Sombra was one of many children orphaned during the Omnic Crisis. She developed her skills at manipulating both people and computer systems in order to survive, convinced that information would grant her power. But eventually, she became aware of a powerful global entity....or more accurately, it became aware of her. She had to erase all trace of her existence and go underground. Eventually, she emerged with new cybernetic implants as the mysterious "Sombra". While she presently works for Talon, it is clear that she does so for her own reasons, seeking to unearth the truth behind the conspiracy she had stumbled upon so she could find out who really runs the world.
Most people are likely to be confused by her classification as a specialist, but I feel that Sombra's particular kit doesn't really lend itself to assassin play. None of her abilities provide her with reliable burst damage, and her machine gun's DPS is actually lower than most of the game's Offense heroes (and considerably lower than Tracer's), so it didn't feel right giving her the same sort of play style as Tracer but with stealth. Her abilities are more designed to disrupt the enemy in unique ways, so Sombra's design really doesn't fit a traditional assassin archetype in my opinion. Thus, I made her a specialist hero whose kit allows her to create chaos in the enemy's ranks. Much like her Overwatch counterpart, she can "hack" enemy heroes to silence them, or enemy structures (such as healing wells) to disable them. The end goal here was to create a stealth hero who has high utility, but low personal damage. This means she will be extremely disruptive in the right hands, but very challenging to use correctly.
Hero Type: Ranged Specialist
Difficulty:
Very Hard
Pros:
- Sombra can hack enemy heroes to shut them down at a safe distance, or she can temporarily shut down enemy structures for her team to push more easily.
- Sombra can use Thermoptic Camo to escape in stealth, or to approach a potential target.
- Sombra's Translocator allows her to escape from dangerous situations over a great distance, or even to help her advance over territory more quickly.
- Sombra has incredible utility with her heroic abilities. She can silence enemy heroes for a time with an EMP, or she can disrupt their vision and enable her allies to escape with the Sombra Protocol.
Cons:
- Sombra does not provide a great deal of damage on her own, has no direct form of wave-clear, and her abilities provide no additional damage on their own, either. She is very much reliant on her team mates to take advantage of the opportunities she creates.
- Sombra's Hack can be disrupted by any damage, which can limit her use of it significantly.
- Sombra's Translocator has a limited duration that it works within, so it can be less reliable as an escape if the timing is incorrect.
- Both of Sombra's heroic abilities require that she place herself in harm's way to use them well, and she will pop out of stealth when using them. This can be restrictive and lead to her death much more easily than with other heroics.
Note: All figures shown on this hero concept page are listed at their baseline figures (Lvl 0).
Health: 1420 HP (+4%)
Health Regen: 2.95 HP per second (+4%)
Resource: None
Attack Damage: 50 (+4%)
Attack Speed: 3.0
Attack Range: 5.5
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
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Her interaction with shields is actually mixed, depending on the type of shield in play. EMP disables and strips Lucio's shielding completely and still allows the target to be hacked, but Zarya's bubbles protect the target from being hacked (though the bubble is destroyed). Also, the success of hacking Reinhardt depends on the situation: you can hack him if you're behind his barrier and you can't hack him if you're in front of it, though EMP knocks out the barrier regardless of position.
This is all important to note because of how these abilities would be potentially translated into HotS. Lucio's shields would likely be transferred one-to-one, so this isn't a problem, but Zarya's shields were turned into "generic" shielding for HotS to differentiate her from Medivh, so there needs to be a way for Zarya to protect her targets from hacking in this way. Fortunately, such a mechanic pretty much already exists: Unstoppable. I'm going to rely on its functionality to cover for this issue.
Reinhardt's barrier, on the other hand, is almost assuredly not going to function like a generic shield, but should still be vulnerable to EMP in some way. I'm not really sure how to fix this particular issue since it'll depend on Reinhardt's own implementation, but I guess we'll see.
In the meantime, I've adjusted several of the mechanics for my design to help implement your idea. So far we've only got one talent that deals extra damage to shields, so it's hard to know what's appropriate, but I think I've got it where it ought to be.
1) Silence all nearby enemies.
2) Shut down all nearby buildings.
3) Remove all shields.
There's no heroic currently in the game which does all of those things at once. Heck, there's no hero currently in-game that does all of those things at once across their entire kit, much less doing them all at once on a single cooldown. So, basically I'm worried that giving her all of those things at once would make her SUPER overpowered. And the part that makes it particularly hard to balance is the fact that there's very little precedent in-game for some of this stuff. Sylvanas is essentially the only "building shut-down" hero in the game, Varian's the first hero with a shield-breaking talent, etc. So it's really hard to know where the "sweet spot" is.
That said, I'm very much open to your suggestions as to how I might incorporate this element into her design. Did you have specific numbers in mind?