Played some PTR and stuff. Once again I shall disclaimer that I only concern about the high tier play and can't be bothered about qp / soloq etc. But that isn't to say I won't touch on those.
Anyway, as a Mercy who ate Sombras on PTR with like 300 ping, I'm going to say, no Sombra's weapon isn't that bad. Mercy should always be dying 1v1 Sombra no questions asked. The problem is most of the time Mercy won't let you 1v1, but yet I just take it because I don't rely on teammates to deal with Sombra unless I have a target to fly to. Her rate of fire isn't bad, of course not Tracer tier but it's decent for someone who has such a strong passive. Problem is most Sombra decide it's a good idea to hack Mercy instead of outright killing her. Maybe they're not confident of the kill idk? They still try to hack me now and then when I'm actively shooting at them so lol. But I've been abusing map geometry to take quick regens with that 1s buff. I would have died more to Sombra if they just go straight for the kills probably.
But yes, Sombra's raw power is comparatively weaker to every other DPS hero. But as mentioned she's a utility hybrid, DPS-Support. She can't be played the same way as most DPS. Also that 60 clip is reallyyyyyy good. I usually don't bother reloading while fighting the same person until the clip is expanded. Usually you can half-half the clip to kill people. Also chasing them with invis/tp is pretty decent, though not ideal. She shouldn't be taking fights with DPS. She should be either quickly killing supports, lit enemies, or just farming ult.
Oh gosh her ult charges so dang fast lols. Like I just poke at people for some time (with 0 elims lol) and EMP the heck out of everyone and just murder. And yes I did the TP mid air Ult and then invis before landing combo I mentioned. Is really easy to pull off lol and the enemy can't do anything about it. It's disgusting. The only thing is QP (or most in general) players don't understand how powerful EMP is. People like to say that oh you can still shoot and move and stuff and act like that's normal. The advantage of having shield hp ripped, barriers broken, abilities and ultimate disabled, is so huge. With that impression, most people just don't follow up on it because they don't see the advantage, just like how people often don't see ult advantages, number advantages and stuff. As someone who's very sensitive regarding ult fights, EMP is an insta win kind of thing when you want to wipe all if not the majority of the enemy. Things like Graviton Deadeye combo I used repeatedly in Season 1 requires a lot of conditions to be cleared. To list a few: Genji Reflect on CD, Rein barrier down, Sound Barrier used, Speed Amp used, D.Va mech dead, list goes on. I have to mentally keep track of every single relevant CD and abilities if I want to pull that combo off, and believe me we just keep using that combo to insta wipe enemy teams on S1 just to farm rank to 65. It takes a lot of work to align all this conditions. But with Sombra? EMP just instantly meets every single of these conditions and there's nothing the enemy can do about that. And I wouldn't call Mercy Rez as a reliable answer to that either. You either hack Mercy before hand or hack her before she gets into Rez range, depending on map location on where she can Rez from and what angle. Best answer maybe but not something I'd rely on.
EMP is basically a trump card that says 'I win this fight now'. There's no kiting EMP. Sombra can hold off EMP until all her necessary targets are in range. TP and Invis with EMP is way more unkitable than Nano Dragonblade. It is never a good thing to spread your team out by more than a 8-9m radius. There's too much disadvantages of doing that just to avoid a full EMP, and heck not all maps allow that in the first place. We all know how powerful Mei's Blizzard is at denying and disabling areas. But EMP is way ahead of that. I'm just going to say that EMP definitely needs tweaking for it to be balanced in coordinated play. There's too much auto win with EMP plus another ult, and is much easier to execute than even Nano Blossom. Ironically the only good thing about EMP imo is that it kills Nano Blossom lols. However, too much of a power creep here with no answers.
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Okay enough about what I want to say about Sombra being broken. The main beef I have with her is just EMP. For something that's such an insta-win thing, there needs to be reliable answers or a really high opportunity cost. Fast ult charge + win condition that's more powerful than Nano Boost, and dry pushing is possible on the first fight by getting EMP first.
Anyway, Sombra's kit feels really guilty fun to me. A lot of utility and does a lot of work. Hacking healthpacks is reallyyyyy weird. I haven't played koth yet so I can't say for sure what's the impact there. But it does slow the game down slightly when the map has really good pack placements. Also it favors the defender Sombra since she guarantee can hack at least 1 healthpack, and more often than not can deny most of the relevant packs, like on R66. And omg it gives her ult :O! A lot too! With valid packs, they can be ult batteries for Sombra like how Ana uses teammates as batteries to get Nano first. Hacking packs right now is really worth it. If I don't feel a need to hack players, going for important packs is real good. It does affect map flow similar to how Mei does. The extend, I'm not too sure.
