In regards to the new Sombra changes coming from the dev blog, they are removing her ability to stay invisible forever. In addition to combing it with translocator and putting it on a cooldown. I would personally have liked it if stealth to be controllable ability like how it was before but what can I do.
However some people are making it seem like Sombra not being invisible 24/7 and having stealth on a cooldown will kill her, even though it really won’t. While these changes will make her harder to play, Sombra does not need to be invisible all the time.
Sombra by herself is still very stealthy without being in stealth. Sombra has the quietest footsteps in the game, and not being in stealth means you don’t have to worry about Sombra blurring out voice lines when coming out of it or being detected by getting too close to the enemy. Not having stealth just means you cannot run out in the open but that rule applies to all flankers so having the the ability to still do it sometimes is a big advantage for her.
Also a five second cooldown on translocator is still in line with the cooldown of other escape abilities for flankers.
By comparison:
Echo’s Flight | 6 seconds
Tracer’s Blink | 3 seconds
Genji’s Swift Strike | 8 seconds
Reaper’s Shadow Step | 10 seconds
So Sombra having a five second escape ability will hardly do anything bad for her.
TL:DR: Sombra is still stealthy without stealth, just be more careful and don’t run around like a headless chicken.
That’s literally all I was hoping for with stealth nerfs: periods of vulnerability. She doesn’t really have that as long as stealth is permanent. 2 seconds of visibility with 5 seconds of invisibility (that you can no longer be knocked out of btw, so the speed buff can’t be interrupted either) is a good move imo.
In an ideal world, we would have stealth and translocator seperate again as well to allow for more skill expression and control of your character, but this is Overwatch we’re talking about here lol.
It basically just means you can’t really engage until the 5s is up for the most part which is fine. I’m curious how much faster I can kill though now. Hack and virus plus 20% may just be absolute horror. we’ll see how it plays out. No reason to hate it or love it without first hand experience on it.
Comparing sombra tp to those other heroes is incredibly dishonest. TP is her only engage & disengage tool.
Echo - can tap fly to go super high and have it available by the time she wants to leave
Tracer - has 3 blinks & recall itself is a positioning tool letting you return to a safe position with your hp back
Genji - has deflect as another option if his dash engage didn’t work out.
Reaper - has wraith to become invulnerable and make his way out with self healing through his weapons.
It’s also 7s for translocator now so you can at best wait until stealth ends to engage and have 2s where you hope you’re not cc’d or blown up with 225hp. You also are at a lot of risk vs mobile heroes on that disengage.
New sombra will be forced to play inside her team building ult and maybe against stationary comps can look for flanks here and there.
Oh I’m locking in the Kiri the first couple of days of the season because of this change lol. I think hack being lowered from 1.5s to 1s helps, but that’s still a 160dps to 192dps increase on her primary fire. I’m not sure if virus’ 145 current max damage will be affected by the 20% passive, but the patch notes specify ‘weapon damage’ so probably not.
Emp is going to be something to look out for for sure now. The 3s hack gives Sombra enough time to murder the backline even without virus damage.
The old opportunist passive just boosted weapon damage. Her melee attack was unaffected. I assume Virus will still be boosted by Hack the way it normally was before (not 20% stronger).
That would make sense. So not as much as I was assuming. But still more damage regardless. I also assume we get that weird hack the last .5s of invisibility to get that weird tech I guess you call it to make it fluid. The issue being I don’t Know if that’s better because then you still have to live for 2s in the enemy backline with nothing but your single target lethality. It’s gonna feel like old doom for a bit.
Right. because this is what gave her equal footing vs other dps heros, including with her hack. (and i dont mean damage increase hack) Now hack is also nerfed to useless 1 second. 1 second doesnt even give her time to pul out her gun
(btw i do agree that she shoudlnt have had perm stealth. But still controllable temp)
we’ll see how it plays out. No reason to hate it or love it without first hand experience on it.