The goal is to make Sombra weaker in a team environment and stronger individually. It is also to make her kit more engaging and fun to play (her enjoyment, or lack thereof, is a reason why her pick rate is so low).
Primary fire:
Spread reduced by 20%
Damage increased from 8 to 9
Comments: this allows Sombra to have more individual output with her weapon and less reliant on her team’s ability to follow up.
Hack:
Cast time increased from 0.65s to 1.5s
Duration reduced from 6s to 3s
Opportunist:
Hack cast time is reduced to 1s on opponents less than 100% health.
Comments: this means that Sombra can hack her enemies in the same amount of time as long as her or someone else has damaged them. The hack duration reduction is to compensate for her higher damage - it is important to note that Sombra’s clip empties in 3 seconds, so it gives her right amount of time to finish her target in a single clip (which now does 540 damage).
Stealth:
Cast time reduced from 0.7s to 0.3s (the same cast time as Soldier’s sprint)
Movement speed increased from 50% to 100%
Comments: this will make Sombra’s kit feel a lot more fluid and fast paced, and will be balanced out by being easier to detect. Her stealth currently feels very clunky and watered down and these changes attempt to remediate that.
Translocator:
Cooldown when used reduced from 4s to 3s
Cooldown when destroyed increased from 4s to 6s
Comments: these changes reward Sombra players that hide their translocators in difficult-to-reach areas with more frequent mobility, and punishes Sombra players who get their translocator destroyed with more downtime.
EMP:
Radius reduced from 15m to 12m
Cast time increased from 0.5s to 1.5s
Duration reduced from 6s to 3s
Instantly reloads Sombra’s weapon and provides her with infinite ammo for the duration.
Comments: the EMP changes aim to simply nerf EMP. Sombra’s kit is too focused on her EMP rather than the other aspects of her kit. Additionally, the ammo change allows Sombra to have more individual effectiveness during the EMP duration rather being fully team reliant.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Don’t overreact to the immense cast time nerfs to hack and EMP. Once you factor in the fact that the stealth cast time is 0.4 seconds shorter, there is not a very big difference at all. Sombra being able to hack enemies below 100% health in 1s is actually better than the 0.65s cast time due to the 0.4s stealth cast time buff. (0.65+0.7 > 1.0+0.3).
I truly believe these changes would change Sombra from a boring and oppressive hero to an enjoyable, individually impactful and vibrant hero that I would personally enjoy playing.
That’s the purpose of the cast time buff. That changes the delay between invisibility and shooting from 0.7 seconds to 0.3 seconds. This is just like the buff that Soldier got recently - it removes unnecessary clunkiness from her kit in exchange for oppressive power in the CC department.
What you propose is a HUGE nerf to both hack and EMP. Also a HUGE nerf to invisibility (4 meters is insane detection is insane). And to compensate you provide small buff to her SMG and mobility in invisibility. Minor tweaks aside.
I will tell you what this “Rework” you mention here will cause:
Sombra will be trash in terms of teamplay now. Her hack and EMP are now just not worth it. Too long to cast, to easy to die while at it for such a short punishment.
Her better invis mobility and damage/accuracy will make her A LOT more annoying than she is now. While she won’t be able to really be a great teamfight DPS, she will now more reliably be an assassin. So, all the players will be evern MORE annoyed by her than now. Forums will explode.
So not only you trying to resolve a problem that doesn’t need to be resolved, you’re making it worse.
shes fine as it is, people are blowing this way out of proportion because of owl. she has always been good vs goats. another meta less focused on tanks or if the game goes to 2-2-2 you will see her much less.
That’s the idea. Hack and EMP are far too oppressive and need to be nerfed. You are spot on. Sombra is too reliant on these abilities.
There is absolutely no possible way that Sombra would become more irritating after this patch. I find her to easily be the most oppressive and cancerous hero in the game, and these changes are specifically to fix that. I actually don’t understand how you could even possibly assert that people would be more annoyed by her after these changes.
Not even close. Sombra is a massive design issue, and these changes would fix her - not make her worse.
Your nerf brings them straight into “I wouldn’t even bother using it” territory. Aside from some very specific situations, a 3 sec hack after a loud reveal from invisibility and 1,5 sec of cast is not worth it on most of the heroes.
And Ult that disables abilities for 3 seconds? That. Is. Nothing.
Your buffs in no way come even close to compensate, not to mention they will just murder half of her kit and turn her into another bland pewpew hero.
For you? Maybe. But you know what will be the first thing I would do if some insane mind applied your changes to her? Would use this tactic:
Go invis.
Zip around enemy team. Yeah, they maybe seen me, but with new speed - doesn’t matter, I’m not near them already.
Hack a medkit, place a translocator.
Proceed to repeatedly murder supports. Now, with more reliable SMG, it is easier.
Translocate back. Repeat from p. 3
All the supports would come to forums and whine how invisibility is OP. Others would join them.
I’m confused. All you are saying is that her hack/EMP will be weaker and her weapon/invisibility will be stronger. That’s literally the purpose of the rework. And you’re just blatantly false in saying that people would hate sombra more after the changes. Have you seen the amount of people complaining about hack and EMP???
Forum people: “Here’s my idea for a Sombra rework!!!”
Actual idea: is a massive nerf
Also,there may be a lot of people complaining about Hack and EMP,but she has a sub-1% pickrate on ladder so it’s not like people see her in every match. And even if they see her on the enemy team,their team has a higher chance of winning considering Sombra has a 47% winrate.
Have you seen her pickrate? Have you seen her winrate? Did you know she’s the worst hero in the game in ladder?
Let me guess, you watched a few games of OWL and suddenly think that’s the level of gameplay in your games and 99.9% of the rest of the playerbase. Top meme.
Yeah. And I suggest that being constantly killed by invisibility hero will be more annoying for people than being hacked but still able to do something.
Yes, I’ve seen amount of people who hate Sombra. I also have seen amount of people who don’t. Sorry, but Sombra haters so far seem like a loud minority. Even in a thread where people were asked to name the most annoying hero Sombra was far from being the most mentioned. Here it is: Your most hated hero?
Hack Cast Time Used to be 1 second on release. It was so Bad that Nobody bothered ever trying to hack an enemy. Hacking health packs was the only thing it was good for. Difference being hacking packs used to be her bread and butter because healing through hacked packs gave her ult charge. This has been gone over a year. So you nerf hack into uselessness, where the Sombra player get a really big punishment for even trying to attempt a hack since she’s missing out on 180 dps during her cast time. Basically her whole gameplay turns into being a stealth assassine budget Tracer with hack only being there for the memes. This destroys and defeats the purpose of the hero.