Fix Sombra Rework

General Discussion
1

Many complain about Sombra. Some find the Virus too strong, while others are bothered by what Sombra has become. I belong to the latter.

Sombra is not an assassin, and Blizzard themselves have said that they wanted to preserve her identity as a hacker, which is not the case. A hacker should not be getting kills like Genji but rather aggressively supporting the team.

So here’s just an idea for a properly reworked hacker…

So what I would do with Sombra to maintain her identity as a hacker:

SUBMACHINE GUN

  • Causes 8 damage per bullet.

VIRUS

  • Remove Damage over Time (DoT).
  • Reduce cooldown to 2 seconds
  • Increase impact damage to 30
  • Virus requires 0.3 seconds of preparation time. (When taking damage, Virus goes on cooldown.)
  • Virus consumes 3 RAM.
  • Virus interrupts already active abilities.
  • Virus interrupts ultimates in their activation time (no complaints; many ults don’t have activation time or trigger immediately. Besides, it’s a skill shot).
  • Virus prevents the use of abilities for 0.3
  • Increase the preparation time by 0.2 seconds when Sombra uses Virus from invisibility.
    seconds and inhibits ability cooldown regeneration for 1 second
    (the brief time abilities are disabled is to prevent players from quickly activating another ability. The cooldown delay is to allow Sombra to use the virus against enemies with short cooldowns).
  • Virus deals enormous damage to constructs (turrets, barriers, walls).
  • Virus penetrates barriers and other blocking abilities.

(Note: Orisa’s Defensive Protocol cannot be deactivated. Orisa is immune to status changes during this time. Zarya is also immune within her bubble.).

HACK

  • Remove all effects from Hack
  • Reduce cooldown to 2 seconds
  • Hacked targets cannot activate abilities for 3.5 seconds
  • Already activated abilities cannot be deactivated
  • Hacking players costs 4 RAM
  • Hacking devices costs 1 RAM
  • Hack requires 0.6 seconds of preparation
  • Increase the preparation time by 0.2 seconds when Sombra attempts to hack a player from invisibility

(Hacking tanks either costs 1 more RAM OR the duration of the hack on tanks is reduced by 1.5 seconds. Alternatively, Sombra must stay near the target, or the status will be canceled.)

RAM

  • Sombra gains 8 RAM for using Virus and Hack.
  • Sombra regenerates 1 RAM every 2 seconds.
  • RAM regeneration is delayed by 2 seconds after RAM is used.
  • Virus and Hack cannot be used if there is not enough available RAM.

(Note: The goal of RAM is to manage both abilities with the same resource to prevent spamming. The regeneration rate, number of RAM, and costs can be adjusted for balancing).

EMP

  • Causes the status effect EMP, which corresponds to the effects of Virus and Hack.
  • EMP hacks devices like Baptiste’s lamp even if it’s in the activation phase. ( The lamp cannot be hacked or obtain the hacked status while it’s in the process of being thrown, which can lead to the situation where the lamp is still active after EMP, which should not be possible.)
  • EMP destroys temporary hit points, temporarily converts armor to regular hit points, and reduces shield hit points by 75%.
  • All ongoing ultimates can be interrupted. (with the exception of Zenyatta, who is immune during his ult)

( It’s strange which ults can be disabled with EMP and which cannot. Genji’s ult cannot be hacked or EMP’d even if he activates it at the same moment. Kiriko’s ult, however, can! There needs to be a consistent system.

(- Immediately activated ults (D.Va) cannot be hacked or EMP.)
(- Activated and passive (Widow, Sojourn) remain active. Hack or EMP has no effect on the ult.)
(- Activated and active (Genji, Torbjörn) are interrupted by EMP.)
(- Activated and sustained (Sigma, Moira) can be interrupted by EMP and Hack/Virus.)

TRANSLOCATOR

  • Old Translocator
  • reduce the maximum range to 25 meters
  • requires line of sight to the Translocator to teleport (players, devices, the payload, and destructible map objects do not obstruct the line)
  • teleportation is still possible for 0.3 seconds after breaking line of sight
  • Immediately turns invisible after teleportation.

(The line of sight does not need to go directly to the Translocator, only in its vicinity, allowing teleportation to elevated locations. The purpose of the line of sight is to prevent teleporting through solid walls. The opponent should be able to see where Sombra has landed. The goal of this change is to improve the poorly implemented current Translocator without reverting to Sombra’s old teleport.)

