I mean, that’s the most common suggestion I’ve seen. The only other one is a base movement speed increase. Which I think would be fine but I don’t think is necessary(if they made it so stealth moved the same speed it does now but she also just moved genji and tracer speed out of it.
Personally I think if sombra’s Hack wasn’t canceled by movement abilities(a bug they’ve acknowledged) she’d be muuuuch more powerful. But qol stuff would be good too. They’re always good
Which other rework was a ‘hot mess’? Bastion and that’s just about it. And don’t bring up Sym or another rework that was rejected because people personally and subjectively ‘don’t like’ it.
It is Blizzard’s game. What you fail to understand is that they CAN rework whomever they feel like and however they want. That is 100% entirely in their right.
Again, it’s not that Blizz only cares about the pros or their ‘enjoyment’. It’s that you have to balance around the absolute upper echelon of play. If you don’t they top 1% of players will find a way to abuse it and potentially break it.
Blizzard can absolutely balance or not balance a hero due to whatever reason they may or may not want to use. It’s their game, they can do as they please. Also it really doesn’t matter who watches or how many watch pro play. It’s not adding anything to your argument, and it’s kind of gross.
Seeing pro tournament play was just confirmation that Sombra might not be in as bad of a place as it seems. She gets played on the ladder by top 500’s and Pro’s and they see success. The fact that pros were confident enough and determined that she is viable for a tournament was just confirmation that Sombra might not need another change.
You seem to think this is written in stone, that devs are convinced that Sombra never needs touching again. It’s rather that devs don’t want to make so many changes to a hero in such a short time. That’s never good. They might want to want to see how things play out a little before making a hasty decision.
Lastly, devs never said they were solely balancing around statistics, community feedback, devs feedback. There is so much more that goes into it. They were just taking all of that into consideration. And they are.
They aren’t ignoring you, they just aren’t agreeing. It’s quite different.
No one is asking for her to be balanced around 2k SR. I’m not sure where that came from.
It’s common knowledge that with high communication, Sombra is strong…but these levels of communication are only really seen in ultra-high SR games (lets say…3850+…?), or pro play, like OWL and Contenders. Can you still make an impact with her in ladder play? Sure, but it’s significantly harder to do so due to her focus on teamwork and high communication. It’s like she’s in two different tiers in pro and ladder play; in pro play, she’s seeing a lot of use, and is pretty damn powerful, so she’d be up in like, B-rank. Ladder Sombra, on the other hand, is stuck in E/F-tier…and has been for some time.
Let’s take Widow and Sombra. In low SR games, both of them will be unable to play too well, due to a mixture of poor aim and game sense. Widow won’t pick off people like that, and Sombra won’t have a team that will capitalize on vital hacks and EMPs.
On the other hand, in high SR games (talking Master and above), a good Widow can easily make a massive impact and pull of plays that are worthy of highlight reels (e.g. 4k headshots, and such), whereas Sombra still has to rely on her teammates to effect the game in huge ways. Of course, she’ll get a lot more done than the low SR player considering her improved game sense and aiming, but she still can’t do that much on her own. Not to mention, a lot of the ladder still see Sombra as a throw pick. I’m not sure how different it is through Master, GM and T500, but I’ve had my fair share of players immediately throwing the game and flaming me for my hero choice in Diamond.
The issue is that because she’s seeing increased play in pro situations, and they’re making her work, buffs will have to be dealt with very carefully - a Sombra that can get a lot of stuff done in Diamond could be ridiculously powerful in pro situations…which’ll lead to more nerfs. It’s why we haven’t seen any raw damage changes to her gun.
She definitely needs some changes, but they’d have to be dealt with carefully. You could try giving her a slight damage increase whenever she hacks an enemy (between 5 and 10%)…nothing too powerful, but strong enough that Sombra players would have to think about if they should hack one of her counters to make it easier to burst them down, or try to get the jump on them normally (risky) and save the Hack for a target with high priority.
Oh, and those bug fixes. We’ve been waiting for a while.
