😭 can we talk about sym pls

General Discussion
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Hi guys this is a really long post but by no means exhaustive, just about sym. There’s a tldr at the bottom. I put a lot of work and time into this so I’d appreciate if people have feedback! :blue_heart:

I’m a sym otp that’s almost always been arguing against the sym community on here asking for buffs, saying that’s she’s fine. I thought that she was super high skill but viable enough. As I’ve been studying her in my push to get gm back with 3.0, I’m finding her minmaxed playstyle to be heading in a crappy direction. I find myself disenchanted, because the eminent use of tp according to 4500 sym mains is almost always to use it for spawn taxi…

Symmetra might be viable and her dps rework has largely been a success. However, she remains too protracted and ironically becomes more gimmicky with each attempt at balancing.

I want symmetra’s state to be improved but I really don’t think it would take anything drastic, certainly not a rework to support or tank. Let’s look at what’s exactly has changed and why…

What follows is symmetra’s relevant balance history taken from the patch notes with accompanying developer comments showing their design intention

October 15th 2019
Symmetra

Photon Barrier

  • Duration reduced from 15 to 12 seconds
  • Health reduced from 5000 to 4000

Sentry Turret

  • Damage per second reduced from 50 to 40

Photon Projector

  • Players impacted by the primary fire beam should now hear a louder impact sound

Developer Comment: The duration of Photon Barrier was too high considering its impact on a battle. Recent changes have seen large increases in Symmetra’s overall damage output, so we’re reducing her turret damage in lieu of making further damage adjustments to her Photon Projector.

From September 17th 2019:
Symmetra

Primary Fire

  • Beam width lowered from 0.3 meters to 0.2
  • Beam DPS per level lowered from 65/130/195 to 60/120/180

August 13th 2019:
Symmetra

Teleporter

  • Now lasts an infinite duration until destroyed
  • Players can destroy their Teleporter with the ability 2 input
  • Cooldown now starts when Teleporter is destroyed
  • Maximum range increased from 25 to 30 meters
  • Teleporter is destroyed if the entrance is more than 40 meters from the exit

Developer Comment: Symmetra’s Teleporter is an interesting tool but often felt too restricting to use. Making the Teleporter last indefinitely opens up new opportunities for how Symmetra is used in various maps and group compositions.

August 13th:
Sym community agrees that infinite tp was nothing short of another rework and an unnecessary one at that. It did not tackle her issues and was felt to have come from left field at the time. Tp might have felt restricting to use, but making it infinite was a total failure at making it less so, which was it’s stated design intention.
It almost entirely destroyed a playstyle, which was flankmetra, and slightly buffed supportmetra, which is way more boring, less skillful and less dynamic. Longer cooldowns with less uptime MASSIVELY favours set it and forget it and heavily punishes using it flexibly throughout a midfight. Revert this change please.

We don’t need fangled mechanics like torbs turret where it’s cooldown varies if it’s destroyed and unused etc. It should be intuitive because it’s often team dependent. It should be fluid. It worked perfectly fine before. :boom::sunny: PLEASE REVERT INFINITE TP :sunny::boom:
Why not?

September 17th:
This was following 2weeks after the beam change that saw her effective m1 damage skyrocket. This was categorically a necessary nerf.

Her m1 should be situational and highly punishable. She should remain a unique hero compared to reaper, Mei and zarya. Imo she really shouldn’t have 250hp, because she is not strictly a melee range hero, and those heroes who have 250 hp are detrimental to the health of the game too for that fact. Imo it’s unhealthy and not the right direction for competitive symmetra.

She should remain a very high skill glass cannon, so she does not need to have her value focused in her m1. However, she’s also had her value stripped from everywhere else…

October 15th:

  1. The barrier nerf I think is justified. The wall is an extremely powerful ult and usually a win condition if well placed. 5000 health was superfluous, but the duration nerf hurt. Overall I think that was ok and just increased her skill cap with regards to timing and decision making.

  2. The turret nerf hurts more than we’d like to admit, but it’s been offset by the m2 buff in terms of her pre-fight damage and ult charge rate as well as maintaining the damage breakpoints on her tp bomb.
    That said, tp bombing is rarely done now because it’s so disruptable and expensive in resources when spawn tp is just so much safer and still enormous value. Sym is now very much like junkrat, which is frankly quite boring and crap. He’s hardly a great hero from a design perspective either. Sym used to be her own hero and have her own playstyles and be flexible… Now she is a worse junkrat crossed with a worse reaper. Very much not what we want or need. And it’s all thanks to infinite tp!

  3. A nerf to the audio of her m1, making her even more so the target of priority. If you’ve ever played sym you would know that you naturally are public enemy #1 at all times anyway. This was hardly necessary imo, if people can shoot you they will. Symmetra is always a higher priority target than ana or mercy or widow or a main tank, and she was always very VERY loud with the microwave. Probably an understated nerf, but also probably didn’t change much either.

