The issue being is that they can survive having multiple target them. tools like rewind, bonus health, and reflect can let them function in those scenarios.
Their abilities still work, while being shot at.
If sombra gets the attention of any one, hack just simply not an option.
Which then cuts her damage output dramatically.
She is a hero that can’t really much attention on her, till she sets up. Otherwise she can’t really do her job.
I’ve been a Sombra main since the day she released and I can 100% tell you perma invis was a huge issue in conjunction with virus.
Now, if she didn’t have virus, I think it would have been a lot more balanced. The fact that she could camp at spawn, throw out a easy 75 damage DoT before most people can even turn around to react was insanely annoying. It wasn’t busted by any means, but it wasn’t healthy for the game.
I’d rather they move that power to other aspects of her kit…which they haven’t exactly done yet. Its clear they have no idea what to do with Sombra.
She was less balance without it lol.
the reason she got it was to replace the damage boost, and cap her damage output so she wasn’t mowing down tanks.
as she originally got 40% boost on hack targets.
virus let her keep the TTK on squishies. While keeping it off the tanks post first 2 seconds.
That’s if their hack meaning given warning and a line is drawn back to her while doing that.
Secondly soldier does same thing with a better projectile at 120 flat. And need to set-up lol.
Like really now pull numbers on any other dps, sombra isn’t exactly above average now.
This was largely my point earlier. It doesn’t matter if I give someone all of the tools to deal with her if they themselves simply don’t adapt or hold to their opinion. I know for a developer, that could potentially pose a challenge if enough people feel that way. You can either A) Go the route of a game like TF2 and just leave it and the players who disagree might eventually leave your game. You get less players but a community that better fits the game you as the developer want to foster. Or B) Try to make the game that the majority of your players want to play which can help foster growth from a wider audience.
I don’t think either of those are wrong. I do think that if you as a dev always listen and make changes to the game based on feels / community, that can also lead you down an aimless path potentially. Sometimes as a dev you should also still trust the vision that you and your team want to create over what some in the community may not like.
The issue with stuff like stealth is one that has very little to do with balance imo. It’s almost entirely a “feels” issue.
And I agree with you.
I think we have found that this is far less a diametric opposite and far more a perception of players versus the reality of how those numbers pan out.
Blizzard from 2004 to 2010 fostered a growing community on the basis that they “made the game they (developers) wanted to play.” You could either play their game or not. And World of Warcraft became a juggernaut in the industry.
Or as 2024 has taught us, the players Blizzard has fostered the last decade have had diminishing properties, from balance discussion, personal hangups in regard to language, and traits that make it impossible to reach the heights Blizzard once did. These players are a gangrene, and the only cure is to sever the damaged and useless part to save the whole.
We may disagree there, by pretty much all of the year 2024 shows this is true.
that’s because spy is “balanced” according to his one hit since the death of amby (rip amby because gun spy is too unfair or smth)
spy invis is heavily situational and not the easy escape that sombra has it. You don’t have extra movement speed, it plays a sound when going in and out of it and the emptier the meter the louder the sound + it takes 0.5 seconds to attack after dropping invis.
i think people hate perma invis sombra because she can “debatably” instant drop stealth with no sound que (tell me you hear it in the cacophony that is ow2 sound design) and shoot you in the head.
dead ringer/amby meta i think it was. Damn near unkillable one hell of a time 2014-2016
you know what’s funny? is that diamondback is the same broken pos that always was but people never use it. i’m serious i don’t ever see someone abuse this revolver.
yes it was an issue.
Sorry, I was meaning more so to help emphasize your point rather than argue haha. In hindsight, probably could have worded that better.
I honestly think a lot of it has to do with a lot with how Blizz has handled themselves in the past decade, decade and a half or so. Blizz has dug their own grave in a lot of ways from various scandals, failing to really innovate or strike while the iron is hot on some of their bigger IPs (OW has to be one of the most grossly mishandled IPs in recent history IMO), and overall have dropped the ball in many ways.
I think there’s just multiple things we can point to as all being factors in their decline over the years. Overall, I’ll play whatever I enjoy, which has increasingly become games that have nothing to do with Blizz.
I’m as simple as they come. I never found her an issue. Maybe small easy mini game where you shut her down and watch her swap or throw.
I’ve seen this suggested a lot. To be honest it’s a bad idea for reasons people aren’t considering: a huge reduction in expression and decision making.
With 2 offensive abilities, there are 2 possible combinations that can be formed as needed, i.e. AB or BA. With 3 abilities, there are 12 different combinations. This massively increases the solutions Sombra has to the problems at hand, and it rewards quick-witted players who use that expression optimally.
