New sombra is just harder to play.
I main sombra since i started playing and i want to keep her like that.
Pros:
- You play more with your team and passively make better decisions.
- You can harrass tanks harder
- You burst like the hell and your overall damage is increased, literally you can 1 v 1 anyone (Ahem… Mei, reaper…).
- Needs a very good timing but your invi engages are deadlier and you can be safe (You need 1 second to use translocator if you let the invisible the full time, also you can kill in that second)
- Damage doesn’t slow you on invi and your scapes are better.
- Your teammates will be more aware about you and they heal you more often and are more aware of your engages, because you will need to stay with them if you’re not flanking or you need a scape.
- No one QQ’s about noob sombra now and people looks you fine for doing a good game with her being “a garbage character” when you are not.
- Enemy team doesn’t instant focus you all the time.
- You’re now a more reliant DPS standard character with very fast flanking repositioning and good scapes, also having that incredible burst will easily punish chases or mispositioning made by squishy characters also your mindplay is rewarded hard and you can make heavy jukes and outplays.
- Your ult increases now your overall damage and also you can charge it pretty fast if you’re doing consistent damage.
- Now you’re useful even on poke comps.
- Oportunist passive is hard to get because you cannot freely move now but reacting well to it you can get picks that will get fully healed and also can bring you an easy way to prioritize your target when you’re taking another way flanking the enemy, not to mention his potential to turn the tables in the teamfight for your team, even if you’re trading yourself for another one (And also you can now do it with more consistency).
Cons:
- You can still do sombra stuff but is more reactive and fast paced to do it, needing you to be aware on the teamfight, also as i saw, if you loose your timing on your translocator you’re probably dead. If you go out of invi early, you will have no scape, and if you get out of invi in a bad position and you get spotted, good luck making a scape and also giving enemy team more time to attack your teammates withouth you.
- No more infinite mobility on the map. Your discovery is limited and your flanking “nerfed”. You can position yourself but now you can be spotted like other flankers.
- Punishments to you are more heavy, it’s like now, missplays are more punished and more easy to make them and good plays are harder to get but you can get more reward.
- You need to continously get a good timing on your invisible and engage times with it. You cannot engage any time anymore, just engage when your invi is going out and you will have your scape like always. But i’ll say to you, that thoose 5 seconds are far enough to get in the right place and do your job. (I feel it like dancing on the game all the time with your perfect timings and positioning and getting out of tempo will be so bad for you, specially if you don’t dance well to the song called “How the game is going and what is happening”).
- Your increased kill potential relies heavily on your aim (Being the same with old sombra, you need to multikill and take down important targets on enemy team to success) and it’s so important to hit a lot on the head, if you are not consistent tracking your enemies or your aim is bad, yes sombra is bad.
- Also, now people, specially enemy flankers have better chances to duel you if you’re lacking your invisible surprise attack, and even having it, your cooldown will be so long and you should take care of not being killed in the next 5 invisible seconds unless you want to gamble on an all in with no scape posibility.
- And if no one is getting it, yes you have the big con of being patient and pseudopredicting the game the next 5 seconds that your invisible remains to make your decision in a safe way or completely loose your tempo or just die.
Just try to remain on invisible the full time and do a good spacing and engaging, also retreat if you’re not getting a good place in time. I think you don’t warn anyone if you get out of invisible and no enemy is in your vision.
I overally think that even being out of his special playstyle which can be excesivelly lonely and a game thrower, now you’re forced to play overally better the game with your teammates and your decision making cannot be so independent anymore. But good sake… The damage increase for me is SO HUGE and fits perfectly his changed gameplay.
You just get your mobility sacrificed in exchange of an insane damage that will let you freepick enemies more consistently, more capable of harrassing anyone and even being more anoying than before, because any squishy should take a lot of care trying to duel or outplay you when you can instakill all of them withouth the chance of using any skill or even react.
P.D: Also i got some fun seeing 2 enemies swaping to sombra to “counter sombra” and they literally throwed not knowing how you need to play her.
P.D 2: I’ll post you some stuff that sombra can do better now and not before just for the lack of damage.
