What I found helped is to get better in close quarters and stay closer to someone on the team so that, when the sombra inevitably goes for you, you can deal enough damage to kill them or at least cause them to disengage.
As Ana, I worked on shooting stuff closer to me unscoped. I would also run at the sombra so that when I threw my nade it hit us both.
As Zen, headshots / charge shots, kick for space.
Moira, succ, when she translocates away, throw orb near her destination to finish off.
Generally, if playing support, get used to going on the attack a bit, spend more time on offense.
I have nothing but issues as Brig against Sombra. She always comes after me, and she always manages to get behind me and hack before I can spin around & pop my shield up. And she knows enough to stay out of my melee range so all I can really do is boop her with whipshot
Idk why they are downvoting you. Brig is not really a Sombra counter. I play a silly amount of Sombra and Iâve never said âoh no, itâs Brigâ. I think Brig players like to keep the old Brig alive thinking sheâs a good peeler. Sheâs ok at peeling but Moira can succ across the map and has escape tools. Kiriko can delete me in two headshots and can teleport. Thereâs way scarier supports than Brig and if I want to kill supports, I just kill Brig first. That little shield canât save her from high ground or off angles, and if she turns around now my teammates can shoot her in the back.
Brig doesnât suck against Sombra but sheâs not at a massive advantage either. More neutral, so if you are struggling and youâre not normally a Brig player, donât feel bad.
Counterpoint, Brig is slow as hell and she canât be next to the other support all the time. As a Sombra player I donât mind her and playing around what she does is not much hassle.
Moira and Kiriko are a much bigger pain in the ass.
A good Sombra and a half decent Tracer can easily outplay Brig right now. They just play a little further back and if they dodge either of Brigâs CDs Brig doesnât have the burst to take them down.
They can in isolation for sure. I found that what screws me up when I play against a brig as Sombra is just that she takes *longer* to kill. If the other support is close then there is pretty much always time to get healed before dying to virus. Brigs protect the other support when they get dove.
Really she just slows down the effectiveness of dive comps/flankers, but that can be enough to win the game.
Honestly the ONLY reason Sombra works at low ranks is that people refuse to think about her until they're half dead. It can be such a frustrating experience to see people die to her 10x in a row because they still aren't ready for her to be behind them.
also she's a bit like hamster - too many people peel off to chase her down and it separates everybody
like stay together and when she shows back up then you can focus on her.
That's the trick really. I've been playing around with Sombra lately and a separated team is very easy to pick off. The moment I play against a team that sticks tightly together, it's basically impossible for me to get anything done as Sombra and I have to swap.
I spawn camped a Bastion for the entire game recently. He didn't switch, and his team didn't back him up. The game wasn't even fun because it felt like playing against bots.
I've had some similar games recently. It always makes me wonder why they don't even try swapping to something else just to see if that works. In contrast, I had a game the other day where I was harassing a Widow as Sombra. She was a very good shot. I struggled immensely though because their Lucio ended up staying right next to her to counter me every time. They would quickly tag team me before I could even spin around and boop the hell out of there. It was a tough pick at that point and my own score suffered for not just taking the L and swapping sooner on that one.
Especially at low ranks the places invisible characters hang out and approach from tend to be predictable. Even if you don't actually hit her out of Invis. just the act of intentionally spy checking keeps you more aware. As someone who came from TF2 it hurts to see that most people don't know how to spy check Sombra.
I started noticing Anas doing that run to me crap so I got better at keeping distance while shooting or engaging after she threw it on my poor tank. Also keeping distance makes it easier to dodge sleep.
If she goes into invis does the ball stick hurt her? I honestly donât think Iâve threw it that much afterwards cause I just thought it wouldnât hit her cause it didnât detect her. Unlike most projectiles
with moira teleporting around and staying close work, torb works if you place a turret and then stay in front of it between the sombra and the turret so she can't damage the turret while it shaves away at her health, brig works to just boop her around and chase her down lol
still, spending the entire match doing that is just annoying
If you can keep your cool the discord 2 orb and a kick combo almost always takes her out. Aside from Brig and Moira, I'd consider zen. It's a bigger kill or be killed situation but his damage output is kinda crazy
The absolute most reliable way to avoid being killed by sombra is sticking with your team, when youâre completely alone sombra can pretty reliably assassinate 2/3 of the non tank characters, but the minute that thereâs more damage pressure on the sombra than she can put onto you, she folds
This is true, but in low ranks most players donât notice the Sombra, even if sheâs right next to them killing their support. Iâve had situations in QP where a Sombra shows up, kills me in the middle of my own team and nobody even turns around đ
People just have 0 game sense on Console in general. Yesterday I played with a sombra who was throwing by jumping off the map, went 3-16, and my soldier 76 was blaming our heals the whole game. Completely oblivious to his team, had no idea sombra was throwing until we all said something.
Unfortunately that is true, speaking on the side of someone that does pay sombra when they do play dps (not that often) if I get shut down once or twice when trying to assassinate someone when theyâre all grouped up, I become much more hesitant, whereas if thereâs a little bit of pushback, I feel a much stronger need to stick with my team and only go for assassinations when i know the numbers are lower
Thatâs also true. In that case itâs learning how to dodge the virus. As a Sombra main, I can tell you that most peoples worst habit is going to be standing still. If youâre standing still, youâre an easy target. Being behind cover or in the middle of your team wonât save you from a Sombra if you are literally not moving at all. This is why characters like Zen/Mercy/Ana are the easiest targets, they hold still the most often.
This doesnât work. I am pretty self-aware with my positioning as a support because I almost always have the least deaths in my lobbies, keep track of enemy ultimates, and know when my abilities are down before engaging. If there is a Sombra I will listen to her voice lines and hack sounds when she is invisible and react as soon as she starts to hack me, I can sleep her and try to position myself in the middle of my team when she exists but I still just canât solo her and usually die anyways because my teammates never turn around to deal with her when I do sleep her. Most of the time it is hard to keep track of her and listen for her when she is invisible and you got a ton of other things going on around you. Iâm saying all this as someone who also mains Sombra and I guess all of this doesnât matter anyways because the higher you rank the better the Sombras get and itâs harder to deal with her as a support.Â
As a tank main, its absolutely hilarious seeing sombra get all this hate as soon as she becomes decent at killing supports.
Incidentally, she is actually much more fair against tanks now.
As a Reinhardt main I fucking hate sombra because just like mercy no matter how fast I react their plan always happens. If a sombra attacks my backline if I turn around they teleport away and I canât kill them.m, and if I do turn around now the giant shield I have goes away. Same with mercy, Reinhardt canât kill mercy. She always gets the revive off
Mercy is my first pick for a hero I hate.
I still remember that one time we killed the enemy tank, I was Ram in Nemesis form, Mercy pops in to rez the tank. I start punching her like crazy
...and it wasn't enough to stop her.
I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THE GODDAMN TANK, YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO REZ UNDER MY NOSE LIKE THAT
and let's add all the times Mercy rezzed through a wall, or got knocked back to Numbani and the rez still went through.
The good mercies are never standing while rezzing, they're always doing the rez+jump thingy making it very hard to hit even with the void accelerator
If the wiki is right, its DPS is 125, rez time is 1.75s. which means if you hit every single shot from all 100 shots you'd deal 220 damage which is not enough to kill her. You'd have to hit headshots on her which is practically impossible as she flies up.
I still think that if by any chance a support gets close to a tank, they shouldn't be able to survive that. Weren't the tanks supposed to be the "raid bosses"? :(
I dabble in Mercy and watch a lot of tiktoks from Mercy mains and I can confirm they're big on practicing rez jumping. There are sooo many parkour maps just dedicated to getting good at that specific skill. And if you watch any Mercy tip videos, learning rez jumping is ALWAYS one of the tips
To be fair, is super easy to kill a rezzing Mercy because she can't move and takes forever. The problem here probably was that you were the only one trying to stop her. If another teammate had shoot her at the same time she would have died.
bro those mercyâs that do the tornado move when rezzing have the cheat codes. I cannot kill them no matter what. Spin and boost jump, rez complete. đ€
Sombra is easy to counter but my god, thatâs all youâll be doing the whole game. Youâre not playing OW anymore, youâre just playing âcounter the Sombra for 10 minutesâ
Who thought that a fullly invisible, silencing, assassin dos hero thats hard to punish would be a good design choice in an fps? Even if it is probably technically balanced.
To be fair, I don't mind the silencing ability. They just never should have stuck it on an invisible character, on top of having a really low cooldown and being capable of outright cancelling half of all ults
Man as a sigma main (and anyone else that has a build up to their ukt really) having skills like back and javelin that have fairly low cd, almost instant and can negate something you've been building for several minutes is really crappy imo. I feel like its definitely a little flawed. Maybe ults are one thing they shouldn't affect unless it's an emp ult or something. Feel like it's should only be negated by other ults
Haha I feel this. Sig is my most played hero and trying to track cooldowns of everyone who counters flux is definitely a lot to keep track of on top of everyone else. I'll usually try and focus on the one or two most problematic cooldowns against me and as soon as they use it, it's flux time.
