Sombra Changes I want to see

Sombra is not fine. Now that Doomfist has been nerfed, her pickrate has plummeted. She’s going to go right back into the trash bin now that people have no reason to pick her.

Sombra should be changed so that she’s less oppressive, but also more fun to play. She should have times where she is picked actively, not reactively to what the enemy plays.

Machine Pistol

  • Fire rate reduced to 15 bullets per second (was 20 bullets per second)
  • Spread angle reduced to 1.5 (was 2.7)
  • Damage falloff minimum increased to 50% (was 30%)

This change transforms Sombra’s Machine Pistol into a midrange hitscan weapon. Sombra is not supposed to be an assassin. The devs have stated this explicitly, yet she has an assassin’s gun? A gun that can’t kill anything except with god-like tracking at point-blank range doesn’t suit Sombra’s skirmisher playstyle. Damage has never been Sombra’s issue. Rather, it’s damage consistency.

Instead, giving her a gun with medium range gives her target access and high ground advantage. Her overall potential DPS is a bit lower than before, but she can apply that damage more consistently and at longer ranges, allowing her to stay out of reach of close-range threats like McCree and Reinhardt while still landing the majority of her pellets. With the smaller spread angle and less damage falloff, she’ll likely be dealing MORE damage than before, since more of her pellets are going to be landing. Reducing her fire rate, rather than simply reducing the damage, allows her to shoot for longer as well.

Hack

  • Duration reduced to 4 seconds (was 6 seconds)
  • Cooldown reduced to 6 seconds (was 8 seconds)

A simple adjustment to the duration of Sombra’s Hack makes it less oppressive, but more valuable for Sombra. Players are left helpless for a much shorter duration, both per-Hack and over the course of the match (67% uptime vs 75%). However, Sombra gets more opportunities to Hack enemies and interrupt their abilities. Instead of just leaving enemies without abilities for most of the match, the power of Hack is being focused on having it available to stop enemies once they have started.

EMP

  • Duration reduced to 4 seconds (was 6 seconds)

This change brings it in-line with the Hack duration nerf. However, with the changes to Machine Pistol, Sombra will have a much easier time farming up her ultimate from range, since the reduced spread and increased minimum damage lets her deal a substantial amount of damage to tanks at medium-to-long ranges.

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I really dont think giving Sombra damage is the answer. Her pick/win rates are tied to her heavy reliance on teamwork which isnt prevalent on ladder.

Exactly, which is why giving her a reliable gun is how to fix her. Reducing the team utility of Hack and EMP (without reducing its personal utility), and putting that power into her weapon would disconnect her viability from teamwork and coordination. Sombra’s problem from Day 1 has always been how unreliable her weapon is.

These changes wouldn’t give Sombra more damage. They would give more consistent damage. She would be able to finish off low targets revealed to her with Opportunist from a distance. She would be able to use her Translocator to get up to a high perch and actually dish out effective damage from that position. She could decloak from beyond 15m away so her enemies couldn’t hear it, then deal threatening damage from that range, outside the threat range of most close-range peel.

She would have her own niche totally distinct from the likes of Tracer and could be more independent from her teammates.

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You can have all of this if Hammond can be EMP/Hack resistant while in ball form.

This is what I want to see with Sombra honestly. Somvra's suggestions for Sombra. 💟

Reasons behind these changes Sombra's Delay is Whats Killing Her. 😍

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She now deals 120 dps instead of 160.
(with headshots it would be 240 vs 320)

This is really low compared to the fire rate. (looking at all other hitscan auto weapons)

So she would deal less damage at range?..

I think we can keep the EMP hack duration for 6 seconds because it’s an ult, and I kinda like the rest of the changes - sombra 1 trick from season 6 btw

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Oh, look, another “Why can’t Sombra be Tracer?” thread. That never gets old…

Taking power from hack and giving her more damage goes against everything the character was design to do. But no. Every time someone wants to ‘fix’ Sombra it’s always “Just maker her a flanker, like Tracer with stealth”.

Sigh.

There are very few cases where Sombra is actually landing every single pellet. Her damage potential goes down, but the reduced spread allows her to land the majority of her pellets even at medium range.

