Current hack cast time is 0.65 seconds. This is a very short time frame to hear the hack and react. Most barrier skills have longer cast times, so good luck trying to avoid getting hacked in the first place.
You do bring up a good point – Sombra’s hack speed is much too fast in the present patch for all but the quicker players to counter. Players should have a decent chance at interrupting it by shooting Sombra before the hack is applied. Hack also has a 15 meter range, so Sombra has a good space cushion to hack targets, then escape if necessary. These are all variables that can be adjusted to make Sombra less oppressive to the masses.
most games have significantly smaller windows to react to things.
For example demo knight in tf2, has .3 seconds to follow-up on swing post making contact with their shield bash.
Games like darksouls only have like a .10 ~ .05 or less period to dodge an attack. Which the rolls themselves outside of bloodborn have a windup period before giving you such i-frames. Let alone sekiro’s ddr dance of a deflect system.
fighting games only give you 3-frames or .03 seconds to follow up with a full motion input to combo into special or supper attack off a basic attack.
.65 seconds relatively feels like minutes in game. Like most team fights barely last 20 seconds at times.
Not to mention the average reaction time to random stimuli is .25 seconds. So even caught off guard you will have plenty of time to react.
also this is false, most barriers come up in a matter of frames like 3~5. Or cast instantly in regards to tools like torbs or balls bonus health.
One question to ask is “how often do hack attempts succeed, and how often do they fail?” The Dev’s can decide what is acceptable, but anything in the upper 90% is all but a sure thing. And given how OW2 tic rates work, the hack attempt starts well before target players even hear the audio.
As sombra hacks can fail all the time, the higher you go. The more room and choas you need to get a clean combo off if your not isolated into a 1v1. And even then your sound ques, and cast time on the above hereos can keep you from securing kills.
Especially the ones just out dps you like soldier.
Then either drop healing before are after hack. If not kill you outright.
and even then hack by it’s self doesn’t win fights. You need to stay around long enough to do enough damage / which includes landing virus which is a smaller and slower version of sym right click charge.
That’s not really true. Were talking an off set of maybe .01~.03 seconds. Like your lag has to be reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaally bad for that to not be the case. And in that scenario you have other issues.
I doubt it they are gonna give her compensation buffs for not having infinite stealth anymore which means if she isn’t a glueeater shes gonna be able to setup and do even more burst.
I’m on gigabit ethernet on the US West Coast practically next door to Blizz HQ, so connection speed is excellent. I don’t notice much lag, but by the time I hear the hack and start turning to locate Sombra, the hack is already applied. If I were playing specific character like Tracer where just right-clicking broke the hack, then sure, it would be easier. But not all characters have built in hack mitigation tools like Torb, Soldier, etc. And having a very narrow window to react to an ambush hack is in itself a poor design given how much attention Sombra is now receiving on the Dev side.
Regardless of what we say here, Sombra is being reworked yet again. I can only hope that the change actually results in a better rounded character with more counter-play at all skill levels.
I don’t care about Widowmakers because I know exactly how they play and what I need to do to minimize/mitigate their value. I never feel like I got cheezed by a Widowmaker.
That’s on you, sounds like you need better headphones or makes sure your sound settings are correct as they have different sound “profiles” for if you are using stereo, surround sound, or headhpones.
Because you get a visual heads up the moment it connects.
You can also turn on subtitles and on the bottom screen you get a feed of everything including sombra leaving invis hack starting. If you want more feed back.
That or you can go into color blind settings if you want to adjust how the hud looks if you need it to be more clear.
Get a bud and you can watch the sound visual que match up to the animation of her hacking you. Which is big glowing line back to sombra.
You all have guns. and you can all stand next to a corner or some los break, and just assume she is behind you and move around such accordingly to break LOS. Which is very much a single button press for any hero.
This was all common practice stuff for years. Don’t know why suddenly people forgot how the match up worked after years of playing such. Like perma-invis has been around for about 5 year now. it being a passive doesn’t change that.
The ones with cooldowns are just ones that can do that wherever and don’t need any form of setup other then having the cooldown. or turret ready somewhere.
