@Japanese Teeth  
Interestingly, a few of those points were revisited with Starlight Glimmer:
 
-She’s just a normal unicorn (more so than Sombra even, she looks like she could be anypony you pass on the street) but has incredibly powerful magic at her disposal (including one spell that some past episodes might make you think flat-out breaks the rules).
 
-She’s smart. She figured out from a single, seemingly innocent request that the Dissenters had been talking to the Mane Six and that they had become a danger to her regime, sets up an ambush that takes them completely by surprise, and keeps their cutie marks separate from the rest to better keep them hidden and more easily escape with them should things go south. She had cunning, as well as a great skill in both rhetoric and psychological torture, and it’s easy to see how the ponies around her could have been bent to her will.
 
-She gets away with a surprising amount of on-screen villainy. Between the Cutie Unmarking, the brainwashing hut, they way she ferrets out dissenters… That many of her methods have clear real-life parallels makes it all the more sinister.
 
Unlike Sombra, however, Starlight’s menace is not mostly confined to backstory. We aren’t looking at some nebulous cloud of malice but a seemingly-ordinary pony who’s gone very, very bad somewhere along the way. The message is clear: it’s not just the obvious monsters who are capable of evil.

@Japanese Teeth  
I think he was meant to mostly have a dark presence (like an oncoming natural disaster) and not be a “talkative, expository, hammy” villain like before.
 
But yeah, he could’ve done with more exposure. I can see the show or the comics bringing him back (c’mon, IDW!).

The pluses to Sombra were that his character… lacked character?
 
Seriously, it basically says that being properly intertwined with the script or having quirks are bad things. Which is fine, if you want a purely-there-to-set-up-something-else blob of generic evil like how Doomsday kicked off the Death of Superman storylines, but they aren’t terribly fun when later examined on their own merits.

In all honesty, Sombra has all the makings of a great villain; he’s just a unicorn, which means he must be damn good at magic to be so powerful, he sets up some pretty badass traps, which shows he’s intelligent, and he was capable of allowing his horn to snap off and used it to screw up the kingdom while Cadance’s barrier was still active. Not to mention that whole “Slave empire” thing means he got away with more on-screen villainy than anyone else on the show.
 
The problem is that we didn’t get to actually see him DOING much of that; he spent most of the episode being a sort of nebulous evil. I just wish that when he materialized bodily at the end he would have had a couple of good lines. Would’ve bumped him up a spot on the villain tier.

Wow, I can’t beleve I’m actually agreeing with something on /mlp/. Well, maybe not entire thing, but certainly some good points.
 
(In my opinion, Sombra wasn’t too bad, but expectations for him were too high)

I like that he actually gets annihilated, not turned good, not turned to stone, not blasted off towards the horizon, BLASTED INTO BITS!

^ i think se actuali said “My slaves” oe something like that when he almost returned.

Actually, he hasn’t really fight. They manage to protect the empire before he got full power. But, my major problem come from the fact he’s way too serious. The slavery thing is kind of dark. I guess that’s a good thing he didn’t speak. Whatever he could say wouldn’t fit the show.

V He was completely prepared if someone had went after the Crystal Heart alone and would have won.

I admit that Sombra wasn’t exactly the most well developed villian in the show, but think of this, if Spike HADN’T followed Twilight to the castle and stayed with Rarity she would have stared at that door FOREVER!

@Molestia
 
Agreed. He was more like a malevolent force of nature.

@Molestia  
Yeah, I was glad they knew to change the pace. They didn’t just want to recreate Discord or Nightmare Moon.

But making Spike cry is easy. Twilight was able to do it inadvertently by adopting Owlowiscious.

@Background Pony
 
You forget how the other three fell?

I actually felt Sombra was a breath of fresh air. Unlike the other villains who you can try to dig up a reason for them being evil, this guy was just irredeemable. Essentially he came off as a shadowy parasite to me.

Needs more Gak.

At least he wasn’t defeated by himself, like Chrysalis, who felt like explaining everything she was doing for some reason

Goat Man and Cheeselegs.

>No shit minions  
The others had minions?

I’ll be honest, I didn’t like Sombra.  
I still don’t love him, but this has given me something to think about.

>Defeated easily as fuck
 
And that gives you -100 points

That anon knows what’s up.
 
Sombra only has slightly less character than Planet Nemesis, and Sailor Moon R was the best thing ever.

but everything changed when the GAK nation attacked

I meant that towards the pic.

Quite…