I don’t see much of an adjustment to this rework aside from just massively buffing Sombra’s DMG output and eliminating some quality of life options with her translocator and invisibility.
I don’t think this a “fix” by any means, and players will undoubtedly become more upset when they start losing more often to Sombras, now that she’ll be dealing more DMG and getting more kills. I fear the development team will have no choice but to nerf her shortly after her release to calm the public’s response to her rework, essentially leaving her a shell of her former self (much like what happened after the beta was released).
I find it interesting that they eliminated the placement of the translocator, as if that was anything wrong to begin with. Arguably, the translcoator is the thing that gets most misused by new Sombra players anyway.
The way it is now in the rework is a lot closer to the comital style of gameplay that you see typically from top level play (not the “throw it by a health pack far away from the fight” that most new players used to fall into), and with the faster transitioning into stealth and translocator throw speed, it’s essentially a massive buff that reward players who already play in that manner, players who are probably mechanically good anyway, i.e the same players that people were toxic towards to begin with.
I think the issue with this rework, is that it’s targeting the publics perception of what the issue with Sombra is, i.e her “cringe” abilities, going invisible, teleporting out etc, rather than recognizing that it’s just the nature of the game, and depending on which characters you decide to main with affects your perception on who is tolerable and who isn’t. Just thinking of everytime FitzyHere has made a comment about how cringe Junkrat and Hanzo are, but that’s understandable they’re Sombra counters.
All this rework has done is make some Sombra mains feel very uneasy about their character, reinforced the publics perception that something was wrong with her when there really wasn’t, and pushed back the issue to a future development team, who will scratch their heads fruitlessly wondering why Sombra is such a problem child to begin with.
I mean, they just reverted the nerf they slapped her with when OW2 came out, so I don’t know about this “massive” DPS buff. 99.9999999999999999999999995% of the changes Sombra has gotten so far were not what Sombra mains actually wanted, and they continue to fail to address the issues people have with playing against Sombra.
Personally, from the clips I saw, she kind of seemed busted. And her translocator still looked just as good as her old one as an escape IF they don’t have the mobility to chase her down.
However, those were curated clips and death combo brig is back.
Well, I think the overwhelming majority of the complaints were about hack silencing enemies, and that still exists. So…not sure what the point of this was. Looks like it might be fun though.
They increased the cooldown on hack and made it break stealth. The increased the amount of ultimate charge needed for EMP by 15% and lowered the damage of EMP by 10%. Translocator is now a short range blink in a straight line either in front of you or into the air that has a timer on it of however long it takes to land +.25 seconds making it so even if you use your translocator, there is a chance you will die before you blink away. Stealth is now a passive we have no control over that triggers 3.5 seconds after you exit combat. And they reduced her movement speed buff in stealth from 60% to 40%. Oh, and the virus only does 10 on impact and 100 over time. Double if it hits a hacked target. That hack that now has an increased cooldown.
But they increased her gun damage by .25, made the spread smaller and lowered the reload time. I guess that’s a massive buff.
Go look at the changes on the directors take. They nerfed every ability she has. They even increased how much ultimate charge it takes for her to get her ultimate.
I’m on the fence about the rework but I think the rework is about more than this - it’s an attempt to get non-GM Sombras into the action instead of sitting in stealth most of the game, only to unclock and teleport back to Narnia as soon as they take a point of damage. Sombra is an awful teammate to have at most ranks and I can see why the devs want to change that.
I thought it was funny in the blog when they said they tested replacing silence with a damage reduction debuff instead, but decided against it because it felt oppressive. And a silence doesn’t? You wot mate.
Which pisses me off. We told them over and over that the previous re-work was not going to work. Here we are a year later and they have to re-work her re-work because they didn’t listen to us in the first place.
Now they increased the CD on hack, made stealth a passive we can not control and activates automatically 3.5 seconds after we exit combat and not before, turned translocator into a short range teleport that can only go in a straight line or up that has a .25 second timer plus the time it takes for her translocator to travel and land before it activates, increased how much ultimate charge it takes to get her ultimate and reduced its damage by 10%. They reduced the speed boost in stealth 20%.
Who the eff do they have working on Sombra? These changes hurt Sombra so badly that somebody in their developers has to have a personal vendetta against her. There is no other explanation for this re-work.
Leading up to this, people in the forums have been saying “wait until we see the numbers.” Now the numbers are out and Sombra has been gutted with a rusty knife.
That one buff doesn’t make up for nerfing every other ability, though. This nerf is almost adversarial. These are so obscene that it looks like they have a personal vendetta against her.
