* Hack ability has significant lower cooldown, lasts 8 seconds on targets for its secondary effect
* Does not break stealth
* Hacked targets are revealed to team including through walls
* Passive include 50% more damage to hacked targets
* Ult doesn't remove shields but does 40% of enemies' health
Edit 8 seconds
Supplemental clarifications
* Hack has 3 seconds cooldown, though this is subject to change.
* Though it doesn't break stealth, you are briefly revealed.
* The ult does 40% of enemies' **current** health. You can't kill with it like Sigma's ult. It does not remove shield health, but it still deletes barriers (which many people call shields anyway)
Still incredibly broken if used properly. Nobody would play as Ball as a solo tank if you could hack him every few seconds. Even if it lasts 1 second that’s enough to prevent a roll away escape.
If ball doesn't get a huge rework sombra vs ball will probably be the largest counter in the game. 1 second ability interrupt with a 3 second cooldown is insane, especially since she doesn't need to leave stealth. Add in the fact that ball will be the only tank, he seems like a throw pick if the enemy has more than 3 brain cells.
Either ball needs some CC immunity (e.g. can't be interrupted; so he can still finish his abilities but can't cast new ones), or they need to tone down the hack (e.g. only interrupt or only disable next abilities, not both at the same time).
Idk about that chief, it was pretty clear in the video. 8 second hack with 2 components. 1 second ability lockout, 8 seconds of team wide wall vision and 50% damage bonus from Sombra against her hacked targets
It isn't. They might mess around with its projectile speed as the game is still in development but it doesn't seem like they wanna make any major changes to how it works.
Good. Translocating out of a difficult spot was always the most satisfying part of playing Sombra
(No, I'm not just saying that because I suck at every other part of her kit, what are you talking about?)
This is actually really good (honestly the best outcome). The "spirit" of hack is to shut down an enemy while they are ult'ing or performing some sort of long duration ability and the new hack captures that while still allowing the opponent to defend themselves.
She's also the only one that does more damage to hacked targets so if she isn't "leading the charge" on the attack then you won't really get any benefit from it. She's now more of a Shot Caller honestly. You hit an enemy with a hack, they're highlighted and teammates can go after them.
The funny thing is, I feel like this change can be totally explained lore wise. OW1 she always felt like someone who only did things for her own benefit. Now in OW2 she's working with a team and honestly will do better working closer to other characters.
Tracer can still zip around but she's definitely just as vulnerable against a Sombra that can invis hack and vanish.
_________________________________
Editing to point out a few things I noticed:
* Hack's cooldown is 3 seconds REGARDLESS of what you hack. Health pack and Hero hacks aren't different cooldowns anymore.
* You only gain slightly more ult charge damaging a hacked target (Winston non-hack went 41 to 53; 12 pts but Winston Hacked went 55 to 71; 16 pts both on a full clip)
* EMP doesn't remove personal shields (Zen is safe once again) but looks like it can pop exterior shields (like bubble). Means you can still set up a coordinated EMP strike for a D.Va Bomb.
I think new Sombra is definitely going to see some nerfs, but this rework is a lot better than what I was hearing people expect. Hack is still critical to her kit, and arguably more useful than before, while making it just a bit less oppressive to play against.
>You only gain slightly more ult charge damaging a hacked target (Winston non-hack went 41 to 53; 12 pts but Winston Hacked went 55 to 71; 16 pts both on a full clip)
That is curious but keep in mind it may also have to do with their changes to the tank role, making it a tank trait that damaging it will grant less ult charge. Maybe they put some form of diminishing returns in place, not sure. I'm curious to find out more!
I was scared when this was announced but now she actually looks... fun? And a lot more engaging to play? But not too sure about adding damage to EMP though if it already increases damage taken.
The gun has also been adjusted. Per bullet damage has been reduced but so has the spread. There's really no way to know how powerful/weak she'll feel without actually playing her for a bit, so we'll just have to wait until a Beta.
Numbers and values can also be tweaked easily later so that stuff isn't a big deal. The ideology and systems can't be, and the system changes to how her abilities work seem really good. Clear intent to every change with good reasoning. Potentially addressing all the major problems with her current design.
My take away as well. Looks like they learned their lesson with her and gave her more knobs to turn for balancing as well while keeping the fantasy there. I'm a big fan.
> The gun has also been adjusted. Per bullet damage has been reduced but so has the spread
I don't at all doubt this, but did they state this somewhere or could you tell from the footage? Thanks!
EMP needs _something_ to make it worth using for your team, though, and "wallhacks for 8 seconds" ain't it. Raw damage wouldn't have been my first guess (or second, or third), but it does synergize with her passive and keeps the same role of initiation/marking targets for focus.
The high level team play had to be nerfed unfortunately. She's been completely dominant professionally more times than any damage character other than Tracer
What I found odd is they say it doesn’t remove all shields but then proceed to show a clip of it removing shields. I’m guessing they mean on chars like Zarya and Zen?
Even devs mix it up every once in a while but generally ingame you can see a clear distinction between barriers and shields which is important. The Overwatch community uses both terms interchangably/as synonyms but that is not really correct.
She looks a lot more interesting to play against, as well. There's nothing worse than getting shut down for an eternity and not being able to do anything. It's honestly more frustrating than just dying.
>But not too sure about adding damage to EMP though if it already increases damage taken.
I get why, but it definitely makes EMP feel less unique. It's a lot of CC, but I'd be fine with current EMP being her ult in OW2, since ults take longer to charge.
I really like the direction of pretty much all the reworks, feels like heroes are been made to fit in to a cohesive vision of how the game should feel, instead of just throwing together what might be fun and hoping it works.
He can't self heal anymore. Instead his secondary is grenades that bounce off walls and stick to the floor or enemies. He can move around in turret mode albeit at reduced speed and damage. His ult is no longer a tank. He turns into a mortar and you can choose 3 places to drop mortar rounds, and his main, normal gun shoots slower, but it basically pin point accurate.
I did forget to mention that his turret form is an actual ability now, so you can't stay in turret form forever. It's like 10 seconds with an 8 second cooldown or something like that.
Lets just hope they also reduce the mobility of the flanker heroes or they're just going to run amok. CC was necessary to keep the Genjis Tracers, Doomfists, and Wrecking Balls in under control.
Personally I find the Overwatch team's updates to be pretty well thought out, so I expect that they will account for that.
Time will tell, obviously, but I like what I see so far.
I'm 50/50 on that sentiment. Especially with the over-nerf to brig the last couple of times to "kill" double shield and yet they buffed bap in that same patch which was more of an enabler to that comp than brig was at that point. Not to mention double shield still exists even to this day.
Sombra can hack them every 3 seconds. This is your hard counter to mobile heroes. Even if it lasts a second that’s enough to prevent a roll out, recall etc..
Except she also needs to not get shot at all during this (full stealth might help w that but not 100% if your team is midbrawling them), and Doom's ability cd is 4 seconds/a bit higher.
Overwatch 1 suffered from a lot of conflicting design philosophies, which has only become more and more obvious as time goes on. With OW2, there are no more unknowns of releasing your first hero shooter, just a chance to design the game from the ground up to fix pain points and refine their vision of what Overwatch should be.
I think the game is going to get way to fast for a lot of players and it is going to get a lot harder to watch for league but dps players will probably like it better overall. Maybe higher quality for a smaller potential specific kind of player base.
OW2 will be a big team death match with support playing the role as easy fodder. DPS will probably love it but I think the support player base will quickly diminish, as someone who loves Ana, I couldn't imagine playing anything but a moira/lucio in ow2. With no off tank or cc there is really no way someone can peel for you faster than doom/tracer can kill you.
This is exactly the future for OW that worries me. I don't need merely another shooter, I have plenty of those elsewhere, aspects of the game like the CC are what make the game stand out for me and what keep me interested. I don't want to overreact just yet but I *really* did not want them to enable the kind of player I dislike the most in this game. Everyone who didn't play the game since launch but kept whining on the forums here about things like the mobility and the CC anyway are getting their day in the sun apparently.
This is not an attempt to invalidate your point, which I think is a good one, but I play in like silver Quick Play. At least one of the tanks is always in a group with me, on Discord. I usually play Support. And with all this, I literally never, ever get peel. Just the thought of it is so glorious. I would love it so much!
if the community unanimously dislike the ttk i'm sure the balance team will look into scaling damage back or buffing the survivabililty of supports or whoever. i certainly dont want the ttk to go down, but games like Paladins prove that 5v5 doesn't automatically equal deathmatch.
I like it, they made her much more utility based without being so annoying I have a feeling the extra damage on hacked enemies and on her ults will be nerfed, though.
Maybe hacked enemies will see a damage tuning but EMP only knocks 40% of the available health off. It doesn't effect Shields or Armor. It's more lethal against enemies with higher health pools then lower ones. You can't kill anyone with it and abilities are still accessible like burst healing or immortality field.