Someone said ‘If Blizz wants Sombra to be viable at low elo, they need to rework her.’ So I said my piece about how Devs will never balance around Gold, even though that’s where the majority of the playerbase sits. That’s where 2kSR came from.
Sombra/McCree/Widow will always remain to be the most difficult heroes to balance and they must be balanced around the highest level of play. You have to be so very careful with these heroes. It’s as simple as that. If you cater to Gold and Plat players. Games would be a nightmare for those of us who play at the upper tiers. Simply because players at those top ranks will always find new and borderline gamebreaking ways to play heroes.
There is this illusion that nobody above 4kSR communicates. I’ve played at almost every skill level and that’s just not true. Especially not true since you can LFG and six stack with people who have mics and want to communicate. Silver players who are in voice chat will probably at least attempt to jump an enemy if you are screaming ‘MERCY HACKED’ in the mic over and over.
Ask yourself who takes more skill to play: Widow or Sombra. Widow, obviously, in my opinion she can be the ultimate carry pick. So yeah her reward for being highly skilled is far greater than that of a hero that can take away every ability and shields from an enemy in .6 seconds. Why should a hero who has the most powerful ability in the game (hack), also be also able to be totally viable at every elo, as well as have to capability to to be a top fragger? Well she SHOULDN’T.
Sombra ISN’T supposed to be an absolute DPS monster and top fragger. She is the hero that ALLOWS and ENABLES the top fraggers on their team to be the top fragger. I honestly think people want her to be strong in the DPS and eliminations categories at their level of play, hell even if that’s Diamond, like you said, she would be a gamebreaking hero for top 500’s and pros. That timeline will never exist.
A damage multiplier to hacked targets is not a viable solution. HOWEVER a QOL update where your teammates can see hacked targets more clearly is more so. Bug fixes are one thing, what people actually want for Sombra (I’m assuming most people want a higher killing potential) is probably unrealistic. And frankly, putting a hero with invisibility and a hack into the game in the first place was most likely a mistake.
Just because pros know how to use Sombra isn’t an issue at all. They just understand what her purpose is
Everyone thinks of Sombra in the wrong light. She isn’t an assassin, solo carry, top fragger. She is the sneaky hero that ENABLES the top fragger to do their job more easily.
No, they’re re-evaluating them because of new data from contender.
Do Lucio and D.va not count? Hanzo’s finally balanced and Symmetra is pretty good to.
I said Mercys wasn’t the only hot mess meaning there was more than one, and that doesn’t exclude acknowledgement that some of them were successful. All of the reworks in one way or another felt like crap going through, had issues or problems, and all of them had their issues that either got ironed out eventually or didn’t and still haven’t.
I admit that was a less than ideally worded choice saying:
What I should have said was every rework has experienced unnecessary additional complications in one way or another or has felt pretty bad going through for those who main that hero and stirred up drama and tension that was unnecessary, some of which was necessary, some of which was unpredictable, some of which had lot of ways they could have been better tested to reduce the number of iterations if they utilized PTR better, etc. But thats my opinion coming from a background of testing alpha and beta branches and seeing how other companies and other people handle things.
You aknowledged one bad rework, then throw out a silly little demand that I not include things people didn’t like. The definition of a debacle or botched rework is going to involve people not liking it, so wether or not people liked them or not, I’m going to include them if they caused enough of a hate storm or community disruption; kind of like Mercy’s did.
Hogs hook 2.0 was an outright debacle. Period.
D.Va being turned into a missle/charge/melee assassin when the changes dropped was a debacle more so how the community perception and how people started using it went (and ironically it boosted the strength of Rez). Keep in mind that doesn’t mean I’m saying it didn’t get worked out, just that when it dropped it was a noticable problem.
You say not to mention Syms rework, but you failed to say which one. Because the first one clearly was a resounding success.
Bastion’s and Mercy’s reworks as you mentioned, because obviously those reworks were handled so poorly and stupidly you’d have to put your pants on your head to be on the same intellectual capacity as the pure stupid that fueled those clown fiestas.
