4 more reasons why Symmetra is a bad designed hero

General Discussion
1

Hello. In this post I will point out why Symmetra 3.0 is bad designed and should be reworked. I wasn’t sure about writing this post but vibecheck made a similar post so I wanted to add a few things.

Let’s start with the easiest reason. Her ult.

1. Too big for Smash Overwatch

You might have noticed that there can only exist one wall per team at a time.

During the AMA the devs explained why:

On the engine side, having a giant effect cutting through your entire screen, that has transparency to it, is very costly for performance. We went through a bunch of different visual effects concepts to try to make it look good while still being cheap enough to not crush people’s frame rate. We ended up getting to a good place, but there was still a lingering fear about 6v6 Symmtras, all using ults at the same time. This is why there is a concession in place where each team is only allowed 1 wall at a time. If a second Symm on your team uses an ult while yours is still running, yours will be removed when her’s is created.

That’s kinda reasonable, right? And this only affects a few Arcade game modes, right?
No. Since the release of Echo this affects the entire game because it is now possible to have to 2 Symmetras on the same team even in competitive.
Imagine your wall gets instantly deleted because your Echo used her ult one second later.

I don’t think this will change with Overwatch 2.

If your game can’t handle a certain ability change the ability.

2. Teleporter hates the spawn

Nothing new. Symmetra still can’t use her teleporter in spawn. And she’s there very often.
Why? Reinhardt.
According to the devs it is more important for Rein being able to teleport with an opponent than Sym using her teleporter in spawn. Want to go high ground on King’s Row? NO. Want to respawn a little faster? NO. Want to do something when being spawn camped? NO. Want to teleport while holding an enemy which is useless 99.99999999% of the time? YES.

And don’t forget those countless videos by Not Muda creating bugs with the teleporter.

And there are more.

If an ability causes game breaking bugs change the ability.

3. The unbalanceable teleporter

To use the full potential of the teleporter Symmetra needs a team that is willing to play around it. She has no control over it.
She can’t force her team to use it. She can’t force her team to not use it.
It’s completely up to her team if Symmetra is usefull or not which is a big problem. While other DPS can do their job - doing damage - on their own Symmetra is one of the most team reliant heroes in the game.

In which elos does the team use the teleporter? In the Overwatch League and GM. Teleporter is a nearly useless ability for 99% of the players. And for the other 1% it is one of the most broken abilities in the game and Symmetra’s whole kit is balanced around the potential of teleporter. Or should I say hidden potential?

An ability that can never be balanced should not be in the game.

4. Turret destroyed

Turrets are similar but not that extreme. They are usefull until Gold/Plat. Above those elos they are useless and considered as one of the worst abilities in the game.
Did you notice something?
While teleporter is strong in GM and weak in every other rank the turrets are strong in the lower elos and weak in the higher elos.

It doesn’t matter how high or low your sr is. At least one of your abilities (turrets, teleporter) will always be useless.

I could go on and talk about her beam and orbs but there is already enough discussion about those abilities.

Just like vibecheck I try to find fixes for the problems I mentioned.

1. Make the wall smaller
I’m not against the wall. It is a good ult. But it doesn’t need to be infinite. When I cut point B Hanamura in half I don’t care what the wall is doing on the other side of the map.
50 meters should still be enough to wall the whole point.

2. Don’t let Reinhardt teleport while holding an enemy
A simple change that won’t affect the game at all but will help Symmetra a bit.

3. Get rid of teleporter 3.0
Let teleporter work like spawn teleporter again and rework her back into a support because it wouldn’t fit on a DPS. Reduce the charges to 1 if it’s on her E.

4. Rebalance the turrets
Make the turrets easier to deal with in the lower ranks but stronger in the higher ranks.

  1. HP reduced to 1 OR Damage reduced to 35
  2. Turrets now attack the same target as Symmetra
  3. Symmetra can now see attacked enemies through walls for 3 seconds
3 Likes
2

I agree with most of these and honestly its rediculous how they never revert her TP ban on spawn when they already made a rule where enemies will die instantly inside your spawn,
besides those scenarios where rein tp the enemy at spawn is like stars aligning and will never be replicated that easy on a fight, it was only been made possible because both enemy and rein were chatting and made that intentional, but blizz dev had a panic attack and thought its the easiest thing to do.

I get so many negative feedback anytime i suggest the turret to be removed so that her power can be rebalance somewhere else, however if they would keep the turret my suggestion is that

  • make them have 1 hp and has 5 second cooldown each and deals 30 dps but make it so that they can fire while flying, in this way they can be use as an emergency suplementary dmg that can back her up withoit waiting for the almighty deployment time

Lasty how come they dont want to give her instant ability anymore? She had that with her old photon barrier and it was her one of her most skilled ability able to save team from multiple incoming danger without needing to wait for a charge up etc.
Imagine if rein shield has 2 second deployment time, the horror!