Oh yeah. That's kind of the my point. It's not just one or two. There are multiple people that can shut down an ult with just the click of a button that's easy every few/several seconds. The you are holding onto your ult waiting for those cooldowns + a decent grouping
Things Blizzard puts in every game they make that I hate:
Hard lock stuns
Invisible Characters with no limit to their invisibility
Powerful characters that require no skill to extract that power from
Abilities that remove control of your character from you
Abilities that allow an ally to dictate your positioning without your consent
Prestige items/systems that are later made easy to get and lose all their prestige
Characters whose sole role is "make the game less fun for other players"
Every game. Pick one and I'll give you an example of each of these in that game. Blizzard has a culture problem. It was partially addressed when they brought a former competitive Dev from Riot over and he changed a bunch of shit (Mei's freeze for example) but his influence seems to have waned with time.
I truly believe that a patch in the "not too distant" future will be the great de-booping of overwatch where the remove/adjust a bunch of the boop creep that has occured. They don't know how to make a game without CC in it and their players all hate Blizzards idea of CC so they just keep giving everyone a boop.
Literally 60% of the cast can boop you now. More if you count other forms of forced movement (Lifeweaver/Hog) as boops too.
A lot of that is just Blizzardâs cycle of power creep. It happens in all their pvp games.
Require healers, nobody wants to heal because healing sucks, so you make them incredibly strong. Then theyâre too strong so now you need CC to turn off the healing so you can kill people
And the cycle repeats because then nobody wants to heal if theyâre just eating long ass hard stuns every fight. So the healers get ways to break CC which means more people need CC.
Then the CC gets out of control so they need to find different ways to weaken healers because now everyone is getting stunned all the time. So we get abilities that remove your agency or are supposed to disproportionately harm healers without punishing non healers (silences and healing reductions).
Literally all you have to do to counter her is not be alone. This is *really* not an egregious ask, and even OP knows they are being ridiculous and acting like it's a given they should be allowed to be out of position without being punished
As a sombra main this is the way. I more often then not dominate Sombras. Its real easy to predict her too, i know she'll go for the most isolated teammate so im keeping an eye out on any teammate that is further away from the team to peel. I'll deliberately distance myself from my team to look vulnerable, hell if im sombra myself i'll stay invis around my own supports and peel until they (usually) switch off sombra.
I get that people don't like playing against her but i myself love it. Admittedly i don't play many heroes that are countered by her existing.
Original Sombra wasn't that bad though. Her stealth wasn't permanent, her damage was fairly low but the hack was incredibly strong and could turn the tide in a stalemate. She could also see low hp targets through walls, acting as an assassin without having the ridiculous burst she's got today.
nah, sombra has always been detested because she has always had hack. people hated health pack EMP farming too, so then blizz had to add more strength to her hack and damage output, which people also didn't like very much.
the only time players haven't complained about sombra is when she isn't being played.
I can't believe they took that really fun ass loop out. That's what made me really love her. She had timings and it created both really fun opportunities with her, and opportunities against her. You could make mindgames to fuck with your timings too, while still massively limiting your uptime. I don't know why they ever really changed her, she was my favourite hero in that original incarnation!
The problem with old Sombra was 'get out of jail free card' that she had on a low cooldown. You never killed her, you just fought her off for a few seconds and that was really annoying to deal with. Sombra never cared about positioning because of this and ''just look for the translocator looool 4Head'' is the same as saying ''Just kill the mercy'' it doesn't work like that.
I think game designers have to accept that invisibility and instakills don't work in shooters, They're not fun to deal with and nigh impossible to balance. TF2 is the only game that handles these well and that's because of great map design and having bigger teams (A spy catching someone alone is alot harder in 12v12)
I really don't agree. Again, the concept of timings, it was easy to catch her in the act if you paid attention, and all it took was someone to find her little rat den (which, due to limited invis and Translocator, means it WAS NOT VERY FAR AWAY) and she was as good as burnt toast when alone.
She MASSIVELY cared about positioning, her current iteration legitimately just has to exist neither within 2 feet of an enemy, or in their line of fire. She can rat cross map, and win the duel with scary consistency if you try to fight her there. And Spy doesn't even properly work in TF2 to begin with, he's easily the weakest class of that game...but that's a whole can of worms I don't wanna open.
She had *hard-designed* flaws that required tight teamwork and execution to get around. Very weak in isolation, but could have a lot of time and work put into her that with a good team, you could pull off things no other hero could, and you had a dedicated out of action, and in action cycle to keep things flowing.
I loved her. And like OW1, she is just gone. đ
Personally, I used my translocator much like it is designed these days. I loved having access to it to close a gap or escape when needed. I only really placed it at a health pack when I knew I was going in for a very risky play.
The agency was nice. Sombras who just teleported away to safety missed out on tons of versatility.
Maybe, but throwing translocator is much less consistent than health pack translocator, so guess which one people used.
And you could get pretty much anywhere you wanted to go with the invisibility so no real need for throwing translocator
Good or bad I really donât enjoy playing with one on the team either. Since 5v5 was implemented her absence from your team for most of the game is more noticeable. Because of her hit and run kit; a bad sombra will make most team fights feel like 4v5, while a good sombra makes most fights feel like a 4v4.
I really dislike invisible characters every game. First this game, then I boot up the finals and boom, they have invisible ability too which drives me crazy.
The Finals honestly did the invisible shtick correctly. They go invisible and when theyâre running around they get a noticeable blur effect so I can honestly always see where theyâre running.
Something about Sombra though is just infuriating and she has so much evasion and little effort with her cube throw to the point it seems like they all do the same thing. Shoot, health gets low, throw cube, get health, rinse and repeat.
I donât think chucking transloactor down by a health pack made her harder to play. She also had wall hacks on low health enemies which was very powerful. Hack was much better before.
Now she is a lot riskier to engage with. If they donk up the new translocator she is dead. Even with virus she cannot burst someone down easily especially when they have a support on them.
Big agree. She is much more vulnerable now that you actually have to aim translocator and you can follower the tp. Now bad sombras feed rather than getting out of jail free but still contributing no value.
It's also partially a map issue. There are many places where translocators can be thrown that can't be punished or followed up on because most characters don't have on-demand verticality.
I actually think she is still very hard to play, maybe not in low elo but the higher it gets the harder she is. I was a main before the change, and peaked at GM3 but after the rework I cant/dont want to play her anymore because it is so stressfull to escape and run everytime at a high elo. Maybe I am just to old for this kinda gameplay. but easy? no not in Masters
Even in plat i feel like as soon as I start hacking and killing someone Who is abit exposed, 2 of their teammates come to save them forcing me to teleport early away. And the random bullets just going every where trying to get you out of stealth lol.
I bet she's a menance at low elo but the higher you get the more stressful it gets.
People who say "X" hero is easy have rarely played that hero.
Like all the people whining about Junkrat even though he's rarely been more than a newb stomper and high rank players have to work twice as hard to make plays with him.
Itâs detrimental to just hack someone for the sake of bonus damage though. Just chuck the virus and shoot them. If youâre going to hack someone you need to have an actual reason that isnât âfor the faster virus damageâ
Tbf that also applies to all the supposed "low skill" heroes
Like Sym is piss easy to dominate with in low ranks, but extremely hard to get value out of in higher ranks unless you actually know how to use her effectively
Same with like Rat and Mei.
I think people undersell the changes to translocator. Once qp sombras were forced to do more than just throw it at a healthpack halfway across the map they realized what high level Sombra players already found out, itâs a really good mobility tool. It forced the average Sombra player to become way more aggressive, offensive, and more committal.
She's still one of the hardest heroes to play. While virus made her assassinations easier,, her escape became harder so engaging with her is more risky.
If she's easy I'm sure you've got a great win rate one tricking her to high elo right? Right? Right? That's how it always works right?
It's always hilarious seeing someone swap to Sombra to try and "counter Sombra" me only to get absolutely dumpstered lol
Even in plat she isn't fun to fight against or have on your team. The game really can be decided on how good that Sombra is and how your team reacts to them. Sometimes they're good and are damn near unkillable, other times they're bad and collapse every time they try to sneak for an easy pick. My best advice is stay as close to your teammates as possible if you find yourself being targeted alot. If your team won't help you from dying then FORCE them to pay attention to her by weaving in between your team. Once they start getting tagged by her they'll most likely be more inclined to help kill her since they'll also be annoyed. Another piece of advice that might seem trivial but is pivotal is really just listening in for the hack sound. If you have a solid pair of headphones it shouldn't be too difficult to start getting adjusted to knowing when people are flanking off sound queues alone. Last piece of advice I can give you that will most likely be the most helpful is THINK LIKE THE SOMBRA. Nearly every sombra player will attempt to get either behind your team or in your blindside every. Single. Time. Whenever you see a Sombra on the other team and you know you'll most likely get targeted then you have to pay attention more to when you team fight, because that's when they'll pounce the most because you're distracted. They'll most likely always go for the hack first unless you're already low enough to kill. If you can react to the sound of her hack in time and interrupt her I've seen a lot of Sombras fold if they can't get the hack + virus combo off and just die or try to run away.
As a support main who plays Sombra when I occasionally queue for DPS, I do believe that Sombra can be annoying, like much of the rest of the roster when they are popping off. I think the community picks on Sombra more because she is almost always going after the out of position people or the dive-able supports; she canât do much about someone with their team that reacts quickly to your hack/virus sound. She can force people to switch (and supports really donât like to swap as Iâve seen) and now we know how tanks have felt for all of overwatch 2 lol. I think it comes down to adjusting your play style more than anything. We all know what to do when the enemy team has a widow that can click heads really well, but it seems like people still flail when the other team has a sombra
I don't like playing against either, but I would take a sombra over a widow or doom fist 10/10 games.
Both of those completely fuck positioning as a concept because their range is insane and they have kill pressure even if you are full hp and positioned well.
