Should sombra hack while invisible

Anything to show that you have an actual idea to show that what you claim will work. The pace of the game is very fast with constant back and forth between the two sides. The video i showed is the same pace whether it’s on Sombra, Orisa, Zenyatta, Mercy, Moira, Tracer or Bastion. When will you have time to actually make use of infinite stealth?

Again, show us how you think Sombra will work. Make her work the way you described in an actual game where you have real players interacting. You think you know her enough to insist on a playstyle, then show us.

I don’t need to be a Sombra main to be able to breakdown where the designers are pushing Sombra, and the logical outcome of where these changes will take her. You also don’t need legs to tell a bad sprint from a good one, if you’re learned in how running works. So, sorry, you’re not gonna get the Sombra gameplay that miraculously proves my point. But you can get an essay! Like I said, that’s much more up my alley.

Again, I suggest looking into how Sombra is now and how she can move more freely and independently after these changes, and then once taking those freedoms and independence into account, we can figure out where that works best in what situations. Sombra no longer has to fight against her own arbitrary timers, which limited where she could be and for how long, and it often made Sombra have to abandon a position just because she didn’t perfectly math out her timers. All those times you have a healer down to just a slither of health, but you have to tele out because Translocator is about to expire? Those days are gone, because Sombra can just play in the backlines as long as she personally needs, and will teleport out when she wants. All those times you think you’re about to reach safety to uncloak, but you’re forced out of it and the enemy hears you? Gone too are those days, because she can just stay in stealth until it’s comfy enough to get out.

Whether these changes work out in practice is something neither of us can prove. Not consistently, anyway. This is because these changes are only up on PTR, and PTR makes for a bad testing environment since everyone plays erratically. We’ll only be able to tell if it works when it goes on live and sits for awhile, because that’s where people play seriously (most of the time). And even then, there might still be an issue that the meta simply doesn’t compliment Sombra, and while her abilities might be better overall for her health, she might happen to not have a solid place to actually make those abilities stand out. Not a fault of her balance specifically, but the result of MANY outside factors that are in the rest of the game that control her course.

All we can do is talk and theorize. Even if I got onto PTR, found the miracle game where I can show you how these changes ideally work, it doesn’t matter. That’s just my one game and you could just call it a fluke or dismiss it some other way. Again, I don’t need to be a pro Sombra to figure out what the designers’ intents are and how they expect her to be used post-changes, I can just read their commentary, do the math, and apply the changes mentally to see what’s going on and where she’s expected to be.

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it would be op … it’s basicly impossible to react fast enough.

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If she starts hacking from behind you, maybe, but in that case, she would’ve outplayed you.

Well, here’s what they told us:
Her speed is lower
Her translocator is destructible.
She can’t contest points anymore

Now, you might be right and these might be buffs. We actually don’t know the value of stealth. But we DO know the value of movement in this game(it’s a fast game) and sombra players do know the value of their translocator. You don’t have to be a sombra main but if the buff is to take away the timers, and she is among the least picked hero in the game(she is) then don’t take away her capabilities. Just buff her straight up.
And also, say what your intentions are blizzard for god sakes. You can’t be like “shes too hard, so we made her easier and less good” and not expect people to be upset.

Edit: formatting mistakes

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Sombra’s movement, I’d argue, isn’t really the part about her that you play her for. After all, her movement isn’t good because it’s fast, it’s because she’s invisible. The boost she gets helps her get around, but because invisibility forces her to be inactive, that speed isn’t that great in practice. It’s just for the sake of positioning, and doesn’t have impact in and of itself, other than perhaps a few particularly lucky getaways, in scenarios where Translocator wasn’t up for whatever reason.

What I see these changes as are ways to increase what Sombra should be doing, which isn’t sprinting to positions, but remaining hidden and discretely getting into those positions ideal to her. Without being pressured by her own timers, Sombra can more comfortably be in the opportunities that she wants.

And that doesn’t require a raw buff. Yes it would objectively increase her pickrates if she got raw buffs, yes it would objectively make her a better hero than her current position, but that isn’t healthy for the rest of the game. It would not be healthy if Sombra only got buffs here; she can be invisible infinitely, she can Translocate infinitely and with security that her Translocator isn’t compromised, she can contest points, and she still has that amazing speed while invisible. The goal of balance changes isn’t to make weak heroes stronger or vice-versa, it’s to balance the hero, and that’s almost always going to mean taking some stuff away in favor of stuff that’s much more important. Raw buffs don’t tend to do well with the game unless it’s something genuinely minor, or if it’s a change meant to go hand-in-hand with previous changes.

Also, we do have some Blizzard comments that direct us to what their goal is for Sombra through these changes. In the June 28th patch for PTR, for Sombra’s dev comments we had, “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.” We also have this post from Geoff, where he says, “These changes are really interesting for her as now she is in complete control over when she reveals herself, allow her to time her hacks better for her team, or go for a back line ambush during a critical moment in a team fight.” Then there’s this other post by Geoff, which sounds a little familiar: “The goal of these changes is to make her stronger overall, even if it means being slightly weaker in some areas.”

So from here it seems fairly clear what their intention is. They want Sombra to ambush and get those surprise hacks while navigating the battle field with less detection, but in doing so, they have to clean up the areas where this wouldn’t feel fair, namely in how she could contest objectives or move incredibly fast for an extreme amount of time while also being unseen. Admittedly, I’d still love for some more comments from the dev team to get an idea of what they’re thinking, but game devs usually have their hands-tied on these matters for a number of reasons (namely that their userbase is unstable and sometimes more information is just more fuel for the fire).

