She has the lowest win rate in the game… now… Historically Blizzard has taken exception to this, and buffed the heroes… a LOT.
McCree, Hanzo, etc.
Now… Y’all have a choice. You can try and work out HOW you want her changed so she has a proper win rate, OR… you can let Blizzard do that for you.
Any comments “she is OP” is basically saying you are going to ignore the problem, and leave Blizzard to do their evil work.
Any comments saying “she is Fine” is ALSO ignoring the problem, and leaving Blizzard to do their evil work.
Any comments saying remove her from the game, is asking for something which will never happen, and - yes you guessed it, you will leave Blizzard to do their evil work.
Now, WHEN they get around to it, they are likely to buff her a lot. Like - more than the Hanzo or McCree buffs scale of a lot…
And they are VERY much likely to do it in a way you will NOT enjoy. So… put aside your Sombra hate, and get thinking.
We have a change to influence their thinking here, don’t let it go to waste.
Any hero that is extremely dependant on teamwork and coms to see max value is gonna struggle with winrate imo. Doesnt mean they need any sort of buffs tho
So change her movement to Genji / Tracer speed at 6 m/s?
I agree that hack buffs would be enough - if anything I would shorten hack to 5 seconds, but, make up for it in the rest of her kit.
Personally I’ve always advocated for moving power out of Hack and into her weapon
Right now Hack is absurdly powerful with high level coordination against specific teams, but is pretty useless outside that scenario.
It’s not nearly effective enough to warrant running Sombra against pretty much anything that isn’t Bastion or GOATS, and outside T3 and above, most teams don’t have the coordination to follow up on her hacks.
It feels like Blizzard have backed themselves into a corner because they can’t make Sombra good for the average player, because of how powerful Hack is as a mechanic at the high end of the game, and Hack being balanced at the high end means Sombra is useless at the lower end.
If they make Hack less powerful, but move the power to the weapon, or even make Hack less powerful, BUT easier to pull off and follow up, then Sombra would be in a far healthier and less frustrating state.
I’m with Fitzy in that I think it could be reduced from 6 to 5 seconds. A LOT of what hack is used for is to turn something into an ult charge battery. I sure use it that way myself. D’va / Hog are FAR less scary as a Sombra to get ult off if they won’t kill really quickly.
I think EMP could do with being made smaller, but, I expect the rest of her kit will get QUITE scary with the buffs needed to even balance those changes, let alone make her viable.
But, I wanted to get other ideas. Because I like hack as a very different kind of ability in Overwatch - in that it tilts the battlefield in your teams favour, without it being a pick.
I’m not up for turning Sombra into Tracer v2, so a lot of gun buffs to make her into assassin Sombra isn’t what I would like - but I expect others will have VERY different views on that.
That is one possible future for her.
I have a LOT of love for information warfare Sombra, and would like to see more of that side of her in play.
I have been one for 2 teleporters, because, it is a chunky buff, without making her an assassin, but, also not buffing Hack or EMP.
In my heart I think Blizzard will take her down the assassin route, since, it would be the simplest way to make her viable - without annoying people as much.
One solution I’ve always liked is actually reducing it even further down to 2.5-3 seconds, BUT making it uninterruptible/unable to be LoS’d.
It feels like Blizzard have been wary of reducing the risk of Hack because of how powerful it is against tanks at 6 seconds, but if it was only 2.5-3 seconds (which is still significantly longer than any hard CC in the game, don’t get me wrong), then I think it would be far more flexible an ability, ESPECIALLY against heroes who hack would be good against, but otherwise are too tricky to try and Hack.
While buffing her gun is a pretty vague way of looking at it, I’d much rather they decrease her spread rather than simply buffing her raw DPS in regards for weapon buffs. You’re right in that we don’t really need an invisible Tracer.
Plus the side effect of changing her Hack is that while making it instant/uninterruptible makes it a lot easier to hack targets who are vulnerable to Hack, it doesn’t feel nearly as bad to be hacked. Because sitting there as a Lucio for 6 seconds feels absolutely godawful.
You know what? I like that idea. I think it has legs. 3 seconds would give her exactly one clip. Which would be about perfect. I kinda expect they would change the cooldown so it was still 2 seconds between the hack, but it would give people more escape time.
What if I’m in the minority of players that thinks their work isn’t really evil? Or more specifically, that balance often isn’t as bad as the forums make it out to be?
To be clear, I do think Sombra needs something. Whether it’s massive buffs or whatever.
Just depower Hack/EMP and empower her weapon, the CC based kit is obviously not working to make her a viable character while at the same time being absolutely toxic on ladder for griefing skill characters with an outrageously low skill/high reward ability.
All of the balance decisions that were made around reigning in Dive were long term terrible choices, Sombra is very much a product of it.
I don’t even think they’d need decrease the cooldown. An 3 second reliable hack is still a VERY powerful tool on it’s own and easily justifies the cooldown.
I personally think it’s the beauty of the idea. The biggest complaint about Sombra is that “you don’t get to play the game against her” and the lowered uptime on Hack would alleviate a lot of those complaints, especially from heroes who can’t easily interrupt her like Reinhardt or Lucio players, all while giving Sombra some much needed reliability so she can choose when to disable Rein’s shield for her teammates, or shut down a Doomfist/Tracer terrorizing her backline.