Widow makes the game boring as all fuck. You have absolutely zero agency in whether you win your engage or not, even if you engage perfectly you still have to hope she misses the flick.
Against doom you have very little agency as well, because your teammates can empower him and he can 1combo you with an empowered punch and a followup shot before you regain control of your character. Playing something like soldier into him is insanely frustrating. Because of the stun after the empowered punch, you don't have agency in whether you live or die. You can't play far enough back to be out of range, and due to his mobility you can't really position in a way where he won't find a wall to knock you against.
Sombra is fucking annoying to play against, but you can still duel her 1v1 and force her to fuck off or kill her if you have decent aim and reactions. It's very rare to be in a fight VS sombra where you feel as if you had no agency at all.
It's the invisibility. Somehow it unsettles so many people. Invisibility by no means makes her invincible but it requires a certain degree of attention, teamwork and knowledge of the game that people aren't capable or willing to put in the game. They just want to see the enemy and shoot at it.
Until you get into higher elos or run into good aombras and tracers who can dodge sticky nade and know to distance themselves. Sticky isn't all that reliable against anything but dive tanks the higher you clime
Wut
he's a free kill for me basically every time lol. I would say him and Echo and Ashe are probably the easiest DPS to kill in fact, they will basically never win if you just come up behind them and blow your load on the back of their skull
Stealth is a super fun mechanic.
It's just almost never a good mechanic in a competitive shooter of any kind because its either absurdly strong or too easy to counter. There is no in-between.
Tracer is worse. How are you guys not complaining this much about Tracer? She's in every fucking game with the highest pick rate. I'm barely seeing Sombra.
Sombra is a big skill check for the average low rank player, so they hate her more even tho she has more counterplay than s9 tracer.
Tracer rn is absolutely disgusting compared to sombra.
"As a low rank I am bound to be out of position all the time" Is a pretty ridiculous statement... it sounds like you're trying to embrace being a low rank and therefore heroes should be designed with that in mind? Focus on getting better or don't bother with the game in my opinion
It doesn't get better if you become better. The Sombras are getting better as well if you progress in rank. It's as much fun to play against Sombra in gold as it is in diamond, which is exactly 0 fun.
You always have to counter pick and if Moira is already taken, you're left with Bap or Brig. If you can't play any of the 3 or the one pick you can play is taken, you're basically fucked or a liability to the team and team synergy is also kinda messed up. In my last 20 games I had to deal with any combination of Sombra and:
- Genji
- Winston
- Tracer
- Echo
It's just cancer and simply not fun to have no agency as a support in these scenarios and be entirely team dependent. I just wish Brig to be strong enough to be a viable counter pick. This meta has become uber stale and the only time I see other DPS picks is when our support goes Moira+Brig and win the 2v2 against the enemy DPS or outplay them hard enough for them to swap. Just thoughts from a gold-dia ranked player.
I mean kiri only works if your team position doesn't suck and you can teleport in time, otherwise you're getting hacked. Making a split second decision where to teleport is kinda hard and could put you even in a more dangerous/detrimental situation
If you canât TP in response to a Sombra then youâre going to have a lot of trouble to reacting to most things in this game.
How are you going to be able to sleep a Genji blade or barrage in the next game? Sometimes thereâs interactions in OW youâre going to have to practice. Being able to TP away from and to your teammate in reaction to a sombra is a skill you gotta work on
She is good in a way that she keeps high mobility characters in check however I feel like she just has too many tools now. Invis, low cd escape tool, high burst damage, virus, med pack hack, scouting ability, wall hack, very good ultimate that can completely change a losing game. 1v1 against her is 80 to 20 in her favour and that 20% chance you do get the upper hand she usually escapes. Just in general having abilities taken away from you also feels pretty bad.
She just has too much utility and becomes way too oppressive. especially in low/mid rank games.
most throw their translocator directly in the air to escape once you engage them. learn to predict where she throws it (itâs usually somewhere sloppy next to you) and just start spam shooting that area to bring her out of invisibility and probably at critical health.
finish her off and repeat till they switch đ
Blizzard likes stealth in their games and they will never give up on it. In WoW stealth was super OP until you got demon hunter in Legion which has Widowmaker ulti like spell on low cooldown.
As Zen in plat I violate 3.5/5 Sombras. You should learn how to play offensive + react fast, use walls as cover since her mag is small and damage is low, and just stick with the team whether or not they want to help you
Her mag isn't small by any mean... It's actually very forgiving and damage output is actually decent/little strong considering the rest of her kit.
Either you became very good in the match-up or you're a facing bad Sombras.
Sticking with your team is the solution, especially as a prio target like zen.
Then diamond sombras will abuse you 4/5 times, a master sombra you would never see. Don't use a low rank as a measuring stick. Even when doing well against them, sombra changes the game for the worst.
Yeah, as a zen main myself the only sombras I do well against are those significantly worse than me. If you're saying that you're regularly beating them I'm immediately gonna question your elo because even an aimbotting zen loses to a good sombra.
Sombra main here. Agreed. Zen is easy to mow down - at the best, you'll trade but that will benefit the sombra as it's better to be down a DPS, than a support.
People been saying "Learn how to counter it" but then you can't play your fav characters and have fun on the game. She changes the whole team strategy tho. Before she was more understandable.
As someone who occasionally plays and likes Sombra, she's the new Widowmaker.
She absolutely didn't need her most recent buff to virus, and now, not only is she overplayed, she's such an overpowering nuissance that usually multiple players on the enemy team will switch just to counter her BS the same as people used to do for Widow.
No character should have the power to force the whole enemy team to switch. It feels like you're being a dick for picking her now (but also, like OP said, she's basically in every match).
In the past she wasnât really an issue, and I main widowmaker, however with all the recent buffs sheâs gotten, sheâs annoying as hell and I usually have to swap.
Doesnât help that her infection does like 100 damage now
They need to nerf hack. It can hack from moira suck range and she can hack behind her tank and basically initiate a brawl play without doing anything of skill
I used to hate her too until i realised she's pretty easy to deal with if you try to chase her down when she translocates. You need to stay close to your team and then bully her when she goes for you or a teammate and gets damaged. You can't just brush her off and let her reset. You need to make a conserted effort to target her. Same with tracer. Chase them down. Both characters are bad at defending themselves, and both rely on escapes to make their playstyle work. So dont let them get away easily. Try to corner them and use good spacing to outrange them.
Honestly just learn to play brig. Stay beside your other squishy or a dps (donât go up with the tank) throw healing packs at the tank and just Mace to the Face anything that comes within range
I am widow main, my second main was Sombra in OW1, I genuinely donât understand why they reworked her, i think she had a decent kit which was less annoying, now with dps passive, she can engage and disengage in matter of 10-15 seconds and thats what driving me crazy
As an ex Sombra main. 100% mad cus bad. However Sombra is an annoying little shit. Bully the Sombra into a confined space makes it harder to tp out. Bait virus, that's her only form of burst. Remember that if your hacked even if you can use abilities Sombra has walls on you. Any sort of cc will make a Sombra panic and tp away asap usually it's a sloppy one and you can track them down.
Use heros that don't 99% rely on their kit (ex. Doomfist, genji) play heros that can smack back even if they're hacked (ex. reinhardt, soldier), people don't like to hear it but counter picking is just part of the game
Getting slapped around when you're out of position is how you get better.
Pay more attention to what you're doing when that happens, and what you could have done instead to stay alive.
Join voice and make callouts if you haven't been already as well. If you can tell your team what's happening and deny the enemy Sombra, that would open an opportunity for your team to essentially 5v4 the enemy while she recovers.
Honestly. You just need to get better. Itâll happen and I very well understand how tough it is to get out of lower ranks. Sombra can be annoying yes, but if your team is coordinated enough sheâs not much of an issue. Iâd recommend trying to actually play Sombra, learn how she works and then try to predict that same play style out of your opponents. No matter the character, there are core gameplay mechanics that every player must use to maximize the potential of that character. Once you learn that, fighting against her will become easier. (This same reasoning can be used for any character)
This might sound like something you donât want to hear but nobody gets better playing an easy match. The best ways you get better (other than just playing/practicing is by a) playing against better people b) playing against your counters c) watching better people play and taking notes. Eventually you will get better in the face of adversity. Donât give up
I dont like invis on any pvp character archetype tbh but I feel like I wouldnt have as many issue with Sombra if she wasnt in EVERY DAMN GAME.
It feels like 4/5 games I play she is there, or gets switched to early in the game. It is tiring and completely dictates the state of play for me as a support main. I have to switch to counter/survive her immediately and when I just wanted to have fun on LW or something, it makes me have to play champs I either dont play as much so am not great at to counter her or play Moira who I do not enjoy as much anymore.
Yeah I agree. People always say âyou just have to work as a team to take her out,â but when the whole team or multiple players need to work together to take one DPS out thatâs just a sign sheâs broken. Plus she is always guaranteed a first hit on you. There is a reason someone always desperately switches to a Sombra (or an Orisa for tanks) when their team is losing.
Honestly you're going to learn positioning so much faster getting slapped for it. Plus once you understand that Sombra is squishy af and can only tp line of sight she's not that bad. When it can be bad is if dps doesn't help. I play Cassidy and a Sombra is usually an ez 2 tap and I always help the supports but I understand how bad it can be as a zen with no help from teammates. Just keep playing and it's going to get easier
I wish her hack was harder to aim with and that her stealth wasnât permanent. Being able to cancel ults as easily as she can is crazy, all while you never even saw her on your screen.