I know some of the reworks were definitely successes in the end, like Lucios aura and Reapers change away from using orbs, and some are still mixed bag, like Hanzos, which addressed and fixed multiple problems while creating another lesser one.
Also, you can leave uninformed assumptions about what I do or don’t know or what I do or don’t “realize” out of it; namely things like this:
I have history in the game industry that you are 100% unaware of, and the odds are on my side that I’m more aware than the average player by a very sound margin. Rather than turning it into a personal pissing match that devolves further, lets just stop that little garbage wagon right there.
Yeah in a video game with a competitive professional sports scene, you SHOULD NOT balanced because someone does not personally and subjectivily like the change. You rework and form opinions based on performance. Not on thoughts like ‘DVA is a metal robot she should have 50% armor’ or ‘Sym has no use for exploding balls because she is a builder so she is now Sanjay’. So yeah I will ask you not to bring up ‘personal feelings’, it’s completely in line.
With Sym It doesn’t matter which rework, people didn’t like it because they didn’t personally like it or they held the opinion that it didn’t fit in their ever so percious ‘lore’. And just because a rework doesn’t ‘fix’ (meaning seeing siginificant play time) the hero doesn’t mean it was a failure. There are heroes in games that are doomed from the start, and not every hero will be played at end even rate. Symmetra and Torb were two of them. For example, Tachanka in R6 Siege is another one. I’m sure there are examples in LoL as well, but I don’t play.
Hogs hook was broken, so it was fixed. That’s not a rework, they changed how the hook worked. They just fixed it because it shouldnt have been able to pull you around corners.
DVA during the assassin rework was absolutely a matter of personal opinion. She performed fine, actually too well. So she got toned down. Not the same as Mercy or any other ‘hot mess’ rework.
Hahahahaha. Sure. I’m sure you have history in the game industry. But just like anyone who boasts their golf handicap on the internet, I don’t believe you. I can’t help but think, ‘My dad works for Blizzard.’
Please enlighten me, oh great video game industry employee. Because you totally know who I am and what I do. For all you know my Dad actually does work at Blizzard, maybe I’m an industry employee too, or maybe I’m a pro player. But who’s to judge on the internet right?
Point to any spot in anything I said above where I made any assumption about you. I’ll wait. Also, I said to drop it before it devolves into a further pissing match after you made subjective assumptions about me, not the other way around. You are actively trying to drag this into a pissing match and it does nothing productive.
Also, I wasn’t going to, but since your post smacks of wanting to start an argument, I’m just going to point this out because I find it amusing you did it after commented on cherry picking context.
To which you replied:
Uuhhhh alright I don’t need to point out your assumptions because you didn’t make any, and that’s not my point. But way to make yourself look better.
I said that because you put that oh so incredibly vague information out as if I am supposed to buy it, then agree with you. You put it out there to ‘show’ you know ‘more than me’ and are ‘correct’. I just simply don’t believe you. I’m assuming that what you said isn’t true. You also never know who you are talking to. Sure, you could be an industry employee. But then again I could be the owner of the company you work at in that industry. You just never know, was my point.
Ehhh I misread what you said on that last bit, my bad. Thought you said they rework just because they want that hero in the pro scene.
And don’t know why you think I want an ‘argument’. You put out your point of view. I countered and put in my point of view. If you see it as an argument, so be it. I’m just conversing with a stranger on the internet.
And that is completely fine. I have zero assumption that you would believe it based on your posts thus far. That said, your belief is completely irrelevant to it being a fact and your acceptance or rejection of that fact wont change anything about it.
Edit: It was meant to halt a devolving squabble that is irrelevant and unproductive because the way you posted that is the same way I’ve seen so many threads derail and end up as a pool of petulance and childishness. If you didn’t mean it that way, then thats fine, no harm no foul; but that is the way it came off.
My initial comment was in relation to your claim that balance happens purely around pro play to which I replied about a very recent and very publicly known example of a poorly done rework (Mercy) that was completely balanced around not the pro scene, but the majority of the playerbase’s experience, and that the said rework ended up completely upending the pro scene for almost a year now in a way they did not want.
