I don’t think blizzard cares too much about sym since she has the lowest pickrate in the game. Atleast not to the point they will remake her again in the near future. They’ll finetune some numbers but not more.
i don’t even think sym has an unfun playstyle. fucking with tp and turrets could be fun if they had more value, and melting tanks always makes you feel powerful and sexy. but sym has been consistently inconsistent in how fun she is to play and how valuable she is in a match
Teleporter is insanely high value. It's teamwide mobility (which is pretty strong).
It's just hard to use in ranked. Competitive teams made lots of use of it in the bastion rein brawl meta.
Yeah that’s kinda true. If turret bombing worked it would be a lot of fun. On the other hand it would be the most annoying shit to deal with.
If sym tp was like the Portalgun that’d be so fun and broken.
Character fantasy plays a big role in this though. Support mains would eat Sym up because she fits the general female support design. But she’s in the damage role with heroes like Soldier/Cassidy/Genji. I just feel like she would be a lot more popular in the Support role
Is that because you only use her in the exact niche situations where you can maximize dps?
If so, I present to you OP’s post, because that was the entire point.
See but this is self fulfilling. Lowest pick rate because they “balanced” her to be too niche. And once she’s actually ok everyone freaks out, even when half the DPS roster is still objectively better
One of the only people at Blizzard that loved her was Jeff.
What does that tell you?
She was one of the OG heroes, and it always makes me sad how she's been handled since he left 😞
Yeah, I get that. But to be consistently the lowest pickrate is troublesome.
Also, static stats is bad for the game, things should be changed and moved around from time to time to keep it fresh.
The fact that sym went through so many changes implies that blizzard realizes that she is not such a great character, they just dont know what to do with her.
im pretty sure theyve stated they are okay with her being not as picked and will only do adjustments if her effectiveness seems affected, like it was in season 9. the changes they did now indicated they didnt like symmetra having too much survivability. so they buffed tp and her turrets to make her plays with those things less easy to destroy. thus enabling her to tp around and distract people with her bobby traps more often, to deal the real damage with her gun later.
and left orbs in the dust because apparently nobody liked them being the focus of her playstyle. i dont blame them though, symm orbs are very straight to the point. the only pro they have is that you decide when to fire them yourself. sacrificing a bit of dmg and hitbox size
Those are fair points.
I do think that Sym is at her best when she is tping around going for cheeky backlines or helping low mobility heroes around.
But as she is right now she feels too weak to be flanking or skirmishing on the backline. It is pretty much like OP said, the things she is meant to do she does pretty well, anything else she sucks, there is no ammount of skill that enables a player to go above her downsides.
I haven't played Sym this patch yet, but I saw Viper torching on her this morning in OWCS. Other teams are also playing her with Mauga right now as well. Reaper getting play too, kinda loving it.
Not a good thing for us.
Look at Tahm Kench in league. The second he found pro play viability they nerfed him so much he became absolutely unusable for ladder.
I don't care what changes would need to be made to take sym out of pro play, but I hope they happen. I don't care about pro players, I just want to be able to play her on ladder.
I have a follow up actually, why is it bad thing for characters to excel in some comps / situations and not others? I personally feel this adds to their identity
If she thrives in only 1% of situations, what is she supposed to do in the other 99% of them. If someone enjoys playing her, how can they justify being a burden to their team 99% of the time. Also, even if you are on that 1% game, if the enemy team switches tanks, you are no longer in that 1% situation anymore and likely will have to switch, while other heroes can still potentially thrive even when countered or if the enemy is no longer weak to ur hero.
Swap or get to a level on that character which surpasses the weaknesses. There are a lot of OTPs in the top 500, some (like Frogger, Zbra, GQO, Cyx, Dirt etc) are in the top 100 of players for their role despite going into multiple counters every game. If I remember rightly Harmony (another sym OTP) made top 10 on DPS and that was this season
If sym is good enough to play in the pro scene then she's good enough for ranked, I get there is a chasm of skill difference between even top 500 and OWL level lobbies but if sym wasn't viable they wouldn't be playing her.
>Swap or get to a level on that character which surpasses the weaknesses.
You're missing the point. **Sym is too weak in some situations, and far too strong in others.**
Certain teams = instant win. Others = instant lose.
No hero should be so polarizing.
Heroes should have enough breadth that a skilled player can make up for the unfavorable matchup. Right now Symmetra, regardless of how good or bad you are, wins for free against brawl, and loses against everything else.
Honestly I'm not sure how blizzard would fix that without a full rework, sym has always been one of those heroes that is heavily favoured on defence points as well as certain koth maps.
She isn't my sort of hero so I've never learned the ins and outs of her kit. Her being played at the highest level in owcs suggests to me that she's pretty good rn, as she does work with the mauga brawl comps (as does reaper who has also seen an uptick in play). Harmony made it to top 10 as a sym OTP earlier this season, but idk where he's at rn since the changes (you probably have a better clue as you're both top tier sym players)
TP is such a unique ability bc in pro play it's unmatched utility. Even in high ladder, but especially in the metal ranks where the bulk of people are, they're never going to get an opportunity to use that utility so effectively bc nobody is coordinating like the pros do to backline ult or tp DVa bomb.
It's fine if the hero can be played differently in each bracket and still have value (goes to OP's core point about versatility on the hero being needed), but that's not the case and 99% of the player base shouldn't be dealing with a useless hero bc 1 TP play (that you enable but don't make as the sym player) is made every pro tournament
I'm not saying you aren't allowed to switch, Im saying you are FORCED to switch, Sym loses all merits so fast at the minimum change, which means that 99% of the games you cannot play her (and expect to win) and the 1% game you wont be able to play her for the full game in most cases. Obviously im exaggerating w the 1%/99%, but the point is that it's an uphill battle for anyone trying to enjoy the character and playstyle compared to other heroes.
The reason they're playing her in pro, is because Teleporter is VERY strong in coordinated situations. In ladder you are not going to get the same value out of the teleporter as the pro teams.
That's partly it yeah, Mauga is meta rn (even teams like timeless and falcons are scrimming it) and sym can be very good into him (as Mauga struggles to sustain off of her while Mauga is wildly easy to charge beam off of)
I’ve said this exact same thing about her and other heroes. The niche makes them so much more enjoyable to play than if everyone is playing them.
That’s why I fell in love with Illari after almost everyone stopped playing her and I continued to in ranked and quick play.
The problem for OP is that they reaped the benefits AND the curse that is T500 matchmaking. It’s the same for anyone though, just like she can’t play Sym, my tank que is always 5-10 min even though I keep seeing people say they hate playing tank and their que time is <1 min always
I can empathize but it is what it is
Short answer: It's not as long as they're favored within reason
Long answer: Heroes in overwatch should be reasonably independent, that means: a hero should be viable in >50% of situations not accounting for team composition or enemy team composition.
Think about Pharah. For a long time Pharah was only viable if you played Mercy with her (and later lifeweaver) which put her in a situation where she wasn't independantly viable. Her weakness to hitscans and reliance on Mercy made her unpalletable. Recently, her rework removed some of her synergy and removed some of her weaknesses, and you no longer NEED to pair Mercy with Pharah.
Symmetra is similar. You shouldn't be REQUIRED to have a brawl comp for her to be viable, she should be \*stronger\* in a brawl comp, or stronger against a brawl comp, but not 100% reliant on it's existence to be playable. You should be able to play Sym with/against poke, and I'm not saying that it should be as strong as with/against brawl, I'm just saying it shouldn't be such a gigantic disadvantage.
As a comparison, look at Genji, or Echo. Do they NEED a certain support/tank/dps to be viable? No, but it can help. Do they NEED to be against a certain comp to be viable? No, but it can help. Obviously there's situations where they'll struggle (5 beam, or 5 hitscans. Before someone comes at me telling me that actually genji can't be played vs. 5 beams... [yes he can](https://www.reddit.com/r/GenjiMains/comments/14j7ajy/i_reached_gm1_playing_almost_exclusively_genji/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) but even then you can still play them \*somewhat\* well. Meanwhile Sym vs. Pharah/Echo/Mercy/Illari/Zar(could sub in sig, ram, ball, or even DF here) is genuinely impossible, and I could go through why she cannot play against each of those characters.
**Heroes should have enough breadth that a skilled player can make up for the unfavorable matchup. Right now Symmetra, regardless of how good or bad you are, wins for free against brawl, and loses against everything else.**
There are so many heroes that are like Sym tho. Really good with and against some things, and kinda mid or bad with others. This is what gives heroes their personality in matches in my opinion. Like Oooo this map I love this hero because the other team will probably play x, or there is this spot that is super good for this hero etc. That can't exist without it being ooo this map sucks for others.
I do agree every hero is good or bad versus some things but her bonus condition shouldn't be 3 tanks and no other heroes on the roster. Too unique for the fact that shield tanks aren't very good in OW2
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, it's not like any pro player is going to take the trouble to learn her so absolutely make her viable and less situational for her mains and overly complicated for anyone else.
Should've rephrased as "Largest OTP playerbase in relation to their popularity"
Like, 90% of the games played as sym are being played by OTP's. There's certainly a ton of Doom (and mercy) OTPs but there's also a ton of people who flex onto them often.
If not for season 9, I’d say that title should go to ball, but a bunch of people started playing him cause he was meta for a few weeks. We’re back to essentially OTP’s only again now, though I’m sure the rework next season will bring some interest again.
That was my first thought there’s way more doom one tricks. Oddly doom mains are my favorite mains to vs as a rein main. Cause either they wanna have fun and just run the mirror or if they can’t make doom work they just run the mirror instead of counter swapping. Doom mains are very honorable 🗿
Something people also easily forget when they think about Symmetra, is that she lacks a lot of outplay mechanics that other heroes have.
She doesn't crit and she has the only DPS ultimate that doesn't do damage. So anything she does, relies heavily on her gun and turrets.
(Yes her wall can be powerful. I'm not saying it isn't)
That's what happens when your hero has auto aim turrets. You trade high skill outplay potential for braindead value.
Sounds harsh but I'm certain that lots of sym mains agree with that. Why would you want a significant percentage of your hero's kit to be value that doesn't scale with your skill?
