Her stats this week on overbuff: h ttps://www.overbuff.com/heroes, h ttps://www.overbuff.com/heroes/symmetra/trends
Pickrates/Winrates:
26 Jun: 0.82% / 59.37%
25 Jul: 0.79% / 52.39%
So as expected, everyone immediately declared the Shiny New Toy OP, as happens every time anything new is introduced ever. But as we can see, the stats tell a very different story.
Instead of being “more versatile”, it appears Sym 3.0 is still being played in the same niche she has always occupied, but also, she’s doing significantly worse in that niche than Sym 2.0.
On a personal level, I’ve played Sym for 20 hours in comp at the time of posting, and still have to mute chat, as I find I’m still being called a troll pick/told sym is bad on attack.
And I think we all know why this is:
- the primary fire is, from a technical viewpoint, garbage.
This concern was noted early during the PTR phase, and has not been addressed since. Specifically, although the potential damage has been increased by 50%, the loss of autolock means that after weapon accuracy is taken into account, the max. dps is 33% lower than old Sym. Working below:
- max dps of 2.0 primary = 120
- max dps of 3.0 primary = 180
- average weapon accuracy of most players = ~45%.
Using Geguri’s weapon accuracy w/Zarya as an upper-bound example (42%, h ttps://www.overbuff.com/players/pc/Geguri/heroes/zarya), we see that even the best players can only reach ~76 dps with Sym 3.0’s beam. And given that the new weapon has to be locked on longer to gain charge, AND has a smaller clip (so she has to spend more time reloading, and Sym has one of the longest reload times in the game btw), the real dps is likely much lower.
A common counterpoint to these facts is that its OK for Syms primary to be low damage unless ur getting unreasonably high weapon accuracy because its a tank/barrier busting ability
And theoretically, I agree; the primary should be a barrier buster. But its not. Y? Because it only reaches a pitiful 12 meters. And what enemy team is going to let a 200 hp hero w virtually no defence stand in almost melee range and just eat their barrier? No one, thats who. Try it and ull be storm arrowed faster than u can even reach lv 2 charge.
Even if u somehow convince urself that its ok for a hero to need another hero, like Rein or Orisa, to protect them whilst they attempt to get value out of the so-called main firing mode of their weapon, that still doesnt work, because in all likelihood the enemy teams dps will break ur barrier faster than Sym will break theirs.** In particular Hanzo, Junkrat and Bastion can all break barriers faster than Sym.**
And as for being a tank buster, the fact that most tanks have armor makes that idea pure fantasy.
Sym’s inability to counter barriers (which she lost when she lost the shield penetrating orbs) is 100% the biggest issue holding her back. Adding more range would be the easiest fix to this issue, as it would allow sym to eat barriers safely whilst also retaining the weaknesses that balance the weapon (hard to hit skinny targets).
- Symms turrets have been nerfed
Im going to be quite plain about this, because there seems to be some confusion on this aspect of the rework: the turrets are worse. Here are the full changes that happened to the turrets, and then ill explain y:
- individual damage increases from 30 --> 50 dps
- individual slow increased from ~25% ----> ~40%
- hp increased from 1 to 30
- field capacity reduced from 6 to 3
- storage capacity reduced from 6 to 3
- turrets now throwable, travel at almost same speed as old orbs (12 m/s); can be shot down mid air
This translates to:
- 17% less max power (3 x 50 = 150, vs 6 x 30 = 180)
- 50% reduction in coverable area, because they have the same range, but u can only have 3 out now
- easier deployment
- slightly sturdier
Overall, the turrets provide a slightly weaker defence in a drastically smaller area, and the only real bonus being that they are easier to manage.
A common criticism of new Sym is that she feels better on attack but worse on defence. This is why.
Personally, I would like to see the turrets each have their range increased from 10 to 16 m, and/or have the number we can keep in storage increased from 3 back to 6.
- Syms orbs are the worst weapon of their kind
They have the lowest minimum splash damage in the game, at 12 (same as Zarya), even at maximum charge. They dont arc or bounce, they just travel in a straight line like Pharah rockets. Except pharah rockets travel at 35 m/s, and Sym orbs travel at 20.
When we were told about this rework, we were promised orbs at 30 m/s and w 130 max damage (as opposed to current 120), and that a large percentage of that damage would be splash e.g. 70.
Buffing the orbs in this way would greatly improve Syms damage, and actually make her a viable alternative to the other splash damage heroes like Junkrat and Pharah.
- Photon Barrier uptime is far too low
The following graph, provided courtesy Omnic Meta, shows how Sym’s damage blocked has changed since the rework: Rhttps://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Oc9MKDgEkEI/W0yjarewAyI/AAAAAAAAB7E/Gpdytv5uUCIVgaNzEELXMgrs3DIoZkH3QCLcBGAs/s640/blocked.png
Although her damage blocked has increased 45% overall (2600—>3770), Sym 3.0 on average doesn’t block as much damage as her barrier can absorb (5000), whereas Sym 2.0 could block more than 2.5x the health of her original photon barrier. This indicates that, like her gun, although the potential of the barrier is increased, its uptime lets it down. This is likely why players find her ult lacking and non-impactful.
As part of the rework, Sym’s ult cost was increased by 50% (1000—>1500); Reverting this change, or making the damage Sym does charge her ult more would fix this issue.
Other quality of life issues I’ve personally noted whilst playing Sym:
- Teleporter interaction radius too small
- Small objects, particularly railings, prevent the teleporter from being placed in vital positions, like high ground.
- turrets hitboxes so big they often clip onto unintended objects in flight
- Photon barrier will not deploy unless there is a fair amount of empty space in front of Sym
- Syms secondary fire emits a blinding glare whilst charging. See the following post for comparisons: http s://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/sym-3-0-a-failure-worse-pickrate-than-2-0-winrate-down-7/162005/1126?u=onelyf1trick-2867
- in FFA only, Sym barriers delete any other Sym barrier on the map at the time
- Teleporter sometimes deploys in front of Sym, sometimes underneath. It should ALWAYS deploy underneath u imo.
Something needs to happen soon, or we’re gonna be having another Sym rework next year.
============================
Regarding "bUt PRIvATe prOFIles"
There is a myth going round the community at the moment that because private profiles exist now, we don’t have enough data to make judgements. This is blatantly false, and based on a misunderstanding of statistics.
The justification is that the sample size of public profiles is too low to gt accurate assessments of the community now. However, what this fails to take into account is that Overwatch has 40 MILLION PLAYERS, as of May 2018. Thats 40,000,000.
According to omnic meta (http://www.omnicmeta.com/2018/07/first-look-at-private-profiles-and.html), 16% of the comp community have public profiles.
Whats 16% of 40 mil? 6.4 million. Scientific studies are considered valid with sample sizes of “only” a couple hundred to a couple thousand.
"buT sYM PlaYErs HIDe tHeiR pRoFILEs mORe"
There is no evidence for this, and its an argument that clearly stems from hatred of the Sym community. And even if this were true, and again, we take a lower estimate and say that 1% of the public profile players from above (6.4 mil) are Sym players thats still 64k profiles. And this is an extremely low estimate. The real number is quite likely to be factors higher.
Another fact that blows this idea out of the water is that the default option for profiles is “friends only” (a.k.a. private) anyway, so most players will be hiding their profiles by accident. Even if Sym players were keeping theirs private, so is everyone else, so there is no reason it should affect the data.
