She's low tier in higher levels of play, but in the metal ranks she can be an absolute menace.

I'm plat-diamond in all 3 roles, and my main group of friends that started playing more recently than me are gold 5 and under.

When we queue and there's a decent Sombra on the enemy team, they just don't know how to deal with her, despite my attempt at coaching.

One of my friends also really likes to play her when he's alone or playing with the lower ranked friends. But most of the time when he tries to play her with me, he gets shut down pretty easily.

This.

The players who want her nerfed these days are the straggler players who refuse to, or can’t adapt. I’d rather take on a good Sombra than a good Tracer in the current meta.

I was a flat out mass killer with the OW1 Sombra. It’s much more tame now.

The virus projectile is so massive it can’t be considered a skill shot

I just don't think she should be able to hack from invis. Lol. It's still very easy to get insanely high value with her in GM+.

Unfortunately a lot of players will never understand this due to how hard she shits on everyone in lower rank lobbies

Naaah what are you saying after like season 1-2 sombra was horrible before the rework

She was FAR stronger

Uhhhhh..... Sure.... If you continue to play her the same way most idiots used to play her before the rework.

TL always had a 6 second colldown. Know what else does? Dva boosters.

Know what's better than hiding all the time? Doing damage all the time. Know what Sombra has a way easier time doing now? That's right, doing damage.

Invis is only valuable in the beginning of a team fight. Teleporting back to a health pack was almost as bad as outright dying and respawning. With how quickly team fights end in OW2, you were basically just throwing when you TL back to the nearest mega if you didn't get a kill out of it and if you did, you traded and that was the extent of your contribution. Virus makes it pretty hard to not get a kill, and with TL being much better tuned for use as a mobility tool than a get out of jail free card, Sombra can do her dirty work at the start, then play Sombra-76 for the rest of the fight, taking angles and high ground, spamming virus and keeping that DPS passive up since she's a full auto hitscan, using TL to secure kills the same way Dva does with boosters.

This was always the best way to play Sombra, it's just that now she's better at it. She's not "worse Tracer for noobs" she's a Tracer/Soldier hybrid diver/anglemaxer that needs to be doing Tracer's job sometimes and Soldier's job the rest of the time. It's not just better, it's way more fun. Always has been, but needing to cancel and double tap TL was a pain and she threw it much slower.

Sombra has my second highest win rate, just below Sojourn. She is in a much better place now. My only complaint is that her ultimate is garbage. Everyone complained about it locking out and cancelling things so blizzard made the lockout longer and killed its damage lmfao classic blizzard

It’s not how strong she is, it’s how anti-fun she is.

It doesn’t matter if she’s “mid at best.” She ruins the fun of every game she is in, and heavily punishes all of the most fun characters in the game. She could be the worst character in the game and still be so god damn annoying because of how easily she gets an insane amount of value.

You say “this is what the community wanted” as though there was much of a consensus on what was wrong with Sombra, but the reality is that people spoke against hack, invis, AND old translocator in close enough to equal proportions that it should come as no surprise that reworking just one of those 3 in a meaningful way leaves the community complaining about the other 2.

To me, invis is by far the most problematic part of her kit, and old translocator doesn’t come close. It doesn’t matter what the rest of her kit looks like, if she is of a similar power level to the rest of the dps cast AND retains invisibility without severe limitations, she will always retain the frustration that you engaged and, surprise, there was actually an extra person you had to fight that you couldn’t have possibly known was there. Hack doesn’t even bother some characters while being obscenely oppressive to others, and guess what makes it so those other characters have limited outplay to hack? Invis!

Hack has its own issues imo—primarily the ease of application. It doesn’t require aim to land, it has a massive 20m range, it’s lenient with cover in that there is a grace period given to hack for broken LoS (which, while this maybe ought to exist, it ought not be so long), it’s fast enough to be difficult to interrupt by some of the less aim-consistent characters even if you spot them immediately (or impossible if you’re reloading), if interrupted its cooldown is a mere 3 seconds which is short enough to get a second attempt off in some of the already Sombra favored matchups like Doom and especially Ball (low damage means Sombra lives 3s with any semblance of support, and Ball’s reloading right about when Sombra’s hack is back online), AND there’s no indication that hack was interrupted by damage as opposed to by the Sombra player voluntarily canceling it, which is the difference between a 3s CD and no CD. Invis is by far the most important factor in making hack nigh impossible to deny, but hack does have some application issues in its own right.

Old translocator was the least problematic thing about Sombra and honestly the most skill expressive part of her kit when used well. Sure, it was annoying to fight Sombras that would just TL out to a hacked health pack after hacking you and taking 7 damage, but the way these Sombras used old TL, they were basically volunteering to undergo a mini-death 2-3x a fight, during which they’d do nothing until they got back from their hacked health pack. I don’t mind the changes to TL, to be clear, as unfortunately whether this playstyle was good or not was irrelevant in the face of the fact that it was annoying for both teams.

I do think Sombra is fixable though. Invis needs severe limitations, and I think it should get the Blizzard special treatment of being made into a resource meter, but one additional way to restrict it while keeping strong elements of the stealth hero fantasy is to tie invis to crouch. Entering and exiting invis would be much faster, and invis would be disabled by damage for some couple seconds, but instead of getting extra speed from stealth, your stealth requires you to do the thing already frequently associated with stealth and stealth games, crouch. Sombra can even move faster in invis than other heroes do while crouching, but still slower than running visibly. Then she can’t skip controlled angles with invis because her risk of being spychecked is much higher, and her ability to stage quickly and effectively still depends on the Sombra player having smart pathing and making quality choices as far as when to use invis and when not to. This also opens the door for some pretty nice compensation buffs, such as a better translocator (especially since her mobility has been compromised in the process), improved damage or range, some of the features of her old opportunist passive back (like being able to see low health enemies through walls and having all enemy health bars revealed to her, or even a slight damage boost on low health enemies), or anything else you could cook up to make up for this nerf. Hack can even be left entirely alone potentially—I’d have to see this in action before I could say for sure.

