I’d honestly prefer having my abilities completely shut down—at least then I’m not instantly deleted by the massive damage buff she got to replace it. I understand that as a DPS, Sombra needs to be viable and secure kills, but what happened to the creativity behind her design?
Hack used to be such a unique ability. Yes, it was annoying, but it also opened up opportunities for strategic counterplay and team coordination. Now, it’s essentially just a damage buff for her. One second of true “hack” feels negligible—it’s like the skill only has that name as an excuse to keep calling it “hack.” It used to stand out because no other hero could disable abilities like she could. That uniqueness is gone, and with it, some of the depth the game had.
And honestly, why pick Tracer now? Sombra does everything better in nearly every situation. She can shred you faster and has more versatility. Hack has essentially become a “Discord Orb” that makes her a hyper-lethal flanker, not the disruptive, tactical hero she was designed to be.
I’m not saying Sombra is overpowered—I’m saying she’s lost her identity. She’s just another flanking DPS who hunts supports, rather than the strategic disruptor we had before. The game is becoming watered down. Everything is being streamlined so much that soon it feels like all we’ll have left is damage and healing.
What’s next? Are they going to nerf Ana’s anti-nade into a 50% healing reduction? And then “compensate” her by buffing her damage and healing to turn her into a boring heal bot? These kinds of changes remove what makes heroes unique and interesting. We need more strategic depth in the game, not less.
Another frustrating thing is Hack’s duration on B.O.B. 3 seconds? It’s hardly worth the effort to bother hacking him. And this is coming from someone with 68h of Ashe, and 2h of Sombra.
Oh please, I hope so. This is exactly what we need. Crazy that you would say that ironically when this is unironically the single most healthy change Blizzard could ever do to the game. Oooooh I know what I want for Christmas this year.
I hope they never do this to Ana. The anti nade is incredibly useful, and a 50 heal reduction wouldn’t be at all. There is already so much that counters anti. I don’t see why players are pushing for this so hard.
They’ve tried it both ways and everyone hates it regardless. When she was utility focused, she was useless as a DPS. She farmed EMP and her team pushed off the back of it. Now that she’s damage-focused, her utility is worse and she’s just chasing kills. Sombra is impossible to balance in a way that feels fair to play against because she does a lot of things a hero with stealth should just never do like disable enemy abilities or deal burst damage out of cloak.
Virus is the biggest issue of it all. They have forced her to just be a nothing or everything assassin and it’s boring and unnecessary. Dull her down a little make her fun. Listen to your ex Sombra mains who are so bored
She still can and does. She just had her CC nerfed, like Brig or Mei. I dont really see why we need to remove freeze in a world where, what, 6 seconds basekit ability lockout is acceptable
And to me, the gift would be bringing back scatter arrow, Mei’s freeze and Mcree stun.
Once they max out all ideas for new Heroes, what would they come up with?
How about a Hero that freezes enemies?? Oh wait…
And how about a grenade anti-healing? Oh, we had Ana…
We could have a Hacker that disable skills for a few… Why don’t we just make another version of Soldier?
I don’t even like Sombra, but this change was ridiculous. Ashe is already performing incredibly well and Bob JUST had the tank passive added to him (so he has both the DPS and the tank passive).
Because it basically negates the existence of many tanks and supports when ana throws an antinade.
But i think a better nerf to it would be reudcibg the duration /damage of the nade depending on how far you are from the splash damage.
Like junkrat mines.
Its too easy to randomly throw a nade (that is on a short cooldown, while also being on cooldown while the anti effect is applied, meaning its cooldown is even smaller)
And get maximum value.
Ana is a sniper, all about precision with her sniper and sleep dart.
So why in the world she also have a tactical nuke at her disposal aoe wise ?
There’s nothing strategic about hack. It’s literally just right-clicking to shut off abilities for free. It’s not even hard to do because it has 15m of range, auto-locks onto targets, and happens in half a second. You even get a free 50% cooldown reduction if you mess it up.
That’s all without even factoring in how freely she can position and wait for the most inopportune moment for the enemies with her invisibility.
Nothing about Hack is skillful, nor “strategic.” It’s literally just an admin ability on a 6 second cooldown.
There are 10 cleanses in the game (only 1 of which cleanses more than one person) and 8 shields/absorption abilities that can block anti’s impact.
18 out of 107 abilities and that’s not including ultimates. I don’t know what universe you live in where 16% is “enough” counter-play options, but clearly it’s not this one.
Sombras core design is garbage, the only ones who think it’s good are fun police Sombra mains.
There is no “strategic” counterplay with an invisible hero. Invisibility is the most anti-counterplay thing you can add to any character, whoever thought compounding that with an autoaim quick lock free refunding ability lockout should be barred from any future career involving game design.
yep, seems like all blizz cares about is turning everyone into a pure damage hero. no room for creativity, tactics, strategy anymore. all unique abilities getting flushed down the drain in reworks. just praying they don’t come for my main next
been like this for awhile since early release of ow2, the worst part of her kit isn’t the short hack duration anymore its the fact she is a throw pick due to stealth being yeeeted. Which basically kills her identity. Welcome to community skill issues that caused this , Cookie cutter example of how a hero is soft deleted from the roster.
They delete heroes identity from season 2 , just because its new people and (sorry but it feels this way) have little respect to original design. New team new rules new vision new quality and in results new game . That’s why owc is so different from live game. But new design has own audience and admirers
Because two roles should not be dissatisfied with interacting with one hero, just for the sake of that hero’s playerbase. All tanks and all supports, short of Ana mains, hate interacting with Biotic Grenade. There’s no fun for a tank to be unable to die over three seconds with nothing he or his healers can do to stop it, and there’s no fun for a support to watch someone die over three seconds with nothing he can do to stop it, either.
Nobody likes tanking against Ana, and nobody likes healing against Ana. Ana is the problem. Not 2/3 of the roles.
honestly i like the hack change but it does kind of make sombras gameplay loop a bit inconvenient
pre-rework you would hack someone and engage them immediately, but after the rework you cant really do that anymore, and often have to hack, tp, and then commit when your cooldown is coming back, because otherwise you are way too predictable
this is because auto invis made tp more expendable, but now its the only way to go invis so you cant use it only as a getaway
sure you can engage with virus but why do that when you can hack tp to proc opportunist first? or even better, make someone else look like the target before going to pick another hero instead
