This is another post covering the healthpack locations and tips on which are useful to hack. The previous post is HERE.
I’ve included all healthpack locations available on the map, but only marked the ones I find useful.
The neon-yellow ones are the most important ones that you and your team can use or are necessary to deny heals for the enemy team.
The pink ones are good to hack for yourself.
The orange ones are optional and depend on your personal playstyle or situations.
This is a 2 Capture Point map and therefore not mirrored in design or healthpack placement, and has two points as well as two rounds - attacking and defending. So explanations will be split into attacking or defending Point A and B.
Because this map is an entire building and this top view doesn’t show the insides of the building, I’ve included a general map with labels of each part of the building as well, so it’s hopefully easier to understand and explain. The map source is HERE (this map is from PTR status of the game, so healthpack locations changed! They are corrected in the images I edited and used here.)
This is the Horizon Lunar Colony map, a typical Assault/2CP map with 2 objectives the teams either have to defend or attack. What makes this map special is not only the many opportunities for high ground usage, but also the rather open character of the map which often only relies on small obstacles and half-height walls to hide behind.
Especially Point B asks the defenders to stand more aggressively out in the open on the objective to hold it, while the attackers have more opportunities to attack the objective from more sheltered perspectives. Retreating behind walls makes the defenders lose the objective.
This is opposed to other maps where the obective is more walled off or even almost completely surrounded by walls as a building, which protects the defenders and gives them opportunities to hide and recover while still standing on the objective, while the attackers stand out in the open on the path towards the objective (for example Temple of Anubis Point B).
The healthpack positions are loosely around objective and choke points, while the big healthpacks are usually close together.
This is a map Sombra can definitely profit off of in the best way, because there are many useful and big healthpacks to hack, even in direct vicinity to eachother, which makes her ult charge go up really fast. Horizon is a map where you can really gather charge for your EMP in a super short time, more when attacking than defending because of the big healthpacks’ placement often favoring the attacker’s side a little more.
This map has many positional phases attacking an individual objective and going towards the next, so we have to concentrate on parts of the map and the approach to it one after another.
This post will focus on defending.
We’ll start with the Defender approach on Point A:
Your team is defending and already standing on the objective, preparing and waiting for the enemies to arrive.
The ones directly around the objective are 2 small ones and a big one. These healthpacks are important to take more control of the area around the objective, and make it less safe for the enemy to approach that area.
The small neon yellow one on the left is good for your team as an option to retreat to, but it’s also taking away a good flanking/stealth spot (especially popular among enemy Sombras that don’t want to be predictable on the other two)
The small and big half pink and half neon yellow ones are both important for you and your team as well as map control, and depending on your team and your own preferences, one or both of them could be good to hack for yourself. They give you security when going around harassing the opponents and catching their flankers, and it’s making flanking much more risky for the enemy team.
Since both routes these healthpacks lie on are popular routes to access the objective in a more sheltered and safe way instead of straight towards the objective, be prepared to be interrupted or killed when translocating back. It’s worth a thought to maybe fall back on the small neon yellow one if you’re getting killed too much on the other healthpacks.
The big orange one outside the actual building (the one on the top) is pretty optional and depending on your playstyle. This spot can be safer to heal up on since no one can see you outside (except for Sonic Arrow and alike abilities) and the path is often pretty abandoned. Translocating back there could be an advantage. The disadvantage is obviously the slow movement, being an easy target to hitscans, and people seeing that the door opens and expecting you or following you.
Near the enemy spawn, there are two big orange healthpacks.
It pays off to hack these if you want to take away one chance to heal at this choke point. You could choose one of them in the beginning of the match and translocate away, and later on even stealth back to hack the other one, if you think it’s necessary and don’t risk dying too much.
With none of these health packs available, they’re relying much more on their healers and the choke point is harder to pass.
On the other hand, being so occupied with these healthpacks, you could possibly forget to really pay attention to the healthpacks surrounding the objective; having these available makes moving on from the choke point towards the objective easier for the enemy team too.
It’s not only important to distract or harass the enemy team, but also “hold the fortress”.
You could decide this based on your personal playstyle: Are you rather trying to surround the enemy and attack them on their own side, while taking away healing in their area? It probably pays off to hack the healthpacks there.
If you’re rather staying near your team, defending the objective and keeping the flank routes free and hack the healthpacks in them, basically using the maps architecture to your advantage and really closing it off to enemies through your defense, then those two probably don’t pay off as much. It essentially boils down to your strategy and if you have the skill yet to pull off a more risky Sombra play without dying (much) or not.
After they have taken Point A, you’ll move on towards the bottom left to Point B, where your spawn is. Inbetween is the Hydroponics lab.
Ideally, you’ll try to not immediately fall back on to the last point, but keep the fight in the Hydroponics lab. The small neon yellow healthpacks around Point A that were previously hacked could still pay off here, since they’re now on the enemy side but still useless as long as the hack persists.
Meanwhile, the above healthpacks on the left side are still on your side, especially the neon yellow ones.
They’re important for your team to keep the enemy team at bay. The Hydroponics lab has nice opportunities for hiding while still shooting as well as peeking around corners and objects. Especially the big neon yellow healthpack is good to hack, because it’s near a highground that’s nice to use to keep away the attackers.
The small neon yellow one is mainly just for additional control in what healing the enemy can use.
The pink one is very good to hack for yourself, since your teammates likely will only use the neon-yellow ones and it’s still sheltered off of the enemies.
Doing the Sombra loops with translocating back and forth on it is still easily possible in this phase on this healthpack.
The hacked healthpacks here basically align at the third choke point and hacking all of them is a good way to support your team in holding the enemy team in the Hydroponics lab.
Getting pushed back onto your objective is usually bad and sometimes a sign of an imminent loss. It makes you lose the third choke point, which is good architecture to use to have some support in defending the objective.
If you do get pushed back onto your objective or even slightly behind it, the context of the hacked healthpacks changes slightly.
Now, standing on the objective or slightly behind, the neon yellow marked healthpacks are not on your side anymore.
This makes it even more important to hack them and not let them run out. An enemy team that has you pushed so far back on this map and has healthpacks immediately next to it freely available is having a much much easier time capturing the objective.
This map point itself already favors attackers, and this last point is a bit more difficult to hold than other Point B’s, especially through the advantageous highground above it. To give your team a chance to defend or even push them back again, these are very important.
The pink highlighted one is still a pretty good option for solely you to use, while additionally taking healing away from a possible flank point onto the objective. It’s more likely now that enemies will find this spot than before, but there is no safer healthpack available here.
The small orange one is optional.
You need to judge if it’s worth it or if you’d rather save the hack for an enemy or another healthpack that needs to be updated, especially the neon yellow ones. If the enemies repeatedly get on the objective or already have a part of it captured and you can barely keep them off, it probably pays off hacking this as well. If that’s not the case and/or the enemy team isn’t paying attention to it, save it.
Since the picture above alone doesn’t make clear where exactly the healthpacks are, how to reach them and at which level they are, HERE is a video showing them all while going through the map and also explaining some strategies.
[This post is prone to editing because Horizon is only available since 2 months, as opposed to the other maps being available for a year. My perceptions and experiences could still change since they’re not as cemented as playing on the other maps since release/the open beta.]
