As I said in my title, I’m new to the game. I come from CS so automatic rifles/smg are what I feel most comfortable playing. (Soldier 76, Sombra, Tracer) I noticed that very few pros use Sombra.
What’s wrong with her..? I pretty consistently get 7kd with her ( In quick play obviously, ranked isn’t unlocked yet ) and go 15-1 pretty often as well which is better than with other stuff.
Posted May 29, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC
She's definitely a sleeper hero,can silence people(disable their abilities) for 6 seconds, can go invisible forever, can tranc out at any point. If you're good at tracking and patient she can be a real pain in the ass to deal with.
Yep exactly. I absolutely fucking despise Tanks and their shields and found that just sprinting behind them early and hacking them helps your team’s momentum a lot.
The only thing I feel like she’s not the best at is raw damage.
Also soloing out supports, just doing that can win you team fights as sombra
Yep I always try to target healers and Yeet out asap when I get the kill lmao
She is very viable. But she is also one of the few heroes in this game that would qualify as difficulty. 80% of the heroes are easy, but Sombra is not one of them.
She's situational. Yes she's good against goats, but most of the time it's better to just play goats, and be better at that comp rather than try a Sombra comp. She used to be seen a fair bit before goats became so overbearing. She is still good, don't get me wrong, but as you get to higher levels, she'll be less popular.
Considering you're just starting, don't worry too much about the meta. Chances are you'll be placed in the mid-ranks as new players often are, so just play your best on whoever you're good with and then go from there.
What’s a goat and what does comp mean?
The current meta. 3 tanks 3 supports. Its been mostly what's been played in the Overwatch League recently. Named after the team that popularised its use
Jesus. So is no one playing any damage characters in this...?
In higher levels of play, it works because all of the players are good enough to pull double duty in both their normal role of healing or tanking, and dishing out damage. And since pure damage heroes aren't able to double up on anything, they often are left by the wayside
Rein, Zarya, Dva, zen,lucio and brigette has probably been the strongest yet most simplistic meta there's ever been.
Sombra can be viable in the right circumstances, but she provides the most value by gathering information (or assassinating people) using Stealth and Opportunist, using Hack to disable the right targets at the right time, and using EMP to either set up good combos or to negate certain things the enemy team might be using (e.g. Sound Barrier), and thus she's extremely reliant on communicating with and coordinating with her team to get good value while some other heroes are more straightforward about getting kills and don't have to communicate all of the same things. There is also a bunch of hero-specific skills for pretty much every hero that don't transfer over very well even to a similar hero, so a pro that might be good at Tracer or 76 might not be good at Sombra (or the other way around) and they're also likely to go with something that's proven to work over something untested that is less likely to win games due to being untested (and Sombra was for a long time considered to be weak by most people).
Of course, she's also got counters that can make her job hard enough that she probably should swap off, much like every hero, so while she's not bad there are situations where the "shoot people in the face" approach of another hero will be more beneficial for her team.
Also, K:D is a rather poor measurement about doing well in Overwatch since contributing even a single point of damage to a kill gives you credit for that and sometimes intentionally getting yourself killed is a good call, so don't put a lot of stock in that. This also goes for any other stat, having a medal (or several), getting a card, and getting PotG; none of those things tell you anything in a vacuum, and sometimes a smart play that hurts your stats is better for winning than just padding your stats.
If you want to see Sombra played at a high level, I recommend checking out Fitzyhere's streams. He has also got some tutorials on YouTube that could be helpful even at a beginner level.
Thanks.
I recommend keeping your ult until a teammate uses theirs or an enemy uses a heavy hitting one (like Bob)
I usually just use my ult when there’s a bunch of people in a condensed area of the map
That can be useful but it has to be called out and done at a beneficial time don't be afraid to solo ult if you feel like you can't get off a helpful hack in time
Pros use Sombra as a Goats counter because her ult shuts down what powers Goats, it's sustainability via healing and the tanks mobility/barriers/shields.
Communication is key to Sombra. If you play Sombra without doing callouts or your team isn't on mic to hear you, then Sombra is being played in a very sub-optimal environment. You have to coordinate her strongest ability, her ult with your team. This can be difficult to do with the in game callouts, but possible.
Lastly, Sombra shouldn't expect to sport a lot of your team's damage despite taking up a DPS spot. You're going to probably need some heavy, consistant damage output on your team. That being said, a Monkey and a Sombra in the enemy back lines can wreck some healers and escape to their team to push 6 v 4.
Honestly Sombra is probably one of the strongest heroes in the game. Hacking people at the right time, farming EMP and flanking to kill key characters are all things she excels at. Shes a low risk high reward hero.
Hmm, don't know how I feel about calling her low-risk. She's had a lot of changes over the last year that make her easier for people to pick up and play, but it's still relatively easy to pick Sombra and end up doing little to nothing the whole match. She requires communication more than most heroes, and you have to really know what you're doing to play her well: get the right hack at the right time, show up here and delay / distract this enemy at this time, etc. There's a reason so few people play her.
She's very strong in the higher tiers though, yeah, especially if you know how to play her.
She requires communication but only diamond level communication. Basic comboing and play-making
She's only good when you use her to combo with other characters such as an emp to stop rein from using shield during another ult. Or a mini hack on an annoying tracer. She stops characters from living as long as they should. She's a great character, you just have to use her correctly. It's not all about eliminations, it's about stopping the team from capturing the objective and working with your own team to do so
What I’m doin right now is kind of working around the objective (Not directly on it) and flanking to hack the enemies heavy while my team just shreds him because he can’t do anything.
I also try to stay alive with the teleport thingy because of how long it takes to respawn and get back into the choke points.
You're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Depending on your team, Reinhardt should be your main target since in Quick Play and lower levels of Competitive players have no idea what to do with him and since his shield has 2k health they don't even bother shooting it to break it most of the time.
Aside from that, you should be paying attention to who is slaughtering your team the most and make it your mission to keep them shut down as often as possible by hacking them and letting your team know about it. That might be a tank like Roadhog (another tank that gives QP and low-level Competitive players problems), or Bastion, or a Tracer that's on your healers, etc.
When there isn't much happening or your team has things under control, sneak behind the enemy and harass their squishies. You don't necessarily need to kill anything, but you can be extremely annoying and they'll have to choose between keeping you off their healers or pushing toward the objective. If the enemy team is a disorganized mess to begin with, which they often are in Quick Play, then you can just pick off anyone straggling behind the enemy team or wait outside of the enemy spawn and kill easy targets as they come out of spawn.
Aside from that, you can hack health packs on your team's side of the map to help take some pressure off of your healers but you can also hack health packs on the enemy's side of the map as an offensive tactic to prevent them from healing easily during a fight and putting more pressure on their healers.
As far as her ultimate goes, you'll either have to let your team know you intend to use it so they're ready or, more likely, react to your team making a move. Often, players don't seem to take advantage of your ultimate which, in my opinion, is one of the most powerful in the game. So, to get around that, wait until there's a big team fight where everyone's grouped together or your Zarya uses her ultimate, or some other obvious time to use it and do so. That way you don't have to "coordinate" anything with anyone, which usually doesn't work well anyway until upper levels of Competitive, and your team can take advantage of it just because the enemy is standing right in front of them with no defense.
Thanks a lot for this :)
No problem.