Honest Conversation with Devs

No offense, but can we just get an honest conversation with the dev’s about Sombra? Why can’t she get a linear buff to make her viable instead of stacking her kit with every nerf possible?

She has NEVER been properly balanced. Not for a day. So this design flaw of adding buffs and nerfs at the same time to ‘balance’ her is insane.

Sombra was too weak. We asked for a viable gun. You gave the gun. AT THIS POINT SHE WAS CLOSED TO BALANCED. Now the logic that follows is completely insane. If she is too strong… then adjust her kit in a small way. Don’t completely remove her ability to gain ult charge from healing, and give hack a completely new set of targets and controls all at the same time.

Now who the hell knows what the balance is of that new hero. NO ONE. We have never played this hero. Oh she sucks worse than the original hero we are trying to fix? Once again. Lets make some tweaks. Maybe work on that LoS. Maybe work on the cooldowns. Lets tweak… NOPE. We changed the only two parts of her kit which were left untouched. Great news, now every single piece of her kit has been nerf’d except her gun. And you wonder why shes useless. You took a useless her and made her worse in EVERY aspect except raw damage.

Sombra was my favorite hero and she got buffed. Everyone(not anyone who played Sombra mind you) rejoiced. The buff added was a 5-second addition to her trans timer. NO SOMBRA MAIN WANTED OR NEEDED THIS. I posted in these very forums explaining how this was a change in the wrong direction and anyone who needed this change didn’t play Sombra enough because this wasn’t going to help anything. We had serious dps problems. When the DPS was fixed… she was instantly given a whole host of new problems which have not yet been resolved. THIS ARE MAN MADE PROBLEMS BY THE DEVS.

YOU MADE SOMBRA THIS BAD ON PURPOSE. You don’t nerf an underpowered hero. You’d have to be stupid or purposefully sabotaging her in order to make such a ridiculous error in judgment. In order to help you, I have included a basic problem solving chart.

  1. Identify the issues.
  2. Understand everyone’s interests.
  3. List the possible solutions (options)
  4. Evaluate the options.
  5. Select an option or options.
  6. Document the agreement(s).
  7. Agree on contingencies, monitoring, and evaluation.

I really feel like everyone on the dev side involved in Sombra has no interest in playing her. Pharah can fly. That’s pretty massively overpowered. Every other match someone is talking about how we are gonna deal with the potential possibility of a Pharah. I never once saw a conversation like that about Sombra’s hack, or Sombra’s invisibility, or her translocator. Yet we are stacking nerfs on Sombra left and right out of some unjustifiable fear of her. Shes NEVER been a threat. I no longer care how in version 1.2 of the game invisibility caused all these problems. That version of the game didn’t have stunlocks every 5 seconds, defense matrix, or any number of other abilities.

Sombra is the only hero outside of Mercy who is even debatably worse than she was a year ago. And Mercy is/was considered god. Sombra is/was considered useless.

3 Likes

she has more changes you know, and they sound alot better to me

Amanada you are being sold a lemon of a car, and the owner is telling you they are gonna spit shine that car when you point out the engine doesn’t work.

And if you’re trying to sell me a car. Wash it first. Don’t make me point out to you all the dirt, then wash it, and act like you’re doing me any favors.

Devs need to solve : 1 sombra isnt played enough 2 sombra have a skill floor too high. 3 CC on playerbase(lol) . the agenda is simply different.

How does this make her stronger? Enemies targeting trans is a nerf. Period. Adding timer to her already insanely length timer is a QoL change. Not a power creep. It makes her kit easier to use but it doesn’t make her stronger at all. It’s like if you said you are nerfing Hanzo by making him reload his quiver. But he only has to reload once every 60 arrows. That isn’t a real nerf.

Same thing with her invisibility. The only reason why you ever need more than 6 seconds of invisibility is when you are contesting an objective. I am never hanging out on the backlines ‘scouting’ invis… doing nothing. Also, because I cant hack packs while invis, I have to break stealth anyway once i get behind enemy lines, then restealth.

Overwatch is a timed match. Sombra isnt just gonna be hanging around for 20 seconds in the background invisible doing nothing else. And if she is… shes a useless team member. Again, I just don’t see how this makes her stronger. It makes her kit easier to use if you are bad… you wont accidentally let the timer run out… its 6 seconds with visual markers.

And the nerfs that come with invis are as massive to invis as the nerfs to ult charge on packs were. We are losing versatility and raw power for QoL changes. Everyone begs for base Sombra speed increase to match Genji and Tracer. And instead our speed boost ability got nerf’d and we are told this is to make her stronger overall. LOL. I haven’t seen a single buff. All i see is a massive list of nerfs.

Except you’re not being sold a car. Sombra was released for free. All her changes, buffs, nerfs, reworking and balancing are being done for free. Blizzard doesn’t have to do any of this, give her any attention or even attempt to make her better. They could take Sombra out of the game tomorrow and never put her back in if they were as malevolent, petty and manipulative as you and others unfairly portray them every day. Do you really think they’re doing all this work, for free, just to make Sombra weaker and spite you? Show a little gratitude and appreciation for all they’ve done and continue to do, if you have criticisms at least make them fair and respectful.

the statistically worst hero in the game DOES NOT require compensation nerfs for her buffs, im so confused why they did that.

I’d understand it a little more if they applied their balancing philosophy equally to everyone on the roster, but they’ve buffed other characters with low pick rates with virtually no tradeoffs (Hanzo), and have introduced characters that have low skill floors that are still more impactful than heroes that are more difficult (Brigitte). I’m not sure why Sombra is the exception, other than people seem to have some irrational hatred of her kit, sepcifically hack, despite the fact that it’s the least disruptive CC. So Sombra gets labeled “unfun” and Blizzard feels compelled to “buff” and “balance” her by changing the aspects of her kit that are least offensive to people rather than just tweaking her and making her viable.

There is no Sombra solution that includes hack as it currently is implemented.