For a hero with all of her ability has delays,deployment time,charge up youd think that she would be a very powerful hero but nope!

  • atleast give her one instant ability without the need for ramp up,wind up and chargeup shenanigans like her orb that charge like a sniper yet deal pathetic dmg that moves like a snail.
1 Like
3

Honestly, I think turrets just need to go and be replaced with something else. They’re too easy to destroy, and people who are remotely competent won’t just walk into your turret nests more than once. I don’t think your changes to turrets would help all that much. In fact, I think reduced damage/health would just make them worse, even with the wall hack.

The reason turrets are a load in the first place, is because they’re super inconsistent and work or not work on a match by match basis, depending on how bad the enemy team is. Changing around what they do a little bit won’t change that severe inconsistency. They’d still be awful at gold or higher. Also, why the wall hacks only for Sym? If your turrets attack something, you already know someone is over there.

If they are going to keep the turrets, they should completely rework them, and just get rid of damage entirely. Maybe make the turrets do something else. Make the turrets real sentries that everyone can see the enemies they tag, or make them give allies buffs, or make them give enemies minor debuffs. Things where your opponent won’t immediately know that they are there and shoot them. Torb’s turret only gets away with that because it has more health, and longer range.

1 Like
4

I hate the new ult so much because it can’t even be used reactively many times. Why give a defensive ult a casting time when the non-ult version was instant?!

About turret rebalancing, I think making them six again will help a lot because it allowed a lot of room for experimentation and make them less predictable. With only 3 turrets there is a limit how disposable each one individually is, and how far apart they can be from each other.

1 Like
5

Yes!

And don’t get me started on how some map geometry it would just randomly placed somewhere so far from where you intended it to be, i had a game where i want to put in front of us to save us from the dva bomb but lo and behold it went so far ahead that i was shooked and didnt even try to move just accept a defeat. You cant even relocate the barrier onced its placed, why should i be punished by a game bug that they dont want to fix?

1 Like
6

I don’t think it “can’t” they just don’t bother
They don’t take many ideas or PowerShifts like with hack, repair pack, etc

It can definitely be balanced, it just doesn’t feel like they try, they’re too scared IMO
And whenever there’s a change it’s either minor or doesn’t please the playerbase of that hero, rather pro streamers/players, or they please them but make it too op and then nerf them to a worse state than before the changes

What if we just replace turrets with shield generator? :shield::lips::shield:

Clearly the better ability
Buffs junkrat as side effect

7

You could have replied to that thread instead, was your argument ‘too important’ to warrant its own thread?

Give us a 4th Symmetra rework, and introduce Sanjay as a mix of those previous symmetra versions.

8

I really don’t know why TP in spawn isn’t enabled again, they bloody fixed the abuse by putting a dot if you’re in the wrong spawn ages ago so the bug can’t happen, but it has stayed disabled.

9

Coz its symmetry(symmetra)

She is the only hero who cant use an ability on spawn.

1 Like
10

This likely will change with OW2.

This is really bad argument. Killing yourself is not possible in spawn for various game play reasons too. If you don’t understand why, you’re not really paying much attention.

To use the full potential of Reinhardt’s barrier, Reinhardt needs a team that is willing to play around it. He has no control over it.
He can’t force his team to use it. He can’t force his team not to use it.
It’s completely up to his team if Reinhardt’s barrier is useful or not which is a big problem. While other DPS can do their job - doing damage - on their own, Reinhardt is one of the most team reliant heroes in the game.

It’s not.

They do more work that Torbjorn’s turret; doing more damage that BOB does and have a stronger slow that Sigma’s own ultimate.

50 meters is close to twice the size of the second capture point in Hanamura.

You are correct in that the wall doesn’t have to cleave the entire map, but you probably need to understand distance a little better.

This won’t change the reasons why teleporter can’t be used in spawn. Alternatively, it might be more fun to allow more things into teleporter, beyond devices and bodies. Junkrat’s concussion mines, Roadhog’s hook, Tracer’s Pulse Bomb or even Mei’s Blizzard would be fun ways to cause some chaos.

If she goes back to Support, her whole functionality would have to be changed to provide healing as a primary source, and damage as a secondary source. This would mean that the sentries would (probably) have to provide healing, she’d probably lose her teleporter and her secondary ability would either be a low-powered shield generator or something else defense/support-minded. She would still be a builder-type hero, but she would be healing instead of damaging.

Doesn’t need to happen.

ALready do.

Already does.

