On principle, I still oppose Overwatch turning Sombra—the ex-Talon hacker whose entire deal was that she would hack enemies, shut down their abilities, and create openings in opposition’s defenses for her team to open fire through—into a Support hero in the new season five patch. However, after playing several matches with her, it’s clicking that this is probably the most fun I’ve had with the character in over a year, since her last and final DPS rework. My muscle memory for defunct plays that had become habit after years of playing her as my secondary Damage hero is still kicking in constantly, but amid all the shifting abilities, it feels like Sombra has gotten a lot of buffs that make her feel snappy, and no longer sluggish and weak like she was in her final DPS iteration.
Thus far, Support Sombra has felt like more of a careful team player than her DPS kit made her, which encouraged her to run off on her own missions, pestering foes in the backline. Now, she doesn’t have a Hack on hand to lock opponents’ abilities, and her Translocator doesn’t teleport her as far as it used to, so it’s riskier than ever for her to stray too far. But in general, the ease of use in her kit is far and away the most apparent part of this change.
The abilities that she’s retained from her DPS kit (or their equivalents) are quicker to cast, such as Hotfix, the primary healing ability she uses instead of her previous Hack. This ability heals allies over time, and is performed the same way Hack was, by Sombra bringing up her hacking software and quickly inputting a few keystrokes toward her target. The cast time is just a few hairs shorter than Hack’s was, but I could feel just how much quicker it was each time I used it because I was healing my allies fast enough that, even if they ran out of my line of sight, they’d get the benefits and I wouldn’t spend much time having to chase them or being frustrated when precious seconds were lost on healing that I would have to restart.
Sombra is a surprisingly efficient healer, though her numbers won’t hold a candle to the more “healbot”-oriented characters like Lifeweaver. The healing over time that she offers lets her set and forget Hotfix and then get back to shooting and sneaking around. Yeah, you’ll still have to pay attention to your teammates and re-up the healing throughout, but you won’t need to hold their hands as they enter the fray. Broadly, she feels more along the lines of characters like Wuyang, who are more about enabling heroes than constantly topping off their health bars.
The star of her new kit, however, is Cyberspace. This replaces her Virus ability, a damage over time skill shot that, unless you hacked a foe before using it, really was just a mild annoyance that would do minimal damage without any sense of urgency. It was nearly impossible to get value from unless it had been set up and comboed with something else. Cyberspace, meanwhile, is the true continuation of Sombra’s hacker persona, in that it gives her a bespoke debuff to cast on her foes that “weakens” their healing and damage output by half. This area-of-effect ability can drown out Ultimates, give Sombra a fighting chance against more powerful foes if she gets caught sneaking around alone, and is much easier to get value out of than Virus because it doesn’t have to make a direct hit.
© Blizzard EntertainmentThe drawback is that enemies can escape its effects by exiting the field it creates, but I’ve already seen so many cool interactions with Cyberspace, like casting it against a wall where an enemy Reinhardt is about to pin one of my teammates, so that when the killing blow lands, it only does half the damage, allowing my ally to survive the hit, take some healing, and turn the tables in fight. I’m waiting for an Orisa or Reaper to try and Ult on my team and I throw it down, saving everyone from what would have typically killed them all instantly.
Sombra haters who got mad they were Hacked out of their Ults may have won this war in stripping the character of everything they deemed annoying to play against, but after years of Overwatch accommodating people who don’t play as her, Sombra had become such an inefficient hero that the only way to salvage her was to essentially make her into a new character entirely. I’ll miss being able to Hack Sigma out of his Ult as he flies through the air unless I have my EMP charged, but even if I have to mourn the character we lost, I can at least appreciate that my girl no longer sucks to play.
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