I propose a way to make Sombra feel less helpless to play against while lowering her team dependence. Content Warning: Math

General Discussion
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PSA: I’m not a high rank player. I’ve spent more time programming than ranking up, but I think it might be applicable to part of the game.

From what I gather, the most polarizing attribute of Sombra is the amount of communication present between her and her team. In higher ranks, this is what makes Sombra so powerful, while the lack of it in lower ranks causes her to perform so poorly. If the stealth changes go through, Sombra will see even higher use at higher levels of play and and come to dominate it even more.

Personally, I’m all for the stealth changes in the recent experimental card. I’m of the opinion that a hero that can go invisible and teleport SHOULD be an assassin of poorly-prepared people, and I appreciate any changes that move toward that archetype. Similarly, there SHOULD be a hero that’s able to effectively weaponize information and I’m glad a Hacker/Information broker is the best hero to do so; however, I do empathize for the struggles people have against her:

  • Triple Hacking: It’s where Sombra hacks, EMPs, then hacks again right before EMP ends. It’s frustrating for sure to feel like you can’t play the game for 15 seconds (despite still being able to move, jump, shoot, crouch, and perform other actions only prevented by Sleep, Freeze, Stuns, etc). To solve triple-hacking, Hack should follow a formula of hack_cooldown_against enemy > hack_status_duration * 2. This makes it so no matter the order in which hack or EMP is done, a person can only be hacked only at most two times in a row instead of three.
  • Hacking Health Packs: There’s nothing that can be done to unhack a hacked health pack except wait it out, but a Sombra who is very good at her timing can come back after 59-ish seconds to re-hack it right before the timer expires. It’s practically the definition of “No counterplay”, and this often makes Sombra vs. Sombra matches devolve into “who gets the best health packs first”.

The solution to get rid of triple hacking would entail a sizable nerf to hack in general, meaning she’d be able to hack less than 6 enemies per minute vs her current 7.5. If Sombra had 15 more ammo (just enough to eliminate a hacked stationary Roadhog with body shots), she’d be able to more efficiently capitalize on individual hacks instead of relying on teammates. This would be further improved if EMP reloaded her gun. The more time Sombra can spend shooting, the less time you spend looking for her.

I would GLADLY bid farewell to hacking health packs in exchange for a buff that makes hack more useful against enemies. It would have to be pretty big since it would be useful ONLY against enemies (e.g. no setup before a teamfight). I think a lower cast time would be beneficial here. Ideally, hack should follow a formula of 1 second <= cast_time + interruption_cooldown <= 2 seconds so Sombra is able to hack most enemies during their reload animation. This formula can coexist with the other I mentioned before. Personally I’d recommend a cast time of .5 seconds, with 1 second of interruption cooldown. .35 seconds if my triple hacking solution is accepted but EMP doesn’t reload her gun. This gives injured enemies a chance to recover before being ambushed and makes careful ammo management a more important skill.

In my opinion, having Sombra be devastating with good communications is about as fair as a McCree being devastating with good aim. You can’t really do much about player skill being overwhelmingly powerful. However, I feel like the game mechanics can be adjusted such that those who aren’t as overwhelmingly powerful don’t leave you feeling overwhelmingly helpless.

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A bold, yet interesting proposition.

I wouldn’t mind play testing this in a Workshop, if possible, at least.

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After reading the rest, I know this is not what you meant, but this gave me kind of an interesting idea, so I figured I’d throw it into the mix. Imagine:

Hack has no cooldown of its own (or a 1-second cooldown or something), but a successful hack makes the affected enemy an illegal hack target for a certain (longer) amount of time. The immunity timer/indicator naturally provides useful positional information, but the target can’t be hacked again without EMP during that time.

In theory, that would mean Sombra could hack the entire enemy team sequentially, provided no one paid any attention to her for 4 seconds straight, but that would also inherently mean she wasn’t shooting for the entire time that takes, which makes it probably not optimal to do. While this would be very different mechanically, I don’t actually know whether it would be stronger or weaker than she is now, considering that there’s usually one optimal Hack target she wants to focus on and rarely enough time to even attempt a second.

I don’t have any major problems with how Sombra works currently, but got me thinking.

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Ok I understand why it’s frustrating
But at the same time

If you’re hacked for 15s and still alive, I’d feel like I have the better team compared to that poor sombrero
It’s also a niche thing to do, depends on the tank or who has ult. And you also spend many resources on that person

Although understandable, I think it’s highly unneeded

Honestly none of what you said sounds good at all
Lower cast for hack is 100% unhealthy for the game, and no hack healthpacks, although big nerf for 2cp, it’s pretty much pointless on most other maps, so you’re nearly just buffing hack for 90% of the games while also making sombra even more dependent on healers, make her bad with flanker teammates to benefit from healthpacks, and overall lowering her skill

I don’t see how more ammo makes it more skillful, I also don’t see how lowering the cast time and removing a resource management makes her more skillful either

Only that sombra can be shut down by one enemy while mccree needs at least a 3v1

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Only way I see Sombra being more useful for lower ranks and less effective in OWL is If Hack is reworked to do something else. Taking away key abilities is really strong with communication. People on these forums come up with all sorts of stuff. I’ve heard replacing hack with a discord but people see that as either ineffectual or uncreative. I’ve seen less people suggest making hack function similar to Ana anti-nade but that suffers from the same stuff as before. I can’t really offer anything else because I’m just some guy who isn’t that bright :sweat_smile:

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This is where your wrong
You’re a pachimari

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