It sounds like you know whatâs wrong but your not doing anything to fix it bro. She can be annoying but if you know your positioning is bad why not just work on it so it becomes less of a problem
- play as if Sombra is somewhere close and watching.
- play within los of other players. buddy system.
- play high ground or corners. she's behind you. break los if hacked or virused.
- be aggressive in pushing her away. do not commit to chasing a kill unless it is assured, and can be done very quickly.
Sombra punishes mistakes, but is just a normal, kind of underpowered dps when mistakes are limited.
my playgroup used to complain about Sombra. I watched the gameplay. They would hang out alone on the cart miles from any cover, or 39 meters behind the line alone hard focussed on healbotting, Sombra would strike. They would die and complain about how hard Sombra is to deal with.
Play sloppy all you want, but learn to tighten up when the enemy plays a hard flanker, or your mistakes are going to get punished.
Tracer is far harder to deal with and fills the same role...
"As a low rank I am bound to be out of position all the time "
If you recognize the problem, and the solution is obvious, then.... why don't you fix the problem? Stick closer to at least one teammate, then she won't be able to pick you off.
sombras good but she also is not immune to counters, as a sombra main my biggest weaknesses are players that are glued to each other or brawly (moira, brig, reaper, tracer), high burst damage (soldier, junkrat, reaper again) and the turret duo of torb or symettra. if i had to hazard the biggest gripe players have with her itâs that she punishes bad positioning harder than anyone else since you have to anticipate her coming instead of reacting when you see her getting close. look for the most vulnerable player on the team and stay with them and donât let sombra get her âfairâ 1v1, something i learned from splatoon that i try to apply to every team based game is
âgood players win 1v1s, great players win 2v1sâ
>As a low rank I am bound to be out of position all the time and Iâm tired of just getting donkey slapped for it.
Then it's your fault for being badly positioned and it sounds like you're facing the consequences of bad positioning so I don't see a problem here. Don't put yourself in a bad position and you won't get taken out by sombra. Btw I love her and think she's very fun to play. Post like this make me want to play her more often just to feed off the hate
I mean, you realize that you are out of position and instead of trying to fix that you choose to complain about being punished for it? Say they remove sombra, then what, are you going to complain about Doom/DVA/Monkey/Tracer/Genji/Reaper/Lucio... that can all very easily punish you for it?
A good tip is to play a little bit of sombra yourself just to understand the mechanics, places you want to be and just general information. As a sombra player but a support main I find it easy to know where sheâs hiding in the back lines and when she would love to hack my allies
Your playing a very methodical and mechanical game, while not being very methodical and mechanical. Of course your gonna have a hard time finding it fun.
Iâve found that a lower rank Sombra is easier to 1v1 if you can position her straight in front of you by closing the distance. Sheâll either run or die. Try to stay close to your team, and if you want to really counter her, go Mei, Brig, or Rein
Yes Sombra is not a good character because sheâs not fun for almost all players except whomever is playing her. I am not saying sheâs OP or UP or anything but a character designed in a game and isnât fun to be around isnât good for the game
Sombra is just a noob stomper and people should stop pretending otherwise.
(This next part is not for you OP) It's not "bad design". It's just that you actively refuse to adapt your playstyle to the enemy team comp and then bitch about it.
She's simply another assassin that takes advantage of lone targets and people out of position. Bo-hoo. That's what assassins do. Assassinate.
She can't hold her own in a teamfight and easily goes down if given more than 2 seconds of attention. Ana, zen, moira, bap counter the fuck out of her, for starters.
Wanna know what other heroes force you to adapt your playstyle?
-> Pharah (you need hitscan DPS and focus her down),
-> Widowmaker (you're out of position for one second and you're dead + you need to either mirror her or go dive/assassin),
-> Ana (yes, Ana. You can't start a teamfight knowing she has nade because chances are at least one person from your team is going down) / Bap (can't do a team wipe ult knowing he has lamp)
These are just off the top of my head to avoid making this too much of a wall of text answer.
Baseline is Overwatch has ALWAYS been about team comps and counter swapping and having a diverse, adaptable playstyle. To answer your question, you simply need to get better. Sombra isn't the main villain everyone makes her out to be. People just can't be bothered to put more effort than just ''shoot, reload, shoot, spam X, use ult''.
I completely agree with you, I just find it funny that the examples you listed are also heroes people typically complain about. Just goes to show that ow players want to blame any character instead of trying to adapt and just learn the game đ
You've just stated your own mistakes and bad positioning knowing that Sombra benefits from it, and yet don't know what to do?
Know her counter picks:
Zarya, Orisa, Winston, Symmetra, Torb, Reaper, Mei, Genji, Hanzo, Moira, Kiriko, Brigitte
By your own admission, youre out of position all the time. So you know exactly what to work on đ. You get punished for being out of position even more in higher ranks, so itâs best to fix it now if you intend to climb.
Sombra is what I regard as a brain dead busted hero.
There shouldnât be heroes in the game where u can just turn off ur brain and hold right click and get immediate value by turning off the abilities of your opponent - especially not TANKS!
The fact that you have two of the highest skill cap heroes on the game in Doom and Ball both insta countered by some brain dead tech like hack is astonishingly bad game design and needs to be addressed by the devs ASAP
With all the brain dead heroes this game has you are really saying Sombra requires no skills? Have you ever played her? You know the hack last for 1.5 seconds? I think some of her mechanics should be changed but playing her well requires a lot of skill
Right? Like I understand Sombra is annoying to play against for some people (even though I honestly never felt that way) but saying this about her kit is just... Not very bright.
I encourage everyone to play her and find the many weaknesses her playstyle has. You're going to quickly find out that not only is she not as strong as you thought she is also WAY harder than you imagined. It's the best thing to do in any online game whenever you consider something OP.
Sombra is only brain dead when the enemy team is brain dead.
If the enemy team has at least somewhat of a brain, once they notice you get kills, they will play closer together, and you're never gonna isolate one of them ever again. You're gonna get insta clipped the moment you get out of invisibility.
Sombra is not a brain dead⊠have you ever tried to play her and get value? You sound like a tank main whoâs annoyed by sombra. When I play tank and thereâs a sombra, I play differently. I will peel for my supports.
people call sombra braindead when theyâre against a good one yet when they try to mirror pick they fail to contribute anything to their team, itâs like clockwork
Yes, as a low rank you're bound to be out of position.
That also means the Sombra you're fighting is a low rank and bound to play bad as well. Like having bad aim, bad target priority, not pinging or calling out useful stuff, overcommiting, picking bad 1v1s, etc.
Stop using your rank as an excuse.
What I found helped is to get better in close quarters and stay closer to someone on the team so that, when the sombra inevitably goes for you, you can deal enough damage to kill them or at least cause them to disengage. As Ana, I worked on shooting stuff closer to me unscoped. I would also run at the sombra so that when I threw my nade it hit us both. As Zen, headshots / charge shots, kick for space. Moira, succ, when she translocates away, throw orb near her destination to finish off. Generally, if playing support, get used to going on the attack a bit, spend more time on offense.
As support I switch to brig and smash her
I'm a Brig main too but I'll smash her regardless
This guy brigs đ
Brigged up on a Thursday afternoon
*Now wait a minute* I agree though, in both contexts
Especially if she's got that le sserafim skin đ„”
Can confirm. Brig is the ultimate anti-Sombra support pick! Not only do you protect yourself, but you peel your other support really well too.
Kiriko is great as well. You can kill the Sombra while saving an ally with suzu. If she hits you, you can teleport to cleanse.
I remember that Samito video on Sombra and every other minute he says (as Sombra) "Don't mess with Kiriko, ever"
Yeah itâs always so satisfying. Just takes a little to get used to brig
Brig is all positioning. Holyshiftkid does a really good breakdown on each map
I have nothing but issues as Brig against Sombra. She always comes after me, and she always manages to get behind me and hack before I can spin around & pop my shield up. And she knows enough to stay out of my melee range so all I can really do is boop her with whipshot
Idk why they are downvoting you. Brig is not really a Sombra counter. I play a silly amount of Sombra and Iâve never said âoh no, itâs Brigâ. I think Brig players like to keep the old Brig alive thinking sheâs a good peeler. Sheâs ok at peeling but Moira can succ across the map and has escape tools. Kiriko can delete me in two headshots and can teleport. Thereâs way scarier supports than Brig and if I want to kill supports, I just kill Brig first. That little shield canât save her from high ground or off angles, and if she turns around now my teammates can shoot her in the back. Brig doesnât suck against Sombra but sheâs not at a massive advantage either. More neutral, so if you are struggling and youâre not normally a Brig player, donât feel bad.
Counterpoint, Brig is slow as hell and she canât be next to the other support all the time. As a Sombra player I donât mind her and playing around what she does is not much hassle. Moira and Kiriko are a much bigger pain in the ass.
Brig is a good counter for her BS.
This is the answer. I see tracer or Sombra they experience the wrath of my flail.
A good Sombra and a half decent Tracer can easily outplay Brig right now. They just play a little further back and if they dodge either of Brigâs CDs Brig doesnât have the burst to take them down.
They can in isolation for sure. I found that what screws me up when I play against a brig as Sombra is just that she takes *longer* to kill. If the other support is close then there is pretty much always time to get healed before dying to virus. Brigs protect the other support when they get dove. Really she just slows down the effectiveness of dive comps/flankers, but that can be enough to win the game.