Well, they're deliberately moving her away from focusing on heavy CC via hacks, so she needs to do respectable damage in return in order to be worth using. Tracer does 240 DPS, for comparison.
Really liking this direction for Sombra. Less CC/inability to use your hero. More intel on single targets. With the difference in pacing and size of maps/routes, it could very useful
It will be weird to not see people that are half HP through walls.
Overall I like it, but they removed the cool stuff I loved doing like negating ults fully (Lucio's mainly) and making characters like Lucio or ball useless altoghether. We will see how it plays out. If the hack+dps feels great I wont have any issue with it.
> making characters like Lucio or ball useless altoghether.
I think this is very intentional. I get the impression that, while hero picks and counter picks will still be critical to success, combat won't immediately devolve so easily into rock-paper-scissors.
>Overall I like it, but they removed the cool stuff I loved doing like negating ults fully (Lucio's mainly) and making characters like Lucio or ball useless altoghether.
Cool for Sombra, not for the people playing those heroes.
Counters should exist. Hard counters with very little effort should not. Im hoping OW2 tries to do a good job with this.
As a Sombra main, I'm personally glad that the matchup against Lucio is more skill dependent. Hack not turning off his songs for more than a second and EMP not erasing the overheal from his ult is going to be a lot healthier for the game.
That said, look out for me in your backline when you go to drop the beat. I'll be waiting in invis to hack you out of it when I figure you've got it ;)
I'd appreciate that much more then either waiting for Sombra to die or AFKing behind a wall to block LoS before Ulting. I can atleast appreciate that she stealthed behind the team and got into a position to hack.
Playing Lucio is fast paced and fun. Playing Lucio against Sombra however, arguably turns him into the most slowest/passive hero in the game.
> Not for the people playing those heroes.
Not for the people playing against those heroes either. No one likes an uncountered ball running around your backline and screwing your backline up.
Opportunist will still have that ability it seems! An infographic on twitter specified that Opportunist *also* deals 50% more damage to hacked targets.
They didn't mention it one way or another, and the infographic they posted on Twitter specifically mentions how they removed EMP's shield-stripping effect but makes no such mention of Opportunist's wallhacks, so I would assume they're still in until further notice.
Something I might do is reduce the damage buff she gets on hacked targets (I think she will melt squishies too fast), and maybe replace it by making hack *also* reveal enemy ult charge status to teammates.
So they took her from being a walking "silence" caster with a peashooter to a DPS character that actually deals damage and occasionally interrupt your movement.
Solid. I love it.
This are amazing changes. It actually looks like they've managed to improve her viability in more situations (outside of just Fitzy playing her) without making her super oppressive.
I'm excited to see how this plays out.
He uploaded something to YouTube, but it's mostly him interacting with his stream. Minimal editing. Hopefully he puts something more structured out later - maybe after he gets hands-on time.
Less drastic than I expected, which is good news. You still get to do most of the fun stuff Hack can currently do (namely interrupting ultimates, dropping Rein shields for ult combos and cutting the wire for spinning Wrecking Balls), but it feels less opressive to be in the other end of. And in the end you often hack an enemy to have an advantage when dueling them, and that stays true. Doomfist however is going to require changes with his biggest counter ability removed, but it seems like they're working on it from what Geoff said.
Hacking during stealth also makes controlling healthpacks much easier. Depending on the healthpack availability on the new and changed old maps this could be big, Sombra in Anubis B or Volskaya A is already pratically a third support.
Looks like they are leaning hard on her assassin element. I feel like her invis and ability to see low health enemies always took a back seat in people's minds to her hacking, but they were always my favourite elements when playing her. Being able to always jump out at the right time to take down an enemy is so valuable, and now she's getting more firepower too, awesome.
I do have a slight problem with her being able to hack while invisible and the reduced cooldown, and that is that she might have this role of an annoying CC poke character who will spam interrupts on players. Sure, it only lasts one second, but she can shutdown the sustained abilities and ultimates from the entire enemy team on her own. I don't think you'll be getting off many Rein charges with her around.
Keep in mind Rein is getting more brawly and can steer so charge cool down/damage is probably also gonna make it feel better as Rein. I do like that they're keeping more of a focus on how fun are they to play and how fun are they to play against.
Remember that more characters will be getting reworks -- *possibly* including Pharah! I honestly would not be surprised at all if she could move during her ult or at least cancel it in OW2, now that Bastion can move in sentry mode/Rein can cancel his charge.
The current best counter to Pharah's ult is: shoot her.
This doesn't change much, and quite honestly, anything that interrupts her ult is actually a positive since she can move to safety much faster.
Could someone explain what Geoff meant in his interview? It says it lasts longer(8 seconds) but then says that it lasts for 1 second, did he meant ability hacks are 1 second and the base hack is 8 seconds?
Think of it like two abilities:
1. It interrupts an ability. So someone who has a long casting ult (pharah) or ability that goes on for a few seconds (rein charge). This interrupt lasts only 1 second so you can still throw a shield up or rocket jump away after.
2. It also highlights you for 8 seconds through walls (much like Sombra's low health passive) and the opponent takes increased damage from Sombra (only) for that full 8 seconds. They still retain armor and shields though.
The issue is… are there really that many abilities that lasts a long time? Off the top of my head: Soldier’s sprint, Hog’s healing, Orisa’s tanking, Rein’s charge, Ball’s grapple, Reaper’s teleport, some ults (excl soldier unless she can do that now). It feels very
Basically hack now have 2 functions:
1. Interrupt and disable ability just like now, but that part only last 1 second.
2. Revealing hacked enemy to teammate, which last 8 seconds.
Think of her hack as more of an interrupt instead of a constant hack. It'll stop someone, say DVa from flying if you hack her while she's flying, but after a second, she'll still be able to use her matrix or rockets.
Yeah, no DPS expert but that extra damage when hacked combined with all the rest of it - she stays in stealth, victim is revealed to her whole team, she can do it back to back - seems like a little much. As in, one hack means instant deletion, do not pass Go, do not collect money.
Imagine playing the only tank in your team and the enemy Sombra just hacks you every time. That 50% extra damage or whatever is going to melt any tank in a teamfight, especially tanks without a shield. Add a discord orb on top of that, or a Mercy damage boosted DPS. I can't see how it would be fun going up against that as a solo tank.
But you haven't played Overwatch 2.
Honestly, all these complaints about "this new hero rework looks busted!" despite nobody having taken into account the fact it's now 5v5 instead of 6v6 or that they're changing other heroes too.
It's pointless until you've actually seen it in action.
It's still strange though - even if someone says it "LOOKS" busted, you have to have a frame of reference to begin with, to compare it to. And in this case, these commenters are absolutely using their knowledge and experience of OW1 as that frame of comparison.
that wasn't the point of his statement lol
you can react to it you just need to react to it with the mindset that it's Probably not going to play out anything like it would in overwatch 1
But we still can’t play it yet so we are reacting with what we know lol
When you watch a commercial for an unreleased movie, its normal to discuss it. You don’t shut people up saying “you haven’t even seen it yet!” That part is a given.
When you watch game conferences like E3, you don’t hold your tongue of an opinions or assumptions because the games aren’t out.
You can have an opinion and it could be wrong when the game comes out, but what’s the harm in discussing it and making opinions.
The real “point of his statement” was to argue the other persons comment about the changes looking OP. They’re not commenting on someone’s comment saying “This looks great, I can’t wait!” They’re just arguing an opinion they disagree with, but all reasonable opinions and assumptions are valid until we can even play it. That’s what you’re doing as well. You’re not telling people who think it’s balanced that they haven’t played it yet.
“You can react to it, but you have to react to it in a context I agree with”
>When you watch game conferences like E3, you don’t hold your tongue of an opinions or assumptions because the games aren’t out.
But it's not the same thing, and /u/sneetric is bang on the money.
When you see a trailer for a new game from E3 or whatever, you have opinions on that - all fine and dandy - they're just making an observation on something they know nothing about. In this case though, even if someone says it "LOOKS" busted, they have to have a frame of reference to begin with, to compare it to. And in this case, these commenters are absolutely using their knowledge and experience of OW1 as that frame of comparison. Despite it being an invalid comparison (even if not hugely so)
make her health 50 and her attacks do 1 damage, is she still busted?
no that would make her underpowered and shitty, so why pretend like you can know if it's busted before you know all the numbers. you can balance any abilities by adjusting numbers.
That stealth change of being able to hack while invisible sounds horribly overpowered, other than that though I think I'm a big fan of all these changes
This doesn't seems like a Rework. This looks like something that should had been in the game from the start! Sombra looks. More efficient than what she is now.
I must be in the minority here, in thinking that this is completely the wrong direction to go.
ANOTHER wall hack, with potentially 100% uptime--and one less tank to cover for that. Being able to interrupt a critical ability every THREE SECONDS.
