She need better hack, that’s all. Maximum what her gun could use - faster reload, larger clip or smaller spread.
when a character, that is high risk and a high skill ceiling, becomes reliable, that character always becomes overpowered. Case in point, ana s2/s3. Tracer from s4-s9(and franky still), widowmaker/hanzo since their buffs(and maybe still after their nerfs), and then theres sombra, who after she became reliable with hack she became the most oppressive CC user in the game for 2 weeks.
That is why the 3 most powerful ccs in the game are made to be so hard to reliably use. Anas sleep, Freeze, And hack(4 if you want to count anti grenade as cc since it does a ccs job).
People have to realize, that high skill characters are almost impossible to balance, as much as a high impact ability like resurrect is. They need to be high risk, or they will become overpowered.
It is a shame the community overall lacks that much foresight
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and yet the patch notes:
Developer Comments These changes allow Sombra to more easily play as an infiltrator and scout for her team, as well as give her time to pick and choose when to reveal herself to ambush her enemies.
That’s a whole lot of focus on scout, infiltrator, along with pick and choose… It’s not really worded along the lines of “allows her to hit harder and gain more kills” or anything even close to suggesting it’s to help her kill more player 1vs1.
One of the traps players fall into when it comes to talking about balance is just blindly over looking how a hero is on release, how easy it would be change them and so on. As in it would have taken NOTHING at all balance wise to have Sombra be a spy like killer in this game. Move around a few damage sliders, tighten her spread and there ya go.
Yet blizzard has never done that, not on release or her patches. They keep going with more scouting, more utility like game play so that, to me at least, is saying that’s the way she is meant to be played.
I don’t want a random solo/invisible hero moving in and out of a team picking off anyone who might be a few feet too far back. I honestly don’t want a stealth hero at all but that ship has already sailed. So they they keep her mostly utility and not kill based.
I get Sombra players might not like it but that’s sort of her role. She pack a ton of utility but it needs to used as part of team action, not her own glory. She isn’t a pure DPS.
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I honestly think Sombra needs more actual quality of life changes such as more fluidity when transitioning in and out of stealth, translocator giving you a loud visual indication that it has been destroyed (Much like Symmetra’s Sentry Turrets) and Hack not being interrupted by taking damage again as, ever since this change was made she genuinely feels boring to play as.
If they made changes such as these, she wouldn’t need any kind of increased damage on hacked targets. I just wish the current aspects of her kit were easier to make use of and were more accessible as not all of us can be Fitzy.
To those whom say Hack is unfun, well so are many many other abilities in the game. Imagine if Resurrect was cancelled and put on a 2 second cooldown before Mercy could attempt to Rez again if she took 1 point of damage?
It would feel bad. I don’t see why Sombra has received the incredibly awkward treatment and reworking that she has gotten the past few months. It seems like our most beloved female characters have this happen to them a lot. First Mercy, then Sombra and now Symmetra.
I honestly wonder who will be next
<qol changes
<making hack not interruptable by damage
uhhh, thats bigger than just a QoL change.
I’m of the belief that Sombra is deemed one of the highest skilled heroes because she’s underpowered. Even so, my prior response was not of my own opinion that she needs buffs like a damage boost. Merely, it’s the fact that her winrate and pickrate continues to be garbage below Masters, so the “buffs” did absolutely nothing. And when people point that out, they are not willing to let her be buffed.
IMO all I want are faster reload times and bug fixes. But if you think she is fine the way she is, with her abysmal winrate and pickrate (even after these changes) in any tier below Masters…then I dunno what to tell you. Some people even say her bug fixes shouldn’t happen unless they nerf her hack.
90% of people are clueless with Sombra. lol.
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Revert on that one, my b.
But for real that’s got to be the worst change Blizzard has made to her.
Killing anything that’s being healer pocketed as Tracer isn’t really going to work out either.
sombra is deemed one of the highest skilled heroes not because shes underpowered, no shes actually quite overpowered with coordination as pro players are calling her brokenly overpowered due to her changes, at least contenders.
Sombra is deemed high skilled because she is as someone said above, utility based, not kill based. She has one of the top 3 strongest ccs in the game when it works, and the capability to use it on anyone she pleases(given no bugs happen so 1/100 times)
Sombra would be skill based even overpowered, but shed have to become reliable once again to be overpowered. That is why people dont want her buffed, people who played tanks/etc during those 2 weeks knows what a reliable sombra can do.
Trust me, with a heavy cc meta already looming thanks to the latest changes, you do not want sombra to be reliable again.
People just have to live with it, sombra will always be niche, and not reliable outside of high tiers of play, even high ranks like fitzy/mightyy dont do amazing all the time, and pro tier is just a different kind of ow.
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They literally say the opposite, dude. LMAO. Done.
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Coach of one of the contenders top teams says otherwise. And sombra has been meta in contenders very soon after they could use her reworked state. So maybe whoever told you what you know is wrong, because the games prove im right.
A quote from a different thread sums it up best:
Referencing the damage of Sombra’s gun.
