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Yeahhhh, Sombra seems broken as fuck lol, but super fun. Gonna play the fuck out of her until she gets nerfed for sure, it's probably free wins in QP/Comp for whichever team has the more competent Sombra. Hacking messes with tanks and supports so bad and that's at least 2/3rds of most team compositions right now. If hacking/EMP doesn't get nerfed considerably then team comps might actually end up being drastically different because of it, I predict Rein Lucio and Roadhog being much less common. 6 seconds of even just hacked Rein and Lucio is more than enough time for your whole team to get wiped out, if you don't want that to happen you'll have to spread out and abuse LoS with mobility heroes (you need line of sight for EMP to hit). Reinhardt deathball comps are totally screwed over by EMP combos and will probably force out more Mercies from people that still want to run deathball. Sombra is probably good at finding Mercies too though...
Extremely excited about pretty much everything in arcade mode, hopefully this doesn't hurt queue times too much though. Not sure how I feel about 1v1 being random, I think a draft pick phase would be much more interesting than random picks but I can't complain about free content and loot boxes!
Some questions i have:
- Can sombra hack symmetra's teleporter? What about her turrets?
- Can sombra hack junkrat traps? What about venom mines?
- If sombra hacks junkrat, can he detonate an already placed concussion mine?
- If sombra hacks zarya/mei mid ult, does the ult stop?
- If sombra hacks zen, do his orbs dissapear or does he just lose the ability to change their target?
we may not have the answers to all these just yet but if anyone knows at least a few of these, id appreciate it
Ults and other abilities that are already on the field will not stop, but you cannot press Q/E/Shift while hacked. It's kind of like getting stunned, so Graviton and Blizzard won't disappear if you get hacked.
OH you can still shoot while you are hacked, that initial video/comparison to flashbang was very misleading. That's not nearly as disgusting as I thought it was but hey ult control like that is still very insane
OH you can still shoot while you are hacked, that initial video/comparison to flashbang was very misleading. That's not nearly as disgusting as I thought it was but hey ult control like that is still very insane
Ive compiled a list of the hack effects on most of the heroes and if i think they will be a high, mid, or low priority as a hack target. Obviously mostly theorycrafting but im bored :p
Attack:
Genji: Mid-priority
- Hack will stop him from deflecting damage or swift striking away so this could make him a lot easier to pin down, but he can still double jump around and shuriken and everything so hes not completely crippled.
McCree: Low-priority
- Disabling flashbang is kinda good i guess but 90% of his kit is left clicks regardless.
Pharah: Low-priority
- She cant fly around to get angles on her shots hacked but it doesnt last long enough for this to make a significant difference.
Reaper: High-priority
- Stopping him from wraith forming away is very useful to help kill him, hes severely crippled by it.
Sombra: High-priority
- If you want an incoming ult from your team to not be immediately shut down, hacking their Sombra first is incredibly vital.
Tracer: High-priority
- Without her blinks tracer is incredibly vulnerable and easily focused down.
Defense:
Bastion: Low-priority
- From what i understand this just stops him from changing to recon. Probably better off just shooting at him.
Hanzo: Low-priority
- Basically the only reason to hack him is to disable scatter but i dont think thats enough to justify it.
Junkrat: Low-priority (maybe mid?)
- Stops him from throwing a concussion mine basically, could be useful at close range but you're probably better off just shooting at him.
Mei: High-priority
- Hacking the opponents mei will prevent her from splitting you off with an ice wall, and will also stop her from retreating into her icicle if she takes some heat (heh).
Torbjorn: Low-priority
- All you do is stop him from laying out armor packs basically. Hacking his turret is a chore because it needs to not be shooting at you for it to work.
Widowmaker: Low-priority
- Stops her from getting away from you with grapple hook but by the time your hack is complete she should already have run away
Tank:
D.Va: High-priority
- D.Va without her defense matrix or boosters is a sitting duck. Hacking her is a very good way to punish her from being too careless, and she'll be unlikely to make it out alive.
Reinhardt: depends
- If hacking rein actually disables his shield, then hes definitely an important target. If not, dont even bother.
Roadhog: Mid-priority
- Removing his abilityt to hook for a few seconds is useful, but the entire team has to be focusing him down for it to work.
Winston: Mid-priority
- He cant run away but he still does his job and hes likely to have a zarya bubble regardless or a barrier around him.
Zarya: Mid-priority
- Stops her from shielding herself or allies, but from what i understand she can stop a hack just by popping a bubble on herself so idk.
Support:
Ana: Mid-priority
- Stops her from sleep darting and thats pretty much it. That can be very useful at times though.