INVISIBILITY

  • Damage no longer delays the activation of Invisibility.
  • 3 seconds after activating Invisibility, Sombra is only revealed by damage; her invisibility is not interrupted.
  • Can become invisible on control points and payloads, but will be revealed after 4 seconds if an enemy is nearby the control point.

(Simple. It is a passive and cannot be activated by the player, thus the opponent currently has more influence on this passive ability than Sombra. This is poorly implemented and should be fixed with this.)

ALTERNATIVE CONTROLES
I’ve been thinking about an alternative control setup to bring back the ability to go invisible. One idea would be to move Virus from the Shift key to the left and right mouse buttons.

If you press the right mouse button and then the left, the hack would turn into Virus. The preparation time used for the hack would automatically be calculated as the time for Virus.

I couldn’t test this logically as it’s just an idea. Still, I think it could be a good way to free up the Shift key for invisibility. This would allow Sombra to have a different passive ability.

Possible Passive Abilities:

  • Sombra sees the health of enemies (not through walls as before).
  • Sombra deals double damage with her weapon against barriers and constructs.

GENERAL

This would be my approach to a perfect Sombra. The 3.5-second hack time is based on her fire rate, as it takes 3 seconds to empty her weapon. The additional 0.5 seconds are for escape purposes and to avoid sounding odd with 3.2 seconds.

The question arises regarding abilities that are charged, like Doomfist’s punch. Either you use Virus or Hack. Virus would only deal its damage on impact; however, in the suggested version, the cost is likely too low with 1 RAM. Therefore, you’d probably need to change the cost to 1 RAM upon firing and 1 RAM upon hitting a player. Virus bypasses defensive abilities like Sigma’s Gravitic Flux or Genji’s Deflect to make it possible to end corresponding abilities. Essentially, she throws a ball of 1s and 0s at you. Moreover, Virus probably needs a short activation time, similar to Hack but much shorter (50%).

If anyone sees problems or notices things I haven’t considered, please write!

4 Likes
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I like it… Except for Ram. It still encourages hiding is stealth for too long. Meaning players will likely use it and hope their teammates follow up. We had that problem in OW1 and we should want more time in combat.

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I like this actually good idea

2 Likes
4

We could also not touch heroes like sombra that aren’t overpreforming

3 Likes
5

Do you mean the increased cost for hacking from invisibility?

I would also take that out first and keep it as it is. You can hack devices and stay invisible, but you become visible when hacking players.

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Stealthers and fliers were a mistake. Period.

1 Like
7

Perma stealth and perma fliers was a mistake

Fixed :laughing:

1 Like
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And why not? Because you can’t manage to kill them? Most of the time, you didn’t have to, at least not in Overwatch 1. I’ve had and still occasionally have matches where the entire enemy team had more kills but still lost.

And Sombra has worked for 6 years. Yes, with initial challenges, but it worked, and suddenly that’s a problem?

The price for her abilities was the effective damage of her weapon, which is why I always saw Sombra more as a support and, before the fixed roles, would have liked to see her as a support, just like Symmetra used to be.

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They changed sym plenty of times to make her less frustrating even when she was very low PR + WR

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10

I can comfortably cause i play hanzo, i dont want to keep reposting my vid in every sombra thread cause it starts feeling like shilling [i have kept it unlisted though]

The issue is she can affect your gameplay purely by existing, you can no longer play freely cause if you take a flank route she is there to ruin even if you kill her it doesnt matter cause now your flank is spotted and her life itself doesnt matter cause she will be back in a jiffy.
Im pretty sure she can beat lucio currently on time to spawn in many maps.

The other thing she may ignore you and harass your support when you take a flank which is worse.

Now compare this to tracer who can also do these things she has to actively manage and use her blinks in a skillfull way then have to aim really good with her fast rof weapon also be mindful of her recall as it doesnt go were you throw but rather were you have been which is constantly changing as your engage grows.

The hardest to hit hero of ow1 tracer required this much skill and input to execute that.

The current rework draws a baby circle for you and does everything for you, just got to pop out at the right moment while stalking others.

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They changed her because she was bad, which she has been historically

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“Doesn’t every hero do that? DOOM, Widow?”

“And? The support should be able to handle it. Now it’s a bit more challenging since Sombra has improved, but well.”

“However, Tracer is nowhere near as easy to hit, and her recall is advantageous in every way. You can’t see exactly where she reappears. She is healed, regains ammunition, and, best of all, she can see in which position she comes out. Moreover, her weapon damage is more effective.”

