DISCLAIMER: These are not facts. Do not take any of this as fact. This is speculation and I am concerned, frustrated, and I am venting. Things may or may not come off as logical. I’m not trying to be logical. I, am, venting.
People are already retentive about team compositions, and the demographic of players who accept “niche” heroes (really, they’re not niche, they’re just underpowered) are already few.
With the upcoming PTR changes coming to live next week, we’ll have:
Hammond/Wrecking Ball - a new hero who Sombra could potentially hard counter…but other CC heroes could counter them as well, and they are already more viable than Sombra
Falloff damage buffs to McCree, Bastion, Mei, Soldier 76. Sombra already is having a hard time keeping up with the DPS. It’s going to be much harder to justify picking her when there McCree could potentially ruin Hammond/Wrecking Ball’s day quite easily, and Mei absolutely destroys him.
Sombra changes that don’t actually make Sombra stronger. I get what the intent was. I get that she’s more fun to play for some people. I get that this makes her accessible. But there’s enough threads to share that this DOESN’T make her do her job any stronger. It doesn’t help her do any job stronger. They gave the weakest hero in the game compensation nerfs when they “buffed” her.
#3 already sucks. Mix that in with #2, I don’t think I can justify picking her anymore. If I’m already having a hard time convincing my team to let me play her - and I honestly had to drop her this season because I couldn’t do it anymore - then I CANNOT see how these changes would ever help me justify it now.
I wanted my main to be viable. I wanted her to be looked at. It took months for them to even outwardly acknowledge that they screwed her and that she needed buffs. Then they give us this. I have EXTREMELY little faith in the dev team now. I will still do my best to understand the work they do, and their logic…but they’ve just recently kind of made me feel like they hate me playing her lol.
tl;dr I can’t imagine myself being able to justify picking Sombra in competitive, which I love playing, because how weak she is, how many heroes are getting buffs, and how they’ve changed her to make her even weaker even though they call it a “buff”
If you respond rudely to me even though I put the disclaimer that this is a vent, I will ignore you. :3
It just feels like Blizzard keeps getting Sombra wrong.
“We intend to buff Sombra” should be happy words in the Sombra community yet everyone is dreading the patch. That should be a sign something is deeply wrong with they way they approach the hero.
They are making her more annoying. Not better. How is that fun for anyone?
People will just end up hating Sombra even more.
That’s because her kit does a bunch of different things, and because she doesn’t specialize in any one of them, there’s no clear direction of what we’re supposed to do with her.
She has stealth, but can’t use it like Tracer uses blink or 76 uses sprint.
She has vertical mobility, but can’t direct it like Winston or d.VA.
She has an escape skill, but it works like a budget version of Recall.
She has a short range weapon, but it deals damage like a mid-range poke hero (preferring sustained over burst damage).
She has a fight-ending ult, but it does nothing if she’s the only one nearby when it gets used.
She has strong utility on her alt fire, but it gets interrupted by a stiff breeze two time zones away.
What is Sombra supposed to do, exactly? Why are there so many things in her kit that don’t work together?
Well, their newest direction for her seems to be “Scout”, despite nobody wanting a scout class in Overwatch, so they just keep going deeper and deeper in the wrong direction.
They got D.Va in a pretty good spot. They did the same with Soldier (albeit he’s not strong in this meta, he’s still pretty balanced). They’re getting Mei, McCree, and honestly I have high hopes for Wrecking Ball.
I just wish they’d listen to the community of people who main them…especially when some of them are QA testers! lol
Bastion, Reaper and Symmetra have been released for over 2 years now. Heck, Reaper was literally the first three heroes to be designed in Overwatch way back in development stage, which iirc was around 2014, but Blizzard has failed spectacularly in balancing these heroes.
Yes, Reaper is MUCH better after the latest wraith buff, but he’s still so far off from being relevant that it begs the question why a character that existed for almost 4 years now can be so poorly designed and balanced.
I admit, DVa is now in a rather decent spot, as is Winston. 76 and Pharah are in good spots as well, and Moira was by far one of the most balanced heroes from release, which gave me high hopes. But while Blizzard is catering to new heroes and balancing new releases, their lack of attention to the originally released heroes is, to say the least, concerning.
until that 2 second hot-fix is removed she will never be viable because she has ZERO impact on a fight in progress. Her job in a teamfight is to run away or spam smg and die. She cant hack in a fight especially if theres something like moira on the other team throwing trickle damage everywhere.
At the same time I just want to point out I think letting her infinitely spam hack is problematic. I think a second delay after a failed hack is needed, though obviously 2 seconds is far too long
All of those things. In the current live version, she has that kind of versatility. She’s probably a little too weak at each of them, and Brigitte exists so she can’t deal damage, and double sniper is a common thing now, so she can’t really stealth… but if those things actually worked she’d be great.
They don’t need to choose one specific task for her to grind. That’s exactly what they’re doing with the PTR changes, and that’s why most of the people who enjoy Sombra aren’t very happy about those changes.
You can’t have a hero that “does it all”, but is actually bad at everything. Pick one thing and make Sombra good at it, and change/remove the parts that don’t support it.
As much as I like Sombra’s flexibility, I don’t think she needs a kit stuffed to the brim with features that are only useful in very specific cases.
Would you rather have a Swiss army knife, or a really good plain old knife? Sure, you might work a little harder with the plain knife, but you can be damn sure it won’t break on you when you ask it to do its intended function.
it’s not like she can hack the whole team theres an 8 second cooldown after each hack. But in her current state it might as well be 30 seconds long with how much re-positioning you have to do and how many times you fail to hack either because of LOS or getting shot.
theres so much wrong with her now but that untested hot-fix is the #1 problem. The day that happened my sombra play was cut in half out right. She used to counter tracer now tracer counter her
I definitely agree that Sombra is in the worst possible spot right now, but I still maintain that the infinite hack allowance was very problematic. Essentially, Sombra would ALWAYS get the hack on someone because you can’t fend her off infinitely. That was really not very fun in the sense that there wasn’t much counterplay–unfun not in the sense that i have no abilities, but you could damage her and she would still hack again, eventually landing a rather damaging effect on you.
I would be perfectly fine if the 2s was changed to 1s and given a 20 damage allowance instead of 1, but I think there definitely needs to be something to prevent the sort of ‘infinite hack spam until you land it’ idea
That sort of playstyle is a myth created by, idk what to even call these “players,” no sombra just stands there while getting shot waiting to die. But when you see someone like mercy going for a rez getting interrupted once now guarantees she will be successful. Sometime your only window of opportunity to get a hack off is while they reload and before the feb “buffs” and march “hot-fix” she was able to contribute by fighting and when you knew your targets ammo was getting low you’d start to hack and take the last bit of bullets as damage then get them on the reload with hack unless they had someone watching their back and shooting you. Thats what made her strong in teamfights the ability to tank some damage and cripple an enemy this hit, hide, and poke sneaky bullsh1t really makes her ineffective and puts her in a weird-bad place in fights.
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