So, I’ll be up-front. My two most-played are Rein and Lucio. I hate Sombra, because she is damned annoying. However, I don’t find her all that OP. I do, however, find her somewhat binary.
On many heroes, she essentially deletes them with hack. You essentially cannot play Hammond against a Sombra, for example. And Lucio is horribly punished by being the only healer who cannot continue to heal when hacked (even Zen can, if the orb is out).
On other heroes, she causes them trouble, but not significantly so. Soldier, for example. Or Moira. She fares poorly against a Winston-based dive.
The end result is that she is generally balanced, and works better against some comps than others. This is the good.
The bad, however, is that EMP is the strongest single ult in the game by a wide margin, and has essentially no realistic counterplay. It opens up numerous uncontestable ult combos and usually guarantees a win in a teamfight. Spreading out doesn’t really work. You have to be extremely spread to avoid it hitting most of the team, and that doesn’t work out well in practice, isolating members of your team for picks and breaking up pushes.
It also has an extremely short cast time and she can hide with invisibility watching for an opportunity, one that will appear very quickly. While it can be interrupted, I have only witnessed it interrupted on purpose once, and that was by a GM Widow who’d peaked Top 500 a few seasons prior and got matched in with low diamonds during the wee hours of the night.
But the other shoe is that Sombra is quite weak aside from her EMP. Her hack, while brutally effective on certain heroes (Lucio, Hammond, Doom, etc), is easy to interrupt and limits her already sub-par damage output while attempting it. She can do a lot of damage if you empty a clip up close, but I find in practice spread and return fire rarely allows that.
And while she has good options to disengage from a fight, she has very little staying power during a fight. Sans EMP, the standard pattern I’ve seen for Sombra in a fight is to move up doing chip damage attempt a hack, and then translocate the moment she is targeted.
This isn’t especially fun, for her or her opponents. For her, she feels anemic and easily driven back, resulting in very staggered gameplay. For her opponents, they have a constant pest that is extremely difficult to kill unless she royally screws up.
My desire for Sombra isn’t a nerf or a buff, outright. What I want is for her to be less binary. Weaker EMP, stronger baseline. More focus on her combat potential, less on her hack’s lockdown.
Brainstorming time. Here’s a few ideas, not intended to all be used (especially togther), but just getting people started for suggestions.
EMP’s duration is based on how close you are to her when she EMPs.
-Goal: Spreading allows you to reduce how long you’re hacked, and she has to position closer to key targets. Introduces some counterplay besides “hide your defensive ult support and pray”. EMP’s radius and charge rate can be balanced accordingly.
Sombra’s hack duration is reduced, but she can use it while firing.
-Goal: Shifts more of her power back into dealing damage and less into hacking. In addition to letting her maintain her damage output more consistently, she is punished less for taking stray shots in a game that has a lot of enemies dealing small amounts of area damage. It also makes her hack alone less oppressive on opponents who it currently shuts down. Cast time/cooldown can be balanced accordingly.
EMP does not affect a target after first destroying a barrier between it and the target.
-IE, EMP in a Winston Bubble hacks anyone within and breaks the bubble, but not those outside. And a EMP from outside of a bubble breaks the bubble and hacks those outside, but not inside. Zarya bubbles are destroyed, but the target is not hacked, etc. As usual, her ult’s radius/cooldown/etc could be balanced accordingly.
-Goal: Another possible method of adding counterplay to EMP, as Sombra would then have to position herself relative to barriers, and her enemies could position themselves in a similar manner. It also would standardize one finicky little interaction that currently exists where a hero’s shield HP isn’t damaged if a Zarya bubble was on them at the time. That’s almost a bug atm, really. It goes through other barriers just fine.
If it’s an object or hero, she can hack/EMP it.
-Goal: Standardize the rules for hacking a little. EMP disables Sym teleporter/turrets while standard hack cannot target them. This feels like a bit of an oversight. Likewise you cannot hack/EMP an enemy translocator (which would be a cool trick instead of shooting it, because then she can’t use it OR put down a new one until the hack ends). You can hack B.O.B. to sleep, but not Mei’s Blizzard-bot, etc. Standardize it so it’s clear and not often-arbitrary interactions you have to memorize.
Bring back the ability to hack hacked health kits.
-Goal: Lets Sombras screw with each other. I dunno why they removed this. Two Sombras should be able to battle each other over kits. Right now it is first-come first-served, rather than something that can be countered and contested. Sombra’s can already steal another Sombra’s potg steal. Let their rivalry show through on the battlefield!
Personal pet-peeve nitpick… Either let Lucio keep healing when hacked or disable Brig’s passive when hacked for consistency.
-Goal: I am petty and spiteful. Literally every other healer can heal while hacked, even Zen if his orb is already out. And he at least doesn’t have an ongoing ult deleted by EMP. Losing wall-ride when hacked is fair. But it was bad enough when it locked you from swapping songs, disabling them essentially kills Lucio for 8 seconds. Brig’s passive isn’t shut off by a hack. It’s not fair and that’s not fair and they should make brig suffer as Lucio does because it’s not fair. Misery loves company!