"In a way, you are supporting my statement. Sombra used to be a timing hero. Timing was everything; now she is an assassin, and that bothers me. That’s why I had written my idea for a rework here.

I used to be hardly active in the forums but never received as many hate comments in all chats as I currently do. Sombra is not an assassin, and the problems started with Overwatch 2 because some troll at Blizzard decided to push her into the DPS role.

But we are getting a bit off-topic!"

2 Likes
13

Hack remains core to her Identity because 1) it’s still the value she brings to a team and 2) is what enables virus to blow people up. It’s fair to argue that Sombra might not be what you consider a hacker is thematically, but strictly speaking the rework still sticks to what the devs consider it.

Turning the disable aspect into a skill shot is something interesting for sure. Would open up the possibility to make said effect do more than just disable or last longer, etc.

So essentially you’re separating current Hack’s effect into 2 different things. Virus for active, Hack for not active. An interesting idea, but I feel like the spots should be swapped. As hacking is easy and thus shouldn’t be as powerful. Where as landing a skill shot on paper is not easy.

As interesting as it is I don’t think having a resource meter for Sombra really makes sense unless you had very strong control over how much resource you have at any one time. Other resource meters we have are allowed to regen over time since they don’t actively effect most of their kit. Yours however completely controls what her kit can currently do.

The bare minimum would have to be something like 1 Ram earned on assists and 1.5 on kills.

Makes sense, would it still do damage?

I disagree with giving her old teleport back. New teleport is much better. Only change I’d like to see to it right now is being able to have more agency over when you teleport instead of just auto doing it after a certain time so she becomes less predictable.

Everything else from how it interacts with her passive to the teleporting when hitting a surface is good though.

Nah that’s just buffing invis which we don’t need to do. The devs already have a grace window for her acting and it not effecting the CD of invis. You could maybe argue to slightly widen that grace window.

Overall I think it’s an interesting rework idea, but I also think that it over complicates her tool kit. Also in general I’m not a big fan of redoing a hero’s kit unless it’s absolutely needed since it really messes with people’s invested time into a hero and makes it that much more difficult for players to get used to the hero.

Current day Sombra more or less respects the time invested into OW2’s version of Sombra from playing her perspective wise. And for people who play against her she basically hasn’t changed so they don’t really need to re-learn how to fight her.

If we ever end up in a world with OW3 or OW2 gets made into a slower paced game I think your version of Sombra would fit in better/would be more appropriate to change.

1 Like
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Only if the doom is good or the widow can hit shots, not by existing.

Sombra gets the most free existing value.

Only if the tracer is skilled and still executing it properly.

No such skill bar for execution exists for sombra beyond very basic req.

Again takes high skill has small clip high rof making aim skill very high.

You mean in game chat right?

I used to think I had it bad one tricking hanzo :laughing: but sombra hate is on another level like it’s straight to extreme toxicity.

As much as I hate the sombra rework people being this toxic should just be banned.

Regarding your rework it like what Robert wizard says is a big rework.

I practically don’t see blizzard owning up to their mistake and doing a rework again in immediate future.

So my options are she either gets hard nerfed like before to drop pr for everyone or her skill floor is increased to drop her pr but retain the power for good players.

1 Like
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So if I am playing ball and get hacked while grappling, I don’t get forced out of ball. I can just keep swining? I assume rolling is a channeled ability and same with grapple? And like Rinehart holding up a shield. Hack won’t stop the shield, but he won’t be able to fire strike?

If so, I like this change a lot, because I don’t care if the pick rate of sombra is 1% and the win rate is 1%. I think the hero should be deleted at the moment. So reworking hack like this seems to completely remove the play style of switch to sombra and chain hack the tank. I am a big fan of that.

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Part of the problem is that they wanted her to be more committed and engaging to play, but iot do that, they needed to make her more aggressive. Without a damage ability or her old passive, her SMG damage is pitiful. She has adopted an assassin play style, but it was to be expected, especially when they originally planned to do away with TL or Cloak with her rework.

There won’t really be a version of her that can reliably defend itself while also falling into any flanker category.

1 Like
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First of all, thank you for your detailed opinion.

Skills alone are not enough to make a hero what they are; it’s also about how they are played and how they feel. Let’s take Genji and give him a submachine gun… would he still be a cyber ninja then? The hack itself is the only thing that makes Sombra a hacker. “Virus” has more to do with a deadly disease than with a computer virus. Hence, my statement that her identity was not preserved.

