I don’t think she’s the worst DPS, at least in terms of securing kills. That falls to Sombra, who virtually can’t kill through any amount of healing and only has sustained damage as her damage. Symmetra is at least more lethal than Sombra, which isn’t saying much.
Sombra gets a lot of useful non-damage related abilities though.
Symmetra gets a bad, slow, clunky, imprecise group wraith form and an ult that only does something 20% of the time.
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To me it just doesn’t matter if they buff her or not because she would still feel horrible to play. The teleport is clunky and awkward to use, the main fire feels like a discount Zarya and spamming alt-fire at chokes isn’t exactly my version of fun.
Everything is wrong with the new Symmetra. Not only is she not good but every part of her kit stinks. Badly.
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Except the turrets ![:wink:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=5" ":wink:")
give them credit there. It may not have the same “nest” kind of feel, but it’s certainly nice to see a pathetic deflecting Genji get erased by the power of hard-light.
That being said, I’d trade in 20% of the 50-dps for 50-health turrets.
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True. At least they got something sort of right. Yay! 
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You can’t be too mean to the devs though - they have a lot on their plate and IIRC it’s a relatively small team that designs and balances these things. I’m sure that in testing this version of Symmetra seemed absolutely perfect - the ability to ramp up to such a high DPS, throw turrets, and move her team around the map at a whim all combined seem like a great package.
And there was no way for her to effectively be a support hero in their paradigm (they even tried to make the turrets healing objects IIRC, which would’ve not been very good, so I’m thankful that they didn’t do that).
A long time ago, I posted this skeptical-yet-optimistic thread about the Symm rework which got a significant amount of attention, by my estimation, but it seemed to be that the Symm mains that wrote on that thread were opinionated that she should be DPS. And I think that’s certainly the case. Stacking armor and shields do cause a huge problem at low ELO, so it’s probably for the best that it’s gone.
That being said, this new Symm (which doesn’t feel or play anything like you would’ve expected someone with Symmetra’s character to play) is certainly missing something, beyond game mechanics and balancing numbers, and I’m pretty sure that it’s “personality”.
I already wrote about this somewhere, but those turret placement voicelines - where the hell did they go? What an awful decision to remove them.
Symmetra 1.0 16 Dec [2016]: .52% / 61.00%
Symmetra 2.0 02 Nov [2017]: .65% / 63.32%
Symmetra 3.0 02 Sep [2018]: 0.71% / 54.80%
So how I reconcile and explain this is, we’ve returned to the previous statistics for symm play. Low pickrate, played only by those who have mastered her, and therefore, an elevated winrate compared to what you’d expect. Someone in another forum post called this “natural selection”, which I think is an apt description of this reality.
Clearly if their goal is to make her more accessible, it’s working, because she’s being picked around 40% more than she was, proportionally, in December of 2016.
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I have an account main symmetra at high plat and low diamond. I totally agree with you.
The SYM 3.0 rework is a joke. It literally changed sym from a strong defense hero into a TP deploy machine.
I don’t understand why BZ is so afraid of sym being too strong, and not BG or hanzo. Why??
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Again, I wouldn’t go insofar as to say that it’s a joke - I would caution that as players we try not to reduce the likelihood of a dev response.
A blue post in this thread with their internal and 100% accurate statistics would be not only excellent, but it would be nice to have even a small modicum of recognition as to the issues that Symm faces.
And I know you weren’t being aggressive, but I’m just putting this out there.
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I don’t know what’s their so called “testing”, but this game’s design, every character’s average DPS is around 100/s, and calibrate with distance, skills, aiming difficulty, projectile speed… etc. Their is no other character that is close ranged, aiming required AND has low DPS. None.
That’s simple calculation, we all played this game for years and we all know that. I’m just so angry that BZ cannot do this well.
Another example is Ana. The time that they nerfed her into 60 dmg per shot we knew that’s ridiculous. If your DPS is below 100 at any situation, you need either high HP, shield, or anything strong enough for surviving in fighting. After half year BZ finally figured out, wow, 60 per shot with high aiming skill required and without headshot cannot work. Let’s put it back to 70. (Actually I think 70 is not enough, the original design 85 per shot is reasonable)
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I would be significantly more likely to agree with you, if I could remember whether or not she can be damage-boosted.
Because if she can two-shot, at a speed of 1.15 shots per second, that is a LOT of damage coming from a support. Like, a LOT.
That being said, you’re 100% correct - her damage is unacceptably low when it comes to her primary fire. TBH I think the 100/140/180 model is a super good way to deal with this problem, and I hope that blizz comes up with something like that for her.
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And so does 99.99% of the rest of the playerbase.
And you know what? I bet the pros are too. Ur making all these bold claims about how Sym issecretly god tier, and we all just need to git gud, bit id put mobey on Sym having a less than 1% pickrate next time OWL comes round.
You know who was actually played in tournaments tho? Sym 1.0.
Funny that.
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Exactly this. Ive tried new Sym on several occassions and I do reletively well with her, but to be effective she requires much more communication with the team now (in the same way a sombra does) its no good putting turrets down and making teleporters that people arent aware off, sure theres voice cues, but ‘teleporter online’ doesnt tell your team what stategy your trying to pull.
The problem with her is that its a rework and not a new character, theres still a lot of stigma attached to the character. Hopefully when pro’s use her in an effective fashion we’ll see more of her.
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This will just be another Sym megathread with valid feedback that will be ignored for over a year and then Sym will get another catastrophic rework.
I hope I’m wrong.
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But the goal wasnt to make her better than the earliest version of Sym 2.0, it was to make her better than the latest. And just before the rework Sym, as detailed in the OP, Sym had a ~.84% pickrate, and ~.59% winrate.
So the current sym is both less played and wins less when she is. And considering shes been nerfed 3 times since 3.0’s debuts, im not really surprised.
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I’m not saying that we should discount the fact that she’s currently not good - I’m not saying that at all!
I’m just declaring, and I think that’s evident, that Symm isn’t the worst she’s been, but she’s also not the best she’s been by any stretch of the imagination. And I also proposed ways to alleviate the new burden carreid by Symm:
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Incredible that it was SK of all teams in the World Championship to pull her out with a nano-boost, on Eichenwald of all places!
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https://i.imgur.com/bgx0KT7.png
Blizzard keeps removing and giving me back trust level 3 every 2 days smh
and that’s not blizzards fault. heros have to be balanced. you can cry on the forums, or you can go out in the game and learn the coordination you need to be good with her.
Totally worth copy/pasting that link. 100% value. We’ll be here a long time.
Yes, they do! So I take it you recognize her almost undeniable statistical inefficiency - or are you one of those people that believe the wage gap is a statistic that’s entirely the result of a patriarchal conspiracy created to dominate and ensnare half the population?
Suggest ONE thing for her kit - one improvement. Give it a try! Be reasonable, and think about her current glaring weaknesses. I’m sure you’ll see that she needs something.
- Turrets (probably not the best idea)
- Primary Fire
- Secondary Fire (also probably not the best idea)
- Ultimate
- TP
- A passive?
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