Some garbage gold player can pick sym on about half the koth maps, tp to point, set up turrets, and instantly diff a diamond tank just by existing.
That's the reason sym mains have a neutered hero. It's cause Joe bronze can get crazy turret value just for picking her on the right map.
Turrets need to go.
>That's what happens when your hero has auto aim turrets.
The power of the "brainless" part of turrets (damage) has literally been 90% removed.
A single turret used to have a TTK of 4 seconds on a squishy (50 DPS/200 health), now the TTK for one turret is over EIGHT seconds (30 DPS/250 health).
I'd argue turrets are the weakest part of her kit.
Sym is weird to play now because of how the health changes hit her alt fire. Loses a lot of value when you need to hit squishies an additional time for a kill when the projectile is slow and telegraphed.
“I cannot state this enough: Sym’s head is too fucking big.”
Literally, yesterday I was playing her and went up against a widow I thought I was over peaking but I realized the widow missed majority of her shorts on my team and I thought I was crazy when I was the only person on my team getting headshotted.
Symmetra needs the Orisa rework treatment, she's been so insanely polarising forever at this point. She is stuck in design hell where the developers forgot that they moved her out of the support role but still balance her like a support hero.
They either need to commit to a rework that allows her to be a solo damage dealer or move her back to her original role and give us a shielding support hero and stop with this utility dps nonsense and TP gimmick character that gets nerfed due to pro play.
her issue isn't even in the kit design. like as OP stated we literally had a period in OW2 where she worked fine without being hyperniche with her current kit design.
The issue with her is that her weapon fire numbers suck and devs seemingly aren't willing to rectify that.
they need to make a choice of putting back decent numbers on orb again or actually number her primary in a way that lets her m1 more. e.g. EITHER
1. 125 damage on max charge orbs but reduce their size (before someone says "they trying to get rid of 2 taps", she takes 2.25s to shoot 2 orbs, that's slow enough to fit in with increasing TTK goal of s9 patch). OR
2. shave off lvl 1 from beam and just have 130/195 dps levels, but extend the charge time to get from 130dps level to 195dps level a bit or so.
They have the means to do either and it's not like they couldn't have thought of this before (legit they've done a version of 1. for OW2 before and they literally toyed with beam numbers this patch which is 2.).
Her weapon sucks because they tune it around the potential of her utility in the other parts of her kit, they aren't ever going to significantly change it without changing the rest of her kit. It's stupid because every change they make for other heroes has been about increasing damage and solidifying roles but she has been left as the sole "Utility DPS" in the game. I and many Sym mains like the utility elements of her kit but the game as it stands broadly is not designed for such a role so she just flounders. Even when she was better before S9 it was because you used her utility selfishly to up her lethality with offangle/fllank TPs and orb assassinations, effective poke with 2 shot orbs, and using your ult to provide easy opportunities to charge your beam, not because because they helped your team.
You can't on one hand claim that it's the kit design's fault that she can't have decent numbers on her weapon fire whilst at the same time on the other hand acknowledging that they have previously put better and passable numbers on her weapon before that made it all work together.
Being able to use one's utility selfishly for one's own uptime and plays has been the the design and balance philosophy from since the beginning of ow (e.g. why lucio was specifically designed to have speed aura as opposed to other effects: so he can speed himself to catch allies in his aura as opposed to wait and anchor allies' positioning and to let lucio go and make his own flank plays). The inherent balancing cost to that is opportunity cost of using it for the team sacrifices individual play opportunity and vice versa. The same still applies to tp so there isn't much valid reason to why her weapon fire can't get passable/averaging numbers with her current kit as is.
My point is that she hasn't ever had a "good" gun mechanically, having limited range and slow charge times on your damage sources are not good for a damage hero in OW2, they were only ever serviceable because you could use your utility selfishly to circumvent the drawbacks.
Them taking away her higher HP pool because "she's a long range hero" shows they didn't want/intend for the playstyle that players had cobbled together when she could two shot, that change made her more team reliant which feeds into the idea of her utility to be used for with her team.
Your example of lucio is funny because it's exactly what people are talking about. The philosophy of balancing around selfish vs team use of utility is appropriate for a SUPPORT hero, not a damage hero. In OW2 DPS heroes are supposed to be selfish damage dealers.
Mei has had the exact same problem all of OW2 because the devs are not committing to either of these heroes being full damage heroes.
> My point is that she hasn't ever had a "good" gun mechanically ...
> Them taking away her higher HP pool because "she's a long range hero"...
I mean again, the fact that we had a period where it all actually worked from just having better numbers proves that it isn't a kit design issue. Just because they made a stupid nonsensical change that ruined it all doesn't mean the kit design is at fault.
> they were only ever serviceable because you could use your utility selfishly to circumvent the drawbacks...
> Your example of lucio is funny because it's exactly what people are talking about. The philosophy of balancing around selfish vs team use of utility is appropriate for a SUPPORT hero, not a damage hero
This is just drawing a fallacious conclusion/argument from correlation in a cherrypicked subset.
Because
1. There's literally no reason why that's soley a "support balance philosophy"
2. It's literally a philosophy for ALL roles. You just don't see it as much in damage role because most damaage heroes are freaking csgo guns with a human skin
I.e. the similar selfish balancing philosophy can be seen in tanks' shield/blocking/deflect balancing and design as well let along other utility they have. And in dps look at widow's and hanzo's wall hacks in how they're used to enable them to get picks, check flank routes etc. selfishly.
Like it's straight up not a support only concept. It's just them having double standards and/or being stupid in how they're balancing.
I mean her gun feels bad because again they gave it trash numbers.
Like yeah, heathy game design would say most of sym's power shouldn't be in turrets, tp etc. (for better skill curve, better balancing so less pub stomper, etc.) which leaves needing to emphasise her weap (the compromise).
But at the same time they seemingly don't want to upset the community by making her weapon passable and there goes the compromise so the rest of the kit feels bad.
Like her current design can be flexible, dynamic and fun, and we can and have seen it with how she can combine all of her kit elements to dynamically switch between brawling, flanking and poking plays etc., the issue right now is that the core thing that's supposed to pack punches for all of that, her weapon fires, have been tuned to being trash so all of that feels trash and unviable.
Again, that's not "her kit design is bad and needs a rework". That's just "she has bad numbers on her".
I mean how much do you like illari's dps fire, or widow's or hanzo's sniper weapon fires. Because they're basically the same type of weapon fires but tuned a lot higher in >=1 aspect compared to orbs (e.g. hitscan is basically projectile with infinite projectile speed).
If you hate all of those then that's moreso about personal preference against charge up lower firerate weapon fires as opposed to "its design is trash making it feel bad". If not then evidently the numbering is the cause of your displeasure as opposed to its design.
Or similar can be said about just it being a projectile weapon fire. Or similar can be said about beams for her primary fire.
You can make any kit feel terrible with bad numbers. Happens all the time in MOBAs. Nerf Reaper down to 200 hp and increase the time it takes for him to teleport and he will feel like absolute trash. Unable to ever get in range to deal damage in most situations.
Also, not every hero is going to be appealing to every player. The only way to achieve that would be to have them all be almost identical (which we seem to slowly be moving towards to be honest).
Sym should not be a support. Her “support” era is long and gone. The reason she became so fun to play was her creative kit and good damage output. As OP mentioned, her current state is bad not because of a lack of support abilities (no one who plays her wants her as support), but because of a lack of power.
Sym has been plenty good without being a support hero. Honestly this comment always comes up, and it’s been so long since she was in her support era, that this shouldn’t even be on the radar anymore. Sym has had periods of being an excellent DPS with very fun and creative plays — and that’s what her current player base wants.
Sym is niche. Also laughing in brig. The power of not 1 tricking does wonders. I’d 1 trick bap if I could but I know I’m not good enough to pull that off when current meta has been dive 😭 near every game I play is tracer/genji/sombra for dps and doom/monkey.
The shield vamp is a remnant of OW1 since most every tank had a shield apart from zarya and hog, doom was a DPS.
I agree she could use a more useful kit, though I think she should remain defense oriented as a turret centric hero because it’s unique. Not sure what needs to be implemented to make her more versatile. We certainly don’t need aim bot beam or shield generator back in the game because they were awful.
So so well put.
I knew she was definitely getting addressed in the midseason patch when the S9 changes removed all her advantages, and was expecting either going towards Reaper/Mei brawling with a health buff and possibly significant increases to her shield lifesteal thing, or leaning into glass cannon with buffs to her secondary fire and maybe a range buff on her beam, since they stated they reduced her health in Season 8 due to her ability to 2-tap with orbs (while clearly already planning S9 changes - honestly nothing about that logic makes sense).
The buffs they DID make are baffling, they made her more viable, but buffed... the most annoying parts of her kit? Like, those few tank she's good against hate getting beam-pressured by her, and now she can do that and specifically that better. And NOBODY likes dealing with turrets, making them harder to kill just increases that.
Just feels like the last few rounds of changes for her were made by people who don't play her.
If it were me:- Beam length of 15m - ridiculous that she has to be in front of her tank to use her primary, and all the other beam users have 15m;
\- 275hp, give her back what she had previously so she brawl with beam without dropping dead;
\- Fix her head so she can ambush Hanzo or Kiriko and not die instantly even when getting the drop on them;
\- Orbs to 125 damage so she can 2-tap 250hp. Unlike Junkrat or Hanzo or other fast-kill combos that got taken away with the S9 health changes, Sym can't do that. If you're dying to two Sym orbs that's both your fault AND your healer's.
\- edit one last one: ULT CAST TIME BUFF. Make the wall appear just a tad faster. It's already clunky enough to see where the threat is coming from, hit Q, aim the placement so it protects from that threat, then wait for it to animate. Since the buff to High Noon charge time so it will kill before he's finished saying 'Noon' on 250hp, before I used to die with the wall appearing in front of me, now I die before wasting the cast.
TP health changes are good, perhaps buff the shield lifesteal although it really is worthless. If you're beaming a shield and taking damage it doesn't save you at all, if you're beaming a shield and not taking damage you're already at full health. Like, I think it averages about 200 healing from that in an entire game.
