wavebeam [ ♥ ] love

Sombra is weird. She’s hard to kill, explicitly designed to stop you having fun and, most of the time, not even that effective.

She’s the Kevin Hart of Overwatch: nothing they’ve done has really landed but they’re still here. And she may be better in a supporting role.

Sombra as a support character

Sombra is miscast as a damage hero. Everything that tilts her game to annoying backline opponents would position her well in the backline of her own team.

The lore works as well. She’s the person in the van, directing allies. She’s sneaking around, getting info, and increasing the chances of her team’s success with intel, hacks and well-timed interventions.

Abilities

I don’t think Sombra should get all these abilities – we’re just tossing around options.

Hack

Two charges, flat cooldown.

• Hack health packs (no change): only your team can use them, they respawn faster.
• Hack enemies: briefly disable movement abilities and increase damage received (lower increase than current version, but from all allies).
• Hack allies: briefly cloak them and give them a small amount of shield. If Sombra uses a health pack during the hack duration, ally gets 50% of the value as healing.

This turns hack into an enabler and anti-dive tool. Players need to balance what they choose to hack and when.

We turn full invisibility into a cloak that still obscures an ally but gives opponents a better chance of spotting them. The ability remains – it’s character defining, in a way – but it’s used to enable an ally rather than jaunting around the map.

Firewall

Deploy a temporary shield in front of an ally. That ally receives a burst of healing.

Spyware

Deploy a camera. Highlights enemies in its view radius and reveals their ult charge.

Malware

Skill shot. Small projectile. Deals low damage but, if it’s the final blow on an enemy, delete 25% of their ult charge.

This could be scaled up to an annoying ultimate ability – a kit of Hack, Firewall, Spyware + ult-level Malware could be interesting.

Ultimate

EMP

No change: area-of-effect that damages enemies, disables abilities and deactivates shields.

Keylogger

Creates a holographic overlay of an ally that mirrors their actions (including weapons, abilities and ults). Does 50% of damage dealt and, for area-of-effect abilities, everything is offset by 20% to increase the AOE.

Applies differently based on different abilities (e.g. during Soldier 76’s ult, the hologram targets a different enemy than the player).

Update pending

Sombra’s a legitimately cool character. She has a great vibe with some potential for fun interactions. Shifting her focus from flanking opponents to fortifying allies could sand down the rough, annoying edges of her kit into something that better rewards team-play.

If nothing else, I won’t have to keep sighing as I hear the hack animation start behind me when I’m playing support. It’s just… kinda boring.