With the virus I have in mind, the damage over time would no longer be present, so hack would not produce an additional effect. As you noticed, the goal was to separate disabling and blocking of abilities. Which one is triggered now is something that needs testing. However, I believe that the virus should be the skill shot since it would be quicker to use and would allow for better reaction to the opponent’s abilities! The whole thing, however, only works with the RAM system…

I probably didn’t express it correctly, but the RAM is about creating a fluid cooldown system that allows for different times. Since hacking a tank is more valuable than hacking a turret, it must cost differently. Sure, one could simply say that a tank generates a cooldown of 10 seconds and a turret 4 seconds, but then there would be the problem that virus and hack could be used together, deactivating and blocking the tank’s abilities every 10 seconds. This should be possible, but certainly not as often.

Therefore, the system is there for that. I recalculated it myself. Currently, I would give Sombra 9 RAM and a regeneration of 0.5 RAM per second. The costs are as follows:
2 RAM = Hack - devices and medkits (4 seconds),
3 RAM = Virus (6 seconds),
4 RAM = Hack - player DPS/HEAL (8 seconds),
5 RAM = Hack - player TANK (10 seconds).
With a cooldown of 14 to 16 seconds, it would be possible to perform a Virus + Hack combo on the tank, leaving 1 RAM remaining. Or throw 3 viruses, or hack twice…

Yes. No. Yes, it causes damage. No, it does not cause EMP damage. The damage comes from the hit effect of Virus. I had initially considered removing this too since 10 damage is insignificant. But then I decided that the virus must cause at least 1 damage. Ana Sleep!!! Furthermore, it destroys temporary life.

I want the old teleport back. The new one is interesting but poorly executed. Why do we even throw it? It’s a delayed skill shot with a buggy hitbox that is far too easy to track. Also, I have to leave the fight earlier with it, and since Sombra no longer has attack abilities, her teleport must be reliable again. One could do it as before, giving it a timer for how long it lasts so that you can throw it briefly from the fight.

I want the old teleport back. The new one is interesting but poorly executed. Why do we even throw it? It’s a delayed skill shot with a buggy hitbox that is far too easy to track. Also, I have to leave the fight earlier with it, and since Sombra no longer has attack abilities, her teleport must be reliable again. One could do it as before, giving it a timer for how long it lasts so that you can throw it briefly from the fight.

It wouldn’t be such a major overhaul. The RAM system might be challenging, but certainly not to the extent that you wouldn’t figure it out after testing for 2 minutes. But it’s possible that I see it differently because I wrote it.

The arguments about Doomfist, Tracer, and Widowmaker, I can’t tally them up that way because they also apply to Sombra. While Sombra requires less aim, she needs more tactical understanding. When, whom, and why do I hack now? Should I announce my presence? The enemies are grouping up, what can I do now? Do I wait invisibly behind the enemy Sigma to interrupt his ult? Do I protect my healers now? Do I set a trap for the enemy Genji by making him believe Zen is alone?

I can feel the difference quite well in whether someone knows how to play Sombra or not.

The PR seems to be lower again. I hardly see any more Sombras now. HAHAHA, get it? I don’t see them… the hero who goes invisible!!! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

And yes, I meant the in-game chat.

The hack would work exactly like that. Hack only prevents the activation of new abilities. To deactivate abilities, Sombra has to hit you with a virus.

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I love your ideas, I see you took inspiration from cyberpunk lol. I can agree to everything you mentioned except for very few little things. I don’t think virus should go through barriers, I’m Fine with it doing damage though. hack should not remove abilities for 3.5 seconds. At least not on tanks, we really don’t want the last few tank players in the game to leave OW. The time is also a little too high, 3.5 seconds is overkill. I think reducing it down to 1 - 1.5 seconds is fair. Dive would be way too strong if sombra could hack and deny enemy abilities for a whopping 3.5 seconds. I love the RAM idea you made, it makes total sense and it sounds really cool.

I like the idea of slowing down enemy ability cooldown. Thats something this game doesn’t have yet and sombra definitely fits the identity. Again all this stuff will need to be drastically reduced on tanks or heroes like ball, doom, sigma, rein will be useless against her. The last thing is her invisibility, I feel the one thing players hate most about sombra is her lack of commitment. It’s unfair how she can pop out of nowhere at any time for a quick kill or hack. The one thing I would add is a timer to her invis. I think 20 seconds is long enough, thats enough time to position and plan accordingly.

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Thank you for your feedback as well.