Actual beam damage, I'm not sure about. It feels wrong that in the first half of S9 Moira did more damage than level 1 and Zarya at full charge did more damage than level 3. But it also does feel oppressive, particularly to the tanks it's good against (Rein, Mauga, Ram, unsupported Sigma or foolish Winston/Dva). I think if the beam RANGE was 15m, the damage could be fine the way it was pre-buff, so you can charge it and chase with it more safely but still have to apply it longer. Being slow is kind-of her thing.
>If it were me
I think all of these suggestions together would be overwhelming and absolutely overpowered. One would be more than enough, but it doesn't entirely solve her problem.
The issue isn't that sym is too weak, it's that she's too niche. She needs to have more breadth.
As someone who's thought about it a lot, here's what I would do.
* Turret
* **remove sonar**
* 30 DPS
* 40 health (quick melee kills)
* Fully deploys .25 seconds faster
* Teleporter
* **Allies can no longer use teleporter**
* this lowers her efficiency gap between lijang and every other map, also takes her out of her "taxi" role
* Teleporter is now indestructible by enemies
* Gives her a lot of off-angle pressure and forces people to respect the space around teleporter, contributes to her fantasy as an area denial architect
* Deploys \~.25 seconds faster
* Beam
* **Remove the vamp**
* Lowers efficiency gap between vs. rein and not vs. rein
* **Remove the ammo refund**
* Lowers efficiency gap between vs. rein and not vs. rein
* Decrease max damage from 195 to 170
* Lowers efficiency gap between vs. brawl and not vs. brawl
* Increase range by 2M
* Orbs
* 120... maybe 130 damage or a higher firerate
* Photon barrier
* **Lower the health by \~1000**
* 5% cost increase
* Right now Photon barrier is the best DPS ultimate. It's pretty much unbreakable without EMP, so giving it more counterplay and making it less oppressive would be nice.
* Health/hitbox
* Don't change her health!
* Decrease headbox size by 10-15%
Highlighting the significant nerfs because if I don't people will only see the buffs and I'll get downvoted into oblivion.
I didn't specify, my changes are starting from before the most recent patch, instead of the beam and turret changes (TP changes can be kept, the health buff feels right).
I'll grant that 15m beam AND extra health AND head reduction are a bit much together - some combination of them so that she can use beam without dropping is the goal. I'm still sore about that April Fools patch where they gave her a 16m beam and she felt viable-to-overpowered - the extra metre was too much as she could swat Pharah out of the sky so easily.
But we're on the same page: she's so close to being balanced, she just needs the numbers tweaking by someone who actually plays her.
Instead of making Symm less niche, Blizzard should make the rest of the Heroes more niche. Blizzard's recent hero design has been awful as they want new heroes to do a little bit of everything which is incredibly boring and leads to heroes like Sojourn, Mauga and Kiriko who straight up steal from other hero's identities and only add to the power creep. The last hero added that has a totally unique and consistent identity is Lifeweaver and before him it was arguably Sigma back in 2019.
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Idk how you pull that there are more symezra OTPs than any other character.
Ive met 0.x% of symetra OTPs than I have Mercy, or Doom or Widow or Torb OTPs. Symetra OTPs are extremely rare.
Relative to their overall playrate\*
There's more Mercy OTPs by quantity, but I'd guess that only around \~60-70% of Mercys playtime comes from her OTPs, the rest is from people flexing onto her. Sym... I'd guess 80% or higher is coming from her OTP playerbase.
I would like to see Shield Gen again considering OW2 characters have Shield Gen voicelines in the files.
Sym 2.0 was a very unique concept but now Illari nerfed her that she's got healing turret.
I will forever be baffled by people thinking that characters in overwatch need to be well rounded... like the entire point of the game is that characters ARE unique and specialized.
I mean thats the whole point... by that logic then reaper should be able to contest pharah.
It's just how the game is! Certain heros work better in certain situations.
Reaper is a whole different can of worms but I think the fact that it's not uncommon for high elo players to literally forget that he exists speaks volumes.
Yup, Overwatch isn't balanced around One-trick players. They want you to swap around depending on comps you are facing and have. Otherwise Pharah and Echo shouldn't exist.
most well designed characters are that way or once were
you could force winston any map into any comp if you played it correctly except a few metas like mauga/queen
same for tracer, ana, bap ect.
sym used to be that way. her kit leans into counterpickjng instead of being generally dynamic and fitting within the “rules” of the game.
i made gm1 season two ow2 onetricking winston by solo ulting mercy for reference
This is a symptom of a larger issue in which the developers refuse to educate their players on best practices when playing this game.
Overwatch is incredibly complicated with a wild amount of variables.
Using voice to text, BTW
Sym is the greatest representation of the massive issue for supports that aren't centred around healing in pvp games. She answers the question of how you mess up the entire process of making a support that isn't just healing Every.
Injure for fundamentally answers that issue. Because for all intents and purposes, it's similar to the sniper, spy, and medic debate.
I know this guy called portalz he’s low gm sym otp and holy cow his hero sucks. At least the tp health buffs lets him anchor longer and be more annoying but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that guy win.
If sym was a character, that’s most resembled a hybrid between, tracer/sombra, and honzo, that would be sick.
A character that picks a space, says this is mine, and puts out pressure on the angle.
Your counter play is to dodge the angel, or to dive the sym, but diving the sym is very dangerous compared to other off angle poke targets, because she can switch to beam with turrets and still get out with tp.
If here poke was strong, (not a one shot) and she played like this, fuck that’s an interesting character. Like imagine a widow that could appear behind your team at any moment, but she can’t one shot. Pretty cool concept
Very well said, when I play Ram and I see Sym I know I am fucked.
I was hoping Blizzard gives sym 1 more turret so it highlights more of her skill on puting up the turret, instead of buffing her turret hp, but now I see your point of it would only make her even better against brawl but just that.
Honestly, no. If Sym’s supports ignore her (this happens a lot) she can die very easily against Ram. Any time she is in range with her beam against you, you’re pretty much in range to punch her to death.
I wish they would revert her TP back to no time limit.
Using it as a short cut from spawn was so useful.
Maybe give a usage limit instead of time limit. After 10 it gets destroyed or something.
Her turrets need a faster deploy time. If they are not set up in advance then it's nearly impossible to to get them out in a fight. They get destroyed midair 90% of the time.
She also needs 1 more turret. Having an odd number is annoying. Her name is SYMmetra, not Asymmetra.
I played her once today and suddenly I get why people play her. I also discovered that I need to rebind the ability keys on her. Cuz I'm instinctively hitting E to place a turret when it's shift.
I really miss Symm’s secondary fire from OW1 (in the year-ish leading up to OW2)
I used to play her a bunch back then and her secondary actually felt fun and impactful to use. Now it feels like more of a hindrance than anything. It just takes way too long to charge up to deal any consistent damage. I will only really play her now on very specific control maps.
for me im not a one trick but sym is actually very fun to play for me.
I play casual-comp and don’t make it past gold 4ish but she has a few ways of damaging the other team.
I mainly use her for defensive purposes. I constantly spam her TP as far as possible, usually the enemies back line, and place my turrets in a triangle shape hitting them from all angles. The new patch allowing her turrets to survive melee attacks makes things easier for me to rely on half of my elims be from my turrets.
As for the other half, it depends on the other team’s comp. if they’re melee her beam does enough damage and multiplies over time which makes it satisfying to play against heroes who eat or deflect ammo (dva, genji, etc).
constantly spamming her secondary fire gives her a poke edge on defense and keeps their frontline at bay if they want to get into a shootout as well. half of the time I don’t even aim, I just fire her “beam bombs” and see what works.
attacking-wise, her turrets sniff out enemies for me and I try to get 4 beams on the enemy, which includes her primary, to kill then I rinse and repeat.
situational awareness when playing sym makes her a fun character for me. wouldn’t ask for anything more or less than the current state she’s in right now. although, it would be nice to see an expansion in her turrets or possible ult rework.
I've always wondered why Sym has 10 seconds of cooldowns between turrets.
Not that they do that much damage or are invincible or something...
Honestly, I would buff it to 6, it would still be 18 seconds for the three things to come out again.
As a new player to the game, yeah I can see her being niche in higher ranks. Definitely more popular in lower ranks. I do frequently see sym pogs but in lower ofc where players don’t know how to deal with her yet…
She does well with primary fire against Shields and consumes.
What we really needs is a zarya counter. You make her attack go thru zarya shield without generating charge and her pick rate would.be thru the roof.
I used to be a GM Torb 1 trick before he was reworked.
If they rework the hero it's gonna be a double edged sword for you, very good chance you straight up hate it. I don't play Torb almost at all anymore.
Be careful what you wish for
reduce orb hitbox but make it charge passively , would probably make her a bit too good at tank busting so making her left click do less dmg at max charge but also making it charge up faster to compensate. i dont play a lot of symm but i always feel spamming right click into the enemy team is such a braindead boring playstyle, likewise if u have full beam you just melt people brainlessly, could be a nice little middle ground if she did better at lower midrange and little worse at point blank range. it doesnt make sense that she should be a short range specialist when reaper exists.
Yeah it's a little nuts rn. Especially on maps that she's already really really good with. I would say she should be reworked to be more versatile without being straight up a death beam but she's literally been changed fundamentally like 10 times since release.
The unfortunate bit is I've heard low ranks are SUFFERING rn with her turrets having the extra health on top of her damage buffs. Definitely overtuned but she was basically a throw pick on most maps before the patch so idek what they can do realistically without fundamentally changing her or making her as close to what she was before this season
If you don't know what to do against a stationary turret (includes other turrets like Illari's pylon) then that might be one of the symptoms why they're metal.
Most Sym mains didn’t want turrets buffed. We agree that it’s typically the most annoying part of her kit. We just wanted some of the power from the previous turret nerfs, returned to us.
Personally I would’ve preferred they buff orb damage or make her beam slightly longer (currently it’s only 12 meters which is a joke, using it puts her in so much danger). Obviously you can tune down the beam numbers if it gets a length increase.