Except Blizzard who actively refuses to acknowledge that they messed up despite everyone knowing it. They are not infallible, and many of their reworks had missteps in multiple places and a lot of their reworks don’t in fact stem around balance related to the pro scene.
I’ve never once said they should or shouldn’t balance around pros. Again, based on experience, I’ve seen how badly systems with cracks get flaws and the fallout from them, and no one is immune to making mistakes or making the wrong changes. The unhealthy part of what Blizzard does is they have a pride that prohibits them from dealing with balance and reworks the way they should when they do make a mistake.
The last dev comments about Sombra and proposed changes highlight that they didn’t know whether or not she was balanced or needed more or less done to her, probably because they didn’t test her well enough internally with people familiar enough with using her. Kind of the same reason a number of other things didn’t work out in the past when they over or under tuned something. Thats where the PTR comes into play, and would be an amazing tool for them if they actually USED it the way a PTR is supposed to be used.
They use it as a “does the current version fatal error? No? Push to live as is.” I’d be willing to bet a lot of people just want their heros to be reworked in a way that they remain fun and healthy without being OP AF or beyond trash tier (I’m speaking from my personal stance on that since I can’t speak for anyone else). The reworks generally have not yielded such results. Being a Mercy player and wanting in the worst way possible for her to NOT be OP AF, and wanting every support to have their hero moment, have their role, and have their place in the game, it was truly disheatening when the Mercy rework launched despite the many hours and pages of genuine feedback people gave.
I honestly don’t want to see that happen to Sombra because I do like playing her and the limited duration invis gave you a time frame to get in, do your deed, and get the F out before you got splattered by the enemy steamroll coming your way for hacking a key player of theirs. Infinite invis takes away a lot of the urgency and need to be on top of your opportunistic tactical abuse of the enemy, and personally I feel that cheapened Sombra. Same with translocator just staying until you used it. I’d use it as bait or distract all the time to trick someone into standing somewhere my buddy Widow or Hanzo could see and pick them while they waited to “jump” my dummy translocator before it expired, or to look away from a key setup that was about to drop (launch a very visible but kind of half sneaky translocator while Zarya setup to grav from the opposite direction). I also hope beyond all hopes that they DO NOT increase her damage because she’s already got enough punch and she shouldn’t be an assassin DPS. It’s also why I disliked the initial drop of the D.Va rework; I didn’t play her to assassinate people and bully the enemy team with a cheeky micro/boost/boop pick; I picked her to bully them by denying space and denying key shots.
That may just be me though; I don’t like raw DPS because it’s boring AF. Mechanical aim is so boring. I want mind game heros, and the recent trends are going away from that type of play. But thats just my selfishness showing since frankly, if you play one raw FPS, you’ve played them all. It’s the abilities and interactions that make it special, and thats what Overwatch was sold as. Sombra was an embodiment of that by being a disabler and enabler that really could shine by timing things carefully.
Come on dude you gotta separate that one big wall into at least two paragraphs. I’ll stick to the first bit.
I just don’t believe every word people say. I like to see proof, ya know? As far as I’m concerned, with no proof, it’s meaningless. This is why AMA’s and other things require verification. Because, hey guys, I’m Jeff Kaplan. Better believe it, because even if you don’t it’s still a ‘fact’ because I say so. And your acceptance or rejection of this fact won’t change a single thing about it. I am Jeff Kaplan.
The Pro scene were the first community of players to complain that the hide in a corner, stop healing, encourage your team to die, then mass Rez mechanic was awful. Then the masses started agreeing. Then the rework came. So in a way it was based around pro play. Balance is very much Top-Down.
Honestly, I can see why they have been keeping quiet, they should really muzzle whoever did these interviews, it makes them look bad.