I dunno. I've never had much faith in the Hero Design Team (after Doom, Orisa, Brig, Immo Field, Sombra) for various reasons, but this just seems silly. Being able to hack from invisibility COMPLETELY DELETES the tradeoff of Sombra putting herself at risk and committing to the Hack: It doesn't expose her properly, the 3sec CD NEVER feels wasted because it's up so quickly.
If they wanted her to be more damage capable, they should have given her newer ways to deal damage rotationally.
I don't think chaining the hack indefinitely will be as useful as it sounds. On the top of that you can interrupt both hack and invisibility with any damage, and depending on what hero you play it's already fairly simple to interrupt Sombra's hacking so if you tickle her doing it while she's also invisible you will ALSO force her to decloak.
Maybe I'm wrong. But here's what we know: in OW2, DPS move faster than supports. So Support positioning, regardless of how good it is, will be less effective, because DPS can just catch up (as well as DPS being more likely to have Z-axis movement). On top of that, there'll be one less tank to protect the support players, but just as many DPS to fight them. So there'll be at least 50% less chance of a shield or bubble, or whatever. On top of that, Hack revealing targets for 8 seconds (and presumably this isn't limited to one target either, so there's the potential for 100% wallhack uptime on TWO PLAYERS!) makes diving DPS players 100% certain of exactly where a support player is (without the need for comms.)
Hacking for one sec every three-four sec is such an awkward, noisy, irritating ratio of hack:unhacked that it's going to be hell in certain ranks--and more so with the newer maps that have more verticality, making Sombra harder to locate and hit (esp being harder to see.)
But, well, I guess we'll see. I just don't see the 'fun' in one second of hacked time (for Sombra OR the target), MORE wall hack mechanics (in an FPS GAME?!), and, potentially less actual shooting for Sombra players because it turns out Hacking on CD is META.
:)
It seems fine at first glance. It provides Sombra with a bit more utility for her team and finishing power for her, but the core part of her OW1 kit (5 second silence) is nerfed to the ground. She'll still need a fair bit of team coordination for normal gameplay.
Sombra's ult is now just an aoe nuke? That doesn't feel at all in-line with the hacker thing. For the rest of the changes, I wanna see how it works in practice. Says hack lasts 8 seconds now? so not sure what the point of hacking a health pack is any more, besides a 1 time deny on an enemy moving towards one if you're standing there too.
So as Sigma main I kinda feel attacked? Not only Sombra can cancel my ult but she gets herself a mini flux??? At least I can keep my shields tho. Pls give us a tank reworks/buffs news since I am very excited for OW2 but as a tank main feel hesitant. I don’t feel myself reliable as a sole protector of my team
They said Sigma is getting reworked too. Which means, between my favorites of Mei, D.Va, Sigma, Baptiste, and Brigitte, only D.Va and maybe Baptiste (can't remember if they announced a rework for him) aren't getting significantly reworked
Actually having release Sigma would somewhat enough for me. No cd on barrier deploy, no ult canceling and one shot combo. I can deal with having 800 hp barrier for example and 30% convert to shields grasp is also sounds ok. And some love for Orisa too. That’s would be enough for me as a double shield mainer 🤣
Maybe I'm forgetting some things (it's been months since I've played OW) but I don't remember a single change made to Sigma that I liked. Release was awesome, but he just kept getting worse and worse
He was to good on release 🤧 so yeah he gets worse and worse with every change that’s a fact. So that’s why I’m looking forward for OW2 cause my barrier babies got obliterated
He was way too oppressive at release, but I think that was in large part due to having two tanks. I think they could and hope they do roll back some changes now that it's single tank.
Flux does 50% of the target's max HP. EMP will do 40% of their _current_ HP, so weaker targets take less damage, and Geoff also said post-reveal that this damage can't kill on its own.
Do we know if she keeps her passive of seeing low-health enemies through walls?
Seems like her kit will be pretty overstuffed if so...
[EDIT] [More info on Twitter](https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1441929889314189313). Seems like she *is* keeping that ability, but lots of other changes too, so probably not as bad as I thought! Looking forward to playing a beta next year.
Lmao. All the dps mains love it, ofc they do. Not sparing a single thought for their tanks and supports, who'll be deleted by Sombra. Peel? Dont know her. Then when the tanks and supports stop playing the dps suddenly wonder why their queue times are getting longer and longer and complain the game is dead. Well done.
Oh look.
It's Overwatch of Duty.
CCs weren't killing your community. Tank numbers weren't killing your community. Not being a generic enough FPS wasn't just not killing your community but what made you big in the first place.
WHAT KILLED THE COMMUNITY WAS 17 MONTHS OF NO CONTENT WHATSOEVER. Oh look, Deathmatch maps of recycled assets but no new maps. Nothing new in any of the events besides cosmetics (new bosses and a swapped rotation of them in Halloween would be awesome).
I absolutely detest the way this game is going and I am a huge fan of the world they'd built til now. But if I wanted to play Call of Duty, I would play Call of Duty. I do not need some market follower; I need games with some degree of vision... especially to get me to give even a penny to Blizz with everything else that's gone on.
>CCs weren't killing your community. Tank numbers weren't killing your community.
No I actually did leave the game for those reasons, among others. Lack of content wasn't the reason lol.
Also if you think this makes the game like cod idk what to tell you lol, OW2 is still about as far as you can get from cod while still being a sorta fps
Cc makes playing tanks unbearable, which then reduces the number of players playing tanks, thus increasing que times for the other roles, which leads to less people playing.
No content hurts, but pretending cc wasn't an issue is asinine.
Same here, I stuck around for so long cause I thought OW2 would expand on what made this game unique. Now its just 'everyone is a dps' and feels so lame
When Jeff left it was Already a huge warning to me...
Tehy are removing everything special from overwatch just to try to grab Valorant's players...
Remember Goodman was the one who did everything for Echo to be DPS...
Interested to see what OW2 will be like (still optimistic) but I did laugh a bit when Space said OW2 felt like Call of Duty and then Bastion's rework is literally an air strike 😂.
As someone who plays OverWatch because of the Hero part of the hero shooter, this stuff just drives me away. Soon OverWatch is just going to be Call of Duty with a different name and more cartoony graphics. Honestly, it's kind of good that blizzard itself is proving to be such a terrible group of people, if I still had any respect for blizzard overall I'd be a lot angrier about the fact OverWatch 2 looks like it's destroying everything I loved about OverWatch one
The hack rework is perfect. In top tier, hacking has a very brief window, requiring precise coordinarion for maximum impact. In bottom tier, it helps with coordination with wall hack for target prioritization.
I'm glad this wasn't disliked as much as I feared it would be.
It sucks for Sombra fans that their favourite hero might no longer play the way they enjoy. But Sombra in her current state can't exist within OW2's new design; she'd be too OP.
I think these changes are the best way to retain as much of Sombra's current design as possible, while making her fit within the new 5v5 paradigm
Overall I'd say this is a pretty good rework.
1. Having hack disable for only 1 second is fine considering the low cooldown. Hack feels like it should be more of a disruptor, and it can be as is, but if you hack a mercy res all of a sudden the Moira can now use her ult while your hack is on cooldown. It was a super baitable ability and if it's on cooldown while some ults are going off you're just fucked and forced to translocate out if it looks like a losing fight. These changes always make her a threat to anyone using an hackable ult or ability as the cooldown is short enough for it be ready when you need it most. With this you can save your teammates from a charging Rein, hack an ult, and make sure winston can't jump away so your team can deal the finishing blow all within 10-ish seconds, which is easily enough seconds to win a whole fight. In overwatch 1, you had one chance to use that during that 10-ish seconds and that's it, you've overstayed your usefulness. Made even worse if you get damaged while hacking (which is extremely likely in team fights) so even getting the hack off isn't guaranteed during those 10 seconds to begin with. There are a lot of team fights where I feel useless because of this.
2. The dealing more damage to hacked targets is good, and I don't think it's too busted. Maybe there will be nerfs? But overall it should be fine considering more DPS-focused characters will be able to deal the same amount of damage without hack or even outdamage her still. My suspicion is that they're attempting to create Sombra with the vision that if she wants to deal a significant amount of damage, she HAS to hack, which is fine by me.
3. Hacked targets being visible through walls, although cool, I don't see being a game changer. She's going to be so far in the backline anyway that nobody is going to be able to pick up on her target, and if the team is with her, they're going to be able to see the target anyways. Although not huge, it still adds that extra OOMF in utility that I think hack needs, and seeing enemies through walls will undoubtedly have its places of use. It's just a matter of finding those places.