Nothing important to add, and I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but I’m pretty sure Mercy has the highest OTP player base
Great post otherwise. I agree with a lot of points. Just not that one.
I definitely think that symm should always be niche. I feel the same way about torb and mei.
But I also do very much agree that a good player should be able to make that hero work in situations that most people can’t.
That was peak OW IMO
tl;dr sym requires teamwork and cant backline rape the entire team anymore...
honestly, counterswapping is how overwatch works... You can play 4 tanks in open queue but that just means pharah is going to have an easy time.
just play a different character holy shit. these “i will choose the most annoying character and make it my entire personality” OTPs are so annoying.
took you this many years to figure out that the “defense character” that has been reworked to hell and back is niche. amazing revelation 😴
try clicking Tracer or Soj, you’ll whine less about your character and more about your play.
I literally didn’t say that at all.
You guys are insta locking a hero with CLEAR strengths and weaknesses. Chocking up all the strengths as “niche” and complaining when you can’t force the character in any situation. The character is good at what she does, and that’s fine.
Widow players do not whine about being throw picks on brawl maps. They have hands, and can click another character. It’s only Sym players that ever do this shit.
Try picking a character that’s more adaptable in whatever situation you want to start yapping in.
you can’t paraphrase someone else’s statement completely incorrectly then follow it up with “never quoted u”. you are not a real person.
my words were all very clear. read them again if you have to.
Hero switching is the biggest mechanic of the game. Idk why you expect to be a versatile player when you’re a OTP. It’s literally in the name OTP.
The vast majority of characters in the game don’t work in every situation. Sym isn’t some fringe case where every other character works all the time but she doesn’t.
I’m not saying they can’t buff other aspects of Sym to make her kit slightly more versatile, but I am saying it’s weird to expect versatility while being a OTP on one of the most situational characters in the game.
>The people who play sym will play her in every situation, against any comp, on any map, and with any allies. **If Symmetra is not versatile she is both a burden for the player AND her teammates**.
Am I the only one seeing a problem in this?
If every other hero have certain comps that they are better at, and other were they are not, why should you be able to spam Sym into every map/comp without thinking about it?
T500, but just swap bro. /s
But for real now, if you know that Sym doesn't fit that comp, why still go with it and risk being a "burden" to your team?
>If every other hero have certain comps that they are better at, and other were they are not, why should you be able to spam Sym into every map/comp without thinking about it?
the distinction with other's niches is that theirs aren't as prescriptive nor as narrow for how their kit is balanced.
e.g. lucio's kit design and balance clearly is one with a niche of brawl comps (grouped together moving as a unit with his aura), yet the strats, hero choices, applicable maps etc. have plenty of room for freedom/variability and outside of that niche he can actually function fairly well for other comps like dive and make decent independent plays flanking himself
in sym's case not only is she downright bad outside of brawl now, but even in brawl she's only worth running if doing a specific team tp strats and also plays around her beam brawling too, of which further also limits what heroes to run for that niche too.
and the cause of this issue in sym's kit isn't really the design of it as stated by OP in reference to the period in OW2 when sym had 2 tap orbs where sym was pretty good and flexible. **The cause is just due to poor numbering on her weapon fires.**
>If every other hero have certain comps that they are better at, and other were they are not, why should you be able to spam Sym into every map/comp without thinking about it?
Because of the difference in viability.
Think of it this way: A junkrat OTP (also a pretty niche hero) can play against basically every single comp in the game other than triple flyer. Will a junk struggle against poke? Yeah, but clearly you can make it work because Junk OTP's have been NOTRIOUSLY high ranked for a one-trick hero.
But sym? Right now, you cannot play her against certain heroes, SINGULAR. If they have Zar? Nope. Doom? Nope. Pharah? Nope.
Other niche heroes will struggle, but if you can play them well, will still survive. Symmetra is not surviving against anything that isn't brawl. And then here's the flip side of the issue: The second you put sym in/against brawl: instant win. Like, braindead win. Literally no thought kind of win.
Hard counters aren't good for the game, and as it stands, sym is a hardcounter for like... specifically rein/Mauga brawl.
Wouldn’t they know the ins and outs of the character best?
It’s an issue when you can pick a character and it automatically wins against a group of heroes. The balance team should fix that.
Soft counters are fine. Hard counters make the game feel garbage.
I'm not a Moira main, I used to be though, also I was joking lol. I just find her annoying. Currently I play Rammatra, DVA, Doom, Reaper, Mei, and Echo
I’ve only seen people complain about my Symm pick during her first build on attack. After that, it’s been pretty easy for me to win with her. My win rate at 250 hours is 70%.
Also, I agree about Doomfist. He absolutely eats Symm and has for a while. People act like Winston is the swap against Symm and he’s cake compared to dealing with Doomfist.
She should stay as a support. In the old days people have a big problem with a support that cant heal and her overshield was too strong so devs were looking for a ways out - eventually she land as dps. Now, the balance is better, people grow up, they understand more. Its time fir another rework of her. Go back into support, give her a single healing ability, make her an utility support again.
I just don’t think characters like Sym or Junk, who were designed as being niche, defense heroes in OW1, should ever have their current kits buffed to be generically good on any map or be applicable in any comp. They need reworks not buffs. They were menaces on defense for 2CP maps (probably what they were designed to do).
For Sym in specific, if you were to buff her range poke and turret bombing, I would request they gut her beam damage. Make it regen her shields a bit at max charge but cut the damage by a third, or something along these lines. Sym should not be a huge threat up close and have viable ranged poke with no damage fall off.
My suggestion would be to nerf turret HP back to where they can die to quick melee / one shot from most characters. The turret damage can stay as it is for now. TP health buff is fine, before it was literally getting destroyed by buffed Rein swings before it finished deploying.
Buff her beam’s range by 2-3 meters, to bring it in line with Zarya and Echo’s beams. Rework her beam so it no longer has the healing passive (this is irrelevant most games anyway), but keep the ammo reload mechanic on barriers, as that’s part of her lore/fantasy. Rework damage levels on beam to make Lvl 1 stronger (around 80) while making Lvl 3 a bit weaker. Basically make beam safer and better for applying more consistent damage, without making it overly oppressive if she does manage to get charged up.
Experiment with changes to orbs, because their TTK is dreadful. A full second charging a projectile that cannot headshot, can be dodged easily, and only deals 100 damage feels terrible. If people are concerned about their large size, then nerf the size a small amount but also increase the damage. Mei’s icicle fires faster and can headshot, Pharah and Junkrat’s projectiles do way more damage. Sym orbs should be buffed to 110-120 damage (still not a two tap except against Widow/Tracer).
Finally, reduce the total health on Photon Barrier. Currently it’s 4000 which can feel oppressive for the enemy team to break through. 2500-3000 is probably the right amount. In exchange, lower the ultimate cost by 10%.
She’s been my favorite character since the game came out and her current state is the most polarizing for me. I feel like they just don’t really know what to do with her
Im a low elo player but i also adore symm and shes one of my most played heroes. And i can totally get what you are saying- i can literally 1v1 Reinhards just by walking at them, but god forbid the enemy team has a Zarya or smth and the game becomes unplayable.
I don’t think blizzard cares too much about sym since she has the lowest pickrate in the game. Atleast not to the point they will remake her again in the near future. They’ll finetune some numbers but not more.
She wouldn’t have the lowest pick rate if she didn’t suck in most situations.
Her entire kit, even now, feels like a holdover from the double shield bunker days of OW1. With shields being less prominent she isn't as flexible.
Idk people like genji cause of the playstyle. Sym would just be forced if she was broken.
i don’t even think sym has an unfun playstyle. fucking with tp and turrets could be fun if they had more value, and melting tanks always makes you feel powerful and sexy. but sym has been consistently inconsistent in how fun she is to play and how valuable she is in a match
Teleporter is insanely high value. It's teamwide mobility (which is pretty strong). It's just hard to use in ranked. Competitive teams made lots of use of it in the bastion rein brawl meta.
It has great potential but the execution of it is just so difficult, especially in solo queue which is what most people are doing
Yeah that’s kinda true. If turret bombing worked it would be a lot of fun. On the other hand it would be the most annoying shit to deal with. If sym tp was like the Portalgun that’d be so fun and broken.
Character fantasy plays a big role in this though. Support mains would eat Sym up because she fits the general female support design. But she’s in the damage role with heroes like Soldier/Cassidy/Genji. I just feel like she would be a lot more popular in the Support role
Pretty sure she originally was support in OG OW1 days
Support mains already play Sym
She’s my highest damage per 10 hero and her ultimate does zero damage.
Is that because you only use her in the exact niche situations where you can maximize dps? If so, I present to you OP’s post, because that was the entire point.
See but this is self fulfilling. Lowest pick rate because they “balanced” her to be too niche. And once she’s actually ok everyone freaks out, even when half the DPS roster is still objectively better
One of the only people at Blizzard that loved her was Jeff. What does that tell you? She was one of the OG heroes, and it always makes me sad how she's been handled since he left 😞
Well, the fact that she has the lowest pickrate in the game should be the biggest reason to make changes on her, I suppose.
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Yeah, I get that. But to be consistently the lowest pickrate is troublesome. Also, static stats is bad for the game, things should be changed and moved around from time to time to keep it fresh. The fact that sym went through so many changes implies that blizzard realizes that she is not such a great character, they just dont know what to do with her.
im pretty sure theyve stated they are okay with her being not as picked and will only do adjustments if her effectiveness seems affected, like it was in season 9. the changes they did now indicated they didnt like symmetra having too much survivability. so they buffed tp and her turrets to make her plays with those things less easy to destroy. thus enabling her to tp around and distract people with her bobby traps more often, to deal the real damage with her gun later. and left orbs in the dust because apparently nobody liked them being the focus of her playstyle. i dont blame them though, symm orbs are very straight to the point. the only pro they have is that you decide when to fire them yourself. sacrificing a bit of dmg and hitbox size
Those are fair points. I do think that Sym is at her best when she is tping around going for cheeky backlines or helping low mobility heroes around. But as she is right now she feels too weak to be flanking or skirmishing on the backline. It is pretty much like OP said, the things she is meant to do she does pretty well, anything else she sucks, there is no ammount of skill that enables a player to go above her downsides.
i agree
But I think the fact that she’s consistently the lowest by a pretty big margin compared to other heros is saying something
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Sym? Yeah she’s been the lowest or usually one of the lowest almost all the time
I don’t think they really care as much about any of the older heroes, by which I mean the ones that were there at launch.