Her TTK with full setup is like 2.5+ seconds depending on the hero.
She isn’t particularly good at the whole getting quick kill things, unless she is pressed directly to head for headshots.
This has always been a thing my guy.
This isn’t new, nor-is perma invis or anything else ouside of virus.
Welp, the community has spoken, and the DEV’s are about to remove perma-invis after adding it in 2023 (IIRC). Sombra was not too bad until Virus was added and turned the character from a saboteur to a full time ambush assassin. No one likes being shot in the back by surprise, so it was only a matter of time before Sombra received yet another update.
Now lasts indefinitely
No longer can contest objectives while invisible
Movement speed buff decreased from +70% to +50%
Ability Sombra Translocator Translocator
Now lasts indefinitely
Can now be destroyed (has 5 health)
Radius reduced
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.
They also removed her damage buff from her gun via the hack boost. Which was a lot stronger then, and that damage was moved to virus. Splitting up it’s potential into a single bit of burst damage that can be prevented or dodged. And also requires a third point of set up for sombra to get a kill consistently,
She could do this with hack setup prior with just her gun and the damage boost it got.
It’s funny how no one knows how this hero works yet everyone thinks she is broken.
Honestly, maybe it’s finally time to have a real conversation about Widow. Because when she’s bad she’s really bad but when she’s good she can just run the entire lobby and there’s not a lot you can do about it. You don’t want the first kind of Widow on your team, but you don’t want the second kind on the enemy team.
Sombra is fine at higher ranks, but quite broken at lower tiers where aim and quick reflexes are not guaranteed. Let’s hope that her rework actually makes things better for all players.
Changing how stealth works won’t, because like if she can get behind players. that’s kind of all you need to exploit low rank players.
And it’s not just sombra that does this.
I remember playing on console of my sister’s low rank account while she got some snacks and well… I just kind of jumped off highground and pumped rockets while grounded into the enemy team. And they didn’t turn around at all.
(And that was with pharah if you couldn’t guess, one of the loudest most noticible heroes in the game)
Just widening stealth detection distance, giving invisibility occasional random “shimmer”, or increasing Sombra’s footfall sounds would do wonders for minimizing the surprise factor. Widow’s footsteps are among the loudest sounds in the game, which is pretty funny for a character with her slender frame. Perhaps she wears tap dancing heels instead of ballet shoes?
Basically everywhere is flank able, outside a few off instances like the opening to second point royal’s spawn. double jump/dash/wall climb/ledge grab which is unique to him. and more kind let him get around quite a bit.
Flanks usaully avoid los in general, let alone use of highground and other tools.
Also like most flankers you not suppose to catch them mid flank, or even kill them in most scenarios. That is a major upset to how they work in most cases.
As just getting them to burn their tools run away and reset is enough to win a given fight.
Especially for sombra who needs to set up, unlike tracer genji venture pharah that just get to attack.
His damage against her is no joke but I’ve been flashbang dodging with translocator since the early days when he had his original flashbang. It wasn’t as big of a threat and much easier to do when he had his slow hinder grenade. I’ve been getting back into the swing of dodging the faster flash/hinder-nade again.
This was actually more effective than the Virus ability too. The Virus hurts with setup but isn’t very threatening to tanks. Sombra was an actual counter to Ball when she just did bonus bullet damage to hacked targets. She could disable him for long enough to reliably burn down his HP bar. It made her own follow-ups to EMP more dangerous too as she could gun down multiple people. Now EMP + Virus usually nabs you one free squishy kill but nothing more without team follow-up.
No thanks. Her lethality alone was never the issue. It’s the fact that she can traverse the entire map unnoticed and choose almost every aspect of every one of her engagements at her own pace.
There are enough Widow counters in the game already, if people can’t deal with Widow with any of her other counters and need to rely on perma invis to do so then I’m afraid that is a skill issue.
Cass, Torb, Moira, Brig, and a few other characters were specifically made to shut down flankers. But somewhere along the way flanking player skills got good enough to mitigate anti-flanking effectiveness.