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Point of my entire thing.
Do not buff a character, who has one of the most insane utilities when it works, in either damage or utility. Last thing we need is sombra to get a week of meta and then turbonerfed into permanent extinction. In a similar way bastion got meta for a week then turbonerfed into F tier again
High skill = balanced with high risk. high skill = overpowered without it. This is how balancing high skilled characters work, and sombras 2 weeks of oppression shows it, as well as other heroes.
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Well, like I said, I only want her bug fixes first and then maybe a faster reload time. Fix a hero to make them consistent first, then we can evaluate their state of balance.
But, my point being, there are people saying she’s already OP. “Teamwork” is not what makes Sombra OP because literally every other hero benefits the same, if not more, from teamwork. There are people who think because she is in Contenders, that she is 100% fine and doesn’t need anything - this includes bug fixes, they are literally saying she shouldn’t be fixed LOL.
I say 90% of people don’t know where Sombra lands, or what she would need, if she needed anything, because they’re clueless. Geoff is pretty clueless with her, too. IMO she doesn’t need more gun damage. She doesn’t need really need tighter spread. She would benefit more, without being busted, from faster reload, or using translocator giving her ammo, or using EMP giving her ammo, etc. Things that do not make her inherently stronger, but help you finish off those targets in really clutch moments.
She needs QoL before buffs IMO. Like an actually noticeable indicator for your hacked targets. As someone who is colorblind, little subtle waves of the same color outline as the enemies is a piss poor visual indicator of a hacked target. For someone who is so utility-based, her utility indicators are pretty subpar, and her utility is the most easily interrupted in the game. Everything in her kit is now destroyed by 1 HP (yeah, yeah, translocator is 5 HP. But literally nothing in this game does that little damage unless you’re across the map and shooting at it as D.Va. So, realistically, it’s still a garbage 1 HP target screwed by chip damage).
That was my point. If she’s not meant to be a DPS, then her utility better be great - but it’s not only clunky atm with bugs, but it’s also really easily disrupted. BTW, it is still heavily bugged. Hack actually starts on one enemy, and if another enemy walks by, it actually transfers and completes on the wrong target.
Sombra’s “2 weeks of oppression” is a myth. Her pickrates and winrates declined rapidly and steadily after her release. You can try to justify it any which way, but statistics prove otherwise. She was not overpowered when her winrates and pickrates were below Tracer’s. It was nothing but a garbage panic-nerf because pros cried about her, and that was the first of the “let’s screw Sombra in the long-term” dominoes.
For reference: Pro OWL players, pro Sombra players, and popular streamers, all think Sombra is lacking. They feel she is not better off with these changes. The only thing that was made her okay for the time being was the nerfs to Brigitte, to Hanzo, and to Widowmaker. They still think she is not in a good place. So I don’t know which pro players you were referring to…but, no. They are saying the opposite.
but again - I would much rather have bug fixes first before we establish anything else. Bug fixes first. QoL second. Slight buffs to reload speed/reloading ammo with certain abilities last.
Lastly, to address your point:
No. They know what 2 weeks of having a faster hack with the last .1 second of it being unbreakable is like. And that could have easily been removed so it would have been stricter. But, nah. People cry over dumb things. Look at the people asking for more Junkrat or Bastion nerfs.
If you really trust people’s ideas on a hero that most people have little to no time on, then I would recommend you talk to people who can look at her in a more unbiased manner.
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Zenyatta players: “ummm how about no? learn to aim.”
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Exactly what is an ambush again?
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I’m all up for some Sombra buffs, unless they are something to do with hack. In this case, I would love to see this change.
That’s her niche now.
She’s a spawn killer.
It’s a style of attack, it’s not really about the power of the attack. Being as I said before, if there was any real intention of changing her into more of a pure stealth killer they could have done so with a snap of their fingers. That fact that hasn’t happen speaks volumes as to her role in this game, players just don’t want to hear it.
I don’t think that’s the consensus at all. Sombra’s hack is not nearly that good. Junkrat’s trap, McCree’s flash/fan, Doomfists uppercut, Hog’s hook and Brigitte’s shield bash are all way more likely to result in you dying than hack. Hack is one of the most surviveable abilities in the game.
Honestly hack is a real trash ability, and I can prove it. Pick your favorite DPS hero, and if I offered you hack in exchange for one of their abilities, would you take it? Would you give up Soldier’s helix rocket, or Tracer’s blink? Would you give up Genji’s swift strike or his deflect? What about reapers wraith form? Would you give up Hanzo’s storm arrow? If hack is the god tier ability that some think it is, then you should be foaming at the mouth to gain access to it, but truth be told there’s not much people would trade for hack. It’s slow, it’s unreliable, and the only reason it’s useful at all is because Sombra uses it as a surprise attack.
And if you’re still not convinced, imagine if you offered Sombra players Helix rocket, tracer’s blink or Storm arrow, but they lose the hacking ability… do you think they’d take the deal? As a Sombra player myself I can tell you I’d take that deal in a heartbeat.
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