Sombra's actual problems and how to fix them

Sombra 1.0: you’re playing her wrong! She’s a/an: EMP bot
Use her as a healing support and farm EMP

Health Pack healing nerfed

SOMBRA 2.0: you’re playing her wrong! She’s a/an: Hack bot
Use her as a utility support and spam hack

Hack LOS nerfed and bugged

Sombra 3.0: you’re playing her wrong! She’s a/an: Scout
Use her as a spectator cam and waste 1 dps slot out of 2.

Contesting and running speed nerfed

Blizzard please stop ignoring actual Sombra players and change her in the way she needs.

Sombra has 3 major issues:

  • Her kit is too fragile: you can counter her whole kit with 1 - 5 damage.

Hack is interrupted with 1 damage
Stealth is canceled with 1 damage
Translocator is destroyed with 5 damage

From what I remember, damage heroes were designed to excel at engaging and disengaging the enemy at any time

My ideas for fixing her are:

  1. Give sombra 50 shield when she’s in stealth mode.

Her stealth cannot be broken if her 50 shield isn’t gone. (This shield only exists in stealth mode)

  1. Hack should only get interrupted by damage from a limited range (like 15 - 20m).

This way, accidental tickle damage won’t shut sombra down.

  1. Translocator shouldn’t be destroyable for 5s after she throws it or by turrets.

This change helps sombra use her translocator for engaging or disengaging mid fights.

  • Sombra has too many bugs to her hack, stealth and translocator
  1. her hack gets interrupted even within LOS
  2. her Stealth doesn’t work if you translocate right after pressing stealth
  3. she can get stunned or hacked or killed while translocating (this one’s pretty old tho)

check this video from #1 Sombra player, Fitzyhere:

  • Sombra is too reliant on her team to kill her hacked/EMP’d enemies FOR her

This is what has been keeping Sombra away from dps category. she is the only damage hero that can’t secure kills without asking for her team’s help. “Genji is hacked. Rein is hacked”. reminds me of “Genji discorded. Rein Discorded”

these are the fix ideas that help her to be less reliant on her team:

  1. hacked enemies take 10% more damage only from Sombra herself.

This not only helps her secure kills easier, but also gives her a reason to hack heroes that are less dependent on their abilities like hanzo or widow.

  1. Sombra receives 35 temporary shield per enemies EMP’d.

This helps her follow her own EMPs. it’s just a weak doomfist treatment. he gets 75 shield per enemies hit by meteor strike. sombra will get 35. also 6 man emp is pretty rare so she’ll usually get around 100 shield. the purpose of this change is again, to help her follow her own EMP and be less reliant on her team. not to mention, combining this shield with 10% hack damage boost will significantly help her to follow her own ultimate.

All we Sombra mains want is to have our main as useful as good and as fun as other heroes in this game.
Thank you for reading

45 Likes

Translocator shouldnt be destructable by dmg period.

39 Likes

even if they remove all the nerfs with this new patch, these changes still arent what sombra needed in the first place

9 Likes

She’s an assassin that requires teamwork and follow up to be able to assassinate.

While we’re playing her wrong, she can’t do anything she can’t do on live, but can do things on live that she can’t do on PTR.

5 Likes

I know, but at least she wouldnt be nerfed. I’d call that a success at this point. Sad but true.

2 Likes

I basically ignore everything you just said and only noticed the cute cat

7 Likes

I really want this one. Like a personal discord.

3 Likes

Just pointing out the irony of these posts.

tbh I don’t understand why devs never try Sombra in an offensive way. we are in triple support meta (mercy brig zen) with one dps and 2 tanks. why would you fill that one dps slot just to “scout”

1 Like

Its a way to try to make her sound useful while in reality its just the path of least resistance because making her fun to play against is more important to them than actually making her viable.

5 Likes

The kitto is doing a great Reaper impression

Another idea that I’ve heard from fitzy himself was to give sombra 10% damage against enemies with less than half hp. It’s a damage buff to her passive

I can see where he’s coming from with that, but it seems a little too complicated. Like what if the low health enemy is being healed whilst you’re attacking them, and as a result the health goes back above half for a bit? And it feels like a hp-connected debuff would be harder to code than a hack-connected debuff.

1 Like

Not necessary if they just get rid of stealth being canceled by a stiff breeze two time zones over.

Also, you know that if they made Sombra shielded during stealth they’d just put a Zarya bubble effect around her (visible to everyone) and call it good.

1 Like

They need to stop applying compensation nerfs every time they “buff” her. Or stop changing unnecessary things which then requires a nerf somewhere else.

6 Likes

Hacked targets take 10% more damage from Sombra?

Wth?

That would make her OP!

She does plenty of damage as it is, especially to crippled targets.

People still seem to keep forgetting that Sombra is one of the most balanced heros in the game, with an extremely powerful ability (hack) that can also stop a ton of things including ults that can save the day multiple times.

l2p Sombra!

If they want Sombra to be a scout, GIVE her the tools to be one, but don’t be audacious and say she can be now.

Please revert TL and make it indestructable again or give it more HP.

I agree with bug fixes more dmg to hacked target and small shield for emp. She would be perfect with just that. The rest isnt so important imo.

Thank you for making such a good post. I really really hope they would implement these ideas, but at this point i dont have faith in them anymore (atleast for sombra case)

1 Like