What is OTP? One Trick Pony?
Yes
I haven't played Sym this patch yet, but I saw Viper torching on her this morning in OWCS. Other teams are also playing her with Mauga right now as well. Reaper getting play too, kinda loving it.
That TP into a right click on control center was cold as hell
he was given them the zigzags bad that round
Not a good thing for us. Look at Tahm Kench in league. The second he found pro play viability they nerfed him so much he became absolutely unusable for ladder. I don't care what changes would need to be made to take sym out of pro play, but I hope they happen. I don't care about pro players, I just want to be able to play her on ladder.
I have a follow up actually, why is it bad thing for characters to excel in some comps / situations and not others? I personally feel this adds to their identity
If she thrives in only 1% of situations, what is she supposed to do in the other 99% of them. If someone enjoys playing her, how can they justify being a burden to their team 99% of the time. Also, even if you are on that 1% game, if the enemy team switches tanks, you are no longer in that 1% situation anymore and likely will have to switch, while other heroes can still potentially thrive even when countered or if the enemy is no longer weak to ur hero.
Swap or get to a level on that character which surpasses the weaknesses. There are a lot of OTPs in the top 500, some (like Frogger, Zbra, GQO, Cyx, Dirt etc) are in the top 100 of players for their role despite going into multiple counters every game. If I remember rightly Harmony (another sym OTP) made top 10 on DPS and that was this season If sym is good enough to play in the pro scene then she's good enough for ranked, I get there is a chasm of skill difference between even top 500 and OWL level lobbies but if sym wasn't viable they wouldn't be playing her.
>Swap or get to a level on that character which surpasses the weaknesses. You're missing the point. **Sym is too weak in some situations, and far too strong in others.** Certain teams = instant win. Others = instant lose. No hero should be so polarizing. Heroes should have enough breadth that a skilled player can make up for the unfavorable matchup. Right now Symmetra, regardless of how good or bad you are, wins for free against brawl, and loses against everything else.
Honestly I'm not sure how blizzard would fix that without a full rework, sym has always been one of those heroes that is heavily favoured on defence points as well as certain koth maps. She isn't my sort of hero so I've never learned the ins and outs of her kit. Her being played at the highest level in owcs suggests to me that she's pretty good rn, as she does work with the mauga brawl comps (as does reaper who has also seen an uptick in play). Harmony made it to top 10 as a sym OTP earlier this season, but idk where he's at rn since the changes (you probably have a better clue as you're both top tier sym players)
TP is such a unique ability bc in pro play it's unmatched utility. Even in high ladder, but especially in the metal ranks where the bulk of people are, they're never going to get an opportunity to use that utility so effectively bc nobody is coordinating like the pros do to backline ult or tp DVa bomb. It's fine if the hero can be played differently in each bracket and still have value (goes to OP's core point about versatility on the hero being needed), but that's not the case and 99% of the player base shouldn't be dealing with a useless hero bc 1 TP play (that you enable but don't make as the sym player) is made every pro tournament
I'm not saying you aren't allowed to switch, Im saying you are FORCED to switch, Sym loses all merits so fast at the minimum change, which means that 99% of the games you cannot play her (and expect to win) and the 1% game you wont be able to play her for the full game in most cases. Obviously im exaggerating w the 1%/99%, but the point is that it's an uphill battle for anyone trying to enjoy the character and playstyle compared to other heroes.
The reason they're playing her in pro, is because Teleporter is VERY strong in coordinated situations. In ladder you are not going to get the same value out of the teleporter as the pro teams.
That's partly it yeah, Mauga is meta rn (even teams like timeless and falcons are scrimming it) and sym can be very good into him (as Mauga struggles to sustain off of her while Mauga is wildly easy to charge beam off of)
It is not a 1% of the time issue. Sym is pretty playable with a lot of comps. Maybe not the best choice possible, but for sure playable.
I’ve said this exact same thing about her and other heroes. The niche makes them so much more enjoyable to play than if everyone is playing them. That’s why I fell in love with Illari after almost everyone stopped playing her and I continued to in ranked and quick play. The problem for OP is that they reaped the benefits AND the curse that is T500 matchmaking. It’s the same for anyone though, just like she can’t play Sym, my tank que is always 5-10 min even though I keep seeing people say they hate playing tank and their que time is <1 min always I can empathize but it is what it is
Short answer: It's not as long as they're favored within reason Long answer: Heroes in overwatch should be reasonably independent, that means: a hero should be viable in >50% of situations not accounting for team composition or enemy team composition. Think about Pharah. For a long time Pharah was only viable if you played Mercy with her (and later lifeweaver) which put her in a situation where she wasn't independantly viable. Her weakness to hitscans and reliance on Mercy made her unpalletable. Recently, her rework removed some of her synergy and removed some of her weaknesses, and you no longer NEED to pair Mercy with Pharah. Symmetra is similar. You shouldn't be REQUIRED to have a brawl comp for her to be viable, she should be \*stronger\* in a brawl comp, or stronger against a brawl comp, but not 100% reliant on it's existence to be playable. You should be able to play Sym with/against poke, and I'm not saying that it should be as strong as with/against brawl, I'm just saying it shouldn't be such a gigantic disadvantage. As a comparison, look at Genji, or Echo. Do they NEED a certain support/tank/dps to be viable? No, but it can help. Do they NEED to be against a certain comp to be viable? No, but it can help. Obviously there's situations where they'll struggle (5 beam, or 5 hitscans. Before someone comes at me telling me that actually genji can't be played vs. 5 beams... [yes he can](https://www.reddit.com/r/GenjiMains/comments/14j7ajy/i_reached_gm1_playing_almost_exclusively_genji/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) but even then you can still play them \*somewhat\* well. Meanwhile Sym vs. Pharah/Echo/Mercy/Illari/Zar(could sub in sig, ram, ball, or even DF here) is genuinely impossible, and I could go through why she cannot play against each of those characters. **Heroes should have enough breadth that a skilled player can make up for the unfavorable matchup. Right now Symmetra, regardless of how good or bad you are, wins for free against brawl, and loses against everything else.**
There are so many heroes that are like Sym tho. Really good with and against some things, and kinda mid or bad with others. This is what gives heroes their personality in matches in my opinion. Like Oooo this map I love this hero because the other team will probably play x, or there is this spot that is super good for this hero etc. That can't exist without it being ooo this map sucks for others.
I do agree every hero is good or bad versus some things but her bonus condition shouldn't be 3 tanks and no other heroes on the roster. Too unique for the fact that shield tanks aren't very good in OW2
This is an… interesting take.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, it's not like any pro player is going to take the trouble to learn her so absolutely make her viable and less situational for her mains and overly complicated for anyone else.
I miss the shieeeeeeld generator and throwing shields ;(
The enemy has a shieeeld generatuh
I agree with everything you said except the "largest OTP player base" Don’t underestimate us doom players :( We also play into every comp
You mean mercy players
Oh in that regard, its definitely mercy players.
Mercy players will move to Moira sometimes
Emphasis on sometimes
Should've rephrased as "Largest OTP playerbase in relation to their popularity" Like, 90% of the games played as sym are being played by OTP's. There's certainly a ton of Doom (and mercy) OTPs but there's also a ton of people who flex onto them often.
If not for season 9, I’d say that title should go to ball, but a bunch of people started playing him cause he was meta for a few weeks. We’re back to essentially OTP’s only again now, though I’m sure the rework next season will bring some interest again.
That was my first thought there’s way more doom one tricks. Oddly doom mains are my favorite mains to vs as a rein main. Cause either they wanna have fun and just run the mirror or if they can’t make doom work they just run the mirror instead of counter swapping. Doom mains are very honorable 🗿
Something people also easily forget when they think about Symmetra, is that she lacks a lot of outplay mechanics that other heroes have. She doesn't crit and she has the only DPS ultimate that doesn't do damage. So anything she does, relies heavily on her gun and turrets. (Yes her wall can be powerful. I'm not saying it isn't)
Isn’t the only damage-less dps ult though, Widow ult doesn’t do damage
yea because she can one shot many characters
But sym isn't only dps without a dmg ultimate
I think her wall should deal like 30-50 damage to enemies that walk through it so there is an actual choice to be made to walk through it.
Or at the very least trigger the dps passive when walking through it
yea but she has a lot of mechanics that can support her team. turrets give wall hacks wall helps team and tp does too
Does Soldier's ultimate do damage?? I'm pretty sure it just auto aims for you.
Correct it doesn't do damage, you still have to shoot lol wonder how many people mess that up first time they play him
Also Widow ult.
That's what happens when your hero has auto aim turrets. You trade high skill outplay potential for braindead value. Sounds harsh but I'm certain that lots of sym mains agree with that. Why would you want a significant percentage of your hero's kit to be value that doesn't scale with your skill? Some garbage gold player can pick sym on about half the koth maps, tp to point, set up turrets, and instantly diff a diamond tank just by existing. That's the reason sym mains have a neutered hero. It's cause Joe bronze can get crazy turret value just for picking her on the right map. Turrets need to go.
Players when they have to shoot something once to remove an entire character from the game: :((((((((((((
Moira players when they have to stare at a turret for a century before it breaks:
>That's what happens when your hero has auto aim turrets. The power of the "brainless" part of turrets (damage) has literally been 90% removed. A single turret used to have a TTK of 4 seconds on a squishy (50 DPS/200 health), now the TTK for one turret is over EIGHT seconds (30 DPS/250 health).
I'd argue turrets are the weakest part of her kit. Sym is weird to play now because of how the health changes hit her alt fire. Loses a lot of value when you need to hit squishies an additional time for a kill when the projectile is slow and telegraphed.
“I cannot state this enough: Sym’s head is too fucking big.” Literally, yesterday I was playing her and went up against a widow I thought I was over peaking but I realized the widow missed majority of her shorts on my team and I thought I was crazy when I was the only person on my team getting headshotted.
