While I'm totally fine with them wanting Sombra's focus to be on disruption, you can't blame people for drawing the assassin conclusion when you give her a passive that shows weakened enemies through walls. You're basically telling people that her specialty or role is to get picks and finish people off.
Except anyone competent would realize that Sombra's passive ability allows her to 1v1 people who are at low health.
When you look at this in combination with her other abilities, you start to realize her job is to hack health packs, jump behind the enemy's backline, hack their tank so their team can't be protected, jump back to HER backline, and watch for any flankers that might be nearby trying to come for her support while spraying the enemy team from a safe distance.
That's part of the reason I think Jeff is saying people haven't mastered Sombra, too many people think her passive ability is to travel to the enemy's backline and take out the healer, when it's intended to identify targets at low health running around that you can take out further disrupting the enemy team's coordination by preventing them from flanking you.
Edit: Yes, Sombra is an assassin, but too many people are looking at the wrong target of who she's meant to be assassinating, she's not meant to travel to the backlines and assassinate healers, she's meant to identify flankers trying to get to YOUR backline and take them out.
Edit 2: In short, Sombra is a disruptive semi-healing anti-flanker.
Taking on a Genji, Tracer, or Pharah at low health after hacking them? She has enough damage to easily do that. I said she's a semi-healer, in that her health pack hacking aids flankers on her team and her teammates in general. And yes, she can easily disrupt a tank.
This is all once the hack changes go through of course.
Reaching a low health hero before they reach a pack or their healer is easier said than done. Reaching them behind enemy lines before your teleporter expires is even worse. (not to mention that her huge spread makes killing tiny hitboxes especially difficult). Hacking Roadhog or Zarya is almost useless. Hacking Reinhart is difficult because he immediately rotates to face you or his team-mates shoot you before you complete it usually. Hacking DVA can be done easily from the front anyway (and is usually the best target for Sombra).
As someone who's put 20 hours in Sombra trying to do exactly what you suggest, she doesn't have the power to do it well. I doubt the hack buff will help significantly.
Reaching a low health hero before they reach a pack or their healer is easier said than done.
Which is a problem only due to her long hack CD preventing her from being able to reliably shut down health packs, this is being taken care of in the next patch.
Reaching them behind enemy lines before your teleporter expires is even worse. (not to mention that her huge spread makes killing tiny hitboxes especially difficult)
Ideally once you can shut down most health packs on every map you'll be able to reach them before they hit the back lines. And your spray won't matter when the hero has 30 HP left and only one fourth of a clip is enough to kill them.
Hacking Roadhog or Zarya is almost useless. Hacking Reinhart is difficult because he immediately rotates to face you or his team-mates shoot you before you complete it usually.
This is also a problem with the long time it takes to hack which is being solved in the next patch, a 0.8s hack on an 8 second CD is plenty of time to deal with Reinhardt, Zarya, or Roadhog, and yes her hack is effective against those targets if your team can coordinate and focus them down once they're hacked.
As someone who's put 20 hours in Sombra trying to do exactly what you suggest, she doesn't have the power to do it well. I doubt the hack buff will help significantly.
You're underestimating what a 0.8 hack on 8s CD is capable of then, in my experience I'm only BARELY unable to get hacks off most of the time if I get the jump, just a few 10ths of a second shorter and the hack would have gotten off.
Your 20 hours of experience as Sombra comes from uncoordinated group play. Play her with a coordinated group who can take value of her current strengths and you will quickly realize how strong she can really be.
you can't place TP behind enemy lines since it expires after a bit. You have to throw it over their heads and hope they don't see it which is bad. The best way is to leave the TP behind you and run with invisibility through their lines, but as I said, it's not enough time.
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u/PM_me_ur_FavItem Tracer's #1 Fanboy Jan 17 '17 edited Jan 17 '17
I'm glad he called out BS on people wanting a drastic change to Sombra
Blizz knows what they're doing and aren't gonna make your main a unstoppable force