effective range of a weapon is simply determined by fall-off. range at 25m away it’s so slow it gives a whole second for targeta to reactively dodge a fired orb. at 15m it’s 0.6s.
For reference,
they are slow. and that slowness makes them not effective at range because it makes the players a less of a factor in making them land.
like would you say genji’s shurikens are being effective if you were sniping a far away target? obvs not because the target has plenty of time to see them and dodge them which you have no control over. same principle applies to sym’s orbs but more severe because they’re much slower (speed literally less than half if genji’s shurikens) i.e. see that effect even in shorter ranges.
I said that to appeal to the many that lump them together under the umbrella term “utility heroes”. take it up with them if you have a problem.
the fact of the matter is that sym cannot reasonably independently obtain opportunities to do her job unlike the rest of the damage cast.
the same as her weapon which is about ~15m at best when including orbs.
turrets are inconsistent damage sources pretty much irrespective of range due to how easily destructible they are, how they need enemies to walk to them for them to damage (high waiting time compared to time damaging) and how the player has no control on targetting on them. Given all this inconsistency, you can’t reasonably consider turrets as a substitute nor an equivalent to a hero’s weapon when considering a hero’s effective range.
idk whether you missed the words “sustain” and “delays” or completely misunderstood them. we’re talking about how sym is somehow expected to somehow stay alive in her so short effective range for at least 2.5~3s (either 2 orbs factoring aiming or primary charge up time; not even talking about time for actually utilising lvl3 beam yet) with low mobility, nothing to really help her keep her alive for that time reasonably in her kit and while many heroes have a ttk on her of like 1~2.5s…
I mean even shallowly looking at how all these weakness stack up against her whereas that not being the case for most others would already be a large red flag in showing that she’s lacking.
it was a a legit reason. Geoff specifically talked about sym being too niche in being a defence only hero and wanted to make her more flexible, viable on attack and dynamic, i.e. addressing the “why do I have to change my entire comp and playstyle to cater for a sym pick?” complaint which was legit very rampant.
- emphasis added to direct you
not denying that they wanted to make the kit able to put out more damage (they explicitly said that too), but my point there is definitely a legit one.
I mean given that it can’t headshot, the charge time is on par with dps snipers and the damage it deals is the same as a sniper body shot, I don’t see really a reason why a guaranteed less consistent weapon should be dealing less damage too if it lands. like doing a bit of compensation nerfing on splash radius, hitbox size and/or turret dps I get and I’m fine with if reasonable and necessary, but I don’t see how it’d be too high damage when comparing to other heroes’ weapons with similar conditions/traits.
like I said faster orbs I wasn’t talking like hanzo, ana or mei >=100m/s projectile fast, but moreso like 30~35m/s-ish.
if they want sym to have utility capability, tp fits very well in that it can be team utility or sym’s personal engagement and disengagement tool. the key thing is it needs to strike the right balance of:
- having high enough cast frequency to let sym optimise and fluidly repurpose it (i.e. can fluidly transition between team use and personal use and when she wants/needs to)
- lasting long enough to still need some commitment from sym and/or team to a placement
- and being able to reward enemies in destroying it and punishing sym for poor placement
and you may say “blizz can’t do that” but the thing is, they were pretty much on the mark with non-infinite tp as that version of tp ticked all those boxes.
what went wrong is blizzard decided to put in infinite tp with an absolutely horrible cd mechanic which made it not satisfy the 1st point and being to harsh on sym on the others.
it is only useful if the hero can let themselves not take damage for 3s and still somehow can provide value during that time or somehow “catch up”/not lose out on value if they do so. for sym, she doesn’t have that capability and often requires her to hard disengage to be able to utilise it i.e. often either shield regen isn’t helpful or she isn’t helpful to use shield regen.
if sym gets something to let her kinda of trigger it at will or let her trigger it sooner, I think it’d be a really good solution to her lack of sustain without creating a 2nd reaper case (since shield regen is cancelled by any damage received and we’re not talking about overheal here).
it is more situational when you consider the fact that it has a pretty long charge up from low dps (long delay) and that we’re talking about a squishy hero with low mobility options and low sustain options.
like rein hammer and zarya’s weapon start off with higher dps, have much higher hp, have more available barriers and in zarya’s case has more range which let them gap close and live long enough when in range for their TTK on squishies which is just above 2s (TTK rein and zarya are is than 2s even if we’re assuming a constant 180dps damage source esp when taking barriers into account). that is not the case for sym even with the above suggested changes (assuming done reasonably/fairly).
which other damage hero has neither an on-demand escape or self sustain option? 
how many of them have both low effective range and low sustain?
you’re disregarding the destructibility and the waiting restrictions on them as explained above in this comment.