- Killing phara easily
- Killing mercy easily
- You maybe can depend on hack damage increase but in general you can be a menace just headshoting the enemy.
- Capable of beating Mei and Reaper and also many supports will be unable to save themselves from you if you hack + virus + perfect head track them because they will die with his skills disabled (But i think they nerfed this, because today i noticed that atleast moira was capable to escape from this, but in general even enemy reacting forces them to scape or die trying to get rid of you, because you already did too much damage.)
- Can save your tank from being hard countered by hacking and bursting the enemy tank. And in overall she is more capable to push out enemy team and more capable to get rid of thoose anoying and important threads on the enemy team.
- You can force picks and trades in a more heavy way, which it was completely counterable by teamplay and fast heals before this rework.
- You overally can “counter the enemy” in so much many ways just being capable of all this stuff with your damage, and also sombra is harder to counter if played well. Remember that Sombra is the hacker and the one which should hack and beat you, and hackers are usually very smart and also very vulnerable if they get spoted.
Sorry but i’m not agree with all the world saying that new sombra is bad just because now is not easy to play it getting a minimun easy reward and having that extreme safety to scape anytime. I’m even getting more fun with her now, forcely playing better the game and increasing my gamesense and also i’m capable of exploiting more my aim which is my strongest point, getting a lot more rewarded by it than before. And YES I ONLY PLAY SOMBRA AND I WAS COMPLETELY DEPENDENT ON HIS OLD GAMEPLAY. I just throwed translocator 1 time to get noticed about all this stuff, seeing that second of non-invisibility you’re really getting. I left the game by the past wave of cheaters and now i don’t even care about them because i can consistenly outdamage them, and also i though that this rework was a final reason to not get here back but just testing it is all the opossite way. All sombra limitations went out.
Also i’m not here the best player of the world and anything like that, i’m just silver ^_^" and i have like 280 Hours of game played in my entire life, but just with sombra (and some sojourn or soldier, but that is like a 2% of the hours) and i mained permanently her due to his role, in an old game i was a competitive player and one with a really heavy aim and mi role was the same, just abusing the damage to unbalance the enemy team and being a permanent thread which should be killed or there is no way to win (Also agaisnt competitive players, the main thread was to not let me even play or atleast try to not make my play consistently overworthy for my team, being also my team entirely another important thread to handle after me, also there was other few players like me, that usually in trainings we never got allowed to go in the same team or at least have a balance of damage or the game will just end in a heavy stomp). Ofc i’m not like that in OW and that happened like 15 years ago, but playing the hero now feels even more nostalgic to me and is even more funny.
I just want to encourage people to really test the rework and get in. It’s sad to see how even good players or streamers doesn’t say anything more relevant than she is just garbage now. She is now more in the general gameplay, we got rid of the QQing and also she is even better doing his job. But aye… that makes him as i said first: Harder to play. And there is no more easy sombra play, making his skill cap heavier, or maybe this rework wanted to force people to play sombra as a high skill capped hero which i though always it was his core design. As i saw in his first version, sombra was on the competitive scene due to his incredible hack damage and his extreme survability. On the first rework, they nerfed the damage and that survability and got out of it, but still got his easy win play and his extreme survability (We just needed to translocate behind walls to be unchasable or die). Now taking in count that sombra pasively cuts 15% of healing and his hack deals increased damage, plus his virus literally getting rekt of half of your HP, maybe has even more damage potential than initially got but i guess, of course the easy and safe play that she always got should be capped this way, because being able to do insane damage and make the entire enemy team to camp your TP to get rid of you it was completely OP and not even worth it to approach a thing like that (Of course that makes her viable with such an OP thing, also i think that hack was giving 40% damage which is completely insane). I’m not sure if being so expensive to take profit will make her a competitive pick again, even being the players so good, because being safe, consistent, OP in some way and resilient to failures are facts that in competitive are key and being risky can easily make her a non-viable pick even having hability to force picks, trades and put the teamfights in your favour, also the invisible period can have a zoning effect which can be valuable but maybe not agaisnt players which can eventually hit you and instantly kill you and punish your entire team, and they all are aware that they need to count to five until you attack or can even track your jump if you’re being so greedy.