Idk how many Sombra players are on these forums but I’d like to hear your thoughts on hack being a skill shot similar to a sleep dart or some other projectile. Do you like the idea of it? I see this brought up a lot and there are pros and cons to it. The obvious pro is that they’ll have to buff her in other areas to compensate for hack being harder to land. A major con is that the tank community will hate us even more . Mostly because they’ll be even bigger targets since it will be harder to land.
I’m kinda neutral on the idea although I’d love to try it on an experimental card someday. I’m mostly curious about Sombra main perspectives although I’d also like to hear what everyone else thinks about this too.
Ehh… Not a Sombra main, but Sleep puts someone completely out of comission for 4.5 seconds. Hack only disables their abilities for 5, and can be interrupted or straight up avoided with mobility. Hell, i personally just use my abilities during her hack animation so she won’t get any value out of it.
You’d probably have to give Sombra a new ability entirely for her to function with Hack as a skillshot. She’s already really lackluster.
Depends on how hard it is to land.
She literally has no damage abilities and she is a DPS so … if you mean something like Revenant Silence from Apex, sure. That would work.
I like comparing sleep with hack because they seem pretty similar in ways people don’t think. People talk about sleep lasting a long time but realistically people aren’t always a sleep that long since dmg wakes them up. Also like sleep some targets are better for sleeping than others although It is a lot more versatile. Hack similarly lasts a long time but some targets are very useful for hacking while others it does basically nothing. I think they can learn a lot about balancing hack by looking at how sleep works.
The hardest part of landing hacks is trying to get high ground to not get interrupted as much. Positioning with Sombra is a lot more important than people think! But once you get that down the hardest part is mastering her whole kit to maximize hacks and their follow up
Not a Sombra player as such, but I think turning hack into a projectile would negate almost all of the counterplay to it. It would be uninterruptible, because it would depend on Sombra landing a skill shot, rather than being left unchecked by the enemy. It could probably be shot from further away (and if it couldn’t, then it’s easy to land shots from that close, negating the point of a skill shot). Sombra could probably get away with shooting it at any hero besides D.Va, Genji, or Sigma from a brazen frontal attack, since it’d be a projectile rather than a drawn-out cast. And since Sombras can probably already aim, given that she has a hitscan weapon, it is unlikely that they will often miss.
Hack’s current design requires Sombra to be sneaky, it requires her to get up close and put herself at risk, and gets interrupted by any stray damage at all. When she gets away with hacking, it’s not because it’s so easy to use the ability, it’s because she was good at recognizing her opportunity and/or the enemy failed to pay attention or shoot her.
Plus, with as much as people loathe CC, it’s not like making it a skill shot will magically make people tolerate the ability more.
You left out being able to use it mid-fight and duels without giving the target 2s notice to interrupt you before you even start shooting.
You can shoot the target and use it instantly without any delay resuming shooting the target.
The only people who wants hack to be a skill shot are primarily mobility heavy heroes such as doomfist, genji, tracer, and hamtaro. They don’t understand the severity of the buff to Sombra players that can aim, and how all the enemy’s slower tank and support players have to suffer the consequences.
This reminded me of when I kept warning how much more powerful Storm Arrow was when it was first announce and not release yet. Everyone was so blinded with hatred of Hanzo’s Scatter Arrow ability
Her kit needs to get adjusted it. Like:
Hacked enemies get now 150 damage when you throw your translocator at them. Headshots possible.
No jokes aside, I think either quantity or qualitiy of hack needs to be adjusted in that case. Lower cooldown/ multiple charges or buffs like increased damage on hacked targets. The problem is whatever buff hack gets EMP will get as well. And we know that EMP doesn’t need any buffs. Of course one could introduce different rules for hack and EMP but that kind of
I don’t like the idea of that because EMP is a multiple targets hack and should have the same effects on enemies.
Furthermore Sombra is already a hero that is hard to get value from so I don’t think the skill requirement for such a fundamental ability of her kit needs to become higher.
But maybe I am just traumatized because the devs tend to slaughter heroes that get reworks.
All in all this sounds like an idea that is different on paper than in reality. I say different because I can’t decide if it’s better or worse yet but an experiment would certainly be a nice idea to test it.
I want it to be a skillshot, so it can be as powerful as sleepdart with a lot of people defending it with the reason of it being a skillshot, regardless of it being op or not.
90% times I hear sombra going out of stealth before she even manages to hack me. I also play sombra and it´s not always easy to hack tanks, when they are surrounded. I think she is just fine as it is. Maybe she would even need some help, cause she is so depend on communication and cooperation of her team, that she is considered a throw pick in normal QP, where people don´t bother to cooperate.
I personaly would welcome something similar to a kill feed - where you would see, who got hacked by who or who got sleep dart by who, etc. It would be very informative and cool to have this things there.
I am in favor of anything being made a skill shot for value. The problem is, the value must be good enough then to offset missed shots vs landed. Therein is the issue. If lets say we buffed Hack and Repair Pack for instance after making them skill-shots, the problem comes in that for full value you must land most of them, and if you are really good, the power is hard to manage with someone very skilled. This is the reason many abilities are 'automatic", the power level use is much smoother in terms of skill progression because it depends more on game-sense and positioning across the board. That being said, I would love to see more abilities at least tested on the XP card as skill shots just to see.
Hack, especially in high critical situations, are a gamble.
If you get it off, you turned the teamfight, if not your are either dead or low life and out of combat.
Hack skillshot takes aways the high risk high reward aspect
At this point I’d redesign Sombra.
She’s totally OP against (some) tanks and completely underpowered and worthless against everyone else and mostly dps. You can hack a tank to cancel their movement and shields, but hack barely does anything against other heroes.
She should be made into a stealth assassin hero, with mobility and better gun damage just lile Tracer.
. Mostly because they’ll be even bigger targets since it will be harder to land.
