Nerfs are on the way for Sombra’s reworked hack

Sombra’s recent rework was meant to make her less of a utility support who focuses her hacking on enemy opponents instead of nearby health packs. The only problem with that rework seems to be that she’s hacking a little too well. Sombra’s hack is not only faster, but it cuts off a pretty wide range of effects. Pharah can’t fly, Lucio can’t play his songs, and Mercy can’t glide with her beautiful angelic wings. With that in mind, it makes sense that Blizzard looking to hit its power a little bit. Geoff Goodman chimed in on the Blizzard forums with some thoughts on Sombra’s balance.

Any time Sombra’s hack is interrupted by damage, hacking will go on cooldown for 2 seconds. With this change, Sombra will have to be more careful about choosing when and who to hack instead of just holding down the button and waiting for people to miss and/or reload etc.

There is currently a 0.1s window of time at the end of the hack where it cannot be canceled via line of sight or other effects (such as Tracer’s recall, Zarya bubbles, etc). This exists so it doesn’t constantly get broken by very small line of sight blockers such as light posts and signs, etc. We are removing this window and instead now using multiple LOS checks to make sure the small LOS blockers are still not a problem. In addition to this, we’re speeding up the update rate of her hacking so that it is more responsive in checking for these fail conditions. The combination of these things means it should be much more reasonable to respond to a hack targeting you.

From the sounds of it, this should make Sombra a little less oppressive while maintaining her new identity as a proper Offense and not a support-oriented, health pack healing hacker. It should also make it a little easier for Reinhardts and Lucios to navigate around this new meta.

Blizzard will be looking to maintain Sombra’s new direction, and they’ll be keeping a “close eye on her to make sure she lands in a good place.” This suggests the rework is largely a success. All that’s left is the tweaking, balancing, and patching to ensure that she’s not able to out-play the entire roster with a powerful hack.