I think if I were to compare her to an existing hero, I’d say she should be around the spot where Reaper and Doomfist are. Decently strong but not oppressive or meta centric. Could take or leave buffs.
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As a fellow Sombra main I agree with you. While this changes made her easier to use for new players it limits her utility for better players.
As you said. Sombra is about fast decisions.
This will encourage the wrong playstyle of setting up trans and trying to eliminate enemy.
I personaly was using her kit agressively and to confuse enemies. So never really ran out of trans as I most often use it as a positioning tool midfight.
I’m hardly a pro but I believe she is suposed to be played on the edges of teamfights. Not as an assassin behind the enemy. So she can use her kit to help her team.
Stealth was okay.
I feel like with this patch they took away the challenge she was. You had just a few seconds to decide.
Hell I was even okay with the 2 sec cooldown. Even that the actual spamwatch and 1dmg from d.va was annoying.
Just repair her bugs and we are fine. She never will be a meta. But that is actually great. As her biggest strenght is that enemies don’t know how to deal with her.
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Also maybe I am a little selfish but I don’t want her to be played more. Like this she is special for me
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Wonderful thread, well said. Thank you for writing that. It seems the devs have been responding more to threads at this time, so hopefully they see this in the sea of new Sombra topics.
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The guy advocating the changes doesn’t seem to understand that the nerfs far outweigh the buffs that shes been given.
When this iteration of Sombra goes live, I can see two things happening. An influx of Sombra players trying out the new Sombra (not a bad thing) and then an influx of Sombra players being reported for Gameplay Sabotage… because regardless of whether or not she is doing her job, it will be perceived by the majority that she’s sitting outside the enemy spawn seemingly afk while failing to reinforce the frontline.
Her PERCEIVED lack of impact on the game will outshine any positive impact she makes.
At this stage we can pray for one thing… hope that when the PTR changes go Live, shes percieved to be super stupidly unbalanced and they perform another kneejerk nerf to which they’ll keep her PTR nerfs intact while removing the infinite duration of her Stealth and Translocate
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I could not even imagine being able to express my thoughts on Sombra better then this. Well done Sinister, I share your thoughts (and Sombra playstyle) completely.
^Also, this!!
This was all I ever hoped Blizzard would change for Sombra, but instead we get these changes, or should I say nerfs?! I am honestly shocked at the total disconnection Blizzard seems to have to Sombra’s playerstyle. Who plays Sombra at the Blizzard office, and why haven’t they said anything against these changes?
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As a Sombra main I agree with you. So what, we spend 20 minutes “setting up” to use a hack that works at random times and a gun that works sub par? Then someone attacks us out of cloak and we have to translocate out leaving all that setup time useless and now leaving the team, yet again, 5 vs 6.
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“Sombra community” holy cow.
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This is a great post and we need to keep it as high up as we can.
Not sure what good it will do at this point but what the hell lets keep trying.
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If I could only ask for one change it would be reducing her stealth animation times. I think this would improve her the most. She feels soo clunky when you want to just pop out of stealth and start gunning somebody down, and I would like to see stealth more viable as a disengage/escape.
The next change would be then to reset her stealth cooldown on elimination. She would be soo fun if you could pop out of stealth on an injured enemy finish them off then get a stealth reset to escape the enemy team instead of using translocate. But for this to work we would remove infinite invis and give it a reasonable timer. Don’t know if it would be too OP though.
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Infinite stealth will let Sombras scout ahead and shotcall safely without time limit pressure, while also having time to wait for the right moment to engage instead of being pressured to jump in before the timer runs out or just translocate out and waste time setting up again and returning to the fight for another potential missed opportunity. Juggling her timers and cds were the most repetitive, hassling and boring aspects of her kit, decision pressure around the time limits was annoying and led to redundant/wasted efforts or death. And every Sombras player knows the frustration of going for the translocate but just missing the window because you were naturally focused on a firefight in front of you and not the timer in the corner, leading to your doom. I think the changes will at least improve her overall flow.
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Yes this! I 100% agree thisll keep bad Sombra players away from the team fight longer. I can even imagine them in stealth mode camping the enemy spawn instead of helping the team.
These changes do not benifit good Sombra’s in anyway. A good Sombra already could manage their sources effectively so nothing was gained and instead she was hit with extreme nerfs.
You can easily tell who’s bad Sombra’s from who’s agreeing with this in the forums. Sombra never needed this. She just needed her los and other bugs fixed, and a buff to her weapon spread. They completely ignored the simple changes she needed and went all out on this garbage rework.
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Like mercy mains were heard? Or how about hog mains? Symettra mains were listened to right? What about genji mains and tracer mains when brig was released? What about Moira mains when the big was fixed? Their is a long line of players that have been ignored. You’re better off coming up with ways to make new sombra better for yourself then getting the devs to change their minds.
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Well put, although I would disagree with the notion that the “set and forget” play style, as you call it, is bad/undesirable. When done correctly this is a very effective play style and is utilized by many top tier Sombras - the most infamous of course being Codey who is widely regarded as the best Sombra.
Otherwise I fully agree with your analysis of the changes. You pretty accurately sum up why the infinite durations are pretty useless bufss and the impact fo the tradeoffs that you get instead.
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I should be clear. I don’t mean to imply set and forget is a bad playstyle, even though I don’t personally use it. I just don’t think encouraging it as the only way to play Sombra is the right route to take. The translocator in live right now compliments the set and forget playstyle very well right now, but I feel like every change seems to be to benefit that playstyle more while actively discouraging aggressive translocator use. It’s versitility shows off how well it’s designed so I don’t want that versatility to vanish because one way of using it is clearly better than another.
Perhaps. I would argue that destroyable translocators (both manual destroy and enemies destroying it) encourage a play style that’s more dynamic throughout the map since the “set and forget” TL on a medkit can too easily be destroyed by a flanker leaving you in a rather crippled location.
I do agree that currently there is a pretty good balance with how it’s used though. My particular play style tends to involve a set and forget style play but I play into the enemy very aggressively in the duration. Once the enemy is engaged I will start using it more aggressively for mobility or even the occasional “fool the enemy” play to grab their attention. It’s still an excellent tool for grabbing high ground or escape mid fight.
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Of course, they can definitely be used in tandem. And it’s not like I don’t occasionally throw down a translocator in my backlines so I can quickly get stuff done in enemy backlines and get out. I think one of the fun things about Sombra is that she has a lot of ways to do one job, and it’s an aspect of the hero I really don’t want to lose, that’s why I’m so passionate about Blizzard getting it right before she has to go through a rework and ends up a different hero altogher.
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I agree with what you said. The best thing about her is the ability to choose what to do and how.
But lets see… we are Sombra players. We will for sure find a way how to use her new design.
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It’s not that I wouldn’t be able to find ways to play her, it’s more that we’re having to compromise because her kit is getting fundimentally worse again
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Yeah I know. This changes for sure sacks. And I bet we will get whiners asking for nerf because infinite stealth is OP.
So she will get nerfed “again” and ending up at the new bottom.
And all we needed was to repair the bugs.
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