The brutal truth about Sombra, is that she’s a catch-22 in and of herself. She can NEVER be truly balanced. She’s 1 of those characters in video games who will either be ridiculously broken to obnoxious levels (overpowered-wise), or a character who will perform subpar and produce mediocre results.
The fact is that the devs kinda tied their hands when creating her, due to the fact that they went and produced a character who: 1. Incorporates stealth. 2. Can “hack” enemies, rendering their abilities null and unusable for a prolonged period of time. 3. Can teleport from place to place. 4. Can hack health packs, providing teammates with pseudo-heals, while also denying the enemy with access to said environmental healing options.
Do you understand now…? There is no “middle grounds” for such a character. They’ll either be stupidly OP, or they will completely average and or at worse - trash. And unfortunately a lot of characters in Overwatch have this problem. To name a few: Bastion, Doomfist, and Mercy. The slightest tweak can easily make them a overtuned powerhouse, or a waste of a hero slot.
Side note: To those who feel otherwise, please feel free to YouTube and or Google footage of when these heroes received “slight buffs”. Lol. Bastion especially.
Thank you. We saw this with Mercy. Utility characters if their utility gets to be too good they become must picks and the game revolves around them. We saw it with res.
Hack is already pretty easy to get off as people have to react in 0.65 seconds. When hack last saw a buff and it was harder to break we saw situations with Sombra hacking tanks even after they put barriers up and it was pretty much a guarantee. If hack ever becomes guaranteed then there will be very little reason to not pick Sombra.
The characters balance always teeters precariously. Now I’m not saying that Sombra couldn’t use some tweaks but it’s hilarious to think that the character couldn’t quickly break the game with the slightest of changes.
agree - they are bad designs for a first person game, period. So is Brig, and so are Torb and Sym. You are going to have some clunkers with 30-odd heroes, unfortunately.
It also doesn’t help that the devs tend to be extremely heavy-handed when performing “tweaks”. Lol. Let alone the fact that a lot of feedback is disregarded from the PTS. We as a community can warn all day and night, but often times then not? It’s completely disregarded. Mercy is a perfect example of this. We warned the original/initial Valkyrie change was broken, but they ignored the feedback. And then “it” happened.
Another perfect example (and modern example) would be McCree. McCree didn’t need Fan the Hammer buffed. In fact, that would be 1 of the last things to buff. But, it was done regardless. And now look. Lol. McCree out here destroying tanks better than Reaper. A character which was initially designed to be a tank-buster. Why? Because, “balancing”.
To most, Hammond is fun but trash to play because of all the CC in the game. This is not taking in consideration the huge massive learning curve he has overall.
But then you see people who have 300+ hours on him and simply destroy games.
The issue with wrecking ball is that he is held back by CC in the game. It forces the Hammond player to play passively or very tricky or get himself exploded when he dives.
He is not an assassin per say. But also not a traditional tank. He can harass, disrupt, push enemies out of position, and dive snipers (ish).
He is strong at low tiers, good at medium tiers, but not great at high tiers.
But if you buff him in the wrong way, he will become over powered. If you nerf him in the wrong way, he will be trash at all tiers. If you buff him at all, he will be a god at low tiers while being ‘ok’ at high tiers.
The issue is this whole balance stuff around ‘pro’ players while trying to not make a hero into a god at low tiers.
Sombra can be balanced now by simply buffing her damage/spread, although it’s inevitable that this produces different results at different ranks. Her utility and abilities are exactly where they need to be.
You think so? Why play Soldier 76 for instance if Sombra gets similar numbers as him + hack and invis(which is better than sprint). I think Sombra could use some quality of life changes but any buff to her damage or hack is going to quickly displace other characters.
Most people were saying it was balanced or if they were Mercy players they said it was making her underpowered as she could no longer bring back more than 3 people.
Very few were actually calling it overpowered in the beginning and it took some people (at least on the forums) a while to realize she was a must pick even when people were showing direct evidence that she was a must pick.
The thing is Sombra can be balance… The devs just need to make her into an assassin like she is supposed to be.
Sombra Suggestions
I feel as though she lacks down-time and damage. I want to try and make her more of a fluent hero, that again focus on her utility that will not only bring the hero down to her playing level, but also help her support herself and not just her teammates.
Stealth: Reduce the cast time from 0.7 seconds to 0.5 seconds
This will help her with both cloaking and de-cloaking, making this ability used more as an engaged and dis-engaged ability.
Base Movement Speed: Increase Sombra's base movement speed from 5.5 to 6.0 m/s to match with both the flankers Genji and Tracer.
I just think it’s odd that her kit scream flanker, but yet she her speed is the same as every other hero besides Tracer and Genji. With this change, this will indirectly help her dodge bullets more frequently, and chase down low hp targets without having to use stealth for that extra mobility speed. Not only would this also indirectly buff her stealth speed as well, meaning she can go adventure old flanking routes before they nerfed her stealth speed.
Hack: Hack will now display a sugar skull above the enemies head, with the same duration countdown.
Also hack now grants a small damage boost to ONLY Sombra.
With these suggestion, this will automatically increase her value of hack since, the indicator visual has improved, but not only that, this will temporarily up her damage but only through her utility.