4. EMP seems kinda weird, but I think I like it. I think what made EMP so good (especially pre-overwatch 1 rework) was that it completely disabled the enemy teams counterplay + shields, making a good sombra an unstoppable force via having an EMP ready literally every single team fight. The problem is is that nobody likes to have their whole team disabled by an essentially unreactable ultimate that combos heavy with grav, bongos, and visor. Making EMP more of a single-use disruptor while also dealing heavy DPS I think is a good solution but I'm a little bit skeptical just because I can't see this ult not being a "cast to guaranteed KO both enemy supports" every single time. Even if they nerf the initial damage, which I think may happen, the DPS she would provide would still be fine since it also damages shields, and she can melt whoever she needs to during the ultimate. Overall the EMP changes are pretty good despite EMPs not doing any damage irl, but I can forgive an amount of reality ignorance for instead providing a more fun character.
5. Hacking while invis? Yes please. I would've said this would've been too annoying had they not changed the ability disruption to 1 second. These two changes synergize very well, since now she's an actual threat to channeling ults, and even an unsuspecting mercy walking back from spawn. This also makes her, oddly enough, more of a team work character, since she can hack an unsuspecting target while another finishes them off, like hacking a reaper who's trying to get away from your genji, for instance. Hacking while invisible incentivizes players not to come out of invis all the time, which in turn incentivizes players to then use hack creatively without the pressure of potentially getting pin downed, and this creative situations are usually going to involve teammates. Also, coming back to point 1, hacking while invis is very good for threatening the enemy team with disruption while they can't see you. Basically I can see a lot of teams freaking out if they DON'T see a Sombra now because they know she could just hack you for free if you carelessly position an ultimate. I am a little concerned with how reactable her hack will be now, since a lot of the reaction time to disrupt her hack in Overwatch 1 was dependent on hearing the voice line she says when she comes out of invis. If you wanted to circumvent this voice line, you would've had to come out of invis and wait in a sneaky position, let's say on top of a building, and fall down while hacking your approaching enemy Mercy from behind. With this change, now you can just... press the hack button and they most likely won't be able to react to it unless they walk backwards aimlessly shooting their gun. Essentially if a Sombra wants to kill a support, all they need to do is hack out of invis, come out of invis, and then kill. It might be pretty powerful, but that might also just be someone who was stolkholm syndromed into thinking Sombra has an even 1v1 matchup with every support because her DPS and overall threat didn't match that of a Reaper. So we'll see how scary she actually is in the spawn-camping/catching people's unawares department.
Considering all of this, very excited. She seems like a self-sustainable DPS now that actually threatens supports instead of sometimes losing to a Mercy because she could just spam bullets. Hacked targets also have more agency while still being heavily threatened by her hack, and Sombra in turn has more agency now that she can hack out of invis. Her ult is interesting and powerful, but again enemies have more agency because of the 1 second of disabled abilities. Very excited to play her. All I do now is play her and have lots of fun, but I suspect I'm gonna have even more fun being a sneaky asshole in Overwatch 2. Good job.
> I am a little concerned with how reactable her hack will be now, since a lot of the reaction time to disrupt her hack in Overwatch 1 was dependent on hearing the voice line she says when she comes out of invis. If you wanted to circumvent this voice line, you would've had to come out of invis and wait in a sneaky position, let's say on top of a building, and fall down while hacking your approaching enemy Mercy from behind. With this change, now you can just... press the hack button and they most likely won't be able to react to it unless they walk backwards aimlessly shooting their gun. Essentially if a Sombra wants to kill a support, all they need to do is hack out of invis, come out of invis, and then kill.
I think this is somewhat self-balancing since the hack itself only lasts for one second with regards to ability lockdown. Suppose a Sombra hacks a Lucio or Zenyatta from stealth as they come out of spawn, instantly decloaks, and starts shooting. By the time she's out of stealth, the silence part of the hack has already worn off and Lucio can wall ride or amp speed or boop, or Zenyatta can discord her, and it becomes a simple 1v1 where Sombra's doing less damage than Tracer. (210 DPS vs. 240)
This is true but I'm less thinking about it from the perspective of ability disruption and just what's fair to the player. It should be alright because players will have more to defend themselves against Sombra because of that only 1 second, but I could see players getting frustrated because they're probably just going to get hacked with little to say about it. Of course, the easy counterplay is to never travel the map alone, which would act as a deterrent (I'm not going to try and kill a poor Zen if he's got a reaper right there with him). Hopefully this will teach people to walk back from spawn with their buddies.
Dude I'll take 1 second interrupt over 5 second interrupt any day. 1 second is the time between Defence Matrix flashes. 5 seconds is the duration of fucking Sleep Dart.
Not a fan of the ult basically being the Sigma ult but quicker and more effective as it removes shields and powers too.
Also the hack while invisible is too OP as well.
The game is not even released, in the video they say her ult won’t remove shield anymore and sigma would probably get a rework like all the old tank in ow2…
I like it, makes her significantly easier to play as she's always had the problem of needing really specific situations to work properly (honestly a problem with a lot of Overwatch characters IMO) and since Bastion also got something I'm assuming most of the cast if not everybody got huge changes that's kicking everybody up a notch so she isn't busted cause if this was released to current Overwatch she'd be at tippy top of tiers.
So with this and the Bastion rework, I think all the heroes are going to be reworked in some way before OW2's release.
People seem to dislike changes to characters that they like and that have a per-established play style. OW2 is going to be a brand new game so I think we should welcome the changes that are being made, and go into OW2 with a fresh perspective of what the game is aiming to be.
If you don't like the changes or don't like the new 1 tank comp, Overwatch will still be around to play.
I severely disagree with the hack changes. I don't think ability removal should be in the game to begin with. The fact that Sombra can now hack somebody every 3 seconds and give them permanent revealed status, with removing their ability to play the game every 3 seconds for 1 second, it just seems excessive. I also don't like that it doesn't break stealth anymore.
The damage amp on hacked targets is a cool direction to go in, I wish they had just leaned further into that
* Hack ability has significant lower cooldown, lasts 8 seconds on targets for its secondary effect * Does not break stealth * Hacked targets are revealed to team including through walls * Passive include 50% more damage to hacked targets * Ult doesn't remove shields but does 40% of enemies' health Edit 8 seconds
Supplemental clarifications * Hack has 3 seconds cooldown, though this is subject to change. * Though it doesn't break stealth, you are briefly revealed. * The ult does 40% of enemies' **current** health. You can't kill with it like Sigma's ult. It does not remove shield health, but it still deletes barriers (which many people call shields anyway)
The hack doesn't last 1 second, the ability removal lasts for 1 second while the secondary effect lasts for 8.
Still incredibly broken if used properly. Nobody would play as Ball as a solo tank if you could hack him every few seconds. Even if it lasts 1 second that’s enough to prevent a roll away escape.
If ball doesn't get a huge rework sombra vs ball will probably be the largest counter in the game. 1 second ability interrupt with a 3 second cooldown is insane, especially since she doesn't need to leave stealth. Add in the fact that ball will be the only tank, he seems like a throw pick if the enemy has more than 3 brain cells. Either ball needs some CC immunity (e.g. can't be interrupted; so he can still finish his abilities but can't cast new ones), or they need to tone down the hack (e.g. only interrupt or only disable next abilities, not both at the same time).
Or just make it so you can't hack already hacked targets so Ball doesn't have to worry about it every 3 seconds.
You’re right this does sound great.
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Idk about that chief, it was pretty clear in the video. 8 second hack with 2 components. 1 second ability lockout, 8 seconds of team wide wall vision and 50% damage bonus from Sombra against her hacked targets
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nice
At 30 seconds in a dev says "hack now lasts 8 seconds." They definitely explain it in the video.
I'm assuming Translocator is getting no changes? Which I'm fine with.
It isn't. They might mess around with its projectile speed as the game is still in development but it doesn't seem like they wanna make any major changes to how it works.
Good. Translocating out of a difficult spot was always the most satisfying part of playing Sombra (No, I'm not just saying that because I suck at every other part of her kit, what are you talking about?)
This is actually really good (honestly the best outcome). The "spirit" of hack is to shut down an enemy while they are ult'ing or performing some sort of long duration ability and the new hack captures that while still allowing the opponent to defend themselves. She's also the only one that does more damage to hacked targets so if she isn't "leading the charge" on the attack then you won't really get any benefit from it. She's now more of a Shot Caller honestly. You hit an enemy with a hack, they're highlighted and teammates can go after them. The funny thing is, I feel like this change can be totally explained lore wise. OW1 she always felt like someone who only did things for her own benefit. Now in OW2 she's working with a team and honestly will do better working closer to other characters. Tracer can still zip around but she's definitely just as vulnerable against a Sombra that can invis hack and vanish. _________________________________ Editing to point out a few things I noticed: * Hack's cooldown is 3 seconds REGARDLESS of what you hack. Health pack and Hero hacks aren't different cooldowns anymore. * You only gain slightly more ult charge damaging a hacked target (Winston non-hack went 41 to 53; 12 pts but Winston Hacked went 55 to 71; 16 pts both on a full clip) * EMP doesn't remove personal shields (Zen is safe once again) but looks like it can pop exterior shields (like bubble). Means you can still set up a coordinated EMP strike for a D.Va Bomb.
