Sure there is. You can spread out. I can’t even tell you the number of games I’ve played where I’ve held EMP for nearly the entire match because the enemy team positioned themselves with the knowledge that EMP is a risk. They take multiple different high ground positions instead of all hunkering down behind the same Orisa barrier.
Not to mention there are plenty of ults that can get substantial value without being able to do much about it. I used to main Pharah and one of my favorite things to do was to drop silently from the sky and solo ult one or two people in the backline. It does enough damage that it’s next to impossible to react to. That one actually kills people too, it doesnt rely on team followup.
You don’t need to get an amazing 6 man to change the game with EMP.
If you’re holding ult all game because you don’t want use it on the important targets and instead want that glory ult, that’s not the ult’s fault.
And this goes for any ult, not just EMP. I can’t count the number of times a good solo grav won the game. Just don’t be greedy and you take away the very counter play you’re talking about.
or just… ult track… and hide for emp…
should do that on every support anyway, but i recently had our game where our zen saw sombra translocate and used trans even though it was obvious she wasn’t even close to emp
I get a good laugh with using Sombra in Competitive play. She literally PUNISHES people staying grouped up and breaks the meta. People complain ALL the time about Bunker comp, Sym turrets and “The OP widow” that nobody can ever get to.
Sombra is my 2nd favorite character in the game and I can say she is what this game needs to break those metas up. INFACT I would be in favor of slightly better improvements such as;
The ability to cancel the trans-locator all together, so a new one can be placed.
The ability to HACK turrets (sym and Torbs) while in stealth!
DO I agree on “EMP ACTIVATED” ultimate that should be fixed and a Cast time. YUP. We should hear “EMP activated” and a 2.5 second or 3 second cast time as she charges and fires it off. (it does allow some counter play). Because everything does deserve reactive counter-play in the game
Of course there are always viable reasons to EMP one or two targets, that’s not what I’m saying. But EMP is not like grav. It’s not a hard CC that locks enemies in place. Much of the time if you only get one or two targets they can fall back to their team. There is no guaranteed kill in a solo EMP. You have to weigh the costs of what other heroes are available and what they can do to mitigate the ffects of EMP, and at the end of the day there are actually a lot. If you dont hit the main tank they can place a shield. If you dont get the supports they may have a variety of defensive ultimates. Depending on where they’re positioned, needing translocator to engage can also mean a nearly guaranteed death if the enemy widow just picks you from across the ways as you use it.
I’m not going for the greedy 6 man EMPs. I’m just telling you that EMP is not a simple I win button like people claim. There is a lot of counter play to it. It just so happens that the most recent metas with GOATS and bunker comps are literally critically vulnerable to EMP by design. There are a lot of comps and strategies that are not.
Exactly. That’s longer than shatter and even dragonblade. Even shatter can be anticipated by Zen and countered with trans. Its not easy, but also not impossible.
don’t de-cloaking take a second? pretty sure you can react to it if you see it, but yeah i would probably not chance it to try to react to it if i had the choice.
As a Sombra main with tons of hours in higher level scrims and tournaments and ranked play, here’s my take on Sombra;
She is the best DPS in the game. Naturally, during an ability based meta (rather than skillshot) the character that stops abilities is good. If a dive or sniper meta happens she will just as mediocre as she was before GOATS/Bunker meta.
But some fair nerfs I’ve though of include:
reduce hack time to 5 seconds and no emp/hack stacking
have EMP work in a wave. EMP is the only ability I think is too oppressive. It seperates Sombras Skill floor and ceiling. Anyone can farm EMP and hit all 6 of the enemy players. It instantly hits everyone within the EMP radius no matter how far in the radius the enemy is. I don’t think the cast time is a problem, I just think if you position yourself in a safer location (while also being able to support your team) this would give players a ton more counterplay in Transcendence, Rally, Valk, Stun, Hack, Sleep, Hook, Headshots, etc. I think this is the best nerf they could give her, just have her EMP travel over time like Lucio’s Sound Barrier.
I’m just sitting here thinking “Wow, I wish I had the reaction time of a teenager on 5 cans of energy drinks”. I guess that’s the price of being older.
Maybe you can’t, but there are people who can. The average reaction time to an auditory cue is 170ms, which including latency makes it nearly impossible for the average person.
There are, however, people who have much better than average reaction times. I don’t know what the best reaction time to an auditory cue is, but auditory reactions are faster than visual ones, and the best visual reaction times are ~120ms. With a low ping, say 20ms, that leaves 60ms within which to react.
It’s not easy, it does require 90th percentile reaction times and a good internet connection, but it is possible.
The test is typically done as ‘press the button when you hear the beep’. (Visual is typically done as ‘press the button when you see the light’.) This is also done typically in a resting situation, and adrenaline, etc., are known to improve reaction times.
It is more difficult to identify the cue in a noisy situation like the middle of a game, but the physiology of it doesn’t change. Also, players who have 99th percentile reaction times have testified to being able to regularly react to Sombra’s EMP.
My own visual reaction time, unfortunately, is a solid 200ms, and I don’t think my auditory reaction time is much better so that won’t ever be me.
I don’t know of an auditory reaction time test online, but you can test your own visual reaction time here,
This will of course include your hardware latency, but not network latency, as it is run within the web browser. This is perhaps a more useful number in terms of gaming anyway, but if your reaction times test particularly badly you may want to consider that you may have a hardware latency problem.
same with hack. some sombra mains will defend her and say “oH jUst ReAct in TimE” but that wont work because 1: hack cast time is really short 2: if you chase sombra all game it would involve losing the game because you cant pay attention to the other 5 people and the objective and for how ez it is to do it lasts waaaay too long.
EMP is just an insta win team fight she needs to be nerfed asap
And that’s not unusual. EMP is often a death sentence for Sombra since she ends up right in the middle of the opposing team. She can translocate out but then her team is at a 5vs6 disadvantage.
It’s not remotely the same. Hack has a 650 ms cast time, compared to EMP’s 200ms time before it goes into effect (not the same as its listed cast time) (also iirc, despite what OP says, I believe it’s actually 190ms from sombra pressing Q to interruptions no longer affecting EMP).
Anybody with average reflexes and an average internet connection can react to hack. (Whether or not you can do anything useful with that reaction depends on a lot of factors; if you have shield, beam weapon, or full-auto weapon, you can just turn around while holding a button, but if you have to aim a shot at her it’s going to be a lot harder).
Reacting to EMP on the other hand requires having extraordinary reflexes far better than the average, and an excellent low-latency connection to the game.
