I had high hopes for a remake. Get rid of the frustrating parts of her kit and make her more than a hard counter/wortheless character coin flip? Sure, sounds amazing. No, Blizz just doubles down on the worst parts of her kit and makes the games insufferable. She sucks to play with. She sucks to play against. No one has fun except the Sombra.
There are no counters to stealth in the game outside of an ULTIMATE for a character who rarely sees play. That would have been an obvious point to rework, but instead of limiting it more severely or removing it altogether they give the most insane buff Iâve ever seen. She gets to dictate every fight she ever takes. Perma-invis AND a speedboost? âIt doesnât matter if youâre playing as a team.â Okay, but sheâs never going to take a bad fight if sheâs good. You can play perfectly 95% of the time and sheâll just sit and wait behind you for that one opportunity. No way to sniff her out, no time limit. Her team is mad because theyâre playing 4v5, youâre getting mad because youâll get destroyed from behind and thereâs nothing you can do outside of having a theoretical perfect team.
The translocator was annoying to deal with, but mobile characters could usually find it and set traps for her recall. Now? Itâs a 3D double blink from tracer that immediately transitions back to that invis. Like, at least make it take 5 seconds or so after she blinks to go back invis so she can be chased. She can just throw it into the air and be invis before she hits the ground.
Worst of all, they didnât even fix the issue with her being totally toxic to half the tank roster. Playing Doom/Ball into her is still impossible. Shortening the duration of the silence doesnât matter. Still interrupts your flow and leaves you vulnerable in a gamestate where you can take 1k damage in a couple seconds easy out of position. Go on her? How? Sheâs invisible and hyper mobile. You cannot sit around and wait for her to show up before making a move. A smart Sombra will wait forever. Her team is mad because theyâre playing 4v5 ect ect ect.
It just continues to the trend of Blizz proving that they have no understanding of their own game. If youâre going to have perma stealth, other characters need a way to break it. Let torb turret see through stealth. Omnics see through stealth. Illari shift reveals all characters within a sightline of the ability for 6 seconds. Whatever. I donât want to get bogged down about specifics because none of those potential fixes are ever happening. What needs to happen is the character be disabled or reverted. She was much less frustrating to go against at launch, ironically, so you could even take her back to that state and it would be a net positive despite the issues it would bring.
Yeah Sombra is in just about every single competitive game I play. If the enemy team doesnât start with a Sombra, they inevitably swap to her once they start losing.
As a support, characters like Kiri or Brig can survive against her most of the time, but itâs still miserable. Fighting off an invisible hero who just teleports away and tries again 5 seconds later for an entire game is just not enjoyable. Getting spawn camped is the worst feeling in the game.
Sombra defenders will say sheâs hard countered by peel, but so is every character. Peel is also something outside of playerâs control, so itâs not really a fair way to balance a character. Iâm sure Sombra sucks at GM+ because coordination is high, but at least as a diamond console player I can say reliable peel is exceedingly rare. I canât imagine how miserable she is for players in gold or below
If youâre in a metal rank I donât doubt coordination is going to be an issue. Try playing Moira vs Sombra. Just hold right click and listen for the audio queue. Most sombras in those ranks end up trying the same flank and as long as you react quickly, youâll interrupt her hack with right click. If the Sombra is the type of player that throws virus right after, you have fade to dodge.
If youâre playing tank, Dva can spy check for her constantly. You know that most Sombras are going to try to go for your backline or a dps thatâs isolated. Anticipate it and punish her when she does. Also helps if people stop taking flank angles that leave them isolated, but control what you can. Sigma can also lob his primary all over the place to try to catch her out.
For dps, Soldier can also spam shots and spy check, plus he has his heal if you want to play close to your supports. Hanzo can spy check with sonic arrow too.
Oh and counter Sombra can also be effective. You go for their backline or you play close to your supports and counter-hack the Sombra when she goes for yours.
Believe it or not it helps a ton. It helps fend off Sombra a lot and unlike Team Fortress 2, we have unlimited ammo. So during your downtimeâŚcheck a corner or a corridor, it takes very minimal time too just to create a 4v5.
We have options. But players refuse to use them.
Hell I use Torb and Sym because the turrets draw out the Sombra passively and limits her areas of play.
SooooâŚTF2 in all its immortal legendary gaming wisdom is just a boring gameplay loop? âSpychecking is everyoneâs jobâ in TF2âŚand despite it being far older than OW2 it retains the same amount of players easily.
So noâŚspychecking is not dumb. Players just donât want to use their UNLIMITED AMMO to do an extra thing in a match.
Why do players act like more options is the plague or something?
Spychecking rarely helps me. I play support and Sombras will universally attack me when Iâm busy or distracted. Not during times when I can be emptying clips randomly around me.
