I’ll try to cut to the chase, and say sym’s primary fire isn’t a shield break weapon because of 3 reasons:
- she has tp
- inherent inefficient design of her weapon and synergy (or lack thereof) with the rest of her kit for shield breaking (mainly her charge up, i.e. why make it charge up?)
- there isn’t really any “fair” way to make sym a shield break hero via her primary with her current design
Reason 1: TP
Simply put it’s more efficient and practical to just use tp to bypass the shield or get an angle that would bypass the shield rather than go through all the hoops to use her primary to battering ram through them (will elaborate in Reason 2).
Reason 2: Inefficiency and Lack of Synergy for Shield Breaking
It’s pretty well known now that sym has low survivability and low mobility. Combining this with a weapon that takes ~2.56s of 100% aim to charge up to comparable dps values which also has a 12m range for sym’s “shield break”, what we have is an extremely situational weapon with so many costs. especially when it takes most heroes 1~3s to kill sym without as many pre-conditions.
And the supposed reward is 180dps, soldier level, whereas the actual shield breakers like junkrat and bastion have higher dps for shield breaking off the bat and without many of the pre-conditions sym has, i.e. less cost, also higher reward/capability in most cases, i.e. far more efficient for the job.
Looking at this from a more abstract level, needing to charge up from low dps to higher dps just to shield bust will be less efficient to shield break compared to another weapon that has high dps (higher than the max dps of the former) from the start (see below subsection as to what I mean). So why does sym’s primary have a charge up mechanic and only up to soldier level dps if it’s supposed to be a shield break weapon?
But what about sym’s “meta” moment in unnerfed double shield meta?
There’s something very crucial to be noticed here:
sym wasn’t good nor prevalent as a shield breaker except for that moment in unnerfed double shield meta.
- Before: there was often 1 shield and in a team setting, the non-sym team would be able to get a head start on breaking the sym team’s barrier in poke phase whereas sym will need to work on getting into 12m range and staying alive there to charge up from low dps --> most non-sym dps combo picks killed shields faster than a sym combo pick if not at about the same time.
- After: shields have been nerfed and so single shield comps are back and even if double are being run, they’re a lot more destructible to most of the cast for that to get the same result as before double shield meta.
So why did sym “get good” or become prevalent in unnerfed double shield meta? Reason was that unnerfed double shield comps on both sides was the most spoon feeding environment for sym’s primary:
- enemy shields inherently delivered to sym’s door like a free uber eats buffet service
- sym’s team’s shields spammed to the enemy faces paving a really safe catwalk for sym to strut her model legs to the enemies’ faces. safe from paparazzi snipers, safe from stalking flankers, safe from whatever harassers to get in her way.
- the shields were so frequent and the total shield hp was so high that reloads actually mattered a lot for shield breaking, i.e. sym’s primary was one of the few that weren’t all too phased by that due to ammo regen on shields --> competition made irrelevant FOR HER despite not having high dps for shield break anyways.
Reason 3: No “Fair” Way of Implementing Her Primary as a Shield Break Weapon.
With the current design of sym’s kit and charge up weapon, you either make it “unfair” for the sym player like now where you need to suck up plenty of team resources in order to be capable of shield breaking, or you make it “unfair” for sym’s enemies in upping her range or sustain to the point of letting her shield break without needing much resources from her team, i.e. it’s going to be really oppressive for sym’s enemies IF:
- sym can charge up from a long range (like >=20m) then continue battering ram the enemies; or if
- sym can just walk up in the front lines tanking damage like a juggernaut whilst charging up through damaging you.
Well if it’s not a Shield Break Weapon, What is it?
Sym’s primary fire is a zoning tool. The whole design of it is supposed to punish staying close to sym for long periods of time, not short. And if you look at it that way, a lot of things start making sense, i.e. why sym’s weapon charges up and having lvl3 dps at only 180, or why sym has so much ammo without the regen effect, etc.
So Are You Saying Sym’s Primary is Fine?
Absolutely not. The issue with primary is that things kill sym too quickly for her to be able to punish “long” periods of targets staying in her personal space. Her primary should be smoother in terms of dps levels, then you can start looking at 15m range.
However, most of sym’s problems lie in the rest of her kit/gameplay because, like I said earlier, her primary is very situational, i.e. comprises a very small portion of her kit/gameplay compared to tp and orbs.