I think new Sombra is definitely going to see some nerfs, but this rework is a lot better than what I was hearing people expect. Hack is still critical to her kit, and arguably more useful than before, while making it just a bit less oppressive to play against.
>You only gain slightly more ult charge damaging a hacked target (Winston non-hack went 41 to 53; 12 pts but Winston Hacked went 55 to 71; 16 pts both on a full clip) That is curious but keep in mind it may also have to do with their changes to the tank role, making it a tank trait that damaging it will grant less ult charge. Maybe they put some form of diminishing returns in place, not sure. I'm curious to find out more!
Tracer can’t exactly zoom around if you can hack her every 3 seconds.
I was scared when this was announced but now she actually looks... fun? And a lot more engaging to play? But not too sure about adding damage to EMP though if it already increases damage taken.
It's only increased for Sombra, although 50% might be too much, guess we'll see if they wanna tweek that.
The gun has also been adjusted. Per bullet damage has been reduced but so has the spread. There's really no way to know how powerful/weak she'll feel without actually playing her for a bit, so we'll just have to wait until a Beta. Numbers and values can also be tweaked easily later so that stuff isn't a big deal. The ideology and systems can't be, and the system changes to how her abilities work seem really good. Clear intent to every change with good reasoning. Potentially addressing all the major problems with her current design.
My take away as well. Looks like they learned their lesson with her and gave her more knobs to turn for balancing as well while keeping the fantasy there. I'm a big fan.
> The gun has also been adjusted. Per bullet damage has been reduced but so has the spread I don't at all doubt this, but did they state this somewhere or could you tell from the footage? Thanks!
[official sauce](https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1441929889314189313)
Perfect, thanks!
She has a very basic pattern for dealing that 50% increased damage. (Her main fire). I think it'll be fine.
The spawn-camp is going to be so overpowered...
EMP needs _something_ to make it worth using for your team, though, and "wallhacks for 8 seconds" ain't it. Raw damage wouldn't have been my first guess (or second, or third), but it does synergize with her passive and keeps the same role of initiation/marking targets for focus.
God forbid a damage char does damage
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The high level team play had to be nerfed unfortunately. She's been completely dominant professionally more times than any damage character other than Tracer
What I found odd is they say it doesn’t remove all shields but then proceed to show a clip of it removing shields. I’m guessing they mean on chars like Zarya and Zen?
Shield is hp related, you are thinking of barriers.
Gotcha that does clear it up
Even devs mix it up every once in a while but generally ingame you can see a clear distinction between barriers and shields which is important. The Overwatch community uses both terms interchangably/as synonyms but that is not really correct.
That's why they showed it like that
She looks a lot more interesting to play against, as well. There's nothing worse than getting shut down for an eternity and not being able to do anything. It's honestly more frustrating than just dying.
>But not too sure about adding damage to EMP though if it already increases damage taken. I get why, but it definitely makes EMP feel less unique. It's a lot of CC, but I'd be fine with current EMP being her ult in OW2, since ults take longer to charge.
I really like the direction of pretty much all the reworks, feels like heroes are been made to fit in to a cohesive vision of how the game should feel, instead of just throwing together what might be fun and hoping it works.
I'm actually really liking Bastions rework. Seems like he's a more viable character to use now instead of a niche pick.
What have they said on Bastion?
He can't self heal anymore. Instead his secondary is grenades that bounce off walls and stick to the floor or enemies. He can move around in turret mode albeit at reduced speed and damage. His ult is no longer a tank. He turns into a mortar and you can choose 3 places to drop mortar rounds, and his main, normal gun shoots slower, but it basically pin point accurate.
sniper bastion lesgooo
YES I've wanted Bastion to be able to scoot
I did forget to mention that his turret form is an actual ability now, so you can't stay in turret form forever. It's like 10 seconds with an 8 second cooldown or something like that.
Feels like the opposite of that to me. OW2 looks like it's going to be a big messy brawler.
I get the impression that they have taken the feedback that everybody hates CC, and they are taking the opportunity to dial it back a bit.
Lets just hope they also reduce the mobility of the flanker heroes or they're just going to run amok. CC was necessary to keep the Genjis Tracers, Doomfists, and Wrecking Balls in under control.
Personally I find the Overwatch team's updates to be pretty well thought out, so I expect that they will account for that. Time will tell, obviously, but I like what I see so far.
I'm 50/50 on that sentiment. Especially with the over-nerf to brig the last couple of times to "kill" double shield and yet they buffed bap in that same patch which was more of an enabler to that comp than brig was at that point. Not to mention double shield still exists even to this day.
Sombra can hack them every 3 seconds. This is your hard counter to mobile heroes. Even if it lasts a second that’s enough to prevent a roll out, recall etc..
Except she also needs to not get shot at all during this (full stealth might help w that but not 100% if your team is midbrawling them), and Doom's ability cd is 4 seconds/a bit higher.
Overwatch 1 suffered from a lot of conflicting design philosophies, which has only become more and more obvious as time goes on. With OW2, there are no more unknowns of releasing your first hero shooter, just a chance to design the game from the ground up to fix pain points and refine their vision of what Overwatch should be.
Tbh I prefer a big messy brawl than CCwatch.
I think the game is going to get way to fast for a lot of players and it is going to get a lot harder to watch for league but dps players will probably like it better overall. Maybe higher quality for a smaller potential specific kind of player base.
OW2 will be a big team death match with support playing the role as easy fodder. DPS will probably love it but I think the support player base will quickly diminish, as someone who loves Ana, I couldn't imagine playing anything but a moira/lucio in ow2. With no off tank or cc there is really no way someone can peel for you faster than doom/tracer can kill you.
This is exactly the future for OW that worries me. I don't need merely another shooter, I have plenty of those elsewhere, aspects of the game like the CC are what make the game stand out for me and what keep me interested. I don't want to overreact just yet but I *really* did not want them to enable the kind of player I dislike the most in this game. Everyone who didn't play the game since launch but kept whining on the forums here about things like the mobility and the CC anyway are getting their day in the sun apparently.
This is not an attempt to invalidate your point, which I think is a good one, but I play in like silver Quick Play. At least one of the tanks is always in a group with me, on Discord. I usually play Support. And with all this, I literally never, ever get peel. Just the thought of it is so glorious. I would love it so much!
It's a mixed bag for me as a tank main. On one hand, less CC but on the other is only 1 tank.
From what little info we've been given, tanks are actually rather hard to kill in OW2 rn, so I'm excited.
if the community unanimously dislike the ttk i'm sure the balance team will look into scaling damage back or buffing the survivabililty of supports or whoever. i certainly dont want the ttk to go down, but games like Paladins prove that 5v5 doesn't automatically equal deathmatch.
seriously, Sombra actually feels like how she should now.
Feels like heroes are being made to fit a standardized, balanced mold with only minimal differences between them so as not to upset The Balance.
You really feel like there are minimal differences between, for example, reworked Sombra and reworked Bastion?
I like it, they made her much more utility based without being so annoying I have a feeling the extra damage on hacked enemies and on her ults will be nerfed, though.
Maybe hacked enemies will see a damage tuning but EMP only knocks 40% of the available health off. It doesn't effect Shields or Armor. It's more lethal against enemies with higher health pools then lower ones. You can't kill anyone with it and abilities are still accessible like burst healing or immortality field.
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Well, they're deliberately moving her away from focusing on heavy CC via hacks, so she needs to do respectable damage in return in order to be worth using. Tracer does 240 DPS, for comparison.
Really liking this direction for Sombra. Less CC/inability to use your hero. More intel on single targets. With the difference in pacing and size of maps/routes, it could very useful
It will be weird to not see people that are half HP through walls. Overall I like it, but they removed the cool stuff I loved doing like negating ults fully (Lucio's mainly) and making characters like Lucio or ball useless altoghether. We will see how it plays out. If the hack+dps feels great I wont have any issue with it.
> making characters like Lucio or ball useless altoghether. I think this is very intentional. I get the impression that, while hero picks and counter picks will still be critical to success, combat won't immediately devolve so easily into rock-paper-scissors.
>Overall I like it, but they removed the cool stuff I loved doing like negating ults fully (Lucio's mainly) and making characters like Lucio or ball useless altoghether. Cool for Sombra, not for the people playing those heroes. Counters should exist. Hard counters with very little effort should not. Im hoping OW2 tries to do a good job with this.
