Age old problem I suppose. But how do you deal with her without swapping to another tank?
I dive, I get hacked, I have no abilities to escape and die.
I flank, I get hacked, I have no abilities to escape and die.
For whatever reason I’m pretty effective playing as ball. I know who to focus and how to distract so that the enemy rarely gets a fair fight with the rest of my team. The issue is they realise that and switch to Sombra to ruin my fun.
I can deal with other ‘soft’ counters. I’m not bothered about getting hooked or slept I can usually escape and reset. But Sombra is just instant death for me
What are the strats to deal with her? Literally just rolling around looking for her? Or forget about flanking and diving a stay near the team? Neither is particularly fun for me. It’s annoying how switching to one hero can ruin my entire game. It’s not even about win or loss, it’s just not fun playing against a sombra.
I guess the same applies to Doomfist and Winston, even Dva? I can’t play the other tanks to the same level and find them boring so switching isn’t really an option.
Yeah, damn. Oh well. It was almost better when she could teleport away, as now she’s forced to stay and fight. I’ve always thought adaptive shields should protect against hack. So you could use your shields before going in, obviously it would have big downside too not as much shield and not available when you’re low on a health and need it. Which would give it balance while offering a little protection against the dreaded Mexican
You have to swap if your team isn’t dealing with her for you. Monkey is good. If you want to stay on Ball you’ll just have to coordinate with your team better so that you can be healed through the hacks.
The hack alone isn’t preventing you from escaping as abilities are disabled for like 2s.
So my best advice would be : don’t blindly dive. Try to spot where ennemies are cause if you die in less than 5s, you’re either diving mid life or diving alone between the 5 ennemies.
Check for sombra, coordinate with your team as packing is a natural counter against her.
Also if Sombra is focusing you but your mates are coming along, you might die but the frontline got broken and your team should take advantage. Its not fun indeed but its efficient.
If I understand correctly, you play either Queen or Ball. Ball has to pay attention to when use his shielding ability and hook.
Queen its much more complicated as she doesn’t really have a proper escape. Best way for her is to play around corners and covers. Use her knife or shoot from time to time at corners to check for Sombra.
But Queen shouldn’t be left alone anyway. You’ve to pay attention to your team composition : Hanzo or Widow won’t follow a diving tank and being isolated is the best way for Sombra to get you.
Winston has his shield that saves him from damage or even hack. Dva can check for Sombra but she’s overall, imo, kinda weak ; so Dva shouldn’t be flanking alone when there’s an opposing Sombra imo.
Depends on the map and objective. Attacking into her on hybrid map can be rough, its on you to attack them but she can just sit there invis and babysit her team against your dives. Winston can jump in and block her hack with bubble though and its easy to cancel her hack with primary.
But she is pretty weak in the poke part of the team fight. So if its escort or push you can play closer to your team and use your mobility to screen around the objective (clear high ground for dps etc) and your team should be able to push. Then its on her to make a move, at which point you can punish her. Ball vs sombra is pretty fun imo, she is good against him if he dives but he is also one of the best tanks for chasing her down if she goes for your backline. So you just want to create a situation were you are pushing the objective and she has to react to it. Then you can punish her for it and dive her team as usual. Because sitting there invis and waiting for you to dive just makes it a 5v4 and that should allow your team to make progress.
So play closer to your team, rotate around packs so they don’t get hacked. Spy check and fireball around flank routes and you will catch her pretty often, peel for your supports and clear high ground around objective. Don’t try to slam her, just fireball and shoot. If you need to push her team and don’t know where she are dont commit to a hard dive and slam, just fireball through them and go from cover to cover fast. If you cancel her hack you can slam, otherwise don’t.
I’m a GM ball, ball counters sombra too. You can bait out her hack in several ways. The key is to bait it out before you dive and in a spot you can take cover. Then you engage.
I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BAAALLLLLLLL
In all seriousness, the hardest balls I’ve played against almost played like sombra themselves, isolated a support/squishy dps and got a super quick elim then ran. Be aware of your CD’s and whether you have supports ready for a dive into the main melee. Play tight to the corners to help break the hack LOS and then watch for the chasing translocator and you’ve got a super easy 1v1
Gota bait out the hack and chase when she teleports away. I only play doom so cant help with ball, but on hin you just slam cycle to bait and then when she translocates away you slam near her to reveal
I’ve been playing against Sombra a bit more for practice and putting your advice into action. Getting a little better I think. What works well for practice is to focus a dps, usually Widow, Ashe, Solider. After a few deaths they usually write something suitably toxic in chat, tell me I’m being reported and switch to Sombra. Thinking they’re clever of course but what they don’t know is that’s exactly want I wanted. A (usually inexperienced and tilted) Sombra to practice on.
I do this when it’s a loss to make the game more fun for me. If my team are that awful that none of the enemy are dying, then I’ll kill a support and just spawn camp them until they give up and we make friends.
Focusing down the support or distracting the tank and generally ignoring the dps works too. They have such tunnel vision that they won’t even think about switching until the problem is effecting them directly.
Reading this back I realise that I’m probably just as frustrating to play against as the Sombra is for me. So I guess I can’t complain that much.
I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BAAALLLLLLLL