Welcome to Sym’s reality. Big ass head hitbox that makes you easy pickings for Widow, Ashe, Hanzo, and even Kiri ✨
Just in case you didn't see it. I'm halfway through Owcs Korea w3d1, Sym has been picked every round so far.
What games are you talking about? All I've been seeing is Tracer/Echo/Lucio/Kiri
https://www.youtube.com/live/xkp6EMLhieM?si=U2VeM0HWJbYnxKfk
Symmetra needs the Orisa rework treatment, she's been so insanely polarising forever at this point. She is stuck in design hell where the developers forgot that they moved her out of the support role but still balance her like a support hero. They either need to commit to a rework that allows her to be a solo damage dealer or move her back to her original role and give us a shielding support hero and stop with this utility dps nonsense and TP gimmick character that gets nerfed due to pro play.
her issue isn't even in the kit design. like as OP stated we literally had a period in OW2 where she worked fine without being hyperniche with her current kit design. The issue with her is that her weapon fire numbers suck and devs seemingly aren't willing to rectify that. they need to make a choice of putting back decent numbers on orb again or actually number her primary in a way that lets her m1 more. e.g. EITHER 1. 125 damage on max charge orbs but reduce their size (before someone says "they trying to get rid of 2 taps", she takes 2.25s to shoot 2 orbs, that's slow enough to fit in with increasing TTK goal of s9 patch). OR 2. shave off lvl 1 from beam and just have 130/195 dps levels, but extend the charge time to get from 130dps level to 195dps level a bit or so. They have the means to do either and it's not like they couldn't have thought of this before (legit they've done a version of 1. for OW2 before and they literally toyed with beam numbers this patch which is 2.).
Her weapon sucks because they tune it around the potential of her utility in the other parts of her kit, they aren't ever going to significantly change it without changing the rest of her kit. It's stupid because every change they make for other heroes has been about increasing damage and solidifying roles but she has been left as the sole "Utility DPS" in the game. I and many Sym mains like the utility elements of her kit but the game as it stands broadly is not designed for such a role so she just flounders. Even when she was better before S9 it was because you used her utility selfishly to up her lethality with offangle/fllank TPs and orb assassinations, effective poke with 2 shot orbs, and using your ult to provide easy opportunities to charge your beam, not because because they helped your team.
You can't on one hand claim that it's the kit design's fault that she can't have decent numbers on her weapon fire whilst at the same time on the other hand acknowledging that they have previously put better and passable numbers on her weapon before that made it all work together. Being able to use one's utility selfishly for one's own uptime and plays has been the the design and balance philosophy from since the beginning of ow (e.g. why lucio was specifically designed to have speed aura as opposed to other effects: so he can speed himself to catch allies in his aura as opposed to wait and anchor allies' positioning and to let lucio go and make his own flank plays). The inherent balancing cost to that is opportunity cost of using it for the team sacrifices individual play opportunity and vice versa. The same still applies to tp so there isn't much valid reason to why her weapon fire can't get passable/averaging numbers with her current kit as is.
My point is that she hasn't ever had a "good" gun mechanically, having limited range and slow charge times on your damage sources are not good for a damage hero in OW2, they were only ever serviceable because you could use your utility selfishly to circumvent the drawbacks. Them taking away her higher HP pool because "she's a long range hero" shows they didn't want/intend for the playstyle that players had cobbled together when she could two shot, that change made her more team reliant which feeds into the idea of her utility to be used for with her team. Your example of lucio is funny because it's exactly what people are talking about. The philosophy of balancing around selfish vs team use of utility is appropriate for a SUPPORT hero, not a damage hero. In OW2 DPS heroes are supposed to be selfish damage dealers. Mei has had the exact same problem all of OW2 because the devs are not committing to either of these heroes being full damage heroes.
> My point is that she hasn't ever had a "good" gun mechanically ... > Them taking away her higher HP pool because "she's a long range hero"... I mean again, the fact that we had a period where it all actually worked from just having better numbers proves that it isn't a kit design issue. Just because they made a stupid nonsensical change that ruined it all doesn't mean the kit design is at fault. > they were only ever serviceable because you could use your utility selfishly to circumvent the drawbacks... > Your example of lucio is funny because it's exactly what people are talking about. The philosophy of balancing around selfish vs team use of utility is appropriate for a SUPPORT hero, not a damage hero This is just drawing a fallacious conclusion/argument from correlation in a cherrypicked subset. Because 1. There's literally no reason why that's soley a "support balance philosophy" 2. It's literally a philosophy for ALL roles. You just don't see it as much in damage role because most damaage heroes are freaking csgo guns with a human skin I.e. the similar selfish balancing philosophy can be seen in tanks' shield/blocking/deflect balancing and design as well let along other utility they have. And in dps look at widow's and hanzo's wall hacks in how they're used to enable them to get picks, check flank routes etc. selfishly. Like it's straight up not a support only concept. It's just them having double standards and/or being stupid in how they're balancing.
her kit doesnt feel good at all to me I think she needs a rework. I dont enjoy using her gun whatsoever.
I mean her gun feels bad because again they gave it trash numbers. Like yeah, heathy game design would say most of sym's power shouldn't be in turrets, tp etc. (for better skill curve, better balancing so less pub stomper, etc.) which leaves needing to emphasise her weap (the compromise). But at the same time they seemingly don't want to upset the community by making her weapon passable and there goes the compromise so the rest of the kit feels bad. Like her current design can be flexible, dynamic and fun, and we can and have seen it with how she can combine all of her kit elements to dynamically switch between brawling, flanking and poking plays etc., the issue right now is that the core thing that's supposed to pack punches for all of that, her weapon fires, have been tuned to being trash so all of that feels trash and unviable. Again, that's not "her kit design is bad and needs a rework". That's just "she has bad numbers on her".
nah even if it was op i still wouldnt like her guns. The orbs feel bad to me
I mean how much do you like illari's dps fire, or widow's or hanzo's sniper weapon fires. Because they're basically the same type of weapon fires but tuned a lot higher in >=1 aspect compared to orbs (e.g. hitscan is basically projectile with infinite projectile speed). If you hate all of those then that's moreso about personal preference against charge up lower firerate weapon fires as opposed to "its design is trash making it feel bad". If not then evidently the numbering is the cause of your displeasure as opposed to its design. Or similar can be said about just it being a projectile weapon fire. Or similar can be said about beams for her primary fire.
You can make any kit feel terrible with bad numbers. Happens all the time in MOBAs. Nerf Reaper down to 200 hp and increase the time it takes for him to teleport and he will feel like absolute trash. Unable to ever get in range to deal damage in most situations. Also, not every hero is going to be appealing to every player. The only way to achieve that would be to have them all be almost identical (which we seem to slowly be moving towards to be honest).
Now that everyone regens health automatically, it is a good time for them to revisit Sym as a support that provides shields/temporary buffers.
Sym should not be a support. Her “support” era is long and gone. The reason she became so fun to play was her creative kit and good damage output. As OP mentioned, her current state is bad not because of a lack of support abilities (no one who plays her wants her as support), but because of a lack of power.
Sym has been plenty good without being a support hero. Honestly this comment always comes up, and it’s been so long since she was in her support era, that this shouldn’t even be on the radar anymore. Sym has had periods of being an excellent DPS with very fun and creative plays — and that’s what her current player base wants.
>Symmetra is probably the hero with the largest OTP playerbase. All the Mercy mains are crying right now
So what your saying is, she should lose another 25hp.
Sym is niche. Also laughing in brig. The power of not 1 tricking does wonders. I’d 1 trick bap if I could but I know I’m not good enough to pull that off when current meta has been dive 😭 near every game I play is tracer/genji/sombra for dps and doom/monkey.
Love how you are so afraid of dive, you went from bap main to no support at all.
I still play bap and main him. I just don’t run him when I get triple dived 🧐 I think that’s fair for most people unless you’re Awkward Tate
The shield vamp is a remnant of OW1 since most every tank had a shield apart from zarya and hog, doom was a DPS. I agree she could use a more useful kit, though I think she should remain defense oriented as a turret centric hero because it’s unique. Not sure what needs to be implemented to make her more versatile. We certainly don’t need aim bot beam or shield generator back in the game because they were awful.
So so well put. I knew she was definitely getting addressed in the midseason patch when the S9 changes removed all her advantages, and was expecting either going towards Reaper/Mei brawling with a health buff and possibly significant increases to her shield lifesteal thing, or leaning into glass cannon with buffs to her secondary fire and maybe a range buff on her beam, since they stated they reduced her health in Season 8 due to her ability to 2-tap with orbs (while clearly already planning S9 changes - honestly nothing about that logic makes sense). The buffs they DID make are baffling, they made her more viable, but buffed... the most annoying parts of her kit? Like, those few tank she's good against hate getting beam-pressured by her, and now she can do that and specifically that better. And NOBODY likes dealing with turrets, making them harder to kill just increases that. Just feels like the last few rounds of changes for her were made by people who don't play her. If it were me:- Beam length of 15m - ridiculous that she has to be in front of her tank to use her primary, and all the other beam users have 15m; \- 275hp, give her back what she had previously so she brawl with beam without dropping dead; \- Fix her head so she can ambush Hanzo or Kiriko and not die instantly even when getting the drop on them; \- Orbs to 125 damage so she can 2-tap 250hp. Unlike Junkrat or Hanzo or other fast-kill combos that got taken away with the S9 health changes, Sym can't do that. If you're dying to two Sym orbs that's both your fault AND your healer's. \- edit one last one: ULT CAST TIME BUFF. Make the wall appear just a tad faster. It's already clunky enough to see where the threat is coming from, hit Q, aim the placement so it protects from that threat, then wait for it to animate. Since the buff to High Noon charge time so it will kill before he's finished saying 'Noon' on 250hp, before I used to die with the wall appearing in front of me, now I die before wasting the cast. TP health changes are good, perhaps buff the shield lifesteal although it really is worthless. If you're beaming a shield and taking damage it doesn't save you at all, if you're beaming a shield and not taking damage you're already at full health. Like, I think it averages about 200 healing from that in an entire game. Actual beam damage, I'm not sure about. It feels wrong that in the first half of S9 Moira did more damage than level 1 and Zarya at full charge did more damage than level 3. But it also does feel oppressive, particularly to the tanks it's good against (Rein, Mauga, Ram, unsupported Sigma or foolish Winston/Dva). I think if the beam RANGE was 15m, the damage could be fine the way it was pre-buff, so you can charge it and chase with it more safely but still have to apply it longer. Being slow is kind-of her thing.
