I’m a Masters Sombra main (3716 SR) with over 300 hours on Sombra and I can share some quick insights on my perspective.
Sombra’s biggest challenge is managing her “impact uptime”, which is the proportion of a given match that she is performing actions that actively contribute to victory. Actions such as:
- Distracting the enemy by harassing their backline
- Picking off low-HP enemies that flee from frontline combat
- Hacking key targets
- EMPing the enemy team
- Racking up damage to pressure enemy healers’ attention and resources while farming EMP
- Contesting the objective/payload
Due to the nature of Sombra’s kit (TL and Stealth in particular), Sombra is predisposed to spending a LOT of time doing none of the above. Between running circuitous backchannel routes to flank the enemy, placing Translocator, waiting for Hack opportunities, Translocating away once damaged, then running back towards the fight, Sombra can easily spend much of the match (especially at critical moments) doing nothing at all to help her team win.
An experienced Sombra player learns when and how to enter the fray, knows the fastest routes to access various parts of the map efficiently, knows how to place their TL to both avoid being found while minimizing the time it takes to get back to a good position, and knows how to actively reposition within a combat zone to avoid spending too long simply running between her TL and the fight.
The recent changes made Sombra’s largest challenges worse:
- She takes longer to quickly reposition when the nexus of combat shifts on the battlefield, because she moves slower in Stealth
- She takes longer to return to the fight after TLing away, both because she moves slower in Stealth and because…
- …she must place her TL further from active-combat-zones because it can be destroyed
- She can no longer consistently depend on her TL as an escape because it can be destroyed
- She can no longer use TL reliably within active-combat-zones because it can be destroyed
- She can no longer distract and draw enemy resources to her while in Stealth, because she can’t contest the objective in Stealth
On top of which, the benefits of her changes (infinite Stealth and TL) further predispose her towards spending long periods not contributing to the conflict.
While it’s true that the infinite timers also open up new options, like spawn camping and stalking heroes who are looking for an Ult opportunity (Hanzo, McCree), stalking and spawn camping are also time-intensive activities during which Sombra is not shooting, Hacking, or distracting anyone. She’s just lurking, waiting for the opportunity to make an impact instead of creating those opportunities for impact herself.
The value Sombra now generates from stalking then cancelling a big ultimate or killing a healer returning from spawn is - in my experience - less than the value she would’ve brought had she been shooting, Hacking, generating Ultimate charge for EMP, and otherwise being a distractive nuisance to the enemy team in that time (and formerly did at a faster rate due to her TL invincibility and Stealth speed).
I’m finding Sombra plays slower, has less impact, and spends far more time just waiting than before.