Here are some of my suggestion that will make her more fluent.
The true thing about Sombra is that people confuse broken with annoying.
People act like getting hacked means instant death when in reality its just an annoyance that most of the time doesnt end in you dying. Sombras gun sucks and you can make her go away or kill her most of the time by just shooting her.
If she happens to kill you then she deserved the kill. I mean she is able to kill you once in a while right? Or is she not allowed to get kills?
I think she can be. The problem lies in the fact that she is a super-mobile utility-based character with an assassin’s gun.
Her abilities want her to play at the 10-20m range so she can get decloak silently, use Hack at a safe range to avoid damage, and fight from high ground using her superior vertical mobility, but her gun requires her to be point-blank to do real damage. It has the potential to do 160 DPS with just bodyshots, which is actually quite high compared to other DPS, but between the damage falloff and ridiculous spread angle (it’s 2.7, just 0.3 degrees smaller than Bastion in Sentry Form), she has to be up close and personal with godlike tracking to out-trade enemy DPS, even without their abilities.
What Sombra needs is a gun more suited to her harassing playstyle. Lower the damage output, but reduce the spread severely and have damage falloff only bring her damage down to 50% like Soldier. Making her into a midrange character instead of a point-blank assassin would make her gun synergize with her kit. She could stand at maximum Hack range and actually do effective damage from that range. She wouldn’t instantly delete people, but she would do enough to actually be a threat if they don’t turn to deal with her. She could stand just out of reach of dangerous cooldowns like Flashbang or Shield Bash while still being able to secure kills. If she spots someone far away at low health with her passive, she’d have the consistency to actually finish them off rather than needing to commit her escape to chasing them down.
She was never meant to be an assassin, so focus her damage on being sustained, consistent harassment rather than close-range burst.
To be fair why play him now? It’s inevitable that we get heroes who are equally viable anyway, that’s not a problem. You can pick them both on the same team. You can pick whoever you are most comfortable with or have the most fun with. You can pick whoever better counters the enemy team, or better complements your team.
Having equally viable heroes is the opposite of a problem.
Yeah there wasn’t much reason to play him now because we’re in a burst damage meta and armor heavily screws him over.
This will never be true as someone is always going to be a better pick. Especially in cases where characters are similar but one’s utility is far greater than the others.
It’s exactly why Sombra should not get her spread/damage buffed because she already has a niche utility that would make her a better pick than the straight damage of Soldier.
This would be a better option than a straight blanket buff to her spread or damage. If the numbers didn’t turn out to be the same output as what she puts out now due to misses with spread.
Good luck explaining to that to the bronze level forums who can’t understand why their low skill cheese ability mains can’t be invincible and kill everything.
Pre-Feb 2018 Sombra was best Sombra. Those “improvements” sent her down this inescapable hell. Combine that with OWL’s birth and needing to Sacrifice a hero once a season to appeal the Pro Player Overlords we submit to now and ta-da!!! Current Day Sombra.
The core problem with the game is that a ton of heroes beyond Sombra are also designed this way.
Take Doomfist: If he’s strong he’s overbearing and ruins the experience of the game for a vast majority of players. if he’s weaker he’s unusable and a throw pick in the eyes of the community.
Bastion and Mei are apparently as Niche of heroes as you can go that everyone thinks are easily counterable but heaven forbid if they become must picks in any new meta.
It’s an integral design flaw with these characters that I feel like is very hard to ever find a fix for.
You’re probably right, it shows on Sombra that they were afraid of what a stealth character could do. With good reason, I reckon.
But please give us the frigging sugar skull above hacked enemies, like the one Bob has.
I really agree with this, my only problem is that healing would still heavily weaken her (imo she already struggles with it more than most other flankers). Basically if you are flanking, might as well do it with an assassin, because if the healers are left alive, all the utility is in vain.
It’s extremely interesting and good that you mentioned Mei. Mei to the average player is a meh character. You hardly see anyone complain about them, and at the same time? Mei isn’t exactly “weak”. However, Mei unlike Bastion and Sombra has a very special niche of being EXTREMELY annoying. But not so annoying that she’s “broken” or “overpowered”. I mean, here is a character who in 1v1’s you’re probably going to lose against. Unless, you’re a tank. And even then, she’s going to do some heavy damage to you (except Zarya).
Now, let’s look back at the initial character of Sombra. She’s there to harass as well, but she’s not like Mei. Her means of harassing the opposition is of course entirely different, and is more of a disruption type of harassment. Rather than heavy CC, and things of the sort. Yet, Sombra if tweaked even in the slightest can literally break the game (or rather even more so than what it already is lol). There’s no middle-grounds as I initially said. Mei? Mei is perfect for being in the middle. And I think a dev at 1 point said that Mei is their base character or something along those lines, and for good reason. Mei is the definition of PERFECT BALANCE. Sombra…? N’ah. She will never be balanced. Let alone “perfectly balanced”.
TL;DR Version - Sombra mains need to pretty much accept that their favorite hero will forever be in the situation that they are currently in, unless the devs decide to rip her apart and completely redo her design from the floor and up. There’s no balancing such an unstable character design. It’s impossible.