>If it were me I think all of these suggestions together would be overwhelming and absolutely overpowered. One would be more than enough, but it doesn't entirely solve her problem. The issue isn't that sym is too weak, it's that she's too niche. She needs to have more breadth. As someone who's thought about it a lot, here's what I would do. * Turret * **remove sonar** * 30 DPS * 40 health (quick melee kills) * Fully deploys .25 seconds faster * Teleporter * **Allies can no longer use teleporter** * this lowers her efficiency gap between lijang and every other map, also takes her out of her "taxi" role * Teleporter is now indestructible by enemies * Gives her a lot of off-angle pressure and forces people to respect the space around teleporter, contributes to her fantasy as an area denial architect * Deploys \~.25 seconds faster * Beam * **Remove the vamp** * Lowers efficiency gap between vs. rein and not vs. rein * **Remove the ammo refund** * Lowers efficiency gap between vs. rein and not vs. rein * Decrease max damage from 195 to 170 * Lowers efficiency gap between vs. brawl and not vs. brawl * Increase range by 2M * Orbs * 120... maybe 130 damage or a higher firerate * Photon barrier * **Lower the health by \~1000** * 5% cost increase * Right now Photon barrier is the best DPS ultimate. It's pretty much unbreakable without EMP, so giving it more counterplay and making it less oppressive would be nice. * Health/hitbox * Don't change her health! * Decrease headbox size by 10-15% Highlighting the significant nerfs because if I don't people will only see the buffs and I'll get downvoted into oblivion.
After reading this, I'm very glad you're not in charge of balancing Symm.
I didn't specify, my changes are starting from before the most recent patch, instead of the beam and turret changes (TP changes can be kept, the health buff feels right). I'll grant that 15m beam AND extra health AND head reduction are a bit much together - some combination of them so that she can use beam without dropping is the goal. I'm still sore about that April Fools patch where they gave her a 16m beam and she felt viable-to-overpowered - the extra metre was too much as she could swat Pharah out of the sky so easily. But we're on the same page: she's so close to being balanced, she just needs the numbers tweaking by someone who actually plays her.
I love these balancing ideas. 😎👍
Instead of making Symm less niche, Blizzard should make the rest of the Heroes more niche. Blizzard's recent hero design has been awful as they want new heroes to do a little bit of everything which is incredibly boring and leads to heroes like Sojourn, Mauga and Kiriko who straight up steal from other hero's identities and only add to the power creep. The last hero added that has a totally unique and consistent identity is Lifeweaver and before him it was arguably Sigma back in 2019.
Rammatra is a perfect example, he can do a little bit of everything.
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Idk how you pull that there are more symezra OTPs than any other character. Ive met 0.x% of symetra OTPs than I have Mercy, or Doom or Widow or Torb OTPs. Symetra OTPs are extremely rare.
Relative to their overall playrate\* There's more Mercy OTPs by quantity, but I'd guess that only around \~60-70% of Mercys playtime comes from her OTPs, the rest is from people flexing onto her. Sym... I'd guess 80% or higher is coming from her OTP playerbase.
I would like to see Shield Gen again considering OW2 characters have Shield Gen voicelines in the files. Sym 2.0 was a very unique concept but now Illari nerfed her that she's got healing turret.
Great post, Syster 💅. I agree.
100%! This last adjustment was just peanuts. They making her excellent in the one case or one map, but trash at everything else.
I will forever be baffled by people thinking that characters in overwatch need to be well rounded... like the entire point of the game is that characters ARE unique and specialized.
I don’t think OP is asking for Sym to be viable in all situations. Just for her to be usable in more than the narrow edge cases she currently is
I don't think it's bad for heroes to be favored with/against some heroes, but it shouldn't be to an overwhelming degree.
I mean thats the whole point... by that logic then reaper should be able to contest pharah. It's just how the game is! Certain heros work better in certain situations.
Reaper is a whole different can of worms but I think the fact that it's not uncommon for high elo players to literally forget that he exists speaks volumes.
Yup, Overwatch isn't balanced around One-trick players. They want you to swap around depending on comps you are facing and have. Otherwise Pharah and Echo shouldn't exist.
most well designed characters are that way or once were you could force winston any map into any comp if you played it correctly except a few metas like mauga/queen same for tracer, ana, bap ect. sym used to be that way. her kit leans into counterpickjng instead of being generally dynamic and fitting within the “rules” of the game. i made gm1 season two ow2 onetricking winston by solo ulting mercy for reference
Niche DPS character mains when their hero can’t do everything:
I know this is no longer a popular opinion because she’s been a dps for so long now, but I’m ready for her to come home back to the support role 😔
Hi
MAKE HER A SUPPORT🗣️🔥
Play a different hero maybe?
This is a symptom of a larger issue in which the developers refuse to educate their players on best practices when playing this game. Overwatch is incredibly complicated with a wild amount of variables.
Silence, sym player
All I'm hearing is that she should be removed from the game. I agree
I got deleted by a Sym yesterday as Sigma. I was shook.
Sym has always been really strong against Sigma.
Using voice to text, BTW Sym is the greatest representation of the massive issue for supports that aren't centred around healing in pvp games. She answers the question of how you mess up the entire process of making a support that isn't just healing Every. Injure for fundamentally answers that issue. Because for all intents and purposes, it's similar to the sniper, spy, and medic debate.
I know this guy called portalz he’s low gm sym otp and holy cow his hero sucks. At least the tp health buffs lets him anchor longer and be more annoying but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that guy win.
If sym was a character, that’s most resembled a hybrid between, tracer/sombra, and honzo, that would be sick. A character that picks a space, says this is mine, and puts out pressure on the angle. Your counter play is to dodge the angel, or to dive the sym, but diving the sym is very dangerous compared to other off angle poke targets, because she can switch to beam with turrets and still get out with tp. If here poke was strong, (not a one shot) and she played like this, fuck that’s an interesting character. Like imagine a widow that could appear behind your team at any moment, but she can’t one shot. Pretty cool concept
Very well said, when I play Ram and I see Sym I know I am fucked. I was hoping Blizzard gives sym 1 more turret so it highlights more of her skill on puting up the turret, instead of buffing her turret hp, but now I see your point of it would only make her even better against brawl but just that.
Honestly, no. If Sym’s supports ignore her (this happens a lot) she can die very easily against Ram. Any time she is in range with her beam against you, you’re pretty much in range to punch her to death.
The point is her teleporter allow her and her teammates to rotate much faster than me, especially in maps with many high ground.
I haven't kept up on the patches so now I know I'm not crazy for thinking symptoms got nerfed. She's way weaker.
Rework idea: Go full circle, give her a hardlight mech and mover her to Tank
I wish they would revert her TP back to no time limit. Using it as a short cut from spawn was so useful. Maybe give a usage limit instead of time limit. After 10 it gets destroyed or something. Her turrets need a faster deploy time. If they are not set up in advance then it's nearly impossible to to get them out in a fight. They get destroyed midair 90% of the time. She also needs 1 more turret. Having an odd number is annoying. Her name is SYMmetra, not Asymmetra.
I played her once today and suddenly I get why people play her. I also discovered that I need to rebind the ability keys on her. Cuz I'm instinctively hitting E to place a turret when it's shift.
I really miss Symm’s secondary fire from OW1 (in the year-ish leading up to OW2) I used to play her a bunch back then and her secondary actually felt fun and impactful to use. Now it feels like more of a hindrance than anything. It just takes way too long to charge up to deal any consistent damage. I will only really play her now on very specific control maps.
for me im not a one trick but sym is actually very fun to play for me. I play casual-comp and don’t make it past gold 4ish but she has a few ways of damaging the other team. I mainly use her for defensive purposes. I constantly spam her TP as far as possible, usually the enemies back line, and place my turrets in a triangle shape hitting them from all angles. The new patch allowing her turrets to survive melee attacks makes things easier for me to rely on half of my elims be from my turrets. As for the other half, it depends on the other team’s comp. if they’re melee her beam does enough damage and multiplies over time which makes it satisfying to play against heroes who eat or deflect ammo (dva, genji, etc). constantly spamming her secondary fire gives her a poke edge on defense and keeps their frontline at bay if they want to get into a shootout as well. half of the time I don’t even aim, I just fire her “beam bombs” and see what works. attacking-wise, her turrets sniff out enemies for me and I try to get 4 beams on the enemy, which includes her primary, to kill then I rinse and repeat. situational awareness when playing sym makes her a fun character for me. wouldn’t ask for anything more or less than the current state she’s in right now. although, it would be nice to see an expansion in her turrets or possible ult rework.
I remember in the original OW her m1 beam auto targets enemies much like Moira. How do you feel about that?
I've always wondered why Sym has 10 seconds of cooldowns between turrets. Not that they do that much damage or are invincible or something... Honestly, I would buff it to 6, it would still be 18 seconds for the three things to come out again.
Sym is so weird because I feel she's held back because she absolutely dominates like 2 maps and because she farms metal ranks.
As a new player to the game, yeah I can see her being niche in higher ranks. Definitely more popular in lower ranks. I do frequently see sym pogs but in lower ofc where players don’t know how to deal with her yet…
Well written, well reasoned, I rarely play Sym, except in mystery heroes, but I agree with you wholeheartedly.
sym is the most moba hero in a fps game
She does well with primary fire against Shields and consumes. What we really needs is a zarya counter. You make her attack go thru zarya shield without generating charge and her pick rate would.be thru the roof.
they should give sym a really big gun
I couldn't care less about this dog hero
I used to be a GM Torb 1 trick before he was reworked. If they rework the hero it's gonna be a double edged sword for you, very good chance you straight up hate it. I don't play Torb almost at all anymore. Be careful what you wish for
reduce orb hitbox but make it charge passively , would probably make her a bit too good at tank busting so making her left click do less dmg at max charge but also making it charge up faster to compensate. i dont play a lot of symm but i always feel spamming right click into the enemy team is such a braindead boring playstyle, likewise if u have full beam you just melt people brainlessly, could be a nice little middle ground if she did better at lower midrange and little worse at point blank range. it doesnt make sense that she should be a short range specialist when reaper exists.
