Sombra double translocator + hack buff

General Discussion
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  • Translocator: can now hold 2 charges. Only 1 translocator can be used at a time (this would open up new mobility options for her, improve mid-combat survivability, and greatly reduce downtime)

  • Hack: hacked targets now display a purple skull with a timer above their health bar and are visible to Sombra and her team through walls. (The first part is a quality of life change that, in my opinion, should have been added in the game ages ago. The second part is a very strong utility buff, that doesn’t directly cripple the enemy more than it did before, but allows your team to capitalize on a hack more easily)

My philosophy behind those buffs:
A lot of you might ask me “why not stealth buffs? Or buffs to her weapon?” Well the thing is, while a lot of the suggestions I’ve read on the forums about faster stealth, more duration, stealth not breaking on damage etc. sound really good, and I bet they would make Sombra feel much smoother to play, the problem is they would accomplish just that: Make her smoother the play. They won’t actually solve her most crippling issues. After the latest rework, I realized my buff suggestions had been off all along. I was essentially making suggestions that would make her better for those who are already good at her (a very small, and extremely devoted minority), rather than making her more accessible and viable in more situations. Moreover, I do actually think her gun is pretty decent (unpopular opinion, I know). I think the problem is that she can’t stay in the fight at her effective range long enough to take advantage of her damage potential.

Sombra’s most crippling weakness right now, that never got remedied, despite the rework, is her extremely bad mid-combat mobility and sustain. Yes, you can use the translocator offensively, but this comes with a huge risk. With a second translocator though, you can throw it to harass that Hanzo on the high ground, or hack a mercy-pocketed Pharah in the air, without being punished as easily. You can afford to stay in the fight for longer and even if you do place it on a health pack away from the fight, you can come back faster, because you won’t have to wait for it to come off cooldown before you can place on it again, or you can just throw the second one to get back in the fight faster after you’ve patched yourself up.

Is it going to make her almost a bit too slippery? Yes. Is she going to be really hard to kill without good burst damage/CC? Yes. Is it going to make her OP though? No. She still doesn’t have any burst damage and her hack has more than enough counterplay.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to experiment with more Sombra buffs, it’s just that I don’t want to sound greedy, and I’d rather take moderate steps at a time. That being said, I would also like to mention a few extra buffs that might be worth considering.

  • Stealth: duration increased from 5 seconds to 6 seconds. The latest translocator duration buff was meant to allow Sombra to: a) Stay in the fight longer so she can deal more damage/hack more people b) Prepare a flank more easily. The thing is, the 5s stealth duration doesn’t often give enough time to run to the enemy backline, properly assess the situation, decide who you want to hack or shoot, and on top of that position yourself properly, especially if you want to decloak out of sound effect range.

  • Hack/Stealth: sound effects are now LoS based. Could be potentially obnoxious, but you never know until you test it (I mean, I thought hacking passives was going to be OP. Turns out I was wrong). Think about the possibilities. How you can abuse your surroundings = to feel like a TRUE stealth hero. Also, honestly, I always thought that the hack sound effects are completely redundant. I swear, people can hear you hacking health packs from miles away. I mean, what’s the point of that? I just hacked a health pack, why does the enemy team need to know?

  • Movement speed: base movement speed increased from 5.5 meters per second (assuming that the OW wiki is correct) to 6. I don’t think I need to explain myself too much here, most people seem to want this anyway. I’d just like to add that this would help her when flanking, because if she decloaks a bit too far away from the enemy team (possibly to avoid CC or being heard), this change would help her catch up more easily.

P.S. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about her bugs. Of course, all of these changes are welcome on top of a mandatory fix to all her insane bugs her hack currently suffers from. Pls check Fitzyhere’s post on reddit for more info.

Thank youuuu

8 Likes
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Still on my phone but I gave a quick read through, came across this and I have to leave a comment first. You hit the nail right on the head with that one. It is, by far, her biggest problem and I am glad more people are seeing this.

I’ll give a more thorough read and comment once I’m off work and at a PC.

First question would be how would you implement it? The hold “Translocator”
button to throw a second translocator is not something I’d like to see. It just doesn’t feel smooth in my opinion.

I do see the benefit of having 2 translocators though. It would save some legwork especially when the area of engagement has shifted and the translocator’s previous position becomes obsolete. I often use translocators offensively so an extra one is always nice for getting out. It definitely will allow her to have a much longer presence in a fight which is something we both agree that she lacks.

However, I do think it might make her inconsistent from the rest of the cast who, at most, have one use of their escape ability if they have one. Except maybe Genji and Junkrat.

It’s one reason why I prefer that stealth be tuned to become the “in combat mobility” option for her. I hope to one day see Sombra being able to shoot and then stealth to reposition either to retreat or change to another angle of attack like this gif below. Of course she’d probably can’t destealth as fast…

How I would love to see a purple skull with a timer or even just a colour change to purple. I can’t see the red swirls very well. Being able to see Hacked enemies through walls might not be necessary considering how strong Hack (if it lands) is. I know it fits her “Information is power” thing but it’s quite loaded with features right now in my opinion.

Just my 2 cents.