It’s unlikely, but providing some kind of sonar-effect akin to Radar, Sonic Arrow or Widow-sight, probably wouldn’t hurt. As long as it’s limited.

New Photon Barrier is instant.

Unlikely, since a core part of Symmetra’s design is that she’s a builder. They’re not getting rid of sentries since it’s been a core part of her kit since alpha. They’ve been there longer than even Teleporter.

And tremendously less damage.

Again, Symmetra’s ultimate is instant.

You never could. Even when Symmetra was in the Support-role with ultimate Teleporter, it was never placed in spawn - just outside of it.

11

So you want to make her turrets stronger by… Making their HP significantly less than they are now, and/or reducing their damage, while… not changing anything else about them? Not giving her more in quantity, a better cooldown, anything?

And the whole ‘Turrets now attack the target Symmetra is’ might sound nice on paper, but it’s going to be a minimal change, most smart Symmetras don’t bundle their turrets all in one place to be destroyed so easily, which means your turrets are just attacking whoever is nearby, it’s rare that there’s a battle scenario with your turrets and you in the same area -that’s the whole problem with her now, she can’t take a hit or defend herself much at all up close and personal, but that’s the kind of gun she’s been given.

Like putting boxing gloves on a sniper, it’s just stupid.

12

I meant ability like orb, turret ,tp not ultimate besides her photon barrier had this slight delay so not instant.

And what’s with your post qouting almost everyone who replied, ive seen you doing this often.

Uhm yes! Her TP would place randomly inside spawn , thats why allot of people had asked for blizzard to have it fixed in one place coz people often missed it

You need to watch old symm videos buddy!

Also what is the correlation? They allowed symm to be able to do it when 3.0 was released and the reason they banned it coz of that stupid rein bug video.

13

Cause that’s her schtick. You don’t get that level of power without having some draws to it. Certainly plausible to reduce the cast times on a number of abilities, but it would also require reducing the damage output on all them too. Not sure if Blizzard is likely do this.

You can’t have Sentry-Bastion moving around at the speed of Soldier or Tracer while having that level of output; no reason to expect the same thing for Symmetra who is also defense-minded.

Nope, I’ve been playing since Beta 1. Teleporter always had a fixed location just outside of the healing spawn room so that every player could see it.

14

This is a total non-issue. The only time I’ve ever seen a barrier get cancelled by a new one is in the arcade.

Being spawn camped is really the only reason you’d need to place it in spawn rather than right outside the doors and if you’re getting spawn camped, you have bigger problems to solve.

The balance issue with the teleporter is how loud it is when it is placed. It must be loud in order to alert non-communicative teams that a full-team teleport might be coming, but the fact that it’s loud as hell makes it difficult to use in other offensive scenarios. This idea the whole team needs to use a TP for it to be worthwhile just isn’t right, particularly in the low/mid ranks where you can totally get away with playing Sym like a budget Reaper.

IMO they’re weak against skilled opponents because they take so long to place. They have cast time, then travel time, then build time. By the time they’re shooting, the enemy has either moved on or destroyed them. Other than that, I’d prefer to use Sym’s turrets over Torb’s any day.

15

They already deleted the kit once no reason to do it again.

People like the current design so move on.

The bliz balance team should never be given the task of reworking a hero based on how horrible they have been at it so far

16

Haha Nope you are crazy wrong my friend!

Around 5:20 minute mark look where the tp spawned she even used it when she died and do tell me if thats outside again?
It always spawn inside the room, this is why its a good escape when the enemy is spawn camping because she can save them via tp.

For someone who claimed to have been playing since beta you seems to have a very different memory of her TP placement.

1 Like
17

The video in my post that you quoted says otherwise.

3 Likes
18

It has a cast time are you blind

Have you even played sym lol

3 Likes
19

Dont bother with this person,
We had a conversation earlier and he/she insisted that symm never had an ability to place her tp at spawn since beta and with her 1.0 and 2.0 days and claim that the entrance is always fixed outside the spawn door,tried justifies it as to why her tp can no longer be used inside spawn anymore when the truth is they banned the tp coz of the bug with rein trapping enemy inside.

I was like girl! I mained this queen since 2016, just cause you played since beta doesnt mean i dont know what im talking about.

20

Not a design problem of either Symmetra 3.0 or Echo in any way. This is a technical issue that should be addressed and nothing more.

I’m sorry… Do you even know what “game design issues mean”? Just because an ability doesn’t have an element that used to be present during the 2.0 days doesn’t make it even remotely ““badly - designed””…

Even the devs themselves came out and gave a pretty valid explanation of why this is the case with 3.0 TP.

Yep, just like during the 2.0 days, this could potentially be considered as a design issue.

Let’s not bring that mess if an ULT back again… For more than obvious reasons of course.