she’s only “op” because none of you will communicate where the enemy sombra is located. we have this magic thing called “voice communication”, and if you’re not in the mood to talk, you can use the middle mouse button and ping where the enemy sombra is and your team can focus her down.
also, you know how if you just do one single damage to her, she can’t go invisible? keep that in mind. most hero’s have movement abilities as well, you can totally track down where the enemy sombra would be if she attempts to teleport away, or you can use your movement abilities to escape the enemy sombra if she manages to leave you on critical.
i’m so serious, sombra isn’t op at all. sombra can destroy a messy, uncommunicative team because you allow her to do so.
It’s not about her being “OP”, it’s about her being very, very annoying/unfun to fight. An invisible hero with an escape and locking you out of your abilities isn’t fun…at all to the other players being hit with it.
So all of those things you mentioned can be played around, at least outside of ult.
sombra has warmup periods before she can attack out of stealth, cast hack, and relies on landing a small slow moving projectile in combination of hack. That and TP isn’t a free escape as it use to be, she isn’t half way around the map. And is just popping up and the end of the throw arc which has visual for were that will be. Just get ready to aim up in many cases and you can get that extra hit in.
TLDR just commit to a duel with her, and large parts of her kit doesn’t work. Heck if you catch her out of stealth most heroes will just be able to get an extra hit in for free.
Can be annoying, but once you know she is their you can prepare for most scenarios she can hit you with. Like a tiny LOS break, and listening out for the sound ques. Will go a long way in you ability to never get caught out by her.
Her ult is kind of bs tho. It shouldn’t be able to lock out cooldowns for 3 seconds.
Most people conflate “this is annoying” with “this is OP”.
Most of the complaints I see are from the same people who borderline lie through their teeth to try to justify their frustrations, claiming she’s insta-deleting them. Those are the ones that this thread will apply to.
For the others, it’s just that she’s not fun to fight against. Some will even say she’s the worst-designed hero in the game or that she has no place in the game. IMO you’re bound to have those and it is subjective when you have a variety shooter. Those complaints are valid but if we’re going to alter heroes because they’re unfun, then that’s a big can of worms. But some people seem to place value on that more than actual balance, which I think is silly.
i mean this entirely depends on what heros you’re playing, if you’re playing widowmaker or zen you’re getting hard countered by sombra. her job is to annoy you, kind of a similar way that spy from tf2 is annoying. and what i put can be translated to tf2 terms, by you and your team focusing the spy lol. but you can really argue that any hero is annoying or unfun to fight against.
again, you can put this argument to any hero. reaper can just teleport away or go invis, venture can just run away with her ground digging ability, ect.
Most people say she’s anti-fun, not that she’s over the top strong. But every time this topic gets raised, Sombra defenders rush in to gesture at winrates, pick rates, etc. when that’s completely irrelevant.
Even if she was the weakest character in the game, I think it’s VERY understandable that people take issue with a hero with permanent invisibility and an auto-aim hack that disables your entire kit. Not to mention her ridiculously strong ult, easy escape tools, high burst damage, etc.
The amount of Nickels could have because players lack of awareness there’s a Sombra lurking around. See them die to her yelling Curse you Sombra the Platypus.
I agree with most of what you have said except this, fun is just as if not more important than balance, because we play video games to have fun.
Overwatch will never be perfectly balanced as long as it consistently has unique and niche mechanics, which we can all agree is why we chose to play this game over others, sure we could achieve balance by removing every hero except soldier but that doesn’t seem like a fun time.
This isn’t to say that aiming for some semblance of balance is not needed, but when making balance decisions the fun factor should be taken into consideration as well as strict balance for the 0.01% of players, especially if they plan to completely rework a hero.
for sure she is really punishing out of position players with the new virus rework. one of the reasons of her unpopularity. a lot of players like to go “lone gun” with their hero off in narnia.
i do too with widow since that is her design lol… to be off in narnia behind the backlines but yea with “virus” sombra around its a death sentence.
I am not lying. Not only does she kill me faster than anything outside of one shots, she is more or less the only other character that ever manages to kill me outside of teamfights.
Big difference between OP and unfun. Same reason Widow isn’t really OP, just unfun. Characters that make you have to change up your whole playstyle to counter them are just unfun to play against. So a character with perma-stealth as a passive or a character that can oneshot from most distances where fights happen in this game equal unfun.
Get rid of Lifeweavers too then. Frankly it pisses me off way more when a support main LW that has never clearly played tank decides that I dove in too far and pulls me out of a winnable fight. Hell even if I was that bad and feeding it’s my choice. Why should some random get to make that decision for me?
Sombra isn’t even hard to counter. LW you’re stuck with…
Sombra herself isn’t ‘strong’, but that stupid invisibility makes her absurdly OP.
It is extremely easy for her to get free kills on squishy or low-health team members at the rear of the group - faster than they can even whip around to shoot her - let alone ping her.
She is uncounterable, because you can’t even see her until she’s already halfway through a kill.
Sombra is fully in control of when and how she chooses to engage, and with who. She can bide her time and pick you off quickly when you’re low-health or otherwise distracted to prevent communication that you’re being targeted. She can manoeuvre in such a way that she has a quick escape with teleport (so she has time to turn invisible again before you can catch her).
In essence, Sombra is playing an entirely different game to the rest of us. She has no place in a team shooter.
To be clear, I like the premise for her character. But her invisibility is actually just stupid. Like - actually dumb. It’s a terrible idea.
Her character could be much improved if the devs swapped out her invisibility for a cloaking effect, instead. She’d still be very difficult to spot, but games wouldn’t be FREE for her.
It is a human rights violation that I have to deal with Sombra players in every match.
A period that decreased further when they let her hack while stealthed.
Also! This doesn’t force her to commit. She can get out for free and not lose her stealth because it’s still active.
It’s not that slow moving and your close range usually since that’s where her machine pistol is effective.
It is technically a skill shot but it’s like sleep dart on tanks…wow very impressive. Which also brings me to the fact it applies the damage passive makes it an opressive tool on tanks.
True but reaper doesn’t have the luxury of such an escape tool. Or genji.
I would not make decisions on fun because that is a slippery slope.
“Cool, they nerfed Sombra because she’s not fun, let’s nerf Doomfist next”
“Ah yes they have reworked Doomfist because he’s unfun to go against, now Orisa!”
Also, some people find some heroes more annoying than others. Who is more valid? Who do we tackle first? Who do we adjust because they’re unfun? What is the threshold for reworking or adjusting heroes based on how unfun they are?
It doesn’t make sense to me to do that. Plus, Sombra is an example of how people get (mostly) what they asked for, and they still hate it. “Give her a skill shot instead of damage boost on hacked targets” - they do that and people hate it and complain about being insta-deleted.
This community, unironically, cannot be trusted to balance things out on the merit of fun. It is absolutely riddled with biases and people are only going to assert theirs and how a hero interacts with their character.
