Alright, let’s talk about Sombra. Her design is arguably more dubious than Doomfist’s. “Flavor”-wise she’s cool but her playstyle is atrocious. Set down a teleporter, go invisible, try to take out the critical utility of a shield tank, try to pop up close to a squishy (especially supports) and burst them down or finish them off, relatively quickly teleport out of danger, rinse and repeat. Her weapon loses effectiveness in any other use than getting cheap kills the set-up of and escape from which occupy much of her playing time. Not even Goth kids want to play too much of a hero this lame.
- Machine Pistol damage reduced by 0.6 at the low end up to 2 at the high end (25% damage reduction across her damage range)
- Gains Akimbo - 4-5 seconds after being out of Stealth a second Machine Pistol is automatically pulled out, doubling damage (50% damage increase relative to her current state). Unsure whether the spread should be increased a little or if perhaps the single Machine Pistol should do 1/3 as opposed to 1/4 less damage, or her damage being increased by ~34%. Translocating does not end Akimbo (which could be changed) but entering Stealth does.
- EMP deals the same obliterating damage to barriers, however, only 300 to hero shields
This is about it. Getting a hack off and popping up close to an enemy is still useful but Sombra’s gameplay shifts from cheap time-consuming kill attempts and harassment to shooting power if she can stay out of Stealth, giving her general practicality. EMP still hacks, obliterates all barriers, and destroys all hero shields except for Lucio’s ult, which is almost half negated and degrades quickly.
Further comment on and changes to the supports are warranted regarding main support selection and some of the numbers not making sense. Lucio got too much of a buff and maybe Mercy and/or Zenyatta deserve further 5-10 Hps bumps. I’m starting to be uncertain whether Lucio’s ult doesn’t activate too slowly, especially relative to EMP.
I’ve now looked at the numbers of Moira, Baptiste, and Brigitte and want to comment on my selection of main supports and rebalance them somewhat. There are currently seven supports and I didn’t want to put a majority in a mutually exclusive category. I wanted to avoid supports whose ultimates did not counter heavy damage/keep their teams alive. I also wanted to give priority to supports who did not have much appeal as partial damage dealers. However, representation and playstyle considerations were important at the same time. Mercy was an obvious choice as she is the purest support, dealing little to no damage. Lucio was also an obvious choice due to being the only support who could keep up with dive while being more difficult to kill and having an engaging mobility-based playstyle. The last choice came down to having an aim-based main support. While an idea for Ana appealed to me I think primarily due to the ult Zenyatta is a more suitable pick.
The further adjustments I would make to these heroes:
Mercy
- An additional 10 healing per second is added to Caduceus Staff bringing the total to 70 health per second
If much of what she does is heal one target, albeit one that could change rapidly, she should be able to do it well.
Lucio
- Crossfade healing of allies reduced by 8 per second to 22
His buff is dramatically reduced as combined with the approximately doubled area of effect for his healing and Amp It Up he would probably end up doing too much healing.
Zenyatta
- Orb of Hamony healing increased by 5 per second to 35
- Orb of Destruction damage reduced by 8 to 40
With two Orbs of Harmony his healing is on par with Mercy’s now. Not sure if this is excessive. The nerf to his damage is warranted in this role.
At this time I don’t see a need to nerf the other supports. The dynamics will likely change, increasing the impact of the designated main tanks and main supports while keeping barriers under control. But 3 DPS will exist and there will be extra counters to compositions trying to ram tanks and supports down everyone’s throats. The goal is, while allowing greater freedom in compositions, to effectively accommodate DPS skewed preferences and to make tanks and supports more fun to play. I don’t believe people who make power creep arguments have thought things through.