Back when Sombra had just been buffed, the #1 most complaining about thing on the forums was Hack, namely how fast it was, making it “impossible to react to”. Before the buff, nobody complained about its speed.
Just a quick reminder of what that buff was:
- Hack speed to 0.65s (from 0.8s)
- Translocator duration to 20s (from 15s)
- Weapon Spread to 2.7 (from 3.0)
- All injured enemy healthbars visible if in LoS
- Button-press passives now hackable, + a change to the Crossfade interaction (CROSSFADE IS NOT A BUTTON-PRESS PASSIVE, STOP TREATING IT LIKE ONE)
- Ult charge from hacked Healthpacks removed
She was in a much better spot than before hand, though this came with the bonus of more people playing her, making me realise I was bad at her and stop playing her.
Note how many different buffs there are on that list though, with just the one nerf. The logical solution if she’d been too strong would be to just remove one of the buffs, or water it down. Still an overall buff for her, but not too strong.
Considering the quarrel most had was with hack speed, you’d have expected any nerf to be to that. Dialing it back to somewhere between the new 0.65s speed, and the old 0.8s speed. But no. Instead, on March 15th, Geoff Goodman posted this reply:
No nerf to the hack speed, instead opting to make it not as reliable. Cue 4 months of Sombra threads moaning that hack breaks for absolutely no reason, because the hitbox had become utter garbage, whilst still annoying those who suffered successful hacks because of how quick it was.
Eventually, they did fix Hack’s hitbox (partially), though she’s still garbage against a hero she should be strong against like Tracer because even a Blink (which remember are 3 charges on 3 second cooldowns, very easy to preserve 1 at least) breaks the connection. The problem with it being partially fixed though, is that they still haven’t done anything about hack speed. Add in a needless pair of changes to Stealth and Translocator, changes that don’t help uncoordinated teams at all (in fact they negatively affect things because of the slower movement speed) but massively help those with good coordination from the intel gained, and suddenly we have a meta where Sombra is insanely strong in pro play, hated for how quick she hacks people, and still terrible on ladder.
All of this could have been avoided if they’d just made the logical choice in March. The initial Sombra rework was a good rework. It had its bad parts that needed fixing, but it made sense for the character, and made a previously F-tier hero viable.
All it would have taken was a simple hack speed nerf, with the reasoning that 0.65s was too overbearing for heroes like Rein to have any chance against, and whilst some would have been annoyed, the majority would have understood and respected the nerf. Instead, you made a hero unreliable for months, and once tou partially fixed that it was back to square one.
TL;DR - Take Sombra back to the original rework in February, before any of the post-rework nerfs, then slow hack to either 0.7, 0.75 or 0.8s. I’m sure 90%+ of people would thank you.