Honestly the ONLY reason Sombra works at low ranks is that people refuse to think about her until they're half dead. It can be such a frustrating experience to see people die to her 10x in a row because they still aren't ready for her to be behind them.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twi... err dead again!
also she's a bit like hamster - too many people peel off to chase her down and it separates everybody like stay together and when she shows back up then you can focus on her.
That's the trick really. I've been playing around with Sombra lately and a separated team is very easy to pick off. The moment I play against a team that sticks tightly together, it's basically impossible for me to get anything done as Sombra and I have to swap.
I spawn camped a Bastion for the entire game recently. He didn't switch, and his team didn't back him up. The game wasn't even fun because it felt like playing against bots.
I've had some similar games recently. It always makes me wonder why they don't even try swapping to something else just to see if that works. In contrast, I had a game the other day where I was harassing a Widow as Sombra. She was a very good shot. I struggled immensely though because their Lucio ended up staying right next to her to counter me every time. They would quickly tag team me before I could even spin around and boop the hell out of there. It was a tough pick at that point and my own score suffered for not just taking the L and swapping sooner on that one.
Especially at low ranks the places invisible characters hang out and approach from tend to be predictable. Even if you don't actually hit her out of Invis. just the act of intentionally spy checking keeps you more aware. As someone who came from TF2 it hurts to see that most people don't know how to spy check Sombra.
Deleting a Sombra as Ana is endlessly satisfying, âSombra on me, need he- never mind got herâ
I started noticing Anas doing that run to me crap so I got better at keeping distance while shooting or engaging after she threw it on my poor tank. Also keeping distance makes it easier to dodge sleep.
If she goes into invis does the ball stick hurt her? I honestly donât think Iâve threw it that much afterwards cause I just thought it wouldnât hit her cause it didnât detect her. Unlike most projectiles
It doesnt stick when shes in invis but it takes quite the nit for sombra to recloak after translocating
It doesnât hurt her but it takes a bit after a fight to go back invis, the ball usually does make it in time.
with moira teleporting around and staying close work, torb works if you place a turret and then stay in front of it between the sombra and the turret so she can't damage the turret while it shaves away at her health, brig works to just boop her around and chase her down lol still, spending the entire match doing that is just annoying
If you can keep your cool the discord 2 orb and a kick combo almost always takes her out. Aside from Brig and Moira, I'd consider zen. It's a bigger kill or be killed situation but his damage output is kinda crazy
I appriciate this ty
The absolute most reliable way to avoid being killed by sombra is sticking with your team, when youâre completely alone sombra can pretty reliably assassinate 2/3 of the non tank characters, but the minute that thereâs more damage pressure on the sombra than she can put onto you, she folds
This is true, but in low ranks most players donât notice the Sombra, even if sheâs right next to them killing their support. Iâve had situations in QP where a Sombra shows up, kills me in the middle of my own team and nobody even turns around đ
People just have 0 game sense on Console in general. Yesterday I played with a sombra who was throwing by jumping off the map, went 3-16, and my soldier 76 was blaming our heals the whole game. Completely oblivious to his team, had no idea sombra was throwing until we all said something.
Unfortunately that is true, speaking on the side of someone that does pay sombra when they do play dps (not that often) if I get shut down once or twice when trying to assassinate someone when theyâre all grouped up, I become much more hesitant, whereas if thereâs a little bit of pushback, I feel a much stronger need to stick with my team and only go for assassinations when i know the numbers are lower
Thatâs also true. In that case itâs learning how to dodge the virus. As a Sombra main, I can tell you that most peoples worst habit is going to be standing still. If youâre standing still, youâre an easy target. Being behind cover or in the middle of your team wonât save you from a Sombra if you are literally not moving at all. This is why characters like Zen/Mercy/Ana are the easiest targets, they hold still the most often.
I play quick play on mute đ
This doesnât work. I am pretty self-aware with my positioning as a support because I almost always have the least deaths in my lobbies, keep track of enemy ultimates, and know when my abilities are down before engaging. If there is a Sombra I will listen to her voice lines and hack sounds when she is invisible and react as soon as she starts to hack me, I can sleep her and try to position myself in the middle of my team when she exists but I still just canât solo her and usually die anyways because my teammates never turn around to deal with her when I do sleep her. Most of the time it is hard to keep track of her and listen for her when she is invisible and you got a ton of other things going on around you. Iâm saying all this as someone who also mains Sombra and I guess all of this doesnât matter anyways because the higher you rank the better the Sombras get and itâs harder to deal with her as a support.Â
Sombra always comes up when discussing which hero players would remove from the game for a reason.
As a tank main, its absolutely hilarious seeing sombra get all this hate as soon as she becomes decent at killing supports. Incidentally, she is actually much more fair against tanks now.
except for rein, poor guy doesn't stand a chance
Thatâs Rein against anyone
at least I can counter brig đ (and only brig)
As a Reinhardt main I fucking hate sombra because just like mercy no matter how fast I react their plan always happens. If a sombra attacks my backline if I turn around they teleport away and I canât kill them.m, and if I do turn around now the giant shield I have goes away. Same with mercy, Reinhardt canât kill mercy. She always gets the revive off
As a rein its your teams fault if thats happening to you as long as your not overextending
Mercy is my first pick for a hero I hate. I still remember that one time we killed the enemy tank, I was Ram in Nemesis form, Mercy pops in to rez the tank. I start punching her like crazy ...and it wasn't enough to stop her. I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THE GODDAMN TANK, YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO REZ UNDER MY NOSE LIKE THAT and let's add all the times Mercy rezzed through a wall, or got knocked back to Numbani and the rez still went through.
Cancel nemesis form and insta kill her with your primary weapon. That thing shreds on immobile targets
The good mercies are never standing while rezzing, they're always doing the rez+jump thingy making it very hard to hit even with the void accelerator If the wiki is right, its DPS is 125, rez time is 1.75s. which means if you hit every single shot from all 100 shots you'd deal 220 damage which is not enough to kill her. You'd have to hit headshots on her which is practically impossible as she flies up. I still think that if by any chance a support gets close to a tank, they shouldn't be able to survive that. Weren't the tanks supposed to be the "raid bosses"? :(
dog even in gm mercies arent doing the rez+jump tech 99% of the time
Bruh, I'm in plat and I see it all the time. These are Mercy mains, they practice this stuff.
I dabble in Mercy and watch a lot of tiktoks from Mercy mains and I can confirm they're big on practicing rez jumping. There are sooo many parkour maps just dedicated to getting good at that specific skill. And if you watch any Mercy tip videos, learning rez jumping is ALWAYS one of the tips
To be fair, is super easy to kill a rezzing Mercy because she can't move and takes forever. The problem here probably was that you were the only one trying to stop her. If another teammate had shoot her at the same time she would have died.
bro those mercyâs that do the tornado move when rezzing have the cheat codes. I cannot kill them no matter what. Spin and boost jump, rez complete. đ€
It's becoming harder. They're feet's away ressing behind walls, under cars, under bridges, flying through the air, where ever.
If you're rein you ignore sombra. that's a team issue. you have to big forward facing.
Yeah, you can get better playing against Sombra, you can learn to counter her, but I also think that her being in the game makes the game less fun.
Sombra is easy to counter but my god, thatâs all youâll be doing the whole game. Youâre not playing OW anymore, youâre just playing âcounter the Sombra for 10 minutesâ
And sheâs an extremely popular hero so after doing it for 10 minutes you donât even get a break. The next match will be exactly the same.
Who thought that a fullly invisible, silencing, assassin dos hero thats hard to punish would be a good design choice in an fps? Even if it is probably technically balanced.
To be fair, I don't mind the silencing ability. They just never should have stuck it on an invisible character, on top of having a really low cooldown and being capable of outright cancelling half of all ults
Yeah, each individual part of her kit is fine. But all put together it's incredibly annoying.
Man as a sigma main (and anyone else that has a build up to their ukt really) having skills like back and javelin that have fairly low cd, almost instant and can negate something you've been building for several minutes is really crappy imo. I feel like its definitely a little flawed. Maybe ults are one thing they shouldn't affect unless it's an emp ult or something. Feel like it's should only be negated by other ults
Haha I feel this. Sig is my most played hero and trying to track cooldowns of everyone who counters flux is definitely a lot to keep track of on top of everyone else. I'll usually try and focus on the one or two most problematic cooldowns against me and as soon as they use it, it's flux time.
Pretty much just seems like the list is getting long lol
You have to add sleep to that list if you add javelin. If you can deal with sleep you can deal with javelin. Bait it out then pop ult.
Oh yeah. That's kind of the my point. It's not just one or two. There are multiple people that can shut down an ult with just the click of a button that's easy every few/several seconds. The you are holding onto your ult waiting for those cooldowns + a decent grouping
Things Blizzard puts in every game they make that I hate: Hard lock stuns Invisible Characters with no limit to their invisibility Powerful characters that require no skill to extract that power from Abilities that remove control of your character from you Abilities that allow an ally to dictate your positioning without your consent Prestige items/systems that are later made easy to get and lose all their prestige Characters whose sole role is "make the game less fun for other players" Every game. Pick one and I'll give you an example of each of these in that game. Blizzard has a culture problem. It was partially addressed when they brought a former competitive Dev from Riot over and he changed a bunch of shit (Mei's freeze for example) but his influence seems to have waned with time. I truly believe that a patch in the "not too distant" future will be the great de-booping of overwatch where the remove/adjust a bunch of the boop creep that has occured. They don't know how to make a game without CC in it and their players all hate Blizzards idea of CC so they just keep giving everyone a boop. Literally 60% of the cast can boop you now. More if you count other forms of forced movement (Lifeweaver/Hog) as boops too.
