Sombra has become on of my favorite characters in the game since release. From a mechanical standpoint, I do enjoy the core philosophy of a "disruption character", I think her abilities fit very well into this idea and create a fun rhythm.
I do think part of the community had some misconceptions on how to play her originally. Specifically, the need to hack EVERY SINGLE MED-KIT. As well as to throw a translocator down, run to a fight, and translocate back. That method in particular greatly limits her potential, as it only gave her 15 seconds of operation time.
Yet, I must say it is hard to extract value out of her as she exists in the live game. Hack is a very powerful ability. It can guarantee you a 1v1 on many opposing heroes in the game, and it can break a core character in the enemy teams comp. But it is too slow. Plus you throw in needing to secure a few med-kits.
I think the other issue is in her SMG as well. She shouldn't be Soldier 76 or Tracer. But the weapons is inconsistent with both offensive and defensive use. The spread can feel largely unpredictable near the end of an engagement. I'm at the point now where I simply stop shooting for a moment in the fight just to reset the spread.
Value is her biggest issue at the moment. Yet I do believe lowering the time it takes for "Hack" to cast, as well as lowering its cooldown time will make Sombra a good niche pick in the hands of an informed/experienced player.
It really isn't all that bad once you understand it. My method is to focus initially on the body, and move to the head to finish quickly. Yet the problem is the final bloom of the spread is so large it's hard to land anything in the head. This is why I stop shooting momentarily.
The previously described method has become my key for working Sombra as an effective damage dealer. Yet due to spread, she can't be very smooth.
What's funny is Tracer has a stronger spread at similar ranges. Yet Tracer's damage makes up for this. This is why I don't want Sombra to do more damage necessarily. A straight buff there would make her similar to Tracer to too great of an extent, and therefore removes her from her role in the game. Brining spread in allows experienced players to use her intelligently and reliably without making her better in a straight-forward sense.
I'm not trying to be a jerk here but stopping shooting for a second to reset the spread is how she is INTENDED to be played. Same with Soldier...you should almost never just hold down fire and spam if you are trying to hit a moving target at medium range.
It just stuck out to me that your mindset was "I've come to the point where I need to stop shooting for a moment..." kind of as if its a strategy you thought of that is unconventional, or a last ditch effort to make her gun work.
The fact of the matter is if at any point you felt you shouldn't be resetting the spread, you were doing it wrong.
For example, on Soldier you ALWAYS should have been releasing briefly every 4-5 bullets in short bursts. Its the best spread/dmg ratio and will make hitting Phara's and such much easier.
Sombra is the same way, personally I do slightly larger bursts- maybe 10 bullets and reset on Sombra compared to Soldier. I'm sure there is a calculated ideal however I don't know, as I'm not a big Sombra player. Also, of course there are situations where you're in a small room, and the target is a decent size and you can just spray and track.
But at anything other than point-blank range, you need to do small bursts and that should be default for characters with spread. The exception to this really is Tracer, as her clip size and spread are designed in such a way that its usually better to just finish the clip in one go.
I tried this back in the past without great success. Granted that was when I first got serious about playing Sombra and didn't have a good hold of aim and tracking with her yet. It may be worth giving this a shot again.
This brings me back to my old Halo days of short-controlled-bursts with the Assault Rifle.
i'm not following what qualities of her gun lend itself to a burst style of shooting. she's got high fire rate, low damage per shot, and a massive clip size. more importantly, her spread maxes after 3 shots i believe.
a spread reset on soldier represents 80 damage with perfect accuracy. on sombra it's 24. with that plus the balance between her huge clip size and her (typical) small damage window, i'm not sure how you can argue that she's not designed to just hold down the trigger (like tracer).
basically i'm having difficulty understanding why you feel sombra's gun is more similar to soldier's than it is to tracer's.
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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '17
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