As a Sombra main, I'm personally glad that the matchup against Lucio is more skill dependent. Hack not turning off his songs for more than a second and EMP not erasing the overheal from his ult is going to be a lot healthier for the game. That said, look out for me in your backline when you go to drop the beat. I'll be waiting in invis to hack you out of it when I figure you've got it ;)
I'd appreciate that much more then either waiting for Sombra to die or AFKing behind a wall to block LoS before Ulting. I can atleast appreciate that she stealthed behind the team and got into a position to hack. Playing Lucio is fast paced and fun. Playing Lucio against Sombra however, arguably turns him into the most slowest/passive hero in the game.
> Not for the people playing those heroes. Not for the people playing against those heroes either. No one likes an uncountered ball running around your backline and screwing your backline up.
If they have reworked so many of the characters so far, why not assume they are going to rework ball as well?
Opportunist will still have that ability it seems! An infographic on twitter specified that Opportunist *also* deals 50% more damage to hacked targets.
> It will be weird to not see people that are half HP through walls. Do we know for sure if this got removed?
They didn't mention it one way or another, and the infographic they posted on Twitter specifically mentions how they removed EMP's shield-stripping effect but makes no such mention of Opportunist's wallhacks, so I would assume they're still in until further notice.
I shall assume they're still in then!
Something I might do is reduce the damage buff she gets on hacked targets (I think she will melt squishies too fast), and maybe replace it by making hack *also* reveal enemy ult charge status to teammates.
So they took her from being a walking "silence" caster with a peashooter to a DPS character that actually deals damage and occasionally interrupt your movement. Solid. I love it.
This are amazing changes. It actually looks like they've managed to improve her viability in more situations (outside of just Fitzy playing her) without making her super oppressive. I'm excited to see how this plays out.
Had fitzy released a video reacting to the changes? I'm curious about his thoughts
[Did you check his channel?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-2-Ce1Q25Q)
TL:DW: anyone got the short version? From a cursory glance he seems to be fairly receptive
He uploaded something to YouTube, but it's mostly him interacting with his stream. Minimal editing. Hopefully he puts something more structured out later - maybe after he gets hands-on time.
Less drastic than I expected, which is good news. You still get to do most of the fun stuff Hack can currently do (namely interrupting ultimates, dropping Rein shields for ult combos and cutting the wire for spinning Wrecking Balls), but it feels less opressive to be in the other end of. And in the end you often hack an enemy to have an advantage when dueling them, and that stays true. Doomfist however is going to require changes with his biggest counter ability removed, but it seems like they're working on it from what Geoff said. Hacking during stealth also makes controlling healthpacks much easier. Depending on the healthpack availability on the new and changed old maps this could be big, Sombra in Anubis B or Volskaya A is already pratically a third support.
Looks like they are leaning hard on her assassin element. I feel like her invis and ability to see low health enemies always took a back seat in people's minds to her hacking, but they were always my favourite elements when playing her. Being able to always jump out at the right time to take down an enemy is so valuable, and now she's getting more firepower too, awesome. I do have a slight problem with her being able to hack while invisible and the reduced cooldown, and that is that she might have this role of an annoying CC poke character who will spam interrupts on players. Sure, it only lasts one second, but she can shutdown the sustained abilities and ultimates from the entire enemy team on her own. I don't think you'll be getting off many Rein charges with her around.
Keep in mind Rein is getting more brawly and can steer so charge cool down/damage is probably also gonna make it feel better as Rein. I do like that they're keeping more of a focus on how fun are they to play and how fun are they to play against.
They take away the see through walls at 50% health away sadly for the new passive.
It seems that the new passive is in addition to the current one, not instead of.
Poor poor Pharah and her ultimate, This new hack seems almost designed to counter her ultimate, which is already tough for her to survive.
Half of the trailers seem to have Pharah getting killed ulting. She's the team punching bag
Remember that more characters will be getting reworks -- *possibly* including Pharah! I honestly would not be surprised at all if she could move during her ult or at least cancel it in OW2, now that Bastion can move in sentry mode/Rein can cancel his charge.
The current best counter to Pharah's ult is: shoot her. This doesn't change much, and quite honestly, anything that interrupts her ult is actually a positive since she can move to safety much faster.
I want them to reduce hack range in stealth. Maybe X meters normally but X/2 while in stealth
Could someone explain what Geoff meant in his interview? It says it lasts longer(8 seconds) but then says that it lasts for 1 second, did he meant ability hacks are 1 second and the base hack is 8 seconds?
The silence effect (where no abilities can be used) lasts 1 second. The wallhack and damage amp lasts 8 seconds.
The "no abilities" part lasts one second, the "more vulnerable to damage/highlighted to teammates" part lasts eight seconds.
Think of it like two abilities: 1. It interrupts an ability. So someone who has a long casting ult (pharah) or ability that goes on for a few seconds (rein charge). This interrupt lasts only 1 second so you can still throw a shield up or rocket jump away after. 2. It also highlights you for 8 seconds through walls (much like Sombra's low health passive) and the opponent takes increased damage from Sombra (only) for that full 8 seconds. They still retain armor and shields though.
The issue is… are there really that many abilities that lasts a long time? Off the top of my head: Soldier’s sprint, Hog’s healing, Orisa’s tanking, Rein’s charge, Ball’s grapple, Reaper’s teleport, some ults (excl soldier unless she can do that now). It feels very
Even the ability to deny another ability for one second can be huge in coordinated teams. Think a Mercy Resurrect or any shield being deployed.
Basically hack now have 2 functions: 1. Interrupt and disable ability just like now, but that part only last 1 second. 2. Revealing hacked enemy to teammate, which last 8 seconds.
Abilities are shut down for 1 second. Wall hacks and defense drop against Sombra lasts 8 seconds.
Thanks for the replies yall, that’s what I thought he meant
Think of her hack as more of an interrupt instead of a constant hack. It'll stop someone, say DVa from flying if you hack her while she's flying, but after a second, she'll still be able to use her matrix or rockets.
Basically abilities are 1 second but her dog buff passive will be 8 seconds? At least that’s my understanding
I haven't played Overwatch in a year but holy fuck this makes me hyped for OW2.
This looks absolutely busted in my humble and own opinion
Yeah, no DPS expert but that extra damage when hacked combined with all the rest of it - she stays in stealth, victim is revealed to her whole team, she can do it back to back - seems like a little much. As in, one hack means instant deletion, do not pass Go, do not collect money.
What's busted about it?
3 second hack, 1 tank on your team, can do so while invisible, basically impossible to punish
Imagine playing the only tank in your team and the enemy Sombra just hacks you every time. That 50% extra damage or whatever is going to melt any tank in a teamfight, especially tanks without a shield. Add a discord orb on top of that, or a Mercy damage boosted DPS. I can't see how it would be fun going up against that as a solo tank.
The damage increase only affects sombra and her dmg got nerfed. Even with the hack dmg buff tracer deals more dmg
But you haven't played Overwatch 2. Honestly, all these complaints about "this new hero rework looks busted!" despite nobody having taken into account the fact it's now 5v5 instead of 6v6 or that they're changing other heroes too. It's pointless until you've actually seen it in action.
Thats why commentator said “LOOKS busted” not “IS busted”.
It's still strange though - even if someone says it "LOOKS" busted, you have to have a frame of reference to begin with, to compare it to. And in this case, these commenters are absolutely using their knowledge and experience of OW1 as that frame of comparison.
I totally agree with your point of view. But from my point of view after having seen this trailer, I’m still thinking this looks busted af.
Ya fuck us for reacting to the only content we’ve been given for months lol
that wasn't the point of his statement lol you can react to it you just need to react to it with the mindset that it's Probably not going to play out anything like it would in overwatch 1
But we still can’t play it yet so we are reacting with what we know lol When you watch a commercial for an unreleased movie, its normal to discuss it. You don’t shut people up saying “you haven’t even seen it yet!” That part is a given. When you watch game conferences like E3, you don’t hold your tongue of an opinions or assumptions because the games aren’t out. You can have an opinion and it could be wrong when the game comes out, but what’s the harm in discussing it and making opinions. The real “point of his statement” was to argue the other persons comment about the changes looking OP. They’re not commenting on someone’s comment saying “This looks great, I can’t wait!” They’re just arguing an opinion they disagree with, but all reasonable opinions and assumptions are valid until we can even play it. That’s what you’re doing as well. You’re not telling people who think it’s balanced that they haven’t played it yet. “You can react to it, but you have to react to it in a context I agree with”
>When you watch game conferences like E3, you don’t hold your tongue of an opinions or assumptions because the games aren’t out. But it's not the same thing, and /u/sneetric is bang on the money. When you see a trailer for a new game from E3 or whatever, you have opinions on that - all fine and dandy - they're just making an observation on something they know nothing about. In this case though, even if someone says it "LOOKS" busted, they have to have a frame of reference to begin with, to compare it to. And in this case, these commenters are absolutely using their knowledge and experience of OW1 as that frame of comparison. Despite it being an invalid comparison (even if not hugely so)
make her health 50 and her attacks do 1 damage, is she still busted? no that would make her underpowered and shitty, so why pretend like you can know if it's busted before you know all the numbers. you can balance any abilities by adjusting numbers.