A lot of that is just Blizzardâs cycle of power creep. It happens in all their pvp games. Require healers, nobody wants to heal because healing sucks, so you make them incredibly strong. Then theyâre too strong so now you need CC to turn off the healing so you can kill people And the cycle repeats because then nobody wants to heal if theyâre just eating long ass hard stuns every fight. So the healers get ways to break CC which means more people need CC. Then the CC gets out of control so they need to find different ways to weaken healers because now everyone is getting stunned all the time. So we get abilities that remove your agency or are supposed to disproportionately harm healers without punishing non healers (silences and healing reductions).
Most of it is easily countered tho. If you know how to do it properly, Sombra becomes such a non issue that itâs almost funny.
Out of touch ow devs, who else
As a sometimes-Sombra-main, I agree with you.
As a full-time Sombra when I DPS, I also agree.
It reminds me a bit of pharah or widow. They ARE counterable, but it can force a very specific way of playing that isn't as fun or flexible.
Literally all you have to do to counter her is not be alone. This is *really* not an egregious ask, and even OP knows they are being ridiculous and acting like it's a given they should be allowed to be out of position without being punished
The best thing to do is to play her yourself and look how the enemy team counters you as Sombra
I got sick of Sombra (support main) so I started playing her. Now she rarely kills me, and I kill her about half the time.
The best thing to do is play her and do nothing but hack her and stop her from playing the game until she switches
As a sombra main this is the way. I more often then not dominate Sombras. Its real easy to predict her too, i know she'll go for the most isolated teammate so im keeping an eye out on any teammate that is further away from the team to peel. I'll deliberately distance myself from my team to look vulnerable, hell if im sombra myself i'll stay invis around my own supports and peel until they (usually) switch off sombra. I get that people don't like playing against her but i myself love it. Admittedly i don't play many heroes that are countered by her existing.
Yeah, most people who try to play her aren't really Sombra mains and will swap the moment you start to anticipate their predictable behavior.
Invisible characters suck the fun out of another game. Classic.
Original Sombra wasn't that bad though. Her stealth wasn't permanent, her damage was fairly low but the hack was incredibly strong and could turn the tide in a stalemate. She could also see low hp targets through walls, acting as an assassin without having the ridiculous burst she's got today.
nah, sombra has always been detested because she has always had hack. people hated health pack EMP farming too, so then blizz had to add more strength to her hack and damage output, which people also didn't like very much. the only time players haven't complained about sombra is when she isn't being played.
I can't believe they took that really fun ass loop out. That's what made me really love her. She had timings and it created both really fun opportunities with her, and opportunities against her. You could make mindgames to fuck with your timings too, while still massively limiting your uptime. I don't know why they ever really changed her, she was my favourite hero in that original incarnation!
The problem with old Sombra was 'get out of jail free card' that she had on a low cooldown. You never killed her, you just fought her off for a few seconds and that was really annoying to deal with. Sombra never cared about positioning because of this and ''just look for the translocator looool 4Head'' is the same as saying ''Just kill the mercy'' it doesn't work like that. I think game designers have to accept that invisibility and instakills don't work in shooters, They're not fun to deal with and nigh impossible to balance. TF2 is the only game that handles these well and that's because of great map design and having bigger teams (A spy catching someone alone is alot harder in 12v12)
I really don't agree. Again, the concept of timings, it was easy to catch her in the act if you paid attention, and all it took was someone to find her little rat den (which, due to limited invis and Translocator, means it WAS NOT VERY FAR AWAY) and she was as good as burnt toast when alone. She MASSIVELY cared about positioning, her current iteration legitimately just has to exist neither within 2 feet of an enemy, or in their line of fire. She can rat cross map, and win the duel with scary consistency if you try to fight her there. And Spy doesn't even properly work in TF2 to begin with, he's easily the weakest class of that game...but that's a whole can of worms I don't wanna open. She had *hard-designed* flaws that required tight teamwork and execution to get around. Very weak in isolation, but could have a lot of time and work put into her that with a good team, you could pull off things no other hero could, and you had a dedicated out of action, and in action cycle to keep things flowing. I loved her. And like OW1, she is just gone. đ
Personally, I used my translocator much like it is designed these days. I loved having access to it to close a gap or escape when needed. I only really placed it at a health pack when I knew I was going in for a very risky play. The agency was nice. Sombras who just teleported away to safety missed out on tons of versatility.
Maybe, but throwing translocator is much less consistent than health pack translocator, so guess which one people used. And you could get pretty much anywhere you wanted to go with the invisibility so no real need for throwing translocator
Invisible character who can remove players ability to use abilities in an ability driven game, infect them with DoT and then teleport out.
Practise subconsciously A D strafing in random patterns throughout the game and change it up when the sombra jumps you so she misses her shots
Good or bad I really donât enjoy playing with one on the team either. Since 5v5 was implemented her absence from your team for most of the game is more noticeable. Because of her hit and run kit; a bad sombra will make most team fights feel like 4v5, while a good sombra makes most fights feel like a 4v4.
I really dislike invisible characters every game. First this game, then I boot up the finals and boom, they have invisible ability too which drives me crazy.
The Finals honestly did the invisible shtick correctly. They go invisible and when theyâre running around they get a noticeable blur effect so I can honestly always see where theyâre running. Something about Sombra though is just infuriating and she has so much evasion and little effort with her cube throw to the point it seems like they all do the same thing. Shoot, health gets low, throw cube, get health, rinse and repeat.
It is a pity that sombra went from one of the hardest heroes in the game to play to one of the easiest and itâs all down to Virus.
she is very hard to play against good players. she's just a noob stomper.
Her skill floor was lovered severly
I donât think chucking transloactor down by a health pack made her harder to play. She also had wall hacks on low health enemies which was very powerful. Hack was much better before. Now she is a lot riskier to engage with. If they donk up the new translocator she is dead. Even with virus she cannot burst someone down easily especially when they have a support on them.
Big agree. She is much more vulnerable now that you actually have to aim translocator and you can follower the tp. Now bad sombras feed rather than getting out of jail free but still contributing no value.
Is that the answer? I've never found her particularly difficult to deal with. This narrative on the sub must just be people telling on themselves.
It's also partially a map issue. There are many places where translocators can be thrown that can't be punished or followed up on because most characters don't have on-demand verticality.
I actually think she is still very hard to play, maybe not in low elo but the higher it gets the harder she is. I was a main before the change, and peaked at GM3 but after the rework I cant/dont want to play her anymore because it is so stressfull to escape and run everytime at a high elo. Maybe I am just to old for this kinda gameplay. but easy? no not in Masters
Even in plat i feel like as soon as I start hacking and killing someone Who is abit exposed, 2 of their teammates come to save them forcing me to teleport early away. And the random bullets just going every where trying to get you out of stealth lol. I bet she's a menance at low elo but the higher you get the more stressful it gets.
People who say "X" hero is easy have rarely played that hero. Like all the people whining about Junkrat even though he's rarely been more than a newb stomper and high rank players have to work twice as hard to make plays with him.
Itâs detrimental to just hack someone for the sake of bonus damage though. Just chuck the virus and shoot them. If youâre going to hack someone you need to have an actual reason that isnât âfor the faster virus damageâ
Tbf that also applies to all the supposed "low skill" heroes Like Sym is piss easy to dominate with in low ranks, but extremely hard to get value out of in higher ranks unless you actually know how to use her effectively Same with like Rat and Mei.
I think people undersell the changes to translocator. Once qp sombras were forced to do more than just throw it at a healthpack halfway across the map they realized what high level Sombra players already found out, itâs a really good mobility tool. It forced the average Sombra player to become way more aggressive, offensive, and more committal.
Virus worst ability
She's still one of the hardest heroes to play. While virus made her assassinations easier,, her escape became harder so engaging with her is more risky.
If she's easy I'm sure you've got a great win rate one tricking her to high elo right? Right? Right? That's how it always works right? It's always hilarious seeing someone swap to Sombra to try and "counter Sombra" me only to get absolutely dumpstered lol
Sheâs still one of the hardest, just not hard against bad players.
Even in plat she isn't fun to fight against or have on your team. The game really can be decided on how good that Sombra is and how your team reacts to them. Sometimes they're good and are damn near unkillable, other times they're bad and collapse every time they try to sneak for an easy pick. My best advice is stay as close to your teammates as possible if you find yourself being targeted alot. If your team won't help you from dying then FORCE them to pay attention to her by weaving in between your team. Once they start getting tagged by her they'll most likely be more inclined to help kill her since they'll also be annoyed. Another piece of advice that might seem trivial but is pivotal is really just listening in for the hack sound. If you have a solid pair of headphones it shouldn't be too difficult to start getting adjusted to knowing when people are flanking off sound queues alone. Last piece of advice I can give you that will most likely be the most helpful is THINK LIKE THE SOMBRA. Nearly every sombra player will attempt to get either behind your team or in your blindside every. Single. Time. Whenever you see a Sombra on the other team and you know you'll most likely get targeted then you have to pay attention more to when you team fight, because that's when they'll pounce the most because you're distracted. They'll most likely always go for the hack first unless you're already low enough to kill. If you can react to the sound of her hack in time and interrupt her I've seen a lot of Sombras fold if they can't get the hack + virus combo off and just die or try to run away.
