I have said this before as Warlock (old forum acc)
But jsut make sombra hack an interrupt followed by a long (6 - 8 second) cooldown pause instead of a silence
I think hack would be nearly useless with no ability lockout. It would effectively only end the few channeled abilities that exist in the game (like Moira’s ult). The lockout period is already relatively weak until you get the T3 perk that increases its duration.
Ah, the non-existing one, right
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Not just relatively weak. The effect itself is about as strong as a one-second silence effect can be, but due to the preparation required, it’s extremely weak and almost impossible to place it precisely.
Also, the perk that extended the duration no longer exists. According to Blizzard, that perk only enhanced Sombra’s strengths and didn’t create any new opportunities. Well, the new perk basically does exactly the same thing, but let’s not tell Blizzard that — otherwise, they might get offended.
This would only work if all abilities were interruptible, and Hack would need to be usable much faster.
Now imagine Mauga activating his healing ability, which has something like a 13-second cooldown, and then a Sombra just quickly right-clicks and the ability is canceled. Also, there are heroes like Tracer who couldn’t be hacked at all in that case, meaning one less potential target on the map. The same goes for Ana. The fewer targets there are on the map, the more oppressive Hack becomes for the enemies who do have interruptible abilities! But hey, at least then we could hack Genji’s ult.
Also, what about Ball and Reinhardt? They have abilities without cooldowns.
Oh, dang. Didn’t catch that they’d removed it. I’ve only been in Stadium this week. That’s too bad.
It’s been gone 4 days. Weird thing to be smug about.
It pretty much is an interrupt at this point.
It’s been known for couple of weeks before the patch. And yeah, it’s been whole four days since then
It can happen — I don’t expect anyone to know everything after every patch. I also only look at the things that directly interest me.
What bothers me is Blizzard’s reasoning. What they said about it is definitely a lie. I was hoping they would maybe fundamentally increase the duration again, but no.
By the way, they changed the perk into a virus AoE with an 8-meter radius when Virus hits a hacked target. So it’s just even more damage on a hero who was already ruined by damage.
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That doesn’t mean he has to have read it. Most people don’t look through the patch notes carefully, and even fewer actually read the dev blog. Instead of replying in an annoyed way, you could just point out that this no longer exists — especially since it was only just removed.
Attacking someone over it doesn’t help us at all; it actually prevents a proper discussion and is usually a sign that someone has no real arguments.
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Its a 1s silence with a 0.65s interruptable cast. Its not that oppressive really, its fine imo.
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What’s your goal of changing hack? I wouldn’t say hack is the thing that makes people hate sombra. It’s her invisibility.
Getting free positioning, getting to hit you with virus before you know she’s there, and then having good burst damage when you already lost half your HP before you turn to find where she is, makes most 1v1 against her very much in her favour. And that makes people find her unfair and frustrating.
The only way to stop her being the most hated hero is to remove her reliance on being invisible. Hack is a tiny part of the problem - negligible compared to her invisibility and her free escape.
Hack is fine. Invisibility is harder to get right, the invisible hero also felt horribly unfun in Paladins, but it feels fine in Rivals.
A silence ability can work in hero shooters; invisibility with thoughtful design can also work in a hero shooter. Putting both on the same hero? Makes me want to call the dev team slurs for such obvious horrible design. The “invisible hacker” fantasy is a failed concept. Choose one or the other, or none, but for the love of God after like 5 reworks please stop choosing both.
Only that in this case, it’s not the invisibility people find annoying, but rather the damage!
Also, a lot of things in the scenario description are wrong!
Sombra does not have good burst damage unless she hacks, and even then, it’s only mediocre.
When we hack, the target knows we are attacking, and even if we instantly use Virus, Sombra still has a 0.4 second delay before she can use her weapon.
This is actually reduced further by projectile travel time if you base it on the time of impact — otherwise, you would have to base it on the moment invisibility deactivates.
And since OW2, the sound cue for de-cloaking is much quieter because Sombra’s voiceline was removed as a QoL (Quality of Life) change — which, by the way, is technically a buff for Sombra but also leads to this “assassin, blow-everything-up” problem.
In OW1, where Sombra was fully based around hacking, she had the same delay on hack as now but always had to become visible first before she could hack or deal damage, and that process had a 0.3 second delay — sometimes even longer.
Every time, a greeting voiceline would play, within about 10 meters if I’m not mistaken.
If you wanted to deal damage, it was fine — but for hacking, it was very annoying for Sombra herself.
However, reintroducing this mechanic would also mean a major buff in another area.
It’s not a failed concept, otherwise complaints wouldn’t have increased so much since Sombra became an assassin.
Invisibility works best with debuffs because they only prepare the enemy for a potential kill.
What is actually a bad idea is invisibility combined with high damage — which is exactly what Sombra currently has!
Why were complaints about OW1 Sombra so much fewer and almost exclusively focused on Hack, which, despite its long duration, was fair because it had multiple delays and could be interrupted by damage?
Either all players suddenly turned into 5-year-old kids who just cry about everything, or it’s because of the buffs Sombra received as compensation for the nerfs!
Also, removing invisibility would mean that Hack would have to be both faster and uninterruptible — which, theoretically, it should already be anyway given its short duration!
they need to completely rework her from the ground up, remove invisibility. There is no combination of hack, or virus/burst/combo, that will be healthy when combined with invisibility. If there was an invisible support, it would be unhealthy. If there was an invisible tank, it would be unhealthy. If there was an invisible wall or payload or tree, it would be unhealthy. She doesn’t belong in the game
hack is not the problem. Barriers and defensive abilities can stop people making plays, just like hack. Its annoying, but not broken. What’s extremely unhealthy and kills the game is the fact that she can be invisible and then hack/combo/set up emp. It blows my mind that it has survived in the game for this long
spychecking is NOT adequate given the threat she poses coming out of invisibility.
For invisibility to be balanced, still not healthy but balanced, it would need to be easy to dispel for every single hero in the game, which would make it effectively redundant
there is no solution except to remove invis and never reintroduce it to the game
Remove hack altogether, replace it with another ability.