  4. Lastly to comment on the dev comment from october:
    these nerfs were apparently in lieu of further compensation to her gun. She was certainly doing too much damage before, and I understand why they might want to divert power from her abilities into her gun, but that’s not symmetra’s identity. She’s a builder.

I’m listing some stats now just for some general contextual reference about sym’s performance and as indicators for her spam damage, frontline pressure, burst+ combo potential, and relative risk. It’s not exhaustive it’s just a reference so you have an idea of how she compares.

Here’s some data on the average damage done per match by a handful of heroes for comparison

Torbjorn 19,344
Ashe 16,678
McCree 15,428
Zarya 15,275
Sigma 15,040
Symmetra 14,419
Reinhardt 11,412

So sym is hardly doing dominant levels of hero damage anymore by any stretch of the imagination. She also lacks burst damage compared to other dps…

Here’s some data on the average eliminations of the same heroes

Zarya 25.82
Torbjorn 25.13
Ashe 24.69
McCree 24.43
Symmetra 24.09
Sigma 22.60
Reinhardt 18.83

Here’s some stats for the average deaths, showing how much relative risk these heroes have to be in to do their job

Sigma 6.73
Zarya 6.91
Torbjorn 6.94
Ashe 8.33
Symmetra 8.34
Reinhardt 8.97
McCree 9.44

I’m not trying to say that sym is terrible with these stats, I’m just highlighting that the reason the devs nerfed her so drastically is still not justified even after the m2 buff and she could stand to have partial reverts of her nerfs.

The meta has changed, dive grows ever stronger and barriers are weaker. Sym’s niche and relevance grows smaller by the day.

The m2 buff was nice but didn’t improve on the playstyle limitations that infinite tp created… it just reinforced it. Sym is now a campy spam hero just like junkrat. Great!

Let her FLANK AGAIN!
Let her be FLEXIBLE AND less RESTRICTED AGAIN!
Let her feel good to play again thanks

Basically revert infinite tp and she’ll be a decent hero again. She won’t become op like she was for those 2 weeks, that was entirely the beam, which has been nerfed 3 times now :slight_smile: and the rest of her kit too :slight_smile:

Tl:;Dr can we get a hecking buff for my girl SATYA VASWANI :eye::tongue::eye: ITS WHAT SHE DESERVES :clap::clap::clap:

REVERT INFINITE TP 2K20. LET US MOVE SWIFTLY AGAIN

7 Likes
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Infinite tp would be fine if the cooldown wasn’t 12 seconds.

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I love me some symmetra, but I like the infinite tp. I do agree about the tp cooldown. i feel like if it’s been up for at least 6 seconds and YOU destroy it, the cooldown should be six seconds.
(I also wish the .2 meter hit box should go back to .3 or at least .25 but that’s because I have AWFUL aim)

3 Likes
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I agree but I think the easiest way to do this would just be to revert it. It was so much cooler, fun to use and expressive before.

If they reduced the cooldown flatly on infinite tp to like 4 sec, it would have the same downtime as the old one. It would be able to move around a lot more tho.

Teamwide omnidirectional mobility in 30m range every 4 seconds would be the worst thing to ever happen to the game. It would be far better to just revert to old tp.

We don’t want or need spawn tp. It’s really strong but it’s SO BORING and RESTRICTIVE.

Tp has a horde of weaknesses as it is and used to. It was never OP apart from on two specific points lmao… So why not revert it. The change was stated for a reason that it failed it. 99% of sym mains cite it as the biggest problem and reason she’s poo. What’s good?

2 Likes
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Literally what I was about to suggest. Once you place the teleporter, let the cooldown start to count down, but stay at six seconds. Once destroyed, the 6 seconds count down and you can place a new one.

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This would still be a far longer downtime than the old tp and she still wouldn’t really be able to flank. It wouldn’t really change her current playstyle at a downtime of 6 seconds. That’s way too long outside of pre-fight , and if you’re not in a fight or poke phase then you can just wait 12 seconds anyway.

The old tp was fluid and constantly usable but you had to always be thinking about how to build and set up because things would always be changing… Infinite tp just massively favours set it and forget it period.

Spawn tp is AS strong as flanking and killing 1 or two every fight but feels awful and rly restricts her playstyles. Her viability has gone down but almost her whole kit has been severely globally nerfed too.

Spawn tp is insane we just hate it. We wanna be dps and have actual mobility like we used to before it got taken away for a reason that it only made worse…

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I mean tbh I would love infinite tp if it wasn’t 12 seconds long. I was one of the people to ask for an infinite tp back in the day but never realized that the devs kept the cooldown at 12 seconds and only started to count it down when destroyed.