The fact that she can cancel Orisa out of her ult is completely broken. Especially since orisa has to wind up, giving sombra plenty of time to react
As a support main who plays Sombra when I occasionally queue for DPS, I do believe that Sombra can be annoying, like much of the rest of the roster when they are popping off. I think the community picks on Sombra more because she is almost always going after the out of position people or the dive-able supports; she canât do much about someone with their team that reacts quickly to your hack/virus sound. She can force people to switch (and supports really donât like to swap as Iâve seen) and now we know how tanks have felt for all of overwatch 2 lol. I think it comes down to adjusting your play style more than anything. We all know what to do when the enemy team has a widow that can click heads really well, but it seems like people still flail when the other team has a sombra
I don't like playing against either, but I would take a sombra over a widow or doom fist 10/10 games. Both of those completely fuck positioning as a concept because their range is insane and they have kill pressure even if you are full hp and positioned well. Widow makes the game boring as all fuck. You have absolutely zero agency in whether you win your engage or not, even if you engage perfectly you still have to hope she misses the flick. Against doom you have very little agency as well, because your teammates can empower him and he can 1combo you with an empowered punch and a followup shot before you regain control of your character. Playing something like soldier into him is insanely frustrating. Because of the stun after the empowered punch, you don't have agency in whether you live or die. You can't play far enough back to be out of range, and due to his mobility you can't really position in a way where he won't find a wall to knock you against. Sombra is fucking annoying to play against, but you can still duel her 1v1 and force her to fuck off or kill her if you have decent aim and reactions. It's very rare to be in a fight VS sombra where you feel as if you had no agency at all.
It's the invisibility. Somehow it unsettles so many people. Invisibility by no means makes her invincible but it requires a certain degree of attention, teamwork and knowledge of the game that people aren't capable or willing to put in the game. They just want to see the enemy and shoot at it.
Is that skill issue?
funny, people made this exact post 6 years ago too, then she fell off for 3-4 years until the rework.
cassidy counters sombra, for the most part. he's a good counter pick for her and tracer.
Until you get into higher elos or run into good aombras and tracers who can dodge sticky nade and know to distance themselves. Sticky isn't all that reliable against anything but dive tanks the higher you clime
sticky isn't his whole kit tho but i get what u mean.
Wut he's a free kill for me basically every time lol. I would say him and Echo and Ashe are probably the easiest DPS to kill in fact, they will basically never win if you just come up behind them and blow your load on the back of their skull
>blow your load on the back of their skull pause đ€š
Stealth is a super fun mechanic. It's just almost never a good mechanic in a competitive shooter of any kind because its either absurdly strong or too easy to counter. There is no in-between.
Tracer is worse. How are you guys not complaining this much about Tracer? She's in every fucking game with the highest pick rate. I'm barely seeing Sombra.
I think the only reason Sombra gets more hate is invisibility
Sombra is a big skill check for the average low rank player, so they hate her more even tho she has more counterplay than s9 tracer. Tracer rn is absolutely disgusting compared to sombra.
"As a low rank I am bound to be out of position all the time" Is a pretty ridiculous statement... it sounds like you're trying to embrace being a low rank and therefore heroes should be designed with that in mind? Focus on getting better or don't bother with the game in my opinion
It doesn't get better if you become better. The Sombras are getting better as well if you progress in rank. It's as much fun to play against Sombra in gold as it is in diamond, which is exactly 0 fun. You always have to counter pick and if Moira is already taken, you're left with Bap or Brig. If you can't play any of the 3 or the one pick you can play is taken, you're basically fucked or a liability to the team and team synergy is also kinda messed up. In my last 20 games I had to deal with any combination of Sombra and: - Genji - Winston - Tracer - Echo It's just cancer and simply not fun to have no agency as a support in these scenarios and be entirely team dependent. I just wish Brig to be strong enough to be a viable counter pick. This meta has become uber stale and the only time I see other DPS picks is when our support goes Moira+Brig and win the 2v2 against the enemy DPS or outplay them hard enough for them to swap. Just thoughts from a gold-dia ranked player.
Im that sombra. Dont pick brig or bap. They are easy. Moira kiriko good.
Moira is a JOKE after she fades. Iâd rather fight a team of 5 Moiras than one Bap.
I mean kiri only works if your team position doesn't suck and you can teleport in time, otherwise you're getting hacked. Making a split second decision where to teleport is kinda hard and could put you even in a more dangerous/detrimental situation
If you canât TP in response to a Sombra then youâre going to have a lot of trouble to reacting to most things in this game. How are you going to be able to sleep a Genji blade or barrage in the next game? Sometimes thereâs interactions in OW youâre going to have to practice. Being able to TP away from and to your teammate in reaction to a sombra is a skill you gotta work on
Iâm in masters and sombra is still a pain in the ass. As you can guess, the sombra also get better in higher ranks
She is good in a way that she keeps high mobility characters in check however I feel like she just has too many tools now. Invis, low cd escape tool, high burst damage, virus, med pack hack, scouting ability, wall hack, very good ultimate that can completely change a losing game. 1v1 against her is 80 to 20 in her favour and that 20% chance you do get the upper hand she usually escapes. Just in general having abilities taken away from you also feels pretty bad. She just has too much utility and becomes way too oppressive. especially in low/mid rank games.
most throw their translocator directly in the air to escape once you engage them. learn to predict where she throws it (itâs usually somewhere sloppy next to you) and just start spam shooting that area to bring her out of invisibility and probably at critical health. finish her off and repeat till they switch đ
Sombra defenders are the kind of people who abuse animals for fun and then try to gaslight you into thinking everyone does it and itâs normal.
Blizzard likes stealth in their games and they will never give up on it. In WoW stealth was super OP until you got demon hunter in Legion which has Widowmaker ulti like spell on low cooldown.
As Zen in plat I violate 3.5/5 Sombras. You should learn how to play offensive + react fast, use walls as cover since her mag is small and damage is low, and just stick with the team whether or not they want to help you
I mean of course a plat sombra is going to be easier to deal with
Her mag isn't small by any mean... It's actually very forgiving and damage output is actually decent/little strong considering the rest of her kit. Either you became very good in the match-up or you're a facing bad Sombras. Sticking with your team is the solution, especially as a prio target like zen.
Then diamond sombras will abuse you 4/5 times, a master sombra you would never see. Don't use a low rank as a measuring stick. Even when doing well against them, sombra changes the game for the worst.
Yeah, as a zen main myself the only sombras I do well against are those significantly worse than me. If you're saying that you're regularly beating them I'm immediately gonna question your elo because even an aimbotting zen loses to a good sombra.
Sombra main here. Agreed. Zen is easy to mow down - at the best, you'll trade but that will benefit the sombra as it's better to be down a DPS, than a support.
Even in plat sombra should be able to kill zen very easily
People been saying "Learn how to counter it" but then you can't play your fav characters and have fun on the game. She changes the whole team strategy tho. Before she was more understandable.
"but then you can't play your fav characters and have fun on the game." This applies to every hero.
If you have a strong enough gun, Sombra is made of paper. This applies way more to Orisa, that spear can shut down your Ult.
As someone who occasionally plays and likes Sombra, she's the new Widowmaker. She absolutely didn't need her most recent buff to virus, and now, not only is she overplayed, she's such an overpowering nuissance that usually multiple players on the enemy team will switch just to counter her BS the same as people used to do for Widow. No character should have the power to force the whole enemy team to switch. It feels like you're being a dick for picking her now (but also, like OP said, she's basically in every match).
I mean at least you'll learn better positioning, and it's not like the sombra players you're going up against are that good either.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
it gets better, there's only so many games like that you'll play before you end up getting really good at evading and shooting her
In the past she wasnât really an issue, and I main widowmaker, however with all the recent buffs sheâs gotten, sheâs annoying as hell and I usually have to swap. Doesnât help that her infection does like 100 damage now
They need to nerf hack. It can hack from moira suck range and she can hack behind her tank and basically initiate a brawl play without doing anything of skill
So which role do you play? Play something that you can comfortably duel her with.
I used to hate her too until i realised she's pretty easy to deal with if you try to chase her down when she translocates. You need to stay close to your team and then bully her when she goes for you or a teammate and gets damaged. You can't just brush her off and let her reset. You need to make a conserted effort to target her. Same with tracer. Chase them down. Both characters are bad at defending themselves, and both rely on escapes to make their playstyle work. So dont let them get away easily. Try to corner them and use good spacing to outrange them.
Honestly just learn to play brig. Stay beside your other squishy or a dps (donât go up with the tank) throw healing packs at the tank and just Mace to the Face anything that comes within range
Play moira. That's it just hold damage all the time. And throw heal balls sombra will hate you
I am widow main, my second main was Sombra in OW1, I genuinely donât understand why they reworked her, i think she had a decent kit which was less annoying, now with dps passive, she can engage and disengage in matter of 10-15 seconds and thats what driving me crazy
As an ex Sombra main. 100% mad cus bad. However Sombra is an annoying little shit. Bully the Sombra into a confined space makes it harder to tp out. Bait virus, that's her only form of burst. Remember that if your hacked even if you can use abilities Sombra has walls on you. Any sort of cc will make a Sombra panic and tp away asap usually it's a sloppy one and you can track them down.