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Oh you read it! Nice, thank you :slight_smile:

One more thing that I didn’t mention in the OP. If you observe pro players in OWL you will notice that they almost never leave their translocator on a health pack before a fight. They usually leave it somewhere close to the fight and expect their healers to top them off. There are 2 reasons for that: 1)because the enemy team will probably find it and camp it 2) because they know that if they leave the fight for too long, they’re probably going to lose it anyway. That’s why they often over-commit and die. Sombra dies in OWL a lot more than she does in the ladder.

You misunderstood me. Like I said, “only one translocator can be used at a time”. This means that you can’t set a TL somewhere and then use another one while the previous one is set. What you can do, however, is use one offensively to chase someone on the high ground, for example, and then have another one available immediately to throw away and get out. If you do decide to set it on a health pack, it minimizes the downtime after you teleport back to it, because you won’t have to wait for 4s to set another one before you go back into the fight.

I agree, but I kind of wanted to set the final nail on the coffin regarding Sombra’s case and give her a full set of buffs that I personally believe would guarantee effectiveness in both OWL and regular comp/solo queue. I don’t think she really needs it, but I don’t think it’s OP either.

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I like this idea, this seems likes it almost the same suggestion that I gave on my thread. Keep it up man.

You got my like.

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Ooooh. I get it now. I thought it’d be like the cancel old translocator and throw a new one by holding “E” I’ve read around. So it’s a use one and throw one immediately.

Pretty much the only problem I see with this suggestion is complaints from the other side. They already complain about 1 translocator making her “impossible” to kill. Imagine how many of them will crap their pants when there is two. :joy:

It wouldn’t be OP I guess since it depends on them being Hacked and only reveals one person.

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I read it. I liked all of your ideas, but I think they were more like the suggestions I used to make for her in the past, like I said in my OP. They all sound very good for her, and definitely not OP, but I’m not sure if they are game-changing enough for her. I feel like Sombra needs something to open up completely new options in her kit. That’s why I came up with the double translocator buff. Your suggestions may be enough to make the community want to play her, but I wanted something that would also make her viable in OWL. I don’t know if you understand what I mean…

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My only concern that I can see with two charge for translocator is that people will complain that she will be even more harder to kill, as I love these idea as it promotes all types of play styles, but more importantly it promotes and allows aggressive plays for Sombra.

I mean it’s a great and nice idea with a cool down if you used up both is 38-40 cool down up time and 8 seconds for the actual cool down.

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Exactly!

I thought of that too, and I talked about it in the original post as well. Well, my answer to that is that people will always complain about Sombra not being fun to play against. Let this be her thing. Being that one hero in the game who is extremely slippery, She’s not that lethal anyway. Let her have this presence, this psychological pressure on the enemy team that she can be almost anywhere at any time. She can still be killed by burst damage anyway… Not to mention that it gives underplayed Roadhog a reason to come back into the meta.

Honestly, it’s just a 6s single target wall hack. Sonic arrow does that on a huge AoE, lasts for the same duration and is only on a 12s cooldown.

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I have had the desire for a second translocator just about every time I play her! I would love that, she could play much more offensively with the ability buffed that way, and she wouldn’t need to use stealth and it’s delayed transitions to get close to enemies preemptively.

Am I crazy or does Sombra’s default skin actually have 2 translocators on her tool belt? I wonder if Blizz tried this out?

I also agree that the effect of her hack kind of suffers the same visibility issue as discord orb. Adding the skull above alone would help, but the timer would be game changing. I also wish both hack and discord were visually brighter, since those abilities are supposed to be a beacon for your team to attack that target.

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I was thinking that maybe the translocator cooldown should go up to 6s so it doesn’t get too spammy. As with people complaining, I don’t think she is going to be that much harder to kill, since the translocator is slow and leaves a trail when you teleport to it. If you decide to use your charges offensively there is greater risk involved than if you just set one on a health pack.

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Keep it simple. Kill elim on hacked target refreshes cooldown. Makes sombra more active and skill based.

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Nope, there are far too many oversights here.

2 translocaters at 20 seconds a piece at 4 seconds each. Really, 4 seconds isn’t enough? I’d be fine with a cancel, but not 2.

Stealth, rather than increasing the duration, it needs a 30 damage cutoff before she gets knocked out, so she doesn’t get sniped with a Dva pellet then lose stealth.

Hack and it being LoS based, no. It’s to let the enemy know you hacked it. Crazy idea, I know, but every others ability isn’t LoS based sound ques either.

Movement speed. No. Another miss.

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You are talking about my oversights, even though I provided a whole essay behind the reasoning of my suggestion. Meanwhile, you’re not explaining why 2 translocators shouldn’t be a thing. The cooldown could be modified to 6 or even 8 seconds, but I don’t see why giving Sombra more options is a bad thing.

This would be good, but random damage canceling stealth is not what prevents Sombra from being good. The community won’t suddenly perceive Sombra as a viable pick just because she can sprint through damage. Not to mention that she’d be able to stall payloads and objectives forever, and I’m not sure if that’s healthy for the game (maybe a smaller damage threshold…?) It would be good, but not good enough.

Why does the enemy need to know that I hacked a health pack in a room behind them? If were to hack a player they’d know because I’d be in a LoS. But health packs? What’s the point of that, other than make Sombra even worse at being stealthy?

Since when is hack cooldown a problem? Do you even play Sombra? I’ve never heard any Sombra player complain that hack doesn’t come off cooldown fast enough when you need it.

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That is if they give her two charge however, I think 4 seconds is perfect as it’s technically has two type of cool down.