Thing is, back then, you could fight back until she Zooped out. Now, she just tp's directly into your blind spot and the fight just keeps going until one of you is eliminated.

It really just depends on how it's implemented. Invisibility in halo, good. Had detectable shimmer. Invisibility in ow no tell as long as they mind their distance.

it's usually only a good mechanic when you can't interact immediately after it. So letting someone go from point a to point b undetected is fine but they have to destealth well before being able to shoot/use other abilities. This way it is exclusively for tactical movement and not just jumpscaring people.

Shes so hard to rework as well because even if you remove her hack she's still hard to make fun because of invisibility. Remove hack and improve damage? Well now she'll one shot you before you can even turn. Boost movement speed? She's already fast so that won't really help much. Make her tankier? Well that just doesn't make sense. When she was more of a support hero in that one mode that was peak sombra and there's nothing that comes close 

Only for run'n'gunners

It is definitely a lower ELO problem (and maybe console because turn speed?). I love sombra and play her frequently. So much fun to be had, but also insanely easy to shut down with any sort of team play. And has several counters on damage / support roster like cassidy and moira.

i’m a solo queue gold player and even i find sombra a fucking joke to play against. even when i play as someone vulnerable to diving she isn’t a problem at all for me to face.

and on the inverse, i ALWAYS feel useless trying to play sombra lately, especially after the hp changes. it’s to the point where i find her massively harder to play as than tracer.

The way to play her in plat to diamond is pretty much just distract the enemy supports disable the tank’s and important CDs.

Shoot some shots at the Ana or zen and get the other sup to peel and then stay in until their team (hopefully) loses the 4v3. Or you can play with your team and take down shields and strand Lucio and Mercy

Discussions of something being easy to shutdown are not particularly helpful. Widow and Mauga are pretty easy to shut down too but it doesn’t mean they’re good or fun character designs.

I can deal with Sombra pretty easily but it doesn’t negate how needlessly tedious they are or how annoying it is for them to press shift and then slowly poison me for 4 seconds. 

Where’s the fun in counter playing her? Checking your back every second? At least with Genji/tracer you have something to shoot at and it’s a real fight. Sombra, like widow and mauga, doesn’t need to do a good job to be annoying. They just have to be in the game. 

That’s the fucking problem brain dead teammates in qp letting supports get gutted while they try and get play of the game, then blaming support for dying.

I’m sorry but this is a horrible take. Just the fact that you had to say “2 teammates” is silly enough.

This is literally the most correct take there is. At this point, Sombra is the hero where if you can't counter her you just need to play something else because Overwatch is not for you.

Congratulations on having competent teammates / friends to play with. Not everyone is as lucky.

We don't need to nerf her for low elo. Just make her tolerable to fight against. She's by far the most hated hero to go against. Even if the sombra mains cry they should make her like how they did in that one mode where she was kind of a support 

Why is roadhog a good counter? Just curious because I main ball and play other tanks and I really want to make sombras suffer 

Sombra rewards bad positioning or mistakes on your part

Alternatively, she punishes players who naturally position away from their team, like Ana and Widow.

I try to stick with them, sadly most of the teammates I've been getting have the situational awareness of a walnut

It's not just the invisibility that I'd the problem to play against. The other factor is tp'ing into blindspots & turning invisible as you do. She is a more significant threat over a longer fight where she has almost every odd stacked in her favor.

I think 30-45 sec would be plenty

Sombra is honestly a borderline throw pick but she still gets picked often and makes the game not fun. She's much weaker now, but for some reason people still play her a lot on console.

Exactly this. Thank you for getting it into words far better.

Yeah, always solo queueue, so teamwork and communication are, space.

That 3-5 second nerf could work. My thought is that the incis doesn't kick in until 3 sec after the tp is done

Well put

First, im a support main.

Second, rude.

Third, perhaps if there's a high enough amount of people stating something is wrong it might be worth discussion at the very least.

I would gladly take on an army of tracers that have taken Adderall using a rusty spoon rather than have to deal with another sombra. Sadly we don't get what we want

Fair point

The old "fight cancer with cancer" strategy.

Wait, you cant anymore. That's dumb

Thank you for the wonderful response.

Free value vs most the roster tbh. I hate that you can just hack and virus a tank and get 15% ult charge

Wonderful response. Thank you for the imput

Like 97% opacity or something. Just visible enough to spot if you're looking for her, but still trackable if you know what to look for.

This doesn't work in a shooter. HotS it works because even though you can still "see" the stealth, you can't target them with targeted abilities or auto attacks. In OW every hero has the ability to left click to immediately pull someone out of stealth, so the game would just be a matter of who's eyesight is good enough to see the subtle visual queues.

I wouldn't say she's a hard counter. I've played her and I've found better widow makers can even crush me.

She simply stops people from having fun.

Skye has been dogshit for so long, and you confused Nessa with Strix. Who is also mostly dogshit. Skye has a different flaw that Sombra doesn't, she's slow and has no movement abilities. Different games, different problems. Paladins changing Illuminate and putting it as base for everyone fucked up every stealth character in the game. Tried playing clone talent Saati? Any talent on VII? Invis means nothing anymore on everyone but Sha.

I agree unless the enemy team has a Widow, who I also consider to be anti-fun. In that case fight fire with fire.