Hack on players feels really easy, though you could say it's just people not being used to the cues and stuff yet. IDK but I personally feel the HUD cues aren't really great right now. Oh and I said Hacking players from the front was dumb right? Well it's pretty valid against some enemies lol. D.Va holding Defense Matrix? Hack her lol. Assuming she holds it up for reasons other than yourself, her putting Defense Matrix down just lets your teammates damage her. Oh and yes Defense Matrix can indeed be hacked. Of course, hacking from the front really shouldn't be a thing, but it's something you can really exploit in QP due to composition and positional errors. Basically Sombra punishes enemy mistakes a lot. Roadhog throws a hook while unprotected by teammates? Hack. Also IDK how but I've hacked Winstons by using a teammate as meatshield so he can't damage to interrupt Hack lol. And Hack against Primal Rage basically makes him even more an ult battery. Baby sitting your team isn't that bad as Sombra either, though there should be other things you can be doing. A Genji forced into Deflect is basically a dead Genji cos free Hack, unless he dashes into you, in which case both of his skills are on CD.
Regarding Hack, I personally measure it to be at 15m range, which is really long, and takes roughly 1.5s. I don't think it's 2s but w/e. It's short enough to get free Hacks here and there. The best position to hack from would be with high ground. Enemy doesn't have the option of breaking LOS, but you do, which also lets you escape using invis. Enemy takes longer to respond, will most likely 180, then have to look up. By that time you most likely already completed it. Hacking from the back is still really good. Also omg it makes your sound so weird and soft D: OW has a really excellent sound system and really cripples you to have your sounds screwed up. Like awareness instantly drops a lot rip.
There's various ways to guarantee Hack. Just bringing TF2 strats into perspective. You can apply a lot of frontal pressure with dive bombs (not to confuse with dive comp), or just coordinate a frontal attack. The likely response would be for the backline to rotate, usually backwards. This window lets you Hack for free. If the backline support turns, they're depriving the front of some support, and if you get Ana to turn, that's a fight won. In TF2, the Soldier / Scout can jump in, which forces the Medic's attention to the Soldier to surf the rocket, which exposes him to a Spy stab. It's become common though that Pyros automatically cover Medics during a bomb and Medic will just 180 and stuff. It's a pretty obvious strat, but it works. Don't even need to EMP if it lacks you Hack a Nano Ana.
Getting Sombra to dive bomb with like Winston would be really cool too lol. But that's probably not necessary and inferior to conventional dives that aim to kill rather than to cripple. The fastest long distance roll out for Sombra is still TP invis TP since they have 6s cooldowns. Also apparently you can hear enemy Sombra voicelines if they uncloak too near? It's comparable to TF2 Spy decloaks, probably louder. I've nailed Sombras who think they're Spy and try to decloak somewhere and kill me while I'm low only to get Sleep Dart cos I heard them. Thank goodness for OW sounds. Pretty nifty. Anyway, regardless of how clunky it feels to to have Sombra unable to attack while decloaking, I see that as optimal game play wise. It's same as TF2 Spy. You can't immediately attack while decloaking. It would be too dumb otherwise, and would cause more salt than Scatter Arrows from across the map. Opportunist itself is already a good passive, and pair that with insta decloak shots would be too ridiculous. Sombra shouldn't be able to decloak point blank and get away with it just because the enemy was low health. Sombra should be played intelligently by decloaking safely and engaging appropriately. By all means if you think you can kill someone by decloaking in their face, go ahead, there's some cases where that's perfectly fine.
TP is really good. I haven't gotten into the habit of tossing it before hand though. I like having it on hand when my ult is ready to do the flashy stuff. Maybe I'm just used to playing TF2 Spy and Invis is mostly suffice for me to get out of danger and stuff. There's like Spy invis jukes that would be useful to apply to in OW too. Things like changing directions after fully cloaking, feigning jumping off high ground, etc. Also wooooo cloak around corner stuff. I haven't tried to 'corner hack' or 'stair hack' someone though. Would be cool. Invis is pretty fine as is, though contesting the point while invis is really weird it'd probably be removed idk. TP seems to have more arc and less speed than Ana grenade. To be fair though Ana has really strong arms xD But TP still has good range for everything you need.
Okay I wrote too much, and most people would probably disagree with most of what I wrote and stuff x)
I'll post again regarding global ult nerf another time. I'd say that Ana feels really good in PTR fsr. I'm more comfortable with her in PTR than live. It feels like there's less burst damage from less ults, or maybe cos there's less damage going around cos Sombra idk. Also I completely forgot that Nano Boost no longer applies speed lol and I'm still boosting Death Blossoms and Whole Hogs yay me. They're not bad options but still I barely noticed. No wonder Nano enemies felt easier to sleep dart.
Also regarding Sombra as a whole, yea I do think she's a hero that requires team coordination to be effective. She's not a DPS that'd murder things normally. The team would have to play around her disables and map control. Kinda similar to Mei in that regards.
Okay ciao!