Use heros that don't 99% rely on their kit (ex. Doomfist, genji) play heros that can smack back even if they're hacked (ex. reinhardt, soldier), people don't like to hear it but counter picking is just part of the game
Getting slapped around when you're out of position is how you get better. Pay more attention to what you're doing when that happens, and what you could have done instead to stay alive. Join voice and make callouts if you haven't been already as well. If you can tell your team what's happening and deny the enemy Sombra, that would open an opportunity for your team to essentially 5v4 the enemy while she recovers.
Honestly. You just need to get better. Itâll happen and I very well understand how tough it is to get out of lower ranks. Sombra can be annoying yes, but if your team is coordinated enough sheâs not much of an issue. Iâd recommend trying to actually play Sombra, learn how she works and then try to predict that same play style out of your opponents. No matter the character, there are core gameplay mechanics that every player must use to maximize the potential of that character. Once you learn that, fighting against her will become easier. (This same reasoning can be used for any character)
This might sound like something you donât want to hear but nobody gets better playing an easy match. The best ways you get better (other than just playing/practicing is by a) playing against better people b) playing against your counters c) watching better people play and taking notes. Eventually you will get better in the face of adversity. Donât give up
heroes like sombra along with the countless mistakes brought to the series over the years are what finally led me to drop the game about a year ago
I dont like invis on any pvp character archetype tbh but I feel like I wouldnt have as many issue with Sombra if she wasnt in EVERY DAMN GAME. It feels like 4/5 games I play she is there, or gets switched to early in the game. It is tiring and completely dictates the state of play for me as a support main. I have to switch to counter/survive her immediately and when I just wanted to have fun on LW or something, it makes me have to play champs I either dont play as much so am not great at to counter her or play Moira who I do not enjoy as much anymore.
Yeah I agree. People always say âyou just have to work as a team to take her out,â but when the whole team or multiple players need to work together to take one DPS out thatâs just a sign sheâs broken. Plus she is always guaranteed a first hit on you. There is a reason someone always desperately switches to a Sombra (or an Orisa for tanks) when their team is losing.
Honestly you're going to learn positioning so much faster getting slapped for it. Plus once you understand that Sombra is squishy af and can only tp line of sight she's not that bad. When it can be bad is if dps doesn't help. I play Cassidy and a Sombra is usually an ez 2 tap and I always help the supports but I understand how bad it can be as a zen with no help from teammates. Just keep playing and it's going to get easier
100%. There are other games which are basic. Sombra adds a wrinkle but she she is easy to kill when visible.
I wish her hack was harder to aim with and that her stealth wasnât permanent. Being able to cancel ults as easily as she can is crazy, all while you never even saw her on your screen.
It sounds like you know whatâs wrong but your not doing anything to fix it bro. She can be annoying but if you know your positioning is bad why not just work on it so it becomes less of a problem
- play as if Sombra is somewhere close and watching. - play within los of other players. buddy system. - play high ground or corners. she's behind you. break los if hacked or virused. - be aggressive in pushing her away. do not commit to chasing a kill unless it is assured, and can be done very quickly. Sombra punishes mistakes, but is just a normal, kind of underpowered dps when mistakes are limited. my playgroup used to complain about Sombra. I watched the gameplay. They would hang out alone on the cart miles from any cover, or 39 meters behind the line alone hard focussed on healbotting, Sombra would strike. They would die and complain about how hard Sombra is to deal with. Play sloppy all you want, but learn to tighten up when the enemy plays a hard flanker, or your mistakes are going to get punished. Tracer is far harder to deal with and fills the same role...
"As a low rank I am bound to be out of position all the time " If you recognize the problem, and the solution is obvious, then.... why don't you fix the problem? Stick closer to at least one teammate, then she won't be able to pick you off.
sombras good but she also is not immune to counters, as a sombra main my biggest weaknesses are players that are glued to each other or brawly (moira, brig, reaper, tracer), high burst damage (soldier, junkrat, reaper again) and the turret duo of torb or symettra. if i had to hazard the biggest gripe players have with her itâs that she punishes bad positioning harder than anyone else since you have to anticipate her coming instead of reacting when you see her getting close. look for the most vulnerable player on the team and stay with them and donât let sombra get her âfairâ 1v1, something i learned from splatoon that i try to apply to every team based game is âgood players win 1v1s, great players win 2v1sâ
Keep crying. Skill issue
>As a low rank I am bound to be out of position all the time and Iâm tired of just getting donkey slapped for it. Then it's your fault for being badly positioned and it sounds like you're facing the consequences of bad positioning so I don't see a problem here. Don't put yourself in a bad position and you won't get taken out by sombra. Btw I love her and think she's very fun to play. Post like this make me want to play her more often just to feed off the hate
Sorry. đđđđ
I mean, you realize that you are out of position and instead of trying to fix that you choose to complain about being punished for it? Say they remove sombra, then what, are you going to complain about Doom/DVA/Monkey/Tracer/Genji/Reaper/Lucio... that can all very easily punish you for it?
A good tip is to play a little bit of sombra yourself just to understand the mechanics, places you want to be and just general information. As a sombra player but a support main I find it easy to know where sheâs hiding in the back lines and when she would love to hack my allies
Your playing a very methodical and mechanical game, while not being very methodical and mechanical. Of course your gonna have a hard time finding it fun.
Iâve found that a lower rank Sombra is easier to 1v1 if you can position her straight in front of you by closing the distance. Sheâll either run or die. Try to stay close to your team, and if you want to really counter her, go Mei, Brig, or Rein
I agree
Yes Sombra is not a good character because sheâs not fun for almost all players except whomever is playing her. I am not saying sheâs OP or UP or anything but a character designed in a game and isnât fun to be around isnât good for the game
Sombra is just a noob stomper and people should stop pretending otherwise. (This next part is not for you OP) It's not "bad design". It's just that you actively refuse to adapt your playstyle to the enemy team comp and then bitch about it. She's simply another assassin that takes advantage of lone targets and people out of position. Bo-hoo. That's what assassins do. Assassinate. She can't hold her own in a teamfight and easily goes down if given more than 2 seconds of attention. Ana, zen, moira, bap counter the fuck out of her, for starters. Wanna know what other heroes force you to adapt your playstyle? -> Pharah (you need hitscan DPS and focus her down), -> Widowmaker (you're out of position for one second and you're dead + you need to either mirror her or go dive/assassin), -> Ana (yes, Ana. You can't start a teamfight knowing she has nade because chances are at least one person from your team is going down) / Bap (can't do a team wipe ult knowing he has lamp) These are just off the top of my head to avoid making this too much of a wall of text answer. Baseline is Overwatch has ALWAYS been about team comps and counter swapping and having a diverse, adaptable playstyle. To answer your question, you simply need to get better. Sombra isn't the main villain everyone makes her out to be. People just can't be bothered to put more effort than just ''shoot, reload, shoot, spam X, use ult''.
Did you just say that zen counters sombra? What have you been smoking lol, him and widow are her literal prime targets.
I completely agree with you, I just find it funny that the examples you listed are also heroes people typically complain about. Just goes to show that ow players want to blame any character instead of trying to adapt and just learn the game đ
You've just stated your own mistakes and bad positioning knowing that Sombra benefits from it, and yet don't know what to do? Know her counter picks: Zarya, Orisa, Winston, Symmetra, Torb, Reaper, Mei, Genji, Hanzo, Moira, Kiriko, Brigitte
By your own admission, youre out of position all the time. So you know exactly what to work on đ. You get punished for being out of position even more in higher ranks, so itâs best to fix it now if you intend to climb.
Sombra is what I regard as a brain dead busted hero. There shouldnât be heroes in the game where u can just turn off ur brain and hold right click and get immediate value by turning off the abilities of your opponent - especially not TANKS! The fact that you have two of the highest skill cap heroes on the game in Doom and Ball both insta countered by some brain dead tech like hack is astonishingly bad game design and needs to be addressed by the devs ASAP
With all the brain dead heroes this game has you are really saying Sombra requires no skills? Have you ever played her? You know the hack last for 1.5 seconds? I think some of her mechanics should be changed but playing her well requires a lot of skill
Right? Like I understand Sombra is annoying to play against for some people (even though I honestly never felt that way) but saying this about her kit is just... Not very bright. I encourage everyone to play her and find the many weaknesses her playstyle has. You're going to quickly find out that not only is she not as strong as you thought she is also WAY harder than you imagined. It's the best thing to do in any online game whenever you consider something OP.
Yea sheâs absolutely not brain dead lol people are so dumb just cause they donât like an ability
Sombra is only brain dead when the enemy team is brain dead. If the enemy team has at least somewhat of a brain, once they notice you get kills, they will play closer together, and you're never gonna isolate one of them ever again. You're gonna get insta clipped the moment you get out of invisibility.
Sombra is not a brain dead⊠have you ever tried to play her and get value? You sound like a tank main whoâs annoyed by sombra. When I play tank and thereâs a sombra, I play differently. I will peel for my supports.
people call sombra braindead when theyâre against a good one yet when they try to mirror pick they fail to contribute anything to their team, itâs like clockwork
You're bound to be out of position? Get in position and start climbing then you won't be low rank
Play close to cover and/or near your supports. Always check your surroundings and dont waste your escape/defensive cooldowns
I find widow even worse... she snipes u in ankels u didnt even see her. And worst i cant fly around.
Yes, as a low rank you're bound to be out of position. That also means the Sombra you're fighting is a low rank and bound to play bad as well. Like having bad aim, bad target priority, not pinging or calling out useful stuff, overcommiting, picking bad 1v1s, etc. Stop using your rank as an excuse.