2 sec for Healthpacks. She can only have 3 Healthpacks simultaneously hacked and they can stay hacked for up to 180 sec.
  • EMP does the same as above, except it also makes Over-HP take 100% more damage for 3 sec. After casting EMP, Sombra goes into Stealth for 3 sec, healing for 70hps within 15m - no LoS required. Heals herself for 35HPS.
  • When reappearing with Translocator, burst heal for 50HP around 10m of her. Including herself. Translocator now has 30HP. No LoS needed.
  • Weapon spread is buffed slightly, fall-off increased by 4m, DPS output is nerfed by 25%.

Still a hacker lady. Still slippery and stealthy. Still super annoying and a troublemaker. Still doing a million things at once. No longer disables every ability, so there should be less tears. Still cancels channeling Ults and disables Ults for a bit. Instead of totally being annoying with disables, she can say “haha naw” to enemy shields for heals or even LoS in general. As such, her heals are off-healer status. Better than Zenny by quite a bit, with slightly less damage output (but hitscan kween). The LoS negating is more so she can be effective despite being all over the place and because it’s impossible to account for LoS when you’re playing an ADHD character like Sombra.

No.

Good because she’s a damage hero.

You want a damage hero to be selectable by supports? Ok as long as McCree can be a support too, y’know, cause he supports the team by killing stuff. :upside_down_face:

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do you know about brig??

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I have heard of her - but to my knowledge, her shield bash does not disable moment abilities for five seconds when used.
So it’s not comparable.

The goal isn’t to just stun, but to prevent them from begin able to escape

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Which honestly is a failure of OW support design. Healing shouldn’t be such a pillar of OW that its necessary for a support to have one to exist, can you imagine if tanks couldn’t exist without shields? The fact that the game requires healers is a failure of design. Just imagine if it didn’t than Sombra and Symmetra could be supports, Echo could have been a support, but apparently a support not healing for 15 seconds isn’t a possibility.

Healing has irreversibly ruined OW’s design, it shouldn’t be such a core pillar in this game. Healing needs to return to pre Ana levels in order for supports and the game to be good again.

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If the game wasn’t focused around holding an objective like TDM then sure. Also it’s not like healing is required. It’s a lot like barriers, if the other team has one then it’s way better to have your own then it is not to.

Let her drop the hacked health packs anywhere for her team (the way Torb use to throw out armor packs) and you’ve got a deal.

no thanks mate. she’s meant to be an assassin like dps. not some sad excuse for a support. I will riot if they rework her into a support.

If the role queue was split into 2 sub-Support categories before being placed into a match, & that player could only play heroes of that sub role, then the balance of all the healers being able to heal a lot alone would have actually been a viable balance.

I also liked to solo tank, along with solo healing, before role queue was released because you could feel the power of your own actions helping the team win.

But with role queue came all the nerfs to every hero in every role, essentially, forcing every hero to rely on someone else to do your job by splitting the power of your role.

Which is why I am personally looking forward to 5v5, once OW2 releases.
Because only 1 forced tank means more power will go back into every tank from the pre-mass nerfs for Role Queue.
And with more power to each individual character, means each of them will start to feel fun again, without needing to rely on someone else to do your role’s job as an individual player.


That is the biggest problem created by this forced 2-2-2.
The balance for it is great. But the fact that there is always, 100%, another player on your team playing your role means that your hero’s power level had to get halved & your teammate’s hero’s power level had to get halved, too.

And that is exactly what happened in the past 2 years, since the release of Role Queue.


If they just split the Support role into Healer & Utility, then every hero in each category can have higher power levels.
But to do that, the utility category needs more heroes, and right now, only 2 heroes can fit into that category. Sombra & Symmetra.

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Both Sombra and Symmetra should be reclassified and reworked into supports in OW 2

They can easily be supports with some minor healing like Zenyatta, but mainly utility and maybe providing shield hp and decent damage??

Right???

Solo healing feels really satisfying! I would love if OW had 1 healer and 1 support (Like main healer + Lucio/Zenyatta or full utility support) in each team

But I think it could increase queue time even more :worried:

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With the creative ideas that are constantly implemented in the creation of support heroes, since launch, they are able to play so differently from one another.

With that sort of creative design, the devs could literally split the Support role into 2 sub categories & not have any of the heroes interfere with the other sub role’s abilities.

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I never said reworked - I said reclassified.
Nothing about her should change - only her ability to be selected by the support players instead of the damage ones.

Actually, Sombra was initially designed for being a support hero.
But they couldn’t figure out a way to make Hack not be OP as a support hero, or something like that & decided to push her into a DPS.

I don’t remember the whole behind the scenes explanation they did, either in video, a thread, or an interview. It’s been a while since I learned about that, so every OW related news just blends together at this point.