DIdn’t we rework Mercy cuz people were abusing this playstyle?

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Most of the time when you hack gets interrupted it’s not because the Person you hack reacts fast enough, it’s because someone else of his team saw you … you would take that away.

Her current mobility is extremely useful for flanking. There’s a lot of jumps you can do with stealth, and translocator can be used for aggressive plays.

She should be a backline disruptor/assassin. She was never pressured by timers, unless you were bad at her. All this does is make her bad parts worse. She lacks presence in a teamfight, so now she can sit at the edge of the teamfight in stealth waiting for something to happen. Spoiler: all that’s going to happen is your team losing a 5v6.

She’s an F tier hero. She doesn’t need nerfs to compensate. What are the nerfs compensating for? The ‘extremely powerful’ buffs? She got 2 buffs, 2 bug fixes and 3 nerfs. That’s not how balancing a garbage tier hero works. You don’t need to compensate, because there’s nothing to compensate for.

I have a solution. Don’t go through with these stupid changes in the first place. They haven’t even fixed any of her hack bugs. Her hack is still wildly inconsistent. She still lacks presence in a teamfight. She is still useless at getting kills. Why would I ever play Sombra instead of Tracer? Someone who doesn’t need to ‘wait for the perfect opportunity’ i.e. wasting time. Someone who’s perfectly capable of having presence in a teamfight. I’ll tell you why. Because I enjoy playing Sombra more. That’s it. That’s the reason. There’s no benefit to playing Sombra. Just enjoyment.

More proof Blizzard has no clue what they’re doing.

You see, that’s really funny, because who wants to have to spend 20 seconds in a 5v6 while you wait for your Sombra to find the ‘perfect opportunity’? No-one. Who wants to sit in a corner, invisible, waiting for the enemy team to what? Push in? Why not make it so that Sombra herself can initiate instead of waiting, leaving her team in a 5v6?

She’s an F tier hero. She shouldn’t need to be made ‘weaker in some areas’. And, I fail to see how she’s stronger because of these changes. I have to use my translocator to get anywhere because now I can’t make jumps with my stealth. My hack is still useless, and I still struggle to kill anyone. They have no clue what they’re doing.

So, I’d love to know what the devs think Sombra is. A scout? An infiltrator? What do either of those things mean to her team? I’d love to know just to see how little they actually know about how she’s meant to be played.

Or… maybe they just don’t know what they’re doing with her. Geoff was shocked that people didn’t like the changes. That tells you everything you need to know.

Hey listen, you’re going to get ragged on a lot. Partially because what you’re saying seems to be “I don’t know the character very well but I want to disagree with the people with extensive time on her.”
I want you to know that I agree that just because you don’t main sombra it doesn’t mean you don’t get to speak to her place in the game. However when you deny their perspective and don’t use it to inform your own, it comes off as pure ignorance, no matter how long your posts are. So when you say:

It makes you seem rather ignorant. Here, I am sorry, But it’s speed plays a HUGE part in its value. The speed allows her to make certain jumps. The speed is a major part of it. You’d know that if you played her more.

Now I don’t know. You could be right. However, she is now pressured by things like range, internal timers, and leaving her team at a 5 v 6 disadvantage because her invisibility takes time to get in and out of(and she also gives a voice line as to make sure the enemy actually knows she’s there) also, What do you think the concesquences of waiting and not assisting your team until the right opportunity might or might not appear happens? Would you say that’s a 5 v 6? What about sombra losing an ability to contest points? Would you say that’s because sombra players SHOULD not do that? And when the destructible translocator? Only 5 damage to destroy the thing. Is THAT a buff? Does that not take away from a low tiered hero as is? Maybe there is more available.
Taking away a multitude of playstyles and replacing it with a singular one is a horrible way to “buff” characters.
So she got three nerfs for two buffs. Experts on the character seem to say this will be awful for her because giving her more downtime is a bad solution in a team fight.

She’s at the very bottom of the game. Some raw buffs rather than the 2 buffs - 3 nerfs seems rather silly to me.
So she got cutoff from things she’s capable of now, and yes, that feels a lot like a nerf. Her place on the battle field doesn’t seem to add up, as any sombra player will tell you a dva pellet from across the map can cancel your abilities without doing any damage.
Sombra is still counterable by accident. It takes no effort

I see EMP becoming the new old rez very soon.

The problem with this then falls on her damage output. A surprise attack only means so much when she can barely do the attack part

Most of the time hack gets interrupted, it’s because of bugs. I very rarely have hack properly interrupted. I think we should evaluate Sombra’s position after the bugs are fixed before we make any changes. Currently, with the bugged hack, invis hacking wouldn’t be broken.

I wouldn’t say most of the time, but yes …. to often. Most of the time it’s trash dmg or someone moves behind something the last moment or someone turns around at the worst moment possible.

Absolutely not. That would definitely put her in OP realm for sure.

You are acting like hack is completely riddled with bugs and never works. Please stop. Hack works fine and one or two experiences for you does not equal everyone else’s. Yes there are bugs but to pretend they are stopping hack from functioning (which you pretty much are implying) is ridiculous.

“I cant play well with her so I’m going to blame it on bugs and bad balance”.

Have you ever played Sombra? The bugs happen fairly often. I main her, and there are plenty of videos of it not working, and from my experience, hack gets interrupted more by bugs than damage.

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This is how she was when she was a support hero, except she was just infinite forever. Honestly, being invisible passively can free up space for an ability that would do damage or something.

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no

enough characters to post.

No. Buff her in other areas (or conversely, give her a sneak attack, one of the two).