Sombra recently went live on PTR and it appears that players are having split impressions regarding the new hero. Apparently, despite her overpowered AoE disable, a lot are frustrated about her cloaking animation delay which tips off the enemy of her presence and makes it harder to use in numerous situtions. But just this morning, a fan has taken on Reddit and posted a Sombra tip that will allow you to "remove" the cloaking animation when you activate Thermoptic Camo.
Overwatch Tips: Sombra Cloaking Animation Trick
It's safe to say that Sombra is one of the most overpowered heroes in the game especially as she's the only character that can actually render the enemy's ultimate practically useless. In high tiered rating mostly Diamond and above, proper usage of ultimates are vital in order to win the game and therefore, having the ability to disable that said skill is a game-changing mechanics. Although the EMP has a large blast radius, roughly the same as Mei's Blizzard, as a Sombra player, you still have to flank or at the very least, successfully infiltrate your enemy line unnoticed in order to maximize your ultimate.
Since most of you by now have known the issue regarding the stealth, the great news is that, you can now successfully remove the cloaking animation with the use of a simple trick. The trick is fairly simple; the animation delay prior to the actual invisibility can be cancelled by teleporting midair. So basically, simply throw your Translocator above you and then activate Thermoptic Camo and then Teleport. The moment you teleport, you will then turn invisible instantly, meaning it's an animation canceling method, much like how League of Legends abilities work.
Remember that you must activate these abilities simultaneously in order to make it less obvious for the enemy to notice. Also, this method can go in reverse, for example: Cloak, move to the center of enemy line, throw Translocator above, uncloak, immediately teleport and then EMP. With mastery, you can easily remove the animation delay in both cases which will undoubtedly help you a lot with your survivability.
Overwatch: Blizzard's Take on Sombra's Cloaking Animation Delay
When the developers of Overwatch were asked about why they included the animation delay on Thermoptic Camo, Geoff Goodman, the lead Designer of the game has this to say:
"This is one of those cases where it was necessary to add this delay to make stealth reasonable to fight against. The problem is we don't want Sombra destroying players out of stealth before they feel like they had a chance to react.
There are other ways we could have solved this, of course. We could have just made her gun do less damage, so it just takes longer to kill people, but then the gun is really only good when you use it from stealth.
We could have had the gun's fire rate ramp up over time, so the first few shots are slower and take a little bit of time to reach full fire rate. But that would make the gun feel worse in almost all other situations as well.
In the end, it was the most clean and flexible approach to make the stealth itself force a small delay and give a loud warning sound to nearby enemies, and allow her weapon to be strong outside of ambushing out of stealth. I know it can feel annoying to have that delay, but unfortunately in this case it felt necessary."
Well, there you have it! Although always remember that cancelling the animation for her Thermoptic Camo doesn't take you to Masters and above as there are a lot of ways you can augment your play without the use of such tricks. Simply mastering your coordination and basic shooting skills will take you to higher levels than these cheap tricks. Nonetheless, we do hope that you will find this helpful in several of your matches and remember that in anytime soon, Blizzard may or may not remove these animation cancelling mechanics.