Peel is often limited help as well. If the Sombra is good enough they can virus and one clip me. I mostly play Ana and I had one kill me earlier today before I got my abilities back from hack through my mercy healing meâŚ
You play close to your team and you go Moira. No silver sombra is going to be a force to be reckoned with. You can solo her. And if someone says, âMoira sucks,â you tell them itâs that or they help you peel.
I play diamond / masters (I know my profile may say otherwise but I do). I can beat Moira on Ana and Kiriko and have little doubt some of the sombras I play against can easily beat Moira.
The issue with going Moira is a) I donât really play her and b) Currently I want to play Kiriko or Ana or I will lose due to the current tank meta. Going Moira in itself is already a loss for me. To be clear, I beat a lot of the Sombras I go against. Its just when they are really good its downright awful. You donât really get to respond.
To be clear Iâm not even sure if Sombra is good but I agree with OP that she is very unenjoyable for everyone but the sombra player.
The only good character that can semi reliably spycheck a room with the clip to spare is a Mauga who canât aim or a Hanzo missing their bodyshot into the nearest Sombraâs football sized face.
Mauga with a 350 click randomly sure yeah. But Sombra is like one of the characters with the least reason to kinda annoy him vs a support.
I do kinda agree, redesigns or not. Just every single OW2 iteration of Sombra has been terrible for the team to play around.
OW V1. Sombra had a terrible winrate, but she had basically no other job and like a low winrate for 98% of ranks. All she did was spawncamp the non dueling support players (etc: Ana/Mercy)
But since respawning players often escorted supports. She had a pretty bad winrate with that, basically doing what a laser pointer that shoots you in the head does to a cat.
It annoys the hell out of you psychologically when you keep trying to âCATCHâ it and the sombra teleports away. Sheâd have like a terrible winrate out of voice commed top 500s.
Her only purpose was to spawncamp mercy players and anas to try and turn a 5v5 into a 4.2 vs 4.5. And sometimes the sombra would be the 0.2th of a player.
Iteration 2. Now she has virus and canât tele camp. But now she has a very annoying auto perma stealth.
Ironically in ow1, when she just hacked healthpacks to farm her emp ult she felt more tolerable even as a ult battery than a spawncamper. Sure it was probably boring game design. But the uncatchable fly design is just really annoying. Maybe if her hack awarded bonus damage to teammates (like +10-20 team mate dmg)âŚ
It might incentivize her to be a combat hacker. Instead of a perma stealthing mercy main /support griefer.
Hide away and wait until Sombra shows up. Boom pump sustain into your teammate. You suddenly created a 2v1 scenario for Sombra and charged your ultimate which is better than EMP on most occassions.
The Sombra will start to seocnd guess themselves after a while and just HUNT YOU. So stick to someone and save CDs for yourself.
You can turn Sombra into an Ult battery easily on most Support. Then EMP takes too long to charge so you donât have to worry about it going off more than your more potent and more frequent ultimates.
Have you played with or against Maulga? If I play support, hide and donât heal my tank, thatâs a very quick way to lose a game.
Again, the really good sombras can hack, virus and one clip you before you get abilities back. I otherwise agree that most of them are awful and manageable, but those arenât the ones that worry me.
I thought you had said you were in silver (for some reason). Well it seems like you have the right idea and handle it most of the time. Moira is an option though. Itâs not great into Mauga, but neither is you being dead vs a good Sombra.
If you and your other support canât peel for each other, or one of your dps help peel, you gotta do what you gotta do.
I donât mind Sombra, playing her or facing her, but thatâs just me. I get why a lot of people donât enjoy the surprise ambush.
Positioning in a way to be able to be peeled for is a start. It is in the end a team game⌠that is like saying getting healed is out of your control. But as a tank if you position yourself properly you are expecting to get healed, that is something you rely on just happening when you try to make a play.
Sombra is currently not really that strong in my opinion. There are counters, one of them is spy checking. Then you have Hanzo sonic⌠which⌠I would personally not play into Sombra but you can try it I guess. In the end it is knowing where the potential angles are and keeping track of her position when she does decloak to do something. If you tunnel vision hard without being aware of the Sombra maybe popping up, that is on you.
Its just the really good ones. I agree most of the time its fine but she can utterly ruin certain games.
I faced one of the best ones Iâve ever played earlier. I died a few times before I got my abilities back from hack despite being healed by my mercy. Whenever she killed the mercy player sheâd spawn camp them. Its just generally miserable and unlike every other character you canât position well to avoid it. She ignores that fundamental of the game.
The thing is even then shes not necessarily that good. We still won but no one but the Sombra had a good time.