Lucio: Low-priority
- It stops him from amping and switching songs but idk i think you have better hack targets.
Mercy: Mid-priority
- Stops her from running away with guardian angel but shes usually going to be well protected anyways. She also cant rez if she gets hacked but idk how realistic it is to stop that in time.
Symmetra: Low-priority
- Does absolutely nothing notable. Might be worthwhile when the rework comes through tho.
Zenyatta: Mid-priority
- You can shut down transcendence which is huge but outside that theres not much reason to do it.
Ana is top priority imo. shutting down her nade for 6 secs? hell yeah. only problem is she'll probably nade you (and herself if she can) to stop the hack, but idk on paper its kinda hard to see how it'll go. cuz sombra can hack from a distance and then start harassing ana.
the first thing i thought of when I learned about the hack ability is 1v1ing ana, she might be the only hero that can actually do it LOL
There hasn't been like an official mention of how long Hack takes to channel I think? Some say 2s, some say 3s (heck no lol). I'm leaning towards 1s lols. Anyway
Ive compiled a list of the hack effects on most of the heroes and if i think they will be a high, mid, or low priority as a hack target. Obviously mostly theorycrafting but im bored :p
Attack:
Genji: Mid-priority
- Hack will stop him from deflecting damage or swift striking away so this could make him a lot easier to pin down, but he can still double jump around and shuriken and everything so hes not completely crippled.
McCree: Low-priority
- Disabling flashbang is kinda good i guess but 90% of his kit is left clicks regardless.
Pharah: Low-priority
- She cant fly around to get angles on her shots hacked but it doesnt last long enough for this to make a significant difference.
Reaper: High-priority
- Stopping him from wraith forming away is very useful to help kill him, hes severely crippled by it.
Sombra: High-priority
- If you want an incoming ult from your team to not be immediately shut down, hacking their Sombra first is incredibly vital.
Tracer: High-priority
- Without her blinks tracer is incredibly vulnerable and easily focused down.
Defense:
Bastion: Low-priority
- From what i understand this just stops him from changing to recon. Probably better off just shooting at him.
Hanzo: Low-priority
- Basically the only reason to hack him is to disable scatter but i dont think thats enough to justify it.
Junkrat: Low-priority (maybe mid?)
- Stops him from throwing a concussion mine basically, could be useful at close range but you're probably better off just shooting at him.
Mei: High-priority
- Hacking the opponents mei will prevent her from splitting you off with an ice wall, and will also stop her from retreating into her icicle if she takes some heat (heh).
Torbjorn: Low-priority
- All you do is stop him from laying out armor packs basically. Hacking his turret is a chore because it needs to not be shooting at you for it to work.
Widowmaker: Low-priority
- Stops her from getting away from you with grapple hook but by the time your hack is complete she should already have run away
Tank:
D.Va: High-priority
- D.Va without her defense matrix or boosters is a sitting duck. Hacking her is a very good way to punish her from being too careless, and she'll be unlikely to make it out alive.
Reinhardt: depends
- If hacking rein actually disables his shield, then hes definitely an important target. If not, dont even bother.
Roadhog: Mid-priority
- Removing his abilityt to hook for a few seconds is useful, but the entire team has to be focusing him down for it to work.
Winston: Mid-priority
- He cant run away but he still does his job and hes likely to have a zarya bubble regardless or a barrier around him.
Zarya: Mid-priority
- Stops her from shielding herself or allies, but from what i understand she can stop a hack just by popping a bubble on herself so idk.
Support:
Ana: Mid-priority
- Stops her from sleep darting and thats pretty much it. That can be very useful at times though.
Lucio: Low-priority
- It stops him from amping and switching songs but idk i think you have better hack targets.
Mercy: Mid-priority
- Stops her from running away with guardian angel but shes usually going to be well protected anyways. She also cant rez if she gets hacked but idk how realistic it is to stop that in time.
Symmetra: Low-priority
- Does absolutely nothing notable. Might be worthwhile when the rework comes through tho.
Zenyatta: Mid-priority
- You can shut down transcendence which is huge but outside that theres not much reason to do it.
I don't see Tracer as someone who can be easily hacked given that she can blink / double blink out of Hack range and her spray of weapon would likely disrupt it anyway. However, she better be sure to reload outside of Hack range or yea she's gonna get screwed for that lols.
Seems like there's finally an answer to Mei besides another Mei. And Mei sometimes stays alone to wall off things so she could be a viable target, or you know she could just Cryo-Freeze and wait for teammates to deal with Sombra so :0 Always worth a shot to Hack Mei. They can fight with each other as the most hated hero haha.