For instance right now, I could help focus down Pharah with my primary, then notice enemy Rein charging into my Mercy and hack him out of it to save her, then 180 and use virus to finish off enemy Kiri. Loads of gratifying moments like this that hinge on perfect kit management disappear if hack and virus were combined. This is exactly why Doom lost so much expression when his third offensive ability was removed in his transition to tank.
The game is supposed to be fun.
MOST people think perma invis isn’t fun so IT IS an issue because it destroys the purpose of playing the game.It is an issue again because if the players don’t have fun in a game,they stop playing it so it is bad for Blizzard.
If you have cognition issues to understand that people don’t enjoy to have to shoot “empty” spaces because the perma-invis/afk?/no team play Sombra is the only one having fun then we can’t help you.
That’s a really good point 
lol spy does get movement speed while invis, and both the default watch and dead ringer are pretty good at getting you out of a bad scenario.
also all his watches give him damage resistance on top of that, and don’t break when shot lol.
Sombra also has a grace periods between being able to do damage and leaving stealth.
And lets not forget sombra can also chased down post attempting to escape, and things like wall hacks slows stun and other tools exists to stop sombra in her tracks.
What the invis does is help secure the ideal flanker engagement. Were you effectively apeared to have just popped out around someone. And start doing damage before they can react.
That isn’t unique to her. And is still something she every other flanker can do.
What sombra doesn’t have is the blinks, the rewinds the deflects, the bonus health, and whatever else that actually lets them stay or get around big cooldowns like the stuns, teathers, tick damage, yada yada.
Sombra has the leave the fight or die.
i compare default spy to sombra since a dr/kunai/l’etranger spy is no longer the same class.
invis watch has no movement bonus and 20% damage resist is = to 0 in tf2 besides getting you 1-2 seconds more to survive a pyro.
does it really matters if it’s 0.15 seconds of “fade in”?
when i play her she doesn’t even finish her animation before firing lol.
yeah but for some reason i don’t see people going ape mode about a genji or a lucio flanking them as much as i see sombra. something in her kit was bad. maybe the combination of invis+speed+dmg.
Yes it was. Doubly so after they gave her Virus and allowed her to quickly burst down squishies. Invisibility was always the problem. It created a loop of frustration because of a lack of counterplay. Spychecking was always like trying to find a needle in a haystack and wasn’t really counterplay, so much as it was a guessing game.
If you weren’t timing your engagements as Sombra, you got deleted. The idea was to kill a support or a dps at an opportune moment.
Preferably when they’re focusing on the team fight. Unless you’ve got really good reaction times, which most of the playerbase does not, you basically just got deleted with nothing you could do.
Sonic Arrow is easily avoided by Sombra. Can’t really miss the pulsing arrow stuck in the ground, wall, or object.
So by default he actually runs faster then most other classes, while retaining that speed when in cloak and in disguises ignoring the speed penalty.
And keep that up basically indefinitely via ammo boxes, and or with the cloak and dagger.
Lol, much like sombra your suppose to catch the spy in the act.
You can spy check for them if their is suspion of one being around, and their are weapons / class specifically made to hold M1 at anything that remotely gets close to your team. That can deny space to, and are regularly compared to each other.
But… for the most part you don’t actually have to engage any invisible person. Just catch spy out when he close while in disguise.
And sombra out when she attempts to leave invis (sound effect) hack (huge lite show and sounds) Start shooting ( one of the loudest guns in the game)
Yes and no, that’s not up all the time just when it first lands. And he still use it to read your motions while escaping. Or deny you from entering that location in general.
I feel like the majority of people who say infinite invis is a problem are talking about OW2 sombra. Because back in OW1 the only people who complained about infinite invis were sombra players or their teammates talking about how it made her bad or that their teammates would just spend the whole game doing nothing.
In OW2 they royally screwed up her kit by adding things like hacking from invis, adding burst damage with virus, buffing her primary damage, and drastically reducing the fade in/out times so she could engage faster. And THOSE things made her totally broken because she started to be able to burst down enemies and it made it difficult to react to.
So the version before virus sombra had 40% damage boost on hack targets that could be boosted the result by mercy and zen.
virus even tho more versitile really didn’t crack her damage output like people think. (that and 32.5 ~ 75 damage is not a lot especially when soldier does the same thing with no set-up for 120) As it capped output further then the 2 seconds it was up, while before you got the 40% for like 3~4 ish clips of damage.
They really shouldn’t have handed the passive back on to it, with the current version.
Perma invis was the issue lmao.
The only reason you’ve listed it’s not is…
“You’re supposed to kill her before the fight?”
What? lmao
Uhhh… she could instantly relocate with Translocator??