When Sombra was buffed a few months ago, they took the power out of EMP and put it into Hack with the intent to make it more useful in the middle of the fight
Fast forward 22 days, the two second cooldown went live, along with the atrocious “fix” to her LOS problems which are addressed further here. The thing is, Sombra is supposed to be able to Hack in the middle of a fight; that was the point of her buffs. But she gets punished for trying by the 2 second cooldown, which has no explanation.
That complaint people had of someone holding down Hack until it went through? It’s bogus. If the enemy Sombra is standing there, trying to use Hack and nothing else waiting for you to reload, that Sombra is going to die. Most heroes have a better weapon than Sombra, and assuming they have any modicum of accuracy a lithe target bouncing around in a semicircle isn’t going to last very long. Even if you have to reload, you can melee and keep hack from going through. You can call your team and let them know there’s an idiot Sombra that’s been trying for 3 seconds to hack you. Sure it took a little skill and a little cooperation, but judging from the forums alone ya’ll have plenty of skill and cooperation given all the complaints about Brigitte and Moira who are beaten by both.
What the two second cooldown actually does is aggrevates Sombra’s weakness to shotgun snipers. I’m all for someone within a couple of meters cancelling Hack, but a D.Va flying back from spawn spamming as she soars through the air? Spam from Reaper or Roadhog’s gun RNG screwing over those heroes on the other side of the point shouldn’t negatively effect Sombra like that. Shotguns are totally useless outside of their effective range, and every other hero in the game brushes them off, except for Sombra.
I used to advocate for the 2 second cooldown. At face value, it made sense; the Sombra we’ve been playing against for the last year and a half is generally behind the enemy, out of the firefight. But this Sombra is different. LOS bugs aside, she’s supposed to be able to fight with her team, in the line of fire. With all the spam damage in the game, she’s simply unable to do that.
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They only nerfed Sombra for the same reasons that they nerfed Doomfist, Brigitte, and Moira: Because they countered Tracer/Genji… You think it’s a coincidence that they nerf anything that threatens their precious fan-favorites? The meta is built around what people like the most, because 85% of the player base is Tracer/Genji one-tricks.
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I can’t see that argument to be valid anymore. They’ve since nerfed tracer and genji.
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Moira wasn’t nerfed until recently. Brigitte remains as effective at countering the two as she’s ever been. Doomfist’s rocket punch hitbox was insane. They just overnerfed it.
Your comment is just asking for toxicity.
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The primary problem with hack right now that consituted the 2 second cooldown which effectively killed her usefulness, is that its a 6 second shutdown of your option to use abilities, and before it was nearly unavoidable.
If it was made to be less impactful in exchange for it to be reliable, then I am certain she would be in a better position.
Technically speaking nothing has changed about their interaction true but the effects of time show, genji and tracer have now surpassed brigitte in pickrates in grandmaster genji nearly ties with her in masters with tracer not too far behind him and in diamond she’s within .1% difference of him with tracer not as high due to her skill requirement but the point I’m making is the genji and tracer players have adapted to brigitte and don’t have much trouble with her, her “oppression” of the damage class is over and those 2 she was directly made to counter prove it, it is not her but hanzo and widowmaker that are causing the oppression of the damage class now.
Sombra’s Hack was always essentially unavoidable. I’ve ran into four or five people who could react to Hack after it started casting? Usually I bumped into them and broke stealth first, or they heard me. The fact is, most people let it go through, or it was interupted by the team. It was ALWAYS consistent.
But they didn’t nerf the things that actually made the characters broken.
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Brigitte is designed to counter the two, but both can outplay Brigitte at higher ranks which fits with what you’re saying.
But that isn’t the point of the post.
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This is a very good and well put informational thread!
They never were broken. Deflect was too big sure, but the issue with Tracer is she didn’t have a solid counter.
Thanks. A couple of the other threads brought the idea into my head.
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yeah I know and I agree with the rest of it but sometimes when I see something like that comment I tend to focus in on the part I disagree with even if I agree with the rest of it, I’m glad you decided to read it!
I think the intention was that Sombra should only be able to reliably complete a hack when she is catching someone by surprise. She should not be able to hack a target that is staring right at her. That was the intent anyway.
I personally believe the best solution is to just make hack instant and give it a cooldown appropriate for that level of power.
I think it is safe to say that the 2 second delay does not fit her at all, especially since she already have a delay in literally all throughout her kit.
She always could reliably complete a Hack when catching a target by surprise; she could never complete a Hack when someone stared right at her.
Sombra is supposed to be less reliant on her ult and more effective without it. The only two things Sombra has to make her effective outside of her ult is her gun and Hack. Hack didn’t change for the first Hack of a fight, the one that takes the enemy by surprise. But it beacme more reliable to use in the middle of the fight, where it was needed to shut down an enemy’s mobility.
It goes against what her buffs were supposed to do to her.
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Exactly. Not to mention that hack is her only in-combat ability.
Time changes alot of people opinion I made a very similar post like this months ago and got straight insults and toxicity 2 days ago i made it again and it got over 100 like in 24 hours
h ttps://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/sombras-ability-2-second-cooldown-while-being-shot-is-blatantly-unjust-125-likes/128042/165
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Tracer’s nerf only effects her ability to kill tanks, which she can still easily do, and Genji’s “nerf” was just to match his deflect hitbox with its animation.