The problem is that they’re doubling down on the assassin path, and for that they’re making her more clunky and removing her identity.
The current balance team at Blizzard is obsessed with the idea of making every hero lethal. Even support and tank heroes are balanced towards lethalithy.
Sombra historically worked well as a low damage DPS hero. She even was meta in OWL when she was low damage.
So, having a low damage DPS is not inherently a bad thing.
What was cancer about her is the duration of silencing, especially when you consider how easy it is to hack.
They just have to replace silencing with other utility, like wall-hack for example, and incorporate some sort of silencing in a fair and mechanical way that doesn’t feel cheap.
That’s literally it.
The result is you have a unique DPS, that has relatively low damage, but offers utility to the team, all in a healthy way.
But she didn’t… she had a 45-48% WR across most ranks because she was so bad and unintuitive for the average player. OWL doesn’t really apply to the game, since it is such a heavily coordinated environment with some of the best OW players in the world. She only shone when well-coordinated, but this doesn’t happen in the average Gold/QP match.
Hanzo can already do this but better and AOE, and can capitalise off the wall-hacks himself with a one-shot
To be frank, I don’t believe translocator, hack AND stealth belong on a single character, let alone an “”“assassin”“”. She needs to lose at least one of those or swap roles. She’s obnoxious regardless of her strength because of how small an effort it is to grief with her. They will never get her right as DPS for as long as they are determined to keep all these abilities on one hero.
You’re right it’s not inherently a bad thing, but the problem ends up being the utility has to be insanely powerful to make up for it. Which only ends up being annoying and problematic.
Like imagine we did go back to ow1 sombra but instead of the silence she instead got a different utility that matches the power of a 5 second silence. How would that utility not have to be so strong so as to also be cancer.
Like you said the silence was so powerful that in some cases it was enough to make her meta at high level overwatch.
She actually did. A team-heavy hero is not necessarily unintuitive. Sombra was very easy to pick up, she just scaled with better game sense and better teammates.
There is no better or worse here. Hanzo has a stationary sonar that reveals a small area.
Sombra has a targeted wall-hack that follows its target for 8 seconds.
And it can be enhanced even further if they decide to choose the wall-hack path.
She’s only obnoxious if she doesn’t allow people to play the game, either through a cheesy 5 seconds silencing like in OW1, or through a fast ttk like in OW2.
The perma stealth playstyle can very well function if the hero is supposed to offer utility and interact in a healthy way with the enemy.
Otherwise you’re just deleting the hero by removing its identity.
Changing the identity is also a fix, but a lame one.
You can’t control your teammates. 90% of the player base are in silver-gold, that level of coordination is unrealistic or they wouldn’t be there.
It’s the same reason why Sym isn’t allowed to be good. Theoretically, team tp is super op. Theoretically, turrets are good outside her 3 designated maps.
But they aren’t taken advantage of in the average player’s matches.
They mentioned in her initial OW2 rework blog post that a lot of players would fall into the trap of lying in wait for the perfect moment forever, or that they would translocate across the map as soon as they took the slightest damage. She is/was unintuitive. And being so team-reliant strips her of agency and renders her very niche.
I would not mind her “identity” being changed, because Blizzard have proven that they can’t get the identity they want for her right, as her countless reworks can attest. Or at least try it, and maybe revert it later.
Is she meant to still be an assassin? Not that I’m enjoying much success right now - if nothing else +2s on TL cooldown has got me killed a lot, thank you muscle memory - but it seems to me that sticking closer to the team is the way to go. More of an off-angler instead of an outright flanker, if that makes sense. This feels like a different direction and not doubling down.
Hacking already gives wallhacks to the team for ages, too. I don’t see a way to inject value into Sombra’s kit there. She’s simply going to need a stat injection.
I don’t know why pre-rework Sombra was considered obnoxious to play against, but Roadhog is allowed to exist. It’s annoying to get tagged by Sombra when you’re out of position, but at least she has to put herself at some risk of being taken out as well. Hog can hook you if you’re “out of position” (which means, really, within his line of sight) and if he fails, so what? He just drinks his invulno-juice and waits a few seconds before trying again.
I get that Sombra maybe needed some tuning, but I agree that this sapped a lot of her uniqueness and utility.
In OW1 you had to spend your time choosing a good translocator spot, then waiting for the right moment, then translocating back across the map. That was not great.
In OW2 however, she’s more dynamic. Her cooldowns are quite short, her translocator is some sort of leap instead of stationary, and she stays invis while hacking.
All these changes from OW1 to OW2 make her more engaging, and if they couple this dynamic playstyle with enhanced utility, like a better wall-hack, she should be quite fun and useful.
I meant doubling down on the lethality. They want everyone to deals heavy damage, including sombra. Except that Sombra is now in the middle of the roads, a worse flanker and a worse Soldier 76.
They can enhance that in various ways. Like playing with the cooldowns to be able to hack up to 2 at the same time, and potentially 3 through virus.
Knowing the positions of the enemy is very valuable. There’s a reason wall-hack is the ultimate of widowmaker.
Balancing a game around damage is a hundred times easier than doing it around utility. If that’s the focus, then maybe it’s better to make a game like CoD instead of a hero shooter.
In OW1, hacking wasn’t that easy to pull off. The 0.8 seconds were enough time for someone to turn around and deal damage to Sombra. Yes, it was something mostly seen in higher elo, but still.
To put it simply:
Sombra needs a balanced amount of damage and hack duration. The effective duration of OW1 Sombra’s hack was around 3.5 to 4 seconds. Sombra would be able to hack and suppress the enemy’s abilities for a full fight until she had to reload, making up for her lack of DPS by disabling the opponent’s abilities. If she could do this every 7 to 8 seconds and it took 0.8 seconds to hack, it would be a good balance.
You could reduce the hack time further if her fire rate was increased, but this all needs to be proportional for a smooth gameplay loop.
Just base it off OW1 Sombra and be done with it. She had the least complaints relative to her usefulness!