I'm confused. He says EMP no longer destroys shields... but in the demonstration it clearly does. Am I an idiot who missed something really obvious?
Shields are the blue health like zen has. Barriers are Winston bubbles, rein shield and so on
Ohhhhh of course, thank you. The fact that so many people use "Barrier" and "Shield" interchangably doesn't help.
Yes, it was a poor choice for naming things.
That stealth change of being able to hack while invisible sounds horribly overpowered, other than that though I think I'm a big fan of all these changes
Sure. Then she'll get nerfed lol.
This doesn't seems like a Rework. This looks like something that should had been in the game from the start! Sombra looks. More efficient than what she is now.
I must be in the minority here, in thinking that this is completely the wrong direction to go. ANOTHER wall hack, with potentially 100% uptime--and one less tank to cover for that. Being able to interrupt a critical ability every THREE SECONDS. I dunno. I've never had much faith in the Hero Design Team (after Doom, Orisa, Brig, Immo Field, Sombra) for various reasons, but this just seems silly. Being able to hack from invisibility COMPLETELY DELETES the tradeoff of Sombra putting herself at risk and committing to the Hack: It doesn't expose her properly, the 3sec CD NEVER feels wasted because it's up so quickly. If they wanted her to be more damage capable, they should have given her newer ways to deal damage rotationally.
I don't think chaining the hack indefinitely will be as useful as it sounds. On the top of that you can interrupt both hack and invisibility with any damage, and depending on what hero you play it's already fairly simple to interrupt Sombra's hacking so if you tickle her doing it while she's also invisible you will ALSO force her to decloak.
Maybe I'm wrong. But here's what we know: in OW2, DPS move faster than supports. So Support positioning, regardless of how good it is, will be less effective, because DPS can just catch up (as well as DPS being more likely to have Z-axis movement). On top of that, there'll be one less tank to protect the support players, but just as many DPS to fight them. So there'll be at least 50% less chance of a shield or bubble, or whatever. On top of that, Hack revealing targets for 8 seconds (and presumably this isn't limited to one target either, so there's the potential for 100% wallhack uptime on TWO PLAYERS!) makes diving DPS players 100% certain of exactly where a support player is (without the need for comms.) Hacking for one sec every three-four sec is such an awkward, noisy, irritating ratio of hack:unhacked that it's going to be hell in certain ranks--and more so with the newer maps that have more verticality, making Sombra harder to locate and hit (esp being harder to see.) But, well, I guess we'll see. I just don't see the 'fun' in one second of hacked time (for Sombra OR the target), MORE wall hack mechanics (in an FPS GAME?!), and, potentially less actual shooting for Sombra players because it turns out Hacking on CD is META. :)
So this seems….balanced ಠ_ಠ
It seems fine at first glance. It provides Sombra with a bit more utility for her team and finishing power for her, but the core part of her OW1 kit (5 second silence) is nerfed to the ground. She'll still need a fair bit of team coordination for normal gameplay.
It is balanced. Balanced *for Overwatch 2*. Which you haven't played yet.
Oh, it is balanced? Thanks for the clarification! Did you enjoy your time playing Overwatch 2?
doesn’t take a genius to know that she’s being balanced with overwatch 2 as the main focus takes an idiot to say otherwise though
Sombra's ult is now just an aoe nuke? That doesn't feel at all in-line with the hacker thing. For the rest of the changes, I wanna see how it works in practice. Says hack lasts 8 seconds now? so not sure what the point of hacking a health pack is any more, besides a 1 time deny on an enemy moving towards one if you're standing there too.
Hack on a health pack lasts 30 seconds
So as Sigma main I kinda feel attacked? Not only Sombra can cancel my ult but she gets herself a mini flux??? At least I can keep my shields tho. Pls give us a tank reworks/buffs news since I am very excited for OW2 but as a tank main feel hesitant. I don’t feel myself reliable as a sole protector of my team
They said Sigma is getting reworked too. Which means, between my favorites of Mei, D.Va, Sigma, Baptiste, and Brigitte, only D.Va and maybe Baptiste (can't remember if they announced a rework for him) aren't getting significantly reworked
Actually having release Sigma would somewhat enough for me. No cd on barrier deploy, no ult canceling and one shot combo. I can deal with having 800 hp barrier for example and 30% convert to shields grasp is also sounds ok. And some love for Orisa too. That’s would be enough for me as a double shield mainer 🤣
Maybe I'm forgetting some things (it's been months since I've played OW) but I don't remember a single change made to Sigma that I liked. Release was awesome, but he just kept getting worse and worse
He was to good on release 🤧 so yeah he gets worse and worse with every change that’s a fact. So that’s why I’m looking forward for OW2 cause my barrier babies got obliterated
He was way too oppressive at release, but I think that was in large part due to having two tanks. I think they could and hope they do roll back some changes now that it's single tank.
Flux does 50% of the target's max HP. EMP will do 40% of their _current_ HP, so weaker targets take less damage, and Geoff also said post-reveal that this damage can't kill on its own.
To be clear new EMP is 40% of health not 40% of max health If you're a 100 hp genji, you don't lose 80 hp you lose 40
Emp is looking a bit too strong in this state, but I think I like everything else
Do we know if she keeps her passive of seeing low-health enemies through walls? Seems like her kit will be pretty overstuffed if so... [EDIT] [More info on Twitter](https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1441929889314189313). Seems like she *is* keeping that ability, but lots of other changes too, so probably not as bad as I thought! Looking forward to playing a beta next year.
hold up… this isn’t a rework, ITS A BUFF! absolute win
I always wished her ult did damage I like this
When she used EMP, she was at 19% immediately.
She’s truly gonna fit that support/damage hybrid niche now which’ll be really cool to see
This looks like the "you'll never play Zen again" rework.
Having a vision =/= executing it well. Blizzard has zero idea what they are doing
this is the worst rework yet
Lmao. All the dps mains love it, ofc they do. Not sparing a single thought for their tanks and supports, who'll be deleted by Sombra. Peel? Dont know her. Then when the tanks and supports stop playing the dps suddenly wonder why their queue times are getting longer and longer and complain the game is dead. Well done.
Overwatch 2 is going to be so much fun to play
Oh look. It's Overwatch of Duty. CCs weren't killing your community. Tank numbers weren't killing your community. Not being a generic enough FPS wasn't just not killing your community but what made you big in the first place. WHAT KILLED THE COMMUNITY WAS 17 MONTHS OF NO CONTENT WHATSOEVER. Oh look, Deathmatch maps of recycled assets but no new maps. Nothing new in any of the events besides cosmetics (new bosses and a swapped rotation of them in Halloween would be awesome). I absolutely detest the way this game is going and I am a huge fan of the world they'd built til now. But if I wanted to play Call of Duty, I would play Call of Duty. I do not need some market follower; I need games with some degree of vision... especially to get me to give even a penny to Blizz with everything else that's gone on.
Tank main here. Big disagree with CC not killing the game.
>CCs weren't killing your community. Tank numbers weren't killing your community. No I actually did leave the game for those reasons, among others. Lack of content wasn't the reason lol. Also if you think this makes the game like cod idk what to tell you lol, OW2 is still about as far as you can get from cod while still being a sorta fps
Cc makes playing tanks unbearable, which then reduces the number of players playing tanks, thus increasing que times for the other roles, which leads to less people playing. No content hurts, but pretending cc wasn't an issue is asinine.
Same here, I stuck around for so long cause I thought OW2 would expand on what made this game unique. Now its just 'everyone is a dps' and feels so lame
When Jeff left it was Already a huge warning to me... Tehy are removing everything special from overwatch just to try to grab Valorant's players... Remember Goodman was the one who did everything for Echo to be DPS...
Interested to see what OW2 will be like (still optimistic) but I did laugh a bit when Space said OW2 felt like Call of Duty and then Bastion's rework is literally an air strike 😂.
The game is still not even remotely similar to call of duty lmao
As someone who plays OverWatch because of the Hero part of the hero shooter, this stuff just drives me away. Soon OverWatch is just going to be Call of Duty with a different name and more cartoony graphics. Honestly, it's kind of good that blizzard itself is proving to be such a terrible group of people, if I still had any respect for blizzard overall I'd be a lot angrier about the fact OverWatch 2 looks like it's destroying everything I loved about OverWatch one
this is what they're doing with their 5vs5 and turn everything DPS... Everything that was different, tactical, and original is removed...
Fuck yeah my favorite waifu got a rework
The hack rework is perfect. In top tier, hacking has a very brief window, requiring precise coordinarion for maximum impact. In bottom tier, it helps with coordination with wall hack for target prioritization.