I can see Sombra hacking Widow to disable her grapple so that she's guaranteed dead by Winston. But that would probably only matter if Widow becomes as influential as she previously were.
Apparently Defense Matrix doesn't get hacked ? I haven't seen it myself so I'm not too sure. Whichever team lets their Rein get hacked deserves to insta lose so lol. Hacking Ana guarantees her death by dive comp, more or less. For Mercy, she'd probably be caught up in EMP unless she bails super early. If that's the case, if she can't Rez behind wall, Mercy is pretty much screwed if she has to Guardian Angel into a Rez if she doesn't ding Sombra with a pistol shot. I'd just go for the Hack and intercept her Guardian Angel and if she misses within that 1s then too bad Rez denied. Re Rez behind wall, if you TP into an EMP, you do have the option of cloaking to chase and find Mercy. ALSO please Rez please cleanse Hack status. For some reason I assume it's a bug but Rez doesn't cleanse Ana's heal block. So lol >_>!
I'm probably not going to expand all my shots as Ana unless I'm really near teammates or have my grenade up. Basically reloading is kinda a death sentence by Hack if Sombra knows to exploit reload times. 360 reload everytime hahaha. Also charging right click as Zen is also probably risky due to the self stun time after firing.
Anyway her kit is overall unfun, regardless of whether or not it's balanced. Her Opportunist and Hack encourages people to group up whereas her EMP punishes that. And realistically you can't always be spread out, and most of the time it's more appropriate to be clumped. Meta wise, though I'm not really someone who cares about metas, probably dive comp would be more pronounced, and death ball will kinda be slowed by her presence. What I really want to know though, is how realistically possible it is to 180 shoot Sombra if she hacks from the back. I'd still recommend using invis till a reload occurs though.
And hacked health packs grants her ult charge so, Sombra support confirmed.
With decent sens/mouse space I bet Rein could intercept any hack with a quick 360, which is fortunate because he's a wet noodle when hacked lol. I wonder if winston bubble blocks hacks from the other side entirely, could be extremely useful if so. Even though Hack seems like an extremely strong debuff I think the main threat is when it's applied through EMP, right clicking players doesn't seem viable aside from punishing mispositioned players. Hook and Flashbang seem like major nuisances for EMPless Sombra as well. I think if they're going to nerf EMP somehow they should give it a little more windup so you can stun or kill her. I see no situation where a 6 man EMP+Blizzard/Earthshatter/Graviton doesn't end in a team wipe and it builds extremely fast for an ability that strong.
I can't say that doesn't sound extremely satisfying to me to do though lmao. Sombra only till nerf.
You just made me realise beyblade shield Rein actually has a use now LOL !!!
To answer your question, yes Winston shield blocks Hack. It's similar to Discord. The only way to survive EMP wombo combo would be using Transcendence immediately before EMP if Sombra screws up and panic uses it. And yea I think giving her a quick windup like Dragonblade would be good. That might not help against TP EMP but it's better than nothing.
Maybe this is a naive way of looking at things, but it feels like hacking is stopped by a lot of the same things that stop regular fire, and her clip is pretty large, so when does a high enough level Sombra decide to go for a hack over just shooting someone? I get that you also have ult info from a hack but good gamesense should tell you when people have ults; I'm trying to discuss pure combat advantage.
Nah, hacking enemies with any awareness of you seems pretty inconvenient. It can stop some shit like Deadeye through focus healing though. It might be nice for punishing deflecting genjis so long as nobody else is shooting the genji.
Heyyy sorry I'm posting a lot hahaha. I'd feel like whenever Hacking is of lower risk and less commitment than going guns blazing, or there's like targets Sombra is unlikely to kill outright. If you can go for sneaky Hacks then yea why not take the less risk option unless you're sure of the kill.
I don't see Hack as a combat tool. It's something to exploit an opponent's mistake and also control the way enemies would behave. Like forcing Tracer to consume blinks and stuff.
Btw let's give Symmetra some love before she gets reworked :D I've been playing a lot of Symmetra lol and she's really fun imo. I've been using her turrets as a form of slow and pace control. Even as a soft counter to Nano Rein lol. Single handedly stopping Rein is so good cos with good placement he can never one shot all your turrets.
Also finally got a Symmetra potg woop!! Was basically countering nano rein and baiting Genji into my tele. I was using my tele behind Anubis B for like 2-3 times and changed my placement to the right room for the last push lol. It caused Pharah who went behind point to scout for tele to die to my turrets (lol) and Genji dying to one turret, right clicks and just good old m1 to deny dragonblade.
