I’ve watched a few OWL games and realized that they ran her.
This got me thinking about the forums. Sombra mains here screeched that she was back in F-tier, but I don’t think that’s her case.
The real reason why she’s UP is because most of her fanbase plays her at the ranks where the coordination isn’t at the level required to make her work. That’s like a Mercy trying to fight the enemy when she has no team.
Sombra isn’t UP because Blizzard nerfed her, it’s because it’s too demanding for her to be balanced at a casual tier and not have her dominate top-tier.
For those pointing fingers at the OWL players for complaining about her, I’d sure rather listen to them for feedback than the average player in gold. That’s like an average person cooking who ridicules Gordon Ramsey and thinks they’re better than him. Gordon then proves them wrong, and things actually work out towards Gordon being correct.
Now I do agree that she needs a damage threshold for her hack and even stealth since shotgun snipers can knock her out of those modes too easily since the <1 damage falloff is low enough to deny it, on top of Dva not needing to reload and thus she can spam Sombra off of hack/stealth.
Right now the hardest part of Sombra is her fanbase, and not her balance. Her nerfs only made her harder for casual players to use, but her damage and potential is still there. It’s just with her buffs you can’t have her be more effective at a casual level without making her a carry hero.
Okay so again: most people don’t complain about the nerfs themselves (anymore).
They complain about the bugs which indeed exist. They don’t want buffs they want bugfixes. That is all. Hack is essential for Sombra. Of course the mains cry when it is buggy. Imagine Mercy’s healing beam being buggy.
And a lot of people say these bugs could have been avoided of the Devs didn’t rush and put the changes on the PTR first. This is the thing which is the most understandable for a lot of Sombra players. It feels a bit bad when almost every change goes to the PTR first but some nerfs for your main don’t. Which turn out to be a bunch of bugs.
Well that’s already more then enough reason to be upset since it is her core element.
But there are more bugs. There has to be a list somewhere in the forums. I don’t have it in mind right now. Sorry but if I find it again I will show you.
There was some issues with the translocator as well.
There are many. Ghost throw for trans, dying after you translocate, camera spanking when you translocate, hack getting interupted by small objects, hack getting interupted by nothing, emp interupted by small objects, emp not affecting orisa’s barrier when it’s too close to a wall and more.
That argument can basically be turned around to say that Tracer is OP because her design is too demanding for her to be balanced for casual tier as then she would dominate top tier, and as it so happens she is balanced at casual tier and she is heavily dominant at the top-tier.
Also I think part of the issue, and the reason why Sombra players have said she is back to F-tier is that the changes blizzard did made hack very temperamental when it comes to ping. The pros play in a 0 ping lan environment where none of the bugs are a thing. However the casual players play on a wide range of pings, and that has been showing to break hack often, very often.
Okay, to list more bugs, hack doing literally nothing, I’ve experienced it. I hacked mercy and it did nothing to her. She flew then rezed, while hacked. Another is her translocater literally not doing anything. Sometimes you use the ability, it goes on cooldown, but you don’t go anywhere. You stay in place, your animation goes through, but you don’t teleport.
That’s not a bug. Orisa’s barrier projectile isn’t affected by EMP, so it’s an actual counter to shoot the barrier at a wall so it falls a little later, making it look like it wasn’t affected.
He’s referring to when Orisa’s barrier doesn’t register a line of sight on certain surfaces so it doesn’t get disabled even when you EMP in front of it. Most common instance is near the back wall of Hanamura point B.
Especially when it comes to a character that’s been used to throw. Or people throwing games or reporting for playing Sombra where you don’t even get the chance to use her.
Because it is the conglomerate of bugs that are making Sombra F-tier, bugs that simply do not appear in a LAN server monitored closely by Blizz, such as the one OWL uses, any information taken from OWL isn’t actually that valuable for Sombra. It’s not valuable for buffs because only one DPS player actually knows how to play her, and it’s not valuable for nerfs because it doesn’t give the true picture.
but if I find it again I will show you.