Title says it all—I’ve seen pretty much everyone else have their ult get wasted at some point, except Symmetra.
- “Simple whiff”, or “shut-down”: Coalescence, Infra-Sight, Valkyrie, Rocket Barrage, Tactical Visor, etc — getting killed-or-CC’d during (or immediately/shortly after) the cast time, so the Ult gets negligible-to-zero “air time”
- “Absolute whiff” or “dry-fire”: Blizzard, Gravitron Surge, or Pulse Bomb getting eaten by DM or KG; or Reinhardt, Sombra, or Sigma killed-or-CC’d during the cast window; in any case, the ult being denied existence utterly (despite the charge being spent)
now, obviously, the former can’t happen to Symmetra’s Photon Barrier—it remains even after she’s killed—but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the latter happen, either. No matter how cut-off her “YA HEE-” is, the wall always seems to come into existence. (UNLIKE e.g., Sombra, as mentioned earlier.)
tl;dr: if Symmetra spends her Ult charge, is she guaranteed to bring a wall into existence? Or is there a window (and, if so, how big is it,) in which she could be killed-or-CC’d to waste the charge without producing a barrier?
I’ve never seen it be interrupted, personally. I’ve always sort of assumed it’s an instant cast (even though the animation doesn’t really support this).
It can be whiffed by putting it in the wrong place.
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I’ve also got the same question about Transcendence—if you e.g., shieldbash or headshot him just right as he’s saying “EMBRAACE-”, can you deny it and waste the charge?
I swear I thought the wiki listed a “cast time”, but I just checked and apparently it doesn’t. huh ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I guess “instant cast” might actually be the case!
(It seems to have a delay of like a half-second before it appears, but this thread discussing it didn’t even come to fruition on the visual-vs-effective nature of its pseudo-cast-time.)
This has been my experience, too (hence making this thread 
)
I’m hoping(?) that someone ends up bringing something really neato to this thread. Whether that be counterexample footage (it only takes one positive to prove it’s possible), or (more likely,) the results of a bunch of testing done to show that even when trying to do so, PB couldn’t be whiffed.
(I’ve certainly given it some irresponsible casts in combat, myself, but nothing rigorously recorded, so…)
I tried to be as clear as possible in the OP about the fact that this is not the topic of discussion. Trivially, any ultimate can be “whiffed”, in that sense, by putting it in the wrong time/place and not hitting any allies/enemies/objectives with it; that is even less worthy of mention (in context of this thread) than the “shut-down” case mentioned in the OP.
Booping him off the map 
Shielding him from his team.
I’ve throw an icewall between Zen and his team while he was trying to save them, worked REAL well.
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I’ve headshot a Sym and she still cast Photon Barrier.
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I have yet to miss a Moira ultimate and I use it the second I get it most of the time.
What relevance does this have to the thread? You can be killed at any time starting 0.5s before coalescence, and after it starts, to waste the charge. If you’ve “yet to miss” it (*so far), that’s lucky for you, but nobody questions/doubts the fact that Moira has an 0.5s window in which kills-or-CCs will waste fully 100% of Coalescence.
again, this whole thread (and I’m trying to think how I could have been clearer) is referring to actually denying the ult from existing, rather than just denying it circumstantially. Obviously, you can environmentally deny pretty much anything. But I’m asking about the effects on the characters/ultimates themselves.
no matter what timing you kill her with, she either casts it successfully, or is denied outright, eh?
I guess Vishkar might not tolerate waste…
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The relevance was that I was addressing a point you brought up. If you do not want to discuss it, do not bring it up. That is your b, excuse you, princess.
definitely, tho not in the sense of the wall dying:
- when you try to rotate it too quickly and your repeated q doesn’t register and it’s at the wrong angle
- you place it and the enemy doesn’t actually commit to the fight so you wasted wall
- you kill most of sym’s team before it spawns (there is a delay in it spawning, the amount of times I’ve died to a high noon because it spawned a fraction of a second late is too high)
- you get cc’d to be forced to be on 1 side of wall. e.g. bob, torb or mei ults would do this to you
- there’s a bug that makes sym wall spawn in a random place away
- you might be able to delay/prevent sym from placing wall through vertical cc because “aiming” into voids (like ilios well) and aiming into walls (whilst face planting them) bugs out the wall interface stopping sym from placing it
- I suspect it’s because wall is programatically also a structure like tp to be placed in order to spawn
Left off Anti nade, Robot.
@OP what you meant to ask before moving the goalpost for your quest was “Can Sym’s ult be interrupted?” To which the answer is no.
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No, neither Trans nor Photon Barrier have the chance to “whiff”
Once they are used, they’re used and their effect apply.
Pretty sure those are the only ults like that
Oh maybe Ashe? I forget the window of time it takes before Bob shows up, but I have seen plenty of Bob’s showing up the moment an Ashe dies trying to summon him
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D’va bomb too.
You can’t kill her to stop it going off.
Ah nice catch, forgot about that once since I haven’t seen D.va in ages. 
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Doomfist too, now that I think of it.
Oh yeah!
So what’s that… Zen, Sym, D.va, and Doomfist… Maybe Ashe
sigma’s ult can’t be interrupted/cancelled by enemies either, neither can valk. not sure about brig’s, nano or emp tho.
No it cant be interrupted it has the same cast time as dvas self destruct that is to say instant cast, if there is a window to it its so small that it doesnt even matter because its never realistically gonna happen
Sigma’s ult can be stopped by killing him when he first starts the ult; not when he actually casts the circle.
If you kill Brig when she uses her ult it doesn’t do anything to her teammates so I guess it would fall under being able to “whiff” since it doesn’t do anything. Same with Valk. If you kill them when they use their ults, no effects happen.
Nano and EMP can be CC’d or in the case of Nanoboost, lost if the target dies before the boost is applied
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