Is so fun! Also King's Row is the best Symmetra map. Like you can play Symmetra basically the whole map and get like 20 tele off. Also has very good turret placements. Like super good. I'm just enjoying her kit while I still can. I don't care if it's under powered or whatever but utilizing her kit to the fullest is fun.
Questionable, but I'm playing on qp fwiw. I'm not running sym on comp because it would just cause unnecessary tilt for teammates. And I'm basically going to take the healer slot anyway so lol.
King's Row is the perfect map to run Sym defense full time lol. There's good tele spots at every point, good chokes to farm ult, good spaces for turret placement. Hanamura and Volks I rate okay. They allow for turret placement aimed at slowing enemies. I'd prefer Volks though. And Volks has better tele spots. Only worry is Mei Blizzard instakills turrets but w/e. Volks allows for placement that denies Dragonblade and Nano. Eichen second is still good. Plenty of place to abuse slows despite its open nature. There's at least two near infallible tele spots for quick group tele where a flanker has to go over deep to get the tele and yet the tele is placed well enough to really benefit defense more so than a Rez. Haven't played enough Eichen last defense to comment on that but it still feels pretty good and so chokey. But most of the time we either win on first or second point defense cos tele and turret placements on both points are real good.
Anyhow whenever I play Sym I'm sure I don't over gimp my own team. She's also a good bodyguard for your main healer and stuff. It depends on map and both team composition.
I don't recommend playing her in comp even if you're god tier at her because even if the enemy might not be able to play around her well, chances are your team doesn't know how to play to her strengths either. But for QP, just go ahead and enjoy her. It's quite doable to steamroll with Sym defense, given the pacing of QP and you can keep your healers alive if they don't over extend.
Overall as boring as her kit sounds I still find her fun oddly. Maybe because most people can't handle non death room turret placements and idk they think they can fight people when they're actively being slowed by turrets lol. People die to right clicks so much once I get 1-2 turret beams on them that they're slow enough to be killed by anything.
With regards to usefulness, just run Mei full time instead of Symmetra. Mei is overall more useful all the time, or most. But I'm much better at Sym than Mei :P so there's that haha. Her diminished usefulness past point A isn't as bad in QP. But ofc if the team is getting rolled pretty bad then I'd personally play something else because I'm not getting my portion of fun either if the team can't utilize a paced defense haha.
edit: ooo btw this is in no offense to matthew or anyone. I personally just never saw switching off sym past point A as a necessity all the time, partly due to some maps being pretty decent for sym, and I don't die that much or at poor times and I usually have time or planned ahead for second point defense already. This might not be applicable to everyone. Playing Sym for purely point A defense and for the long term requires somewhat different mentalities.
Yeah sym isnt great but shes a lot of fun and i dont think shes totally useless or the worst hero in the game as people say (that honor probably goes to widowmaker or torb). Shes viable on assault and hybrid maps as well as on dorado first point imo. I know this sounds insane but shes actually a pretty amazing nano target due to her ridiculous damage output close range combined with damage reduction and speed boost to clean up team fights.
I really can't wait to play Sombra for real. The gameplay is great, its teleport is kinda like Recall, but you have to think better on how and when to use it. You can also use it either offensively or defensively, which adds a lot of depth to the decision making while playing. Hacking health packs seems pretty OP and will be mandatory in any koth map lol.
Sombra is not gonna be OP at all. Perhaps, right now it's even too weak.
Her dps is the worst in the whole offense rooster, making it hard to flank and finish a healer, even though you perform a better job at finishing off critical health targets.
You need to use the teleport very smartly, like going back to health packs, or many heroes can just kill you before you kill them.
The 1s uncloaking time is just ridiculous. There's no way to easily flank and attack by surprise.
Hacking is gonna be basically used on health packs unless we talk about very low ranks, it's real easy to stop most of the times if the enemy team is half aware.
Her ult is real good, but it requires team coordination, since it won't kill or cc anyone by itself. You need your team to capitalise on its usage to finish off the enemies. If they fail (which is gonna be likely in soloq), it's a wasted low effect ult.
I personally think her damage is insane for the utility she provides. Idk where people are coming up with the "she sucks 1v1" and "her dps is too low". are people forgetting she has soldier-esque drop off and ///60 rounds in one clip/// ? thats insane. I one-clip mercies all day easy.
also hack a health pack and camp it/bait ppl and u can 2v1 lul
Those Mercys must suck tbh. The rate of fire is too slow for an offense hero, a McCree or Reaper can two-shot you in between health pack respawns and your dps is too low to win that fight, etc.
Really, she will be perhaps good in lower tiers, but that's it. She needs a good team to perform well.