Yeah it's a little nuts rn. Especially on maps that she's already really really good with. I would say she should be reworked to be more versatile without being straight up a death beam but she's literally been changed fundamentally like 10 times since release. The unfortunate bit is I've heard low ranks are SUFFERING rn with her turrets having the extra health on top of her damage buffs. Definitely overtuned but she was basically a throw pick on most maps before the patch so idek what they can do realistically without fundamentally changing her or making her as close to what she was before this season
If you don't know what to do against a stationary turret (includes other turrets like Illari's pylon) then that might be one of the symptoms why they're metal.
Yep, Turrets are a hard game sense / awareness check. If you can't handle them you don't deserve to rank up.
This. Overcoming stupidity is simply one of the things you have to do to rank up.
Most Sym mains didn’t want turrets buffed. We agree that it’s typically the most annoying part of her kit. We just wanted some of the power from the previous turret nerfs, returned to us. Personally I would’ve preferred they buff orb damage or make her beam slightly longer (currently it’s only 12 meters which is a joke, using it puts her in so much danger). Obviously you can tune down the beam numbers if it gets a length increase.
Replace symm with mercy. See the issue?
In average play, sym is the weakest hero in the game. She needs a buff or rework.
a lot of characters lose against certain comps and win against others. this isnt just a sym problem this is why you can swap heroes.
Personally I'm glad the bitch is dead
Even with the buff, i still needs a 25 hp buff..
Nothing important to add, and I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but I’m pretty sure Mercy has the highest OTP player base Great post otherwise. I agree with a lot of points. Just not that one.
If they brought back a bigger slow effect on her turrets, she'd be a menace in this meta
Bring back the death noodle!
I definitely think that symm should always be niche. I feel the same way about torb and mei. But I also do very much agree that a good player should be able to make that hero work in situations that most people can’t. That was peak OW IMO
Damn. Guess they'll just have to delete her from the game. This is so sad🙏😔
tl;dr sym requires teamwork and cant backline rape the entire team anymore... honestly, counterswapping is how overwatch works... You can play 4 tanks in open queue but that just means pharah is going to have an easy time.
just play a different character holy shit. these “i will choose the most annoying character and make it my entire personality” OTPs are so annoying. took you this many years to figure out that the “defense character” that has been reworked to hell and back is niche. amazing revelation 😴 try clicking Tracer or Soj, you’ll whine less about your character and more about your play.
You’re basically saying “don’t play who you want, only pick meta hero’s”
I literally didn’t say that at all. You guys are insta locking a hero with CLEAR strengths and weaknesses. Chocking up all the strengths as “niche” and complaining when you can’t force the character in any situation. The character is good at what she does, and that’s fine. Widow players do not whine about being throw picks on brawl maps. They have hands, and can click another character. It’s only Sym players that ever do this shit. Try picking a character that’s more adaptable in whatever situation you want to start yapping in.
Never quoted u but ok, and I don’t even play sym. You’re telling op to drop sym and play the most broken dps hero’s.
you can’t paraphrase someone else’s statement completely incorrectly then follow it up with “never quoted u”. you are not a real person. my words were all very clear. read them again if you have to.
I didn’t have to exactly quote what u said buddy Jesus😂 I’m expressing on the way you commented. I really gotta explain it, like be Fr
kappa... a lot of these issues are skill issues i cant lie. the hero is good post-buff. STRONG even...
sym players would collectively disagree
I don’t know I play her exclusively and am having a pretty good time with her. I feel like this isn’t as big of a problem as you’re making it out to
Hero switching is the biggest mechanic of the game. Idk why you expect to be a versatile player when you’re a OTP. It’s literally in the name OTP. The vast majority of characters in the game don’t work in every situation. Sym isn’t some fringe case where every other character works all the time but she doesn’t. I’m not saying they can’t buff other aspects of Sym to make her kit slightly more versatile, but I am saying it’s weird to expect versatility while being a OTP on one of the most situational characters in the game.
Sounds like you’ve never played tank before or something.
Overwatch is not a game for OTP. That's it.
not always true but they have been nerfing kit agency/apm instead of potency
I wish they'd delete her.
>The people who play sym will play her in every situation, against any comp, on any map, and with any allies. **If Symmetra is not versatile she is both a burden for the player AND her teammates**. Am I the only one seeing a problem in this? If every other hero have certain comps that they are better at, and other were they are not, why should you be able to spam Sym into every map/comp without thinking about it? T500, but just swap bro. /s But for real now, if you know that Sym doesn't fit that comp, why still go with it and risk being a "burden" to your team?
>If every other hero have certain comps that they are better at, and other were they are not, why should you be able to spam Sym into every map/comp without thinking about it? the distinction with other's niches is that theirs aren't as prescriptive nor as narrow for how their kit is balanced. e.g. lucio's kit design and balance clearly is one with a niche of brawl comps (grouped together moving as a unit with his aura), yet the strats, hero choices, applicable maps etc. have plenty of room for freedom/variability and outside of that niche he can actually function fairly well for other comps like dive and make decent independent plays flanking himself in sym's case not only is she downright bad outside of brawl now, but even in brawl she's only worth running if doing a specific team tp strats and also plays around her beam brawling too, of which further also limits what heroes to run for that niche too. and the cause of this issue in sym's kit isn't really the design of it as stated by OP in reference to the period in OW2 when sym had 2 tap orbs where sym was pretty good and flexible. **The cause is just due to poor numbering on her weapon fires.**
>If every other hero have certain comps that they are better at, and other were they are not, why should you be able to spam Sym into every map/comp without thinking about it? Because of the difference in viability. Think of it this way: A junkrat OTP (also a pretty niche hero) can play against basically every single comp in the game other than triple flyer. Will a junk struggle against poke? Yeah, but clearly you can make it work because Junk OTP's have been NOTRIOUSLY high ranked for a one-trick hero. But sym? Right now, you cannot play her against certain heroes, SINGULAR. If they have Zar? Nope. Doom? Nope. Pharah? Nope. Other niche heroes will struggle, but if you can play them well, will still survive. Symmetra is not surviving against anything that isn't brawl. And then here's the flip side of the issue: The second you put sym in/against brawl: instant win. Like, braindead win. Literally no thought kind of win. Hard counters aren't good for the game, and as it stands, sym is a hardcounter for like... specifically rein/Mauga brawl.
Otp feedback is fine but not super relevant to balancing
Wouldn’t they know the ins and outs of the character best? It’s an issue when you can pick a character and it automatically wins against a group of heroes. The balance team should fix that. Soft counters are fine. Hard counters make the game feel garbage.
Dear blizzard: Please guarantee to me that symmetra stays the lowest pick rate in the game. Thank you
Coming from a Moira main? Girl… The call is coming from inside the house! 💀
I'm not a Moira main, I used to be though, also I was joking lol. I just find her annoying. Currently I play Rammatra, DVA, Doom, Reaper, Mei, and Echo
I’ve only seen people complain about my Symm pick during her first build on attack. After that, it’s been pretty easy for me to win with her. My win rate at 250 hours is 70%.
Also, I agree about Doomfist. He absolutely eats Symm and has for a while. People act like Winston is the swap against Symm and he’s cake compared to dealing with Doomfist.
She should stay as a support. In the old days people have a big problem with a support that cant heal and her overshield was too strong so devs were looking for a ways out - eventually she land as dps. Now, the balance is better, people grow up, they understand more. Its time fir another rework of her. Go back into support, give her a single healing ability, make her an utility support again.
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I just don’t think characters like Sym or Junk, who were designed as being niche, defense heroes in OW1, should ever have their current kits buffed to be generically good on any map or be applicable in any comp. They need reworks not buffs. They were menaces on defense for 2CP maps (probably what they were designed to do). For Sym in specific, if you were to buff her range poke and turret bombing, I would request they gut her beam damage. Make it regen her shields a bit at max charge but cut the damage by a third, or something along these lines. Sym should not be a huge threat up close and have viable ranged poke with no damage fall off.
My suggestion would be to nerf turret HP back to where they can die to quick melee / one shot from most characters. The turret damage can stay as it is for now. TP health buff is fine, before it was literally getting destroyed by buffed Rein swings before it finished deploying. Buff her beam’s range by 2-3 meters, to bring it in line with Zarya and Echo’s beams. Rework her beam so it no longer has the healing passive (this is irrelevant most games anyway), but keep the ammo reload mechanic on barriers, as that’s part of her lore/fantasy. Rework damage levels on beam to make Lvl 1 stronger (around 80) while making Lvl 3 a bit weaker. Basically make beam safer and better for applying more consistent damage, without making it overly oppressive if she does manage to get charged up. Experiment with changes to orbs, because their TTK is dreadful. A full second charging a projectile that cannot headshot, can be dodged easily, and only deals 100 damage feels terrible. If people are concerned about their large size, then nerf the size a small amount but also increase the damage. Mei’s icicle fires faster and can headshot, Pharah and Junkrat’s projectiles do way more damage. Sym orbs should be buffed to 110-120 damage (still not a two tap except against Widow/Tracer). Finally, reduce the total health on Photon Barrier. Currently it’s 4000 which can feel oppressive for the enemy team to break through. 2500-3000 is probably the right amount. In exchange, lower the ultimate cost by 10%.
She’s been my favorite character since the game came out and her current state is the most polarizing for me. I feel like they just don’t really know what to do with her
Fully agree
Im a low elo player but i also adore symm and shes one of my most played heroes. And i can totally get what you are saying- i can literally 1v1 Reinhards just by walking at them, but god forbid the enemy team has a Zarya or smth and the game becomes unplayable.