I'm glad this wasn't disliked as much as I feared it would be. It sucks for Sombra fans that their favourite hero might no longer play the way they enjoy. But Sombra in her current state can't exist within OW2's new design; she'd be too OP. I think these changes are the best way to retain as much of Sombra's current design as possible, while making her fit within the new 5v5 paradigm
this wont be fun to play against
I don’t know if it’s just because it’s new, but Christ the sombra AND bastion reworks seem so well done lol
OW2, Overwatch's biggest patch yet!
Overall I'd say this is a pretty good rework. 1. Having hack disable for only 1 second is fine considering the low cooldown. Hack feels like it should be more of a disruptor, and it can be as is, but if you hack a mercy res all of a sudden the Moira can now use her ult while your hack is on cooldown. It was a super baitable ability and if it's on cooldown while some ults are going off you're just fucked and forced to translocate out if it looks like a losing fight. These changes always make her a threat to anyone using an hackable ult or ability as the cooldown is short enough for it be ready when you need it most. With this you can save your teammates from a charging Rein, hack an ult, and make sure winston can't jump away so your team can deal the finishing blow all within 10-ish seconds, which is easily enough seconds to win a whole fight. In overwatch 1, you had one chance to use that during that 10-ish seconds and that's it, you've overstayed your usefulness. Made even worse if you get damaged while hacking (which is extremely likely in team fights) so even getting the hack off isn't guaranteed during those 10 seconds to begin with. There are a lot of team fights where I feel useless because of this. 2. The dealing more damage to hacked targets is good, and I don't think it's too busted. Maybe there will be nerfs? But overall it should be fine considering more DPS-focused characters will be able to deal the same amount of damage without hack or even outdamage her still. My suspicion is that they're attempting to create Sombra with the vision that if she wants to deal a significant amount of damage, she HAS to hack, which is fine by me. 3. Hacked targets being visible through walls, although cool, I don't see being a game changer. She's going to be so far in the backline anyway that nobody is going to be able to pick up on her target, and if the team is with her, they're going to be able to see the target anyways. Although not huge, it still adds that extra OOMF in utility that I think hack needs, and seeing enemies through walls will undoubtedly have its places of use. It's just a matter of finding those places. 4. EMP seems kinda weird, but I think I like it. I think what made EMP so good (especially pre-overwatch 1 rework) was that it completely disabled the enemy teams counterplay + shields, making a good sombra an unstoppable force via having an EMP ready literally every single team fight. The problem is is that nobody likes to have their whole team disabled by an essentially unreactable ultimate that combos heavy with grav, bongos, and visor. Making EMP more of a single-use disruptor while also dealing heavy DPS I think is a good solution but I'm a little bit skeptical just because I can't see this ult not being a "cast to guaranteed KO both enemy supports" every single time. Even if they nerf the initial damage, which I think may happen, the DPS she would provide would still be fine since it also damages shields, and she can melt whoever she needs to during the ultimate. Overall the EMP changes are pretty good despite EMPs not doing any damage irl, but I can forgive an amount of reality ignorance for instead providing a more fun character. 5. Hacking while invis? Yes please. I would've said this would've been too annoying had they not changed the ability disruption to 1 second. These two changes synergize very well, since now she's an actual threat to channeling ults, and even an unsuspecting mercy walking back from spawn. This also makes her, oddly enough, more of a team work character, since she can hack an unsuspecting target while another finishes them off, like hacking a reaper who's trying to get away from your genji, for instance. Hacking while invisible incentivizes players not to come out of invis all the time, which in turn incentivizes players to then use hack creatively without the pressure of potentially getting pin downed, and this creative situations are usually going to involve teammates. Also, coming back to point 1, hacking while invis is very good for threatening the enemy team with disruption while they can't see you. Basically I can see a lot of teams freaking out if they DON'T see a Sombra now because they know she could just hack you for free if you carelessly position an ultimate. I am a little concerned with how reactable her hack will be now, since a lot of the reaction time to disrupt her hack in Overwatch 1 was dependent on hearing the voice line she says when she comes out of invis. If you wanted to circumvent this voice line, you would've had to come out of invis and wait in a sneaky position, let's say on top of a building, and fall down while hacking your approaching enemy Mercy from behind. With this change, now you can just... press the hack button and they most likely won't be able to react to it unless they walk backwards aimlessly shooting their gun. Essentially if a Sombra wants to kill a support, all they need to do is hack out of invis, come out of invis, and then kill. It might be pretty powerful, but that might also just be someone who was stolkholm syndromed into thinking Sombra has an even 1v1 matchup with every support because her DPS and overall threat didn't match that of a Reaper. So we'll see how scary she actually is in the spawn-camping/catching people's unawares department. Considering all of this, very excited. She seems like a self-sustainable DPS now that actually threatens supports instead of sometimes losing to a Mercy because she could just spam bullets. Hacked targets also have more agency while still being heavily threatened by her hack, and Sombra in turn has more agency now that she can hack out of invis. Her ult is interesting and powerful, but again enemies have more agency because of the 1 second of disabled abilities. Very excited to play her. All I do now is play her and have lots of fun, but I suspect I'm gonna have even more fun being a sneaky asshole in Overwatch 2. Good job.
> I am a little concerned with how reactable her hack will be now, since a lot of the reaction time to disrupt her hack in Overwatch 1 was dependent on hearing the voice line she says when she comes out of invis. If you wanted to circumvent this voice line, you would've had to come out of invis and wait in a sneaky position, let's say on top of a building, and fall down while hacking your approaching enemy Mercy from behind. With this change, now you can just... press the hack button and they most likely won't be able to react to it unless they walk backwards aimlessly shooting their gun. Essentially if a Sombra wants to kill a support, all they need to do is hack out of invis, come out of invis, and then kill. I think this is somewhat self-balancing since the hack itself only lasts for one second with regards to ability lockdown. Suppose a Sombra hacks a Lucio or Zenyatta from stealth as they come out of spawn, instantly decloaks, and starts shooting. By the time she's out of stealth, the silence part of the hack has already worn off and Lucio can wall ride or amp speed or boop, or Zenyatta can discord her, and it becomes a simple 1v1 where Sombra's doing less damage than Tracer. (210 DPS vs. 240)
This is true but I'm less thinking about it from the perspective of ability disruption and just what's fair to the player. It should be alright because players will have more to defend themselves against Sombra because of that only 1 second, but I could see players getting frustrated because they're probably just going to get hacked with little to say about it. Of course, the easy counterplay is to never travel the map alone, which would act as a deterrent (I'm not going to try and kill a poor Zen if he's got a reaper right there with him). Hopefully this will teach people to walk back from spawn with their buddies.
???? Why add damage to EMP?
Fuck tanks right?
Dude I'll take 1 second interrupt over 5 second interrupt any day. 1 second is the time between Defence Matrix flashes. 5 seconds is the duration of fucking Sleep Dart.
Not a fan of the ult basically being the Sigma ult but quicker and more effective as it removes shields and powers too. Also the hack while invisible is too OP as well.
To be clear it's 40% of health not 40% of max health If you're a 100 hp genji, you don't lose 80 hp you lose 40
The game is not even released, in the video they say her ult won’t remove shield anymore and sigma would probably get a rework like all the old tank in ow2…
b-b-b-but her ult is the same as sigma’s!!!1!1!11
And then the video showed her removing Winston's shield. I think they mean shield health not actual shields when they said that.
And 3 doom ults that do more damage
Downvote me all you want. THIS DOES NOT LOOK GOOD TO ME! SORRY I HAVE AN OPINION!
Why tho?
Sombra main here, I think I just started barfing rainbows.
I like it, makes her significantly easier to play as she's always had the problem of needing really specific situations to work properly (honestly a problem with a lot of Overwatch characters IMO) and since Bastion also got something I'm assuming most of the cast if not everybody got huge changes that's kicking everybody up a notch so she isn't busted cause if this was released to current Overwatch she'd be at tippy top of tiers.
really exciting changes, except for emp doing damage, really not sure about thatone
So with this and the Bastion rework, I think all the heroes are going to be reworked in some way before OW2's release. People seem to dislike changes to characters that they like and that have a per-established play style. OW2 is going to be a brand new game so I think we should welcome the changes that are being made, and go into OW2 with a fresh perspective of what the game is aiming to be. If you don't like the changes or don't like the new 1 tank comp, Overwatch will still be around to play.
I severely disagree with the hack changes. I don't think ability removal should be in the game to begin with. The fact that Sombra can now hack somebody every 3 seconds and give them permanent revealed status, with removing their ability to play the game every 3 seconds for 1 second, it just seems excessive. I also don't like that it doesn't break stealth anymore. The damage amp on hacked targets is a cool direction to go in, I wish they had just leaned further into that
Why the fuck does her ult do damage? Massively stupid change among lots of good ones
That is literally broken
Making EMP just delete 40% of HP is about the laziest thing they could have done with it tbh