Concerned About Sombra's Upcoming Rework

For those of you who are unaware:

To list things out:

  • Stealth’s duration is now unlimited (but still has a cooldown when deactivated?).
  • Movement speed bonus while in stealth decreased from 75% to 50%.
  • Translocator’s duration is now endless. The Translocator can now be deactivated instead of timing out.

I’m glad that Sombra is under the microscope; she’s needed that since her release. The concern I have is that these changes neglect the ability that seems to be the source of Sombra’s instability (Hack) while simultaneously covering for a lot of Sombra’s weaknesses.

Sombra can now position herself however she pleases in relation to her target while in stealth; a luxury she didn’t have when her stealth had a limited duration. This wouldn’t be that huge of a concern if it didn’t only take 1.35 seconds to destealth and hack a target (.7 to destealth, .65 seconds to Hack), pushing the limits on a player’s ability to respond.

Take Lucio, for example. 1.35 seconds typically isn’t enough time to to realize Sombra is present, locate her, and shoot her in time when we consider the functionality of Lucio’s weapon; .5 seconds of firing in which 4 projectiles are launched, .5 seconds of downtime. If the hack goes through, it disables every part of Lucio’s kit except for his Sonic Amplifier, rending him nearly useless.

When comparing this to certain other heroes, however, we have the opposite effect. D.Va for example, has a very spammable primary fire. If Sombra tries to destealth and hack her, D.Va doesn’t need to know Sombra’s exact location to interrupt Hack’s cast; she can just turn around while blindly firing her Fusion Cannons, and she’ll hit something. All it takes is 1 damage, and Hack goes on a 2 second cooldown.

The problem we have is that when Sombra counters a hero, she hard-counters them, and the tools to outplay the Sombra are quickly removed from the other player’s kit. Meanwhile, Sombra is nothing but a mere annoyance for the heroes she doesn’t counter.

On top of all of this, Sombra will always have the escape option with Translocator’s endless duration.

The changes to Stealth and Translocator will not fix the problems with Hack. Hack itself needs to be changed to fix the problems brought on by Sombra’s previous two patches.

Some ideas:

  • Increase the cast time of Hack back up to .8 seconds.
  • Reduce the cooldown time when Hack is interrupted to 1 second.
  • Add a minimum damage threshold for Hack’s interruption (I suggest 10 damage; within the capacity of intentional fire, but outside the damage capacity of most blind spray).

Finally, I don’t think Translocator should have an endless duration. Deactivating one is totally fine with me (I have suggested that before), but the 15 second duration was one of Sombra’s weaknesses. The player fighting her knew that if they could outlast that timer while enlisting the help of their allies, Sombra would activate the Translocator rather than letting it expire out of self-preservation. The duration enforces a sort of hit-and-run playstyle that could be outlasted; that wouldn’t exist anymore with the endless duration.

Edit due to necro: Please note that this thread is way out of date, and I understand how uninformed my perspective at the time of creating this post was. Feel free to ignore everything I have said in this thread, as it no longer represents my current position with Sombra.

Doesn’t really matter at this point, considering she’s still garbage, just in different ways now lol

Necrobump.

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