I kinda want Sym to work like Sombra’s translocater. Cooldown starts immediately to stays indefinitely unless manually destroyed or destroyed by enemy. If manually destroyed, then Symmetra can place a new tp right away if cooldown already expired. If tp destroyed by enemies, cooldown starts back at 12 seconds.

3 Likes
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This would be so nice, especially if there was a small cd reduction to mirror the old uptime. Gorgeous. An actual dps hero

This would overall be a buff actually, because you could keep spawn tp indefinitely until wanting to flank with it… and it would have the same positional refresh rate as old tp.

I still think it’d be easier to revert, but I’m definitely not averse to your idea :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

2 Likes
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providing ammunition for ya:
check the commenters in this reddit thread of mine to see various people who aren’t necessarily sym mains supporting that old 3.0 tp being better, notably andygmb. also the upvotes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/eiew66/a_sym_mains_explanation_as_to_why_tp_shouldnt_be/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

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Idk, I like her infinite TP, I just wish it had a shorter cooldown. Or even better, I’d rather her turrets have a shorter cooldown

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Infinite tp is way stronger than you think. You are just not using it correctly. The cd could be lower tho considering the self destroying tp bug still exists and can screw up the entire push. And idk who did you talk with but taxi from spawn is only a good tp usage in specific situations such as overtime or just 3rd checkpoint push etc.

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Her kit is boring… turrets are passive deployables, tp is too team reliant, ult is boring to use… there is no excitement of playing her… holding m1 to shields is not fun… only exciting moment is getting full charge and melting people…

her model and character is wasted with that kit… she could be a super fun and interesting hero but current sym is just no. Too passive.

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Infinite Teleporter is the best you can get out of Teleporter. It should defenetly not be reverted. If you want a blink hero, play Tracer. It was a slight rework and more than necessary!
However, Teleporter is still the problem and should be replaced with her old Photon Barrier.
Your primary talk… I dont even get it. Symmetra is not a high skill hero, she is the easy version of Pharah, who is already a low-skill hero. I think her primary needs as much of a rework as Ability 2 since it has no purpose since the barrier nerfs.
The barrier was strong during double barrier, but it sucks everywhere else. But I dont care if it has 12 or 15 seconds, it doesnt help much anyway.
Turret nerf was only to make Genji mains happy. Like Sym 3.0’s entire rework. Should be reverted along with Teleporter’s removal. Because Turret Bombs is something nobody likes. Another reason why Infinite TP is much better btw.

She shouldnt flank, she shouldnt be flexible and she feels better to play currently than Sym 3.0 ever did. No reverts for TP! She is not Tracer!
Just give her 250 HP, the good old barrier and a new Primary!

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I want the Golden Glove.

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I’m not saying that infinite tp is weak I’m saying that it’s less engaging and limits positional possibilities and playstyle expression.
The sym I’m referencing for spawn tp is AvAtAr. He uses it even on points like attack Havana first from left spawn door to above bench right side going to mini, about 15m. Even before attackers take first corner

I get using tp in preset rotations is so strong but you could do that with old tp and be a solo carry dps fluidly

How could infinite tp be considered a buff to her kit overall?

I just resent being forced back into this playstyle that mimics 2.0. I liked having the option before

What do you think sym needs changed?

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Less spam, more aim. Make Orbs move faster at some damage loss to balance.

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Both symm’s turrets and beam are horrible to play against. It is a terrible design which is one of the most annoying in the game when playing against her. Turret spamming, m2 spamming and standing behind a shield and m1 spamming are all awful abilities. Putting 3 annoying abilities into 1 hero just makes her unlikable.

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Wrong!

What? WRONG!

Sym’s M2 is somewhat similar to Pharah rockets but that’s where all comparisons die. Sym has a lot more to do by way of cooldown management, and has a zarya-style M1 which Pharah does not have in her kit at all.

With slow projectiles and a short range beam weapon Sym needs to track well (because lack of aim is compounded not just by flat damage, but by slower damage ramp. If you’re gonna use your beam on squishies, you need to have good aim, period.) and she also needs to flick well in close-medium range for TP ambushes / blinking Tracers etc. Also timing the slow projectile at mid range with predictions (similar to Pharah there). Also specific TP placement and where to put turrets for value (not trivial. Not 90000 IQ but not trivial.)

Basically if you know how to play Sym and can get value out of her in higher-ish ranks, you should know she’s not low skill by any means.

TP cooldown now freezes at 6 seconds until destroyed

TP cooldown will now be refunded if the TP immediately self-destructs due to a bug

And personally, I believe stage 1 M1 DPS should be 80, not 60.

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I’d want it to drop even lower so it’s more like old tps downtime tbh. It’d hardly make her op, she wasn’t when she only had 2sec downtime before. And a stronger everything else lmao

Let the cooldown freeze at 2seconds see what happens

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I’m inclined to agree personally but you know very well that people would flip out.