@bboifatz  
Saurons so called minions did as much as Sombras traps did. Your point is?

@Firefanatic  
I think that’s what they’re going for with Chrysalis.

@Background Pony We have too many relatables already. I think it’s time for one of those old school hard core irredeemables.

What Bronies did expected from Sombra? An entire arc of episodes on a full season ?  
Like Freezer’s arc in DBZ?
 
Saiyan-Alicorn Powwwwaaa!?
 
Isn’t a little girls show? :p

The problem with Discord was that he was established as a psychotic mind raping innocent torturing monster, there was no implication of anything deeper like with Nightmare Moon. So it was completely out of character for him to start caring, with Sombra they had a blank slate for a possibly relatable/tragic villain but did not use it. Of course he was based on a villain who we never saw speak or act so I think they did a pretty good job, if he’d stayed a silent mass of hatred he’d have been less parodyable.

@Background Pony
 
sigh
 
No, Sauron was never a gigantic eyeball floating over the Dark Tower. He had a physical humanoid body until the end of the Third Age.
 
Saruman was simply another in the long line of schemes.

@Trickquestion
 
The sad thing is that Sombra had potential. Even as a wraith he was still the most blatantly evil character in the show, and every obstacle he put up (plus the Diarchs having to doubleteam him) showed a genre-savvy, powerful opponent. He was pretty much set up to be a pony Sauron.
 
Then when we get him, he’s a shadow with a speech impediment.
 
Sauron’s power was that he was a looming threat throughout the narrative, and that the Lord of the Rings was simply the culmination of a plan spanning millennia. In the end, Sauron was still proven correct - nothing could willingly unmake the Ruling Ring.
 
Sombra…eh. Sure, he’s the most competent of the known villains, but if we’d seen him toy with the Mane Six or Cadance’s minds; if we’d seen Shining’s horn being another piece on Sombra’s chessboard; he’d easily have been the best villain of the series.

@Background Pony  
The difference is that Tirac had more screentime than Sombra. Sombra on the other hand, because of the little screentime that he had, didn’t make a better villain than the more menacing Tirac.

@Princess♠Molestia  
Generalization much?

Just my 2¢ on the whole sombra argument.
 
my personal theory is that the sombra we see in the show isn’t actually sombra it in fact a shade, a kind of half formed ghost by this theory of everything sombra did makes far more sense.
 
For example the fact that sombra barely speaks seems like this isn’t really him. it also explains why the crystal heart had the effect it did shades are said to be reliant on people remembering them a certain way for shade of sombra it would require the crystal ponies to constantly be in fear of him with the Crystal Heart returned and all fear of sombra gone the shade could no longer exist.
 
but this is just my opinion

yeah, the Transformers brand should learn from that and have Megatron become a good guy, no better let’s reform Unicron! let’s have all of the most dangerous villains suddendly go wangsty and reform!

@Background Pony  
I agree that even if they mentioned that Twilight had an older brother in an earlier episode, it would have been much better. Fans would be like “oh wow, she’s got a brother? I wonder when we’re going to see him, and what he’s like!” Instead, it’s more like “Whoa, WTF!? Where did this come from, and how come none of the other characters are surprised!?”

@bboifatz  
Only because of Twilight mirroring the audience’s surprise.
 
“My brother’s getting married!?!”  
“She has a brother?!?”
 
Even then, it’s still not good writing. He should have at least been MENTIONED before, if not seen in a flashback a couple times. Build up the character a bit, you know?

@bboifatz  
Still blame the writer. King Sombra does not really exist.

@MadBrony  
It was a two-parter, so there’s no excuse. Two parts was plenty of time to make Chrysalis an awesome villain, and in THAT two-parter they also had to shoehorn in the introduction of Shining Armor (who should have been introduced in an earlier episode, but they still managed to make it work).

@Itsthinking  
Discord is essentially Mr. Mxyzptlk.

@bboifatz  
Well, for this you just have to blame the writers and fact that the show have only a few minutes for a Sauron villain.

@Trickquestion  
Exactly. Sauron was a true threat because we saw how much destruction he could hurl at the good guys even WITHOUT the One Ring, and he only got more dangerous as the story went on. He had armies of monsters, and more importantly, the Ring was constantly tormenting Frodo and trying to turn him and his friends evil. The villain of the story was actually hanging from a chain around Frodo’s neck the whole time, and that in itself is a pretty heavy idea.
 
Sombra could have been pretty much anything and it would not have changed the story. The ways in which he tried to torment Twilight Sparkle were hardly unique to him. He could have just as easily been replaced with Chrysalis or Discord and the story would have played out pretty much the same way.

I like Sombra

@kruppenstein  
I don’t know, people rarely do things for just one reason. I know people like to say Discord was just doing it to piss ponies off and that’s what he liked most, but I’ve seen other comparisons towards him.
 
Why would he want to spread chaos in the first place? He can obviously do anything he damn near wants, why not just do what Sombra did when he got out the first time and enslave all of Equestria? The answer is pretty simple: he doesn’t actually want power. He wants attention and he doesn’t care how he gets it.
 
The fact that he basically realized what was at stake for him giving up his one friend he had ever made sealed the character for me. He was never evil. He was pretending like friendship made him gag in order to convince himself that he wasn’t missing out on anything. It might be a combination of factors such as being an outcast of society and his natural powers that caused him to think like this, but over time he actually started to believe it.
 
When you think about it, Discord is sort of like Twilight before she came to Ponyville. Both saw friendship as pointless, and had thoroughly convinced themselves that their path in life was to either learn or spread chaos and annoy ponies. Neither of them actually believed they would be capable of having friends until the moment someone actually showed them kindness and “got” them for the first time in their lives. Both have extraordinary powers that Princess Celestia saw as valuable, but needed work on other aspects of their character to make it useful.

That’s why I love Chrysalis, she isn’t flat, and she’s not a total p**sy like Discord.

I dunno, I thought Sombra was too flat by virtue of no personality rather than a shallow one.
 
Also I liked Keep Calm and Flutter On. :|

@Dan3697
 
King Sombra, while being a very few developed villain, is still a good opportunity for those who like to extrapolate how he was.

@Background Pony  
What makes Tirek such a good villain is how unrepentantly threatening he is. He employs ferocious dragons as war beasts, has a right hand man resembling Satan (though Scorpan would turn out to be a pretty cool guy) and threatened to outright murder Spike.
 
Sombra dosen’t do much for most of the story, his speech patterns and obsession with stairs/crystals are endlessly mockable, and he had Shinning Armor’s life in his hands, but chose to give him horn herpes instead of killing him. Yes, they couldn’t show somepony actually being killed, but they should have written it so Armor escapes by the skin of his teeth, not be spared for no reason.

@Background Pony
 
He had, like the bp before you said, minions to do that for him, and he really had more line, even if they contributed more to show how evil he was than explaining him.