She does not need damage buffs to her primary nor secondary fire. Symmetra is a close range hero, but has no self sustain or mobility ability. More burst damage is not what this game needs in general.
Either buff her self sustain or make her more consistent on long range. Teleporter should not be considered nor encouraged to be used as an escape ability, because it’s a utility for the whole team, that’s most of the time set up as a fast repositioning tool from holding the choke back to point on defense or as a faster return from spawn.
I have suggestions for both. Either one, or the other
Buffing Symmetra’s self sustain
Photon Harvest (New passive ability)
Dealing damage to barriers and shield based HP with primary fire regenerates Symmetra’s shield based HP.
Buffing Symmetra’s effective range
Photon Projector (Secondary fire)
Damage no longer scales on charge, charge-up time and damage are now constant numbers. In other words, now there’s a wind-up similar to Mei’s secondary fire
It takes 0.35 seconds to fire with a 0.35 second recovery (that’s 1 orb per 0.7 seconds)
Projectile speed increased to 30 meters per second
At this point it’s pretty clear the devs don’t know what to do with sym, what role they want her to fill. It’s good she’s getting buffed but what exactly is this change gonna do for her except add more damage spam to the game?
Disagree! She’s not really a close range hero. Close range is part of her kit, but it’s on the utility/assist side, not the main brawl carry side. And M2 orb spam is part of her ult/poke phase before comitting with tp.
Stronger M2 orbs let her actually do realistic damage and force pivots. Normal M2 was kinda low threat, readily healed, and lost out to basically any other dps 1v1 given the 1-2shot potential of other dps, and that Sym would normally miss 1-2 orbs.
This lets her force some respect as people will have to pivot around eating too many orbs to the face.
The damage of spam projectiles should not be higher than 120, because there’s a fine barrier where those projectiles with damage amps are and aren’t ok. I’ve always been against Junkrat’s 130 damage (Wasn’t it originally 140 on the PTR, too?) and this is too much. Symmetra will be able to oneshot squishies with Nano or Supercharger… that’s not right.
I was thinking about this aswell and probably if in the future that it becomes problematic they can just revert it back to 120 and it wont feel super nerfed like before.
The buff is good but its just feels weird.
I mean, they could’ve given her faster charge time and slightly larger clip (or just less ammo per M2). That’s kind what I was asking for (although my only real ask was better tp cd). The AI-approved Sym behaviour tends to be 1 3/4 charge orb + another 1/3 charge orb slightly on either side to optimize ammo vs. splash registration probability. It’s rarely just bozzo the clown cranking out 140 orbs down a choke and other bozzos eating them.
So the alternative would’ve give you a few more 120 orbs - the result ends up being the same, spammish. Right now we get stronk 140 orbs (more with mercy - possible new synergy over brig tp dives). Those 140 orbs hurt, but there are few, they are slow/dodge, and run her out of ammo quick.
But spam has it’s place. And fast/coordinate teams will blitz past spam damage. They won’t linger. Almost every projectile hero involves some spam. And for general laddering I don’t think the 140 orbs will be that oppressive.
m2 isn’t a good zoning tool due to the slow fire rate and the travel speed being in that weird spot of “too fast to linger long for zoning, too slow for aimed consistent damage”.
if anything is to be done with orbs, it’s to make them slightly faster so aim can matter more in making them land.
Not meant to be the best zoning tool. IMO Sym is about assigning asymmetry. She doesn’t carry brawl close range, she provides lasor assist/utility. Same for the orb ‘spam’ - it’s not the same grade of zoning, splash, and disrupt as a full-fledged projectile dps carry character. It’s a value added as part of her hybrid kit. So it zones, splashes, and threatens damage ‘OK’ in the overall context of things.
People shouldn’t have to wait for endless amounts of reworks cause Blizzard couldn’t seem to give a damn about one of their heroes. I mean, did you see what the last one did to her? And the Valkyrie rework that broke very fabric of the multiverse?
Hero reworks should be a last resort, not a ‘we dunno how to balance this hero, so let’s kinda make a new one using the same skin’. It’s lazy and can often times make the hero detrimental to the game. Like current Symmetra compared to 2.0.
But I digress. This change is stupid, it does nothing other than making spam better in the game, and a similar change was removed from Junkrat a while ago as it made his spam a bit too good, but nearly one-shotting a squishy with a Mercy damage boost?
Guess who’s gonna receive a nerf next to make it look like they care about Symmetra. I love Symmetra, but these changes aren’t gonna affect her in game unless she’s being close enough for her orbs to hit consecutively. They’re so slow and easy to avoid that they might as well just be a close range option as spamming them is their only other real use. The only change the secondary fire needed was a flight speed increase to 30m/s, so they were actually threatening. This makes them threatening, but when you realise you can just walk right past them, well… Suddenly, that doesn’t sound as good.
think about it this way. 20~25m/s with 1s charge time and 0.55s winddown time is putting 1.55 * 20~25 = 31~38.75m between orbs. that’s a lot of area between orbs that’s inherently being given up for enemies i.e. legit terrible for zoning, not “OK”.
And when it comes to damaging, it’s not “OK” either.
at 15m orbs give 0.6s for targets to reactively dodge a fired orb. That really isn’t good either esp when comparing to other projectiles:
Given than orbs is the weapon that sym uses most in a match, it should be used to damage more rather than simply zone given sym is a damage hero i.e. should have a reasonable general/not situational option to kill things reasonably and fairly consistently (based on the player’s skill) with. her turrets and primary are already zoning tools, orbs don’t need to be zoning tools too.
NOTE: I’m not saying sym orbs should be sniper level faster for her sniper-weapon-like cost, but at least make it more consistent for midrange.
I don’t plan on mindlessly spamming with them. That is suboptimal. It’ll feed and put you at an ammo downtime resource deficit. I’m absolutely going to be trying for mid-range, precise chunk damage, with M1/turret/melee finishers as anyone maxing out the skill/kit would. Some spam, yes, but main gimmick = spam? No.
that pretty much sums up why I’m saying it should be orb travel speed to increase so orbs will be more about aim, more consistent to land if you do have aim and rely less on spam.