15 Things We Learned From Playing Overwatch’s Sombra

Invisibility is maybe too much fun

Her Thermoptic Camo can be used pretty frequently with only a six second cooldown. You can activate it at spawn to sprint quickly to your target, and it’ll likely be back up by the time you’re there and ready to sneak into the fray. In short, every time I felt like going invisible, I could.

Translocator Tricks

If you toss a Translocator out, then activate your teleport before it lands, you’ll pop into midair.

Range

Her hack skill has a great range. Nothing snipey, but large enough to keep you safe. Her weapon, though, has a surprisingly long range for something called a Machine Pistol.

Machine Pistol

Her weapon has a huge ammo clip, by does very little damage. About what you’d expect from what’s pretty much an SMG.

Health

Sombra definitely sits on the squishy side. Not as much of a Pringle as Tracer, but you absolutely can’t take anyone head on without smart use of your skills.

Speaking of Tracer

Sombra feels like Tracer in terms of her play focuses. She’s low on health, and needs to jump around with her invisibility and Translocator if she wants to win a fight. Her guns do small bits of damage, and her main “deal” is irritating the other team before slipping away.

Translocator Invincibility

As squishy as she may feel, it’s hard to die as Sombra if you’re an expert with a Translocator. Place it in a safe area and pop over whenever you’re in danger. The counterpoint to this, though, is that should Sombra find herself under fire, she has a tiny time frame to pop out before dying.

Easy to play, but…

She’s fast, she goes invisible every six seconds, she can teleport around. It’s incredibly easy to just stay alive as Sombra, squeaking in hacks and gunfire every now and then. But your team needs you to make plays with your hacks and pick off people you catch with your X-Ray vision passive. Otherwise, Sombra is just a ghost popping in now and then, and other heroes are far more effective for less effort.

Good news if you hate turrets

She can hack Torbjorn turrets to disable them for a while.

Utility

Though she’s technically an Offensive hero, Sombra feels focused more on utility and disruption than attacking. None of her abilities are focused on damage, and her primary advantages are being able to disrupt the enemy team with your hacks and mobility.

Choose your hack wisely

Because your weapon damage is low, your skills aren’t damage focused, and your hack had a 12 second cooldown, you need to make your hacks worthwhile. Take down Reinhardt’s shield or disable Bastion. Don’t silence Soldier.

Mei still sucks
Still kicked my ass.

Hack vs. Hack

You can’t retake a health spawn that another Sombra has already hacked.

You’re not going to massacre anyone with your ultimate

Sombra’s EMP ultimate blows out nearby shields while hacking and damages everything in the area, but it does very little damage. As blow-uppy as the effect looks, don’t expect to decimate anybody with it.

And that one bonus you probably won’t notice

While a health spawn is hacked, it’ll spawn health packs faster