Mangachu carried with Sym in Contenders?
Its the same case with Reinhardt in the current meta. Even though he gets tossed around like a salad by every form of CC, hes the only viable pick against Hanzo and everything else that does a lot of damage. He isn’t viable, but hes the best option.
For Sombra, that stems even lower. Shes being used as an EMP bot yet again from what I’ve seen.
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You’re saying these pros trying to get into OWL are just “showboating”? Right. When Contenders tournament winnings and a chance to enter the league are on the line, they’re not going to go with tried and true mains, they’re just gonna muck around like they’re in quick play. Gotcha.
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It’s the same story all over again just like what happenend before the infamous mercy rework
Yeah.
But let’s be clear about it, it does NOT mean old Sym was viable.
Sombra is strong versus Lúcio and Hammond, and the map set is also good for her.
“The only reason Sombra is being played is because she has a toolkit that is strong and relevant to what the enemy is using.”
Sombra has places where she works now, and she still retains some bad match-ups, just like any other hero. What more could be wanted here? This is just like Pharah – she dies horribly against her bad match-ups, but she still soars when she has the right circumstances. If anything, this is the sort of ideal balance every hero should have, where they’re strong where they’re meant to be and weak where they’re countered.
I think what will always hold Sombra back is communication and the lack of which is seen in pick-up competitive games. Players by and large have the crippling problems of not being able to communicate effectively, and certainly not like the pros. Sombra, when used in this way, mandates team communication to get her synergy. But you’re not going to see that in teams where most players are only interested in playing the game they personally want to.
It’s almost a curse. Sombra is finally relevant again and in a way that requires skill, but she’s going to be inaccessible to pretty much anyone, regardless of rank, just because so many players are horrible at communicating.
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Heres a simple solution to knowing if Sombra is good or not.
Do you quiver in your seat at the sight of a Sombra? No? How about a S76? A Genji? A Mccree? How about a Zenyatta? A Roadhog? Maybe a Bastion?
What is her effective presence on the field. If we as players can ignore her almost completely theres a problem.
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Can’t speak for anyone else but I think maybe Sombra isn’t dangerous the way a classic DPS makes you worry, but in the strategic sense of the value she brings to plays, much like a good Winston isn’t generally scary but is key to making strategies work.
I repeat myself.
Pro coordination doesnt translate well to the ladder. In ladder play, Sombra is supposed to be a DPS, not a scout.
Suppose you do play as scout Sombra. The burden of your “adaptation” becomes your teammates’ burden. Every fight you don’t have EMP ready is a 5v6.
In terms of combat, every single 5v6 isn’t just one person down. According to the war strategy math model of Lanchester’s square law, when you’re down a person, the fight feels like you’re down an order of magnitude. One less person in the fight means that, at all times during a teamfight, the enemy has fewer targets to aim at. Fewer targets means more enemy crosshairs are aimed at one person at any given time (and thus more bursty damage inflicted).
In other words, a 5v6 teamfight feels like a numbers game; it feels like a 25 vs 36.
Being a scout Sombra is incredibly risky, it wastes match time and increases the likelihood of a failed team push because you aren’t playing Sombra as a DPS. Your absence means you aren’t peeling fire away from a teammate, so they’ll get deleted faster. It makes for a high risk play that isn’t guaranteed success.
Contenders is lower stakes, meaning it is the perfect breeding/training ground for experimentation. In Contenders, it is certainly possible for Sombra to work.
But it has a far less impact on measuring viability than you’re theorizing.
And for all uncoordinated play, (read, 90% of the ladder) she’s not going to suddenly become viable. The risk is too high.
sombra used in games where hammond is literally not even played
only used to kill hammond indeed
These are paid professionals playing for a chance at the league. If they want to test the waters they can do it in scrims, they don’t have to do so in actual matches where their career futures are on the line.
My point is that it’s hard to say Sombra is objectively worse like so many Sombra mains have cried, when many pros are now actually putting her to good use in their matches capitalizing on opportunities and making plays that simply would not have existed before her new changes.
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Players in OWL playing this game totally different than people who are randomly thrown together in OW …. she may become more popular in OWL but she will still be a trash pick in OW.
Well yeah, it’s like Widow or Ana, pros and casuals are on completely different levels.
Yeah because we all know that every Sombra player has the level to attend to the contenders. 
Perfect comm’s, teamplay and whatnots …
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But yet, everyone was saying how bad Hammond is because he has terrible surviability.
even though hes being picked in contenders, hes still crap.
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It’s not so much that they are on different levels, it’s because in OWL they play with the same guys every game and they know how to coordinate and communicate … in OW you need to be realy high in ranks to see this.
No, it’s specifically because they do these pocket strategies in actual matches that you have to be wary of them.
In pro play, it’s better to keep a pocket strategy secret than it is to repeatedly practice in a scrim. The more you do it in a scrim, the more likely it is to leak out to the enemy teams. That exposure can ruin a pocket strat.
Testing out an unconventional strategy in an actual match, if your team is roughly equal skill to your opponent, usually works because of momentum and surprise factor. But the success in a small pool of matches is not actually a measure of viability.
GOATs comp for example, came from Contenders. But it can routinely get shut down if a team knows that particular comp… and it struggles to succeed in ladder play because of a hugely disparate skill gap and typically only works in short stretches because of early round ult economy.
And if you are not visible, you are an useless Sombra. And on EU nobody cares about your calls ;p
Sombra is undeniably, objectively, worse.
Slower speed, no contest while Stealth, and still buggy as ever? The only compensation she gets (perma Stealth) is something that no competent Sombra player needed, or even wanted?
There’s no doubt about it, she is indeed a shadow of her former self.
She does everything she did before, except slower. That makes her worse.
Her Contenders usage and success is due to the element of surprise and high coordination.
Not because some latent power suddenly emerged from the rebalance… because as I previously mentioned, everything in these Contenders matches was previously possible. And previously was FASTER than now.
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