Sombra will be getting a couple of nerfs in an upcoming Overwatch patch according to a post from Lead Designer Geoff Goodman on the game's official forums.
A number of characters in Overwatch recently underwent changes in a patch launched at the end of February 2018. Sombra was one of the heroes that saw some tweaks including a minor nerf where her hacked health packs no longer count towards her Ultimate generation. However, these were balanced out by the buffs she received including a tighter machine pistol spray, a faster hack time, and reduced effect of obstructions on her EMP Ultimate. Blizzard might have overdone things a little bit this time around, though - they're making two changes to the Mexican hacker in an upcoming patch.
Sombra's hack will have a 2-second cooldown if she attempts to hack someone and becomes interrupted (either through breaking line-of-sight or receiving damage). This will make it so that she has to be more careful about choosing when to hack an enemy rather than holding down the button and waiting until the enemy misses or reloads.
Secondly, the mechanics behind the line-of-sight cancellation are going to be tweaked. At the moment, there is a 0.1-second window where it cannot be canceled by breaking line-of-sight or other effects like Zarya's bubble or Tracer's recall. The original intention for this grace period was so that minor obstructions didn't impede your ability to hack someone at a critical moment. This system is being replaced by multiple line-of-sight checks. Additionally, the update rate for her hacking is being sped up so that it's more responsive to the enemy's attempts at breaking the hack. This should hopefully preserve the original intent of the grace period while also not being too gracious.
The recent Sombra changes were intended to make her more viable overall, but it's clear that Blizzard feels she needs to be toned down a bit after a couple of weeks on the live servers. Whether these will bring her to a more balanced state or require further work is up in the air, but we'll be able to see soon enough.
What do you think of the upcoming changes to Sombra? Do you feel she needed the nerfs that are on the way? Let us know in the comments below!
