…instead of the INSTANT spread she has now when she starts firing?
Would help her to secure kills a little better instead of just constantly being prickle damage.
Honestly, imagine Soldier with constant max spread every time he starts firing, but with less than half the damage per shot. That’s kind of what Sombra has now.
I might be a real dork for wanting to see this, but after pulling off a hack, it’d be cool to see that as a temporary buff from her actually holding the smg to reduce recoil.
I just wish she had more damage potential/consistency, seeing as how she takes up a precious damage slot but her unreliable disruption doesn’t quite make up for the vast decrease in available team damage.
Dude, she’s shooting a SMG one-handed
It makes sense the spread’s atrocious
Well, she’s also known to be a tech expert. Who’s to say she can’t modify her gun to be a bit more wieldly?
…Well, i guess the devs are ones to say that if need be, but still!
Hard pass, Sombra already does a decent (dare I say insane) amount of damage if you can track. But I’d be cool with reducing her falloff
… If I’m not mistaken… her falloff isn’t that bad.
Isn’t her DPS issue more just that her skills don’t really do anything for her to really stay in a fight?
Like on paper, the difference between her and Tracer’s weapons leans more towards Sombra, but the difference is Tracer’s abilities are around keeping her in the fight, Sombra’s aren’t is more just about getting in and out.
She was designed to be a, like you said, “Getting in get out” hero. Her hack and emp come with the trade of lack of damage abilities of other dps’. Old Sombra’s playstyle was literally an emp bot.
That being said since emp and hack were so problematic I’d be willing to shift power from them into other parts of her kit. Kinda made her a backline disrupter like tracer.
She’s not anymore. Her nerfs have made sure of that.
“Were”. WERE. WERE
Not ANYMORE.
Her emp and hack have not made her a dominate force in quite a long while. There’s a reason she has one of the lowest pick AND winrates of all the heroes of this game. It’s BECAUSE hack and emp are NOT ENOUGH to make her a viable hero.
I’m not suggesting a numbers buff. I’m not suggesting a hack or emp buff. Helll, i’m not even suggesting higher damage.
I’m simply asking for her to have a little more consistency with her gun and already existing damage to allow her to be WORTH PICKING in this game.
After all, why pick Sombra when a good Tracer or Genji can do her job better? There needs to be a reason, and allowing her a somewhat more accurate gun to be useful in a fight with instead of wildly inconsistent could be that reason.
She has literally the most brutal non shotgun falloff in the game. 15-30m and unlike all the other hitscan, she loses 70% not 50% of her damage at range…and that’s not even getting into the fact that armor hurts her DPS nearly the worst as well.
…speaking of insane.
I’ve mentioned the same idea on various Sombra balance threads. I do think it would. However there are three factors that need to be taken into account.
the minimum and maximum spread
how long does it take to reach max spread
the recovery time.
While I do agree with the buff, it should be fine tuned so that Sombra can deal reliable body shots but not strong enough that she can deal consistent headshots otherwise you’ll get Amby Sombra.
However, I don’t think her gun is her main problem. Rather it’s her downtime and nature as an emp bot which harms her. Right now, her infinite stealth and translocator encourages far too much passivity while discouraging activity. Both of them need to be reworked to encourage a more active playstyle overall.
As for being an Emp bot, Sombra’s entire kit revolving around her ultimate is bad design for two reasons. Without her emp, almost any other DPS is more useful than her. And two, if she fails her emp then it all goes to waste. Instead of all her value being situated on a single moment, it should be spread out so as to provide more value throughout the match.
i’d say the minimum would be like a third the size of her current spread, while the max would stay the size it is now, maybe even just a smidge bit bigger to offset if need be.
About 1.3 - 1.5 seconds. Enough time to use the spread to get a jump start on her damage without it being too accurate for long.
About a second and a half. Long enough for a lull in her fighting to allow a reset without allowing her constant smaller spread like Soldier’s recovery in bursts.
That’s why i think they should put more emphasis on her gun to allow her to actually fight rather than just prickle the enemy until she has emp.
I also kinda wish there were more incentive to use Sombra’s packs, like giving the ult charge that she used to gain from healing the ally to the ally themselves instead or something. But that’s a seperate matter and not the topic of this thread.
actually now that someone mentioned mods. it would be interesting to see if sombra had access to mods to customize her weapon or herself even. she is basically a computer with purple hair
The problem with straightforwardly buffing her gun is that her hit and run aspect could become acutely toxic. There’s a key contradiction between not having her kill at will through Stealth [+ Hack] + Transcolator and having her contribute to fights. This is why she is so hard to buff or change in an effective, balanced, desirable manner.
There are even codes to experience this idea. Her hit and run playstyle that presently doesn’t result in kills anyway gets nerfed while her fighting capability is dramatically buffed. Her utility remains, although the EMP cost might have to be adjusted. The place this idea comes from has her EMP nerfed but that’s a whole different story.
Sombra does 160 dps with being able to shoot for 3sec before reloading, so she has 480 dmg per mag. Her reload takes 1.5sec.
Tracer does 240 dps, which is also how much dmg she has per mag because she fires for 1sec before going empty. Her reload is 1.15 sec.
(Source is the Overwatch Wiki)
So in the 3 seconds it takes for Sombra to unload, she has a 0.15sec “advantage” over Tracer because of Tracers reload. However, before and after this threshold, Tracer is better.
Tracer does more dmg in short bursts and also accumulates more dmg the longer she’s in a fight, while Sombras gun is pretty much designed to unload and then GTFO, requiring a good accuracy over an extended time (probably to make her less burst-y than Tracer).
Their kits are designed in a similar manner, as both focus on positioning and retreat and where Tracer is, again, more frequent, Sombra has to be more punctual in her timing.
I think the key to making Sombra a more competitive DPS is to either add more value to that window (unlikey, probably unhealthy because “too assassin-y” or oppressive) or let her gain value outside of said window. She already favors more careful positioning in her enemy approach and combat because of a slight range and spread advantage over Tracer, it’s simply not enough in my opinion. That’s why I’d like a simple buff to her standart movespeed and her effective range (either via spread OR falloff) to increase her value when staying with the team and when harrassing from an advantageous position.
I secondary main the character and could see some adjustments needing to be made to make her more viable for comp.
The factor of tightening the bullet spread would be helpful.
imo. they should remove her hack as a basic ability and maybe keep it on her ultimate. but like. make it only disable other ultimate abilities and not every ability. maybe
and then you can add other parts to her kit instead of the hack. and buff her gun. give her some temporary stealth ability etc