And now that you mention it, I also realize that the idea is quite close to Cyberpunk. Honestly, that wasn’t my intention. Originally, the term for RAM was “charges” until shortly before publishing, and the idea came to me when I heard that Sombra would be reworked again.

The reason for the virus going through barriers and blocking abilities like Genji, Sigma, and Orisa is simply that it can only deactivate already activated abilities. It wouldn’t make sense or provide enough targets if these heroes could just block it. Also, it’s essential to consider that the virus has a preparation time and is a skill shot. Hitting the shield is not enough to deactivate it; you have to hit the respective hero itself.

Reducing the hack duration to 1 to 1.5 seconds would have too little effect and would be too close to the current hack. The fact that the hack can only block and not deactivate is the reason for an increased duration. Also, hacking a tank would already be more expensive. Alternatively, one could reduce the increased costs and, in turn, reduce the hack duration for tanks by 1 second. Then, they would be hacked for 2.5 seconds. Another possibility would be for the hack to last the full duration only if Sombra stays within X meters of the target. This would be kept generously visible to prevent hacking and immediately escaping. However, this would replace the other two changes—no increased costs and no reduced duration for tanks. (This idea is not mine but comes from a YouTuber who made a video about alternative hacks for Sombra at the beginning of Overwatch 2.)

But I doubt that tank players would just escape. Also, the issue of appearing out of nowhere and then dying wouldn’t be a problem since Sombra deals less damage than now and lacks an ability that causes substantial damage. Even if the damage of the virus were increased to 30, it would be 180 damage per second, assuming all shots hit. Keep in mind, with Sombra, players have an average accuracy of 30%. In rounds where I play Sombra, my opponents react quickly enough to a hack. Even if I manage to hack, they all turn around and focus only on me.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with Sombra is that experiences vary greatly depending on the rank.

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I agree on paper that an identity is more than just gameplay, I’m merely offering a possible explanation for why the devs think they’ve preserved her identity. Adding onto what I said already they might also include that for the most part her core gameplay hasn’t changed. She basically interacts with others in the same way as before and can be approached by both old Sombra players as well as opponents of hers fighting her much in the same way.

All this to say whatever the devs thought process of their statement is to me specifically Sombra still feels like Sombra to me. Gameplay is a bit faster for sure. But she still feels incredibly familiar.

I get where you’re coming from but at the same time even with having damage essentially removed from her combo (and her overall damage not even something I touched on as a possible worry) I still think hack being as easy as it is to land should not get buffed to disable abilities longer than they currently do.

It just would feel incredibly terrible to have to sit out of a fight for that long if Sombra doesn’t kill you. I still would be uncomfy with this even if disabling inactive abilities was on the skill shot instead. It would just feel “tolerable” since Sombra wouldn’t be able to ambush you with invis to do it.

About the only way I could potentially accept it is if you had to expend more ram to make hack longer and that’s only if she wasn’t invisible. If she was invis when she hacked the time would be the same quick time as it is now. This would be to prevent her from just hiding in invis till her ram was full. Both the extended hack duration as well as needing more ram would just slow the game down though and generally I’m not a fan of that.

Nah I get that, I was trying to express that without the ability to easily gain RAM back for her I could see situations happen where she really only has gun available. And considering that you’re removing a giant chunk of damage she currently has with your rework that would just be awful.

That’s why I suggested the kills and assists as a way for her to actively influence her new resource meter. It can’t just be passive gains.

So you’re just essentially removing all of the damage from her kit and expecting gun to do enough without any changes to it (you even nerfed it’s damage) Even current day supports would do more damage than her. That’s problematic.

I just have to disagree here. You can do so much with it you just need to be creative. I do agree that she’s potentially too easy to track which is why I suggested what I did. But so far I haven’t heard any rumblings of Sombra being too easy to follow and finish off from dedicated one tricks so that’s why I’m not currently pushing the idea.

Well yes, in your current version of Sombra she would need a different teleport. However it just sounds like you’d be re-introducing the gimmick/playstyle of rat Sombra that her rework removed. To which even if it makes more sense with your version of her I don’t like the sound of. I really don’t want a hero to be encouraged to be running around and only briefly interacting with enemies.

You’re entirely removing her path to active engagement as well as reliably killing people, separating an ability into essentially 2 abilities, and introducing a resource meter that flat out controls when she can actively engage with players. You’re essentially creating a brand new hero that slows the game down considerably.

It is a major overhaul and it’s not one that fits into how OW2 currently is.

1 Like