Actually, Mercy mains started complaining about it in April of 2017 when the SR problems started wildly rewarding this trash lord play style (Edit: technically we started in March or so when noticing the disparity in SR gains, but it wasn’t until mid April we figured out hide and Rez was rewarding STUPID amounts of SR despite it having a lower than 50% win rate). Well before Seagull’s famous rage video, and he was basically the first of the pros to really start complaining about it.
The problem was Mercy mains don’t mean anything and we got sequestered into a mega thread in the PTR Bug Report forum; a trash can in the black hole of black holes.
Mercy mains started complaining? I don’t believe that either hahahahaha. I see Mercy mains on the forums make posts how Blizzard should just ‘go back to old Mercy’. Mass Rez gave you free SR. Who complained about free SR? I remember the opposite, but that’s fine.
And if Mercy mains complained about free SR in April, Seagull made a video in June. Didn’t know two months was considered ‘well before’, but that’s fine too.
Mercy mains like to play the ‘Blizz doesn’t care about us’ card which is not true. They took up a large percentage of the player base, so it’s not exactly like they could lose them all.
Regardless of how well it was handeled or how well the rework worked out, my view on the infamous Mercy Megathread is that a lot of the Mercy one-tricks, were hostile. They acted like Mercy was above being reworked and that she, and her players were entitled to not being changed. It may have been a situation of the loud minority, but still.
Many said ‘well I dont play FPS games and not very good with aim this is the only hero I have fun with’ as if that is a reason to keep a broken mechanic in a game.
Well, just like invisibility and hack, Rez should have never made it’s way into the game in the first place. It was too strong, and is still too strong. Mercy was picked whyyyyyy too much. That had to change. Most Mercy mains took this as a personal attack and did not subjectivily find it ‘fun’.
Every post was not about the performance of Mercy but how she was not ‘fun’. That’s why they were locked in a mega-thread, because there was no constructive conversation going on. Just people complaining how the devs ‘took my Mercy away’ or that ‘I don’t have fun playing Overwatch anymore’.
But yes, go ahead and demean Mercy players more and tell us that we’re lying when we are 100% in fact not lying. That obviously has nothing to do why none of us tolerate that type of crap you just posted anymore and bite back really fast. Or is that also too hard to believe?
I guess it doesn’t matter though because it’s not like you’ve got the integrity to admit your ignorance when presented with reality. Almost no one in the community does, and that is why we’re done with your crap and get hostile. It got really old a really long time ago.
You literally just admitted in your own words to blatant prejudice and malice towards a section of the player base because of a vocal minority. That is truly the sign of someone who is scummy to the very core.
Also, did you even READ any of the mega thread? There were suggestions left and right, and serious efforts to give constructive feedback. Your ignorance and prejudice based attack on people despite reality based purely on what hero those people play is truly pathetic. I’ve lost any form of respect for you as a person seeing you don’t afford others basic decency purely based on your prejudice.
Christ man, take it more as a personal attack. I was just stating what I saw in the aftermath and I didn’t call you a liar. You just took this personally, and escalated the situation. I just said that was my opinion of the mega-thread, people who took the change personally.
I wasn’t demeaning anyone but if you don’t think for a second that there were comments and posts didn’t contain a shred of what I said, then you are just wrong, because they did. I never said that was 100% of the content. But it was still there. Again, might be a vocal minority, but still.
I didn’t post crap right here I posted what I saw. I know I read constructive posts, but the forums cryers stuck out to me more. I just gave you my opinion of that situation, and what I personally saw, and you took it in a different direction. Way to go. Way to be civil.
I’ll give you that the better players of the Mercy mains started complaining, sure, and not all of them cryed on the forums. But it happened enough to be restrained.
I never admitted prejudice, that’s pretty disgusting. Who is assuming now? I think it’s scummy how many words you are putting in my mouth. Why did you even take it in this direction? Because I saw negative posts about the Mercy changes and brought it up to you? Not even mean (like you are being) negative. It was just ‘hey I’m not having fun’ negative Grow up video game industry, know it all, super star.