For a spread angle comparison:
Tracer - 3.6
Soldier - 2.4
Ashe (unscoped) - 1.85
Wrecking Ball - 2

It’s actually quite small compared to most other heroes. Think of it this way: it’s a 45% reduction in spread in exchange for 25% reduction in DPS.

The damage falloff changes INCREASE her damage at range. Right now, damage falloff brings each pellet’s damage down to a minimum of 2.4 damage. This change would bring that minimum up to 4 damage per pellet at maximum range. It increases her damage at medium-to-long ranges.

This post is the opposite of “Why can’t Sombra be Tracer?” These changes seek to give her a niche entirely distinct from Tracer, giving her more range and damage consistency, not damage output. Tracer is a point-blank assassin. These changes make Sombra a midrange harrier.

I like a lot of this except the fire speed change. Nerfing her fire speed would make her damage even less because then it would take even longer to kill someone.

You do understand that “more consistent damage” and “longer range” does increase her effective DPS, right? At the end of the day you want to move focus from the hack and make her into a pure flanker. Then you can call it “Mid-ranger-combo-hybrid-distinctive-hacker-specialist” or whatever. That is what you’re suggesting.

Soldier, with his 9 rpm, has an accuracy of 36%…
Even with 40% accuracy she will deal 48 damage in a second.
Before she would deal 64.

Yes, it increases her effective DPS, but only at medium ranges. Her DPS at close range would be less than it is now.

A metric ton of Sombra’s potential power is tied up in Hack and EMP, and both abilities require team coordination to make the most of. Reducing some of that power and putting it into her solo play potential doesn’t remove her identity as a DPS with team utility, but it allows her to be good in settings that don’t have a lot of team coordination.

Sombra IS a flanker. That’s her role. That’s what her entire kit is designed to allow her to do. These changes let her do that better, but in a way that is unique to her.

Notice how the guy above you is complaining that this is a buff to her damage?

Accuracy across the course of a game is not an accurate measure for anything useful. Even the pros have low accuracy over the course of a match because they’re constantly spamming to farm ult charge between fights. Good players land 90%-100% of their shots in the span of a few seconds, then spend about a minute spamming chokes and long sightlines.

A (huge) decrease in spread means more pellets are going closer to where she aims, so less pellets are missing her target, especially at range or when going for headshots. A player with good tracking is going to be landing more of her pellets than before at a range she couldn’t even consider dealing good damage. At max range, she could easily output 60 DPS on a big tank, where before she’d only get at most 48 DPS, realistically on a Reinhardt barrier.

Her potential damage goes down, but her sustained damage, ranged damage, and overall damage consistency goes way up.

So she would do a lot better with higher rpm?

I’d rather Sombra wasn’t encouraged to be more of an EMP bot.

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Nerfing her damage in some capacity was necessary to compensate for the dramatically reduced spread. If she could deal 160 DPS at 15-20m, that would be ridiculous. I opted to reduce the fire rate instead of the damage per pellet because it allows her to shoot longer, so she can continue to output damage even after most enemies need to reload. It softens the blow of the reduced damage output even further by giving her more sustained damage, since she’s spending less time reloading.

I’m not really sure why you’re so obsessed with RPM. It’s overall meaningless to the discussion.

She already is encouraged to be an EMP bot because the majority of the power in her kit is tied into her ultimate. If you watch high-level Sombra players like Fitzy, they’re spending the majority of the game securing ult charge from a safe distance and singling out enemies who thought they were safe on high ground.

Instead of passively farming ultimate by poking from medium range, these changes would allow Sombra to deal real, threatening damage from medium range. She could have the safety granted by her preferred positioning while also getting respectable damage.

And that’s a bad thing, so instead of encouraging it, they should try to discourage it.

These changes DO discourage it. She gets a better gun that allows her to be a threat from a safe distance, her Hack is up more often, and the ult is overall weaker. Sombra’s gameplay would be focused on harassing and skirmishing, not farming.

Rpm = dps If each shot deals the same damage.

If we give her less rpm, she will be worse at close range, and might be slightly better at long range.

It would be an overall nerf.

No, they make it much easier.

And therein lies the issue. She could play much safer, while also charging EMP at a faster rate.

Your changes would just make playing Sombra more frustrating to play though. There would be a much larger focus on communication (which is already bad at the moment) and Sombra would still be trash at dueling. So basically, the only thing that Sombra would be good at, would be (still) farming EMP.