You’re pathetic for stamping me as something I never portrayed myself as. There were posts containing every word I said, yes for the third time it was a vocal minority, but they were spamming. I just told you what I saw. You are disgusting for attacking me
I was civil, and human, and told you what I saw. I was just having a discussion with you. You gave me yoir opinion and point of view, I gave you mine. I was not nasty, I did not attack you. I simply told you what I saw. You just shoved lables on me that do not belong on me. You are not a nice person. You are disgusting. You took this so far south, not me. Use a search function and look up keywords I used. You’ll find something.
There was no malice on my end, only from you. I did not let the vocal minority taint my opinion of every Mercy main, another assumption on your part. This game would be sh*t without Mercy mains. I believe that most of the Mercy one tricks that frequently spammed on the forms (a small number of the player base), were hostile. AND PRETTY MUCH EVERY VOCAL MINORITY IS HOSTILE, ACROSS EVERY COMMINITY. THAT’S WHY THEY CALL THEM THE VOCAL MINORITY.
This was fun up until now and YOU turned nasty, and started assuming and throwing sh*t at me. You dirty little hypocrite. Have a good one you hostile individual. Go get some thick skin, I never attacked you. Go walk outside and if you are of age, drink a beer. Reevaluate and re-read what I said and look in at yourself to find where this went wrong.
You read everything I said with the mineset of me attacking you and arguing with you when I, at least thought at first, was just having a normal discussion. I never gave you my opinion on ALL Mercy players, I just gave you my opinion of the vocal minority in the mega-thread. You assumption making, dirty hypocrite. You are a sad person. Honestly, I think you owe me an apology for what you turned this into. Think about that and have a nice day.
Mods, lock this sh*t up before I get wrongfully and disgustingly accused of any more of this nonesense.
There is no reasoning with you. Your post said and proved everything I posted.
I take it as a personal attack when I’m told essentially because of the hero I choose to play that nothing I say could be fact despite it being 100% fact.
Mmhmm. You in fact did, but keep denying it if you want. Your opinion that you didn’t put it in plain text doesn’t change that you put in plain text.
One. Hundred. THOUSAND comments total across all of the mega threads over the course of the entire issue from the day broken SR started the issue creating hide and Rez and the consequential changes because of that very issue that “required” a rework, up to present day. Not one single direct developer response, nor did anyone in the community managers or devs try to stop the false flag trolls from auto-locking the mega thread nor did they acknowledge any part of the mega threads other than pushing it into a corner and adamantly saying it’s a successful rework. Not a single solitary one. Name one example anywhere in any game from any company where anything even close to such a massive gross failure and outright disregard has occurred. Look at the way Mercy players have been treated in game and how they are blamed for the rework when it is 100% not in any shape size or form any part our fault that Blizzard did it! We get hate day in and day out because of a vocal minority that earns malice purely by association with the hero we play. After it happening since launch and to a much larger and more amplified degree in the last year, we’ve had enough.
I’ve been civil up until you showed a complete lack of interest in affording any type of consideration to the validity of Mercy players opinions and presuming about the entire player base a derogatory assumption based on in your own words “may have been a situation of the loud minority”. That is blatant bias and stereotyping, which is the definition of prejudice.
Definition: “Prejudice is an affective feeling towards a person or group member based solely on that person’s group membership.”
I didn’t put anything in your post exposing blatant prejudice. You did that yourself.
I told you exactly why. We are tired of being falsely labeled and assumed to be ignorant and outright wrong about everything everywhere we go in everything we do and being degraded and accused of lying even when proving the truth. The tolerance for it is well past gone, and it’s going to get called out. In this case, as you say:
Seeing as you did this not once, but twice:
This is a lie:
As for this gem of hypocrisy,
What is this here?
And I think the best way to respond to this:
Is this:
You’ve been passive aggressive towards everyone and everything that goes outside of your own personal confirmation bias. You will get no apology that I called it out for what it is.
But either way, that is enough off topic BS. You got the response you clearly wanted, but clearly with far more teeth in it than you desired.
TFW people keep talking about Mercy in a Sombra thread.
Stahp.