Experimental Sym is Balanced

General Discussion
45

except that mentality is balancing or designing for failure/weakness considering the vast majority of heroes who don’t have typically have historic viability issues aren’t being balanced nor designed that way. not even the “support-y” dps that don’t have sym’s viability issues are being designed nor balanced like that.

e.g. mei has a “team support” dps kit yet still can get independent uptime with how much range there is on her wall placement and icicles (they have like hanzo arrow tier projectile speed). and that’s why she doesn’t have severe viability issues that sym has had.

not even the supports are being balanced or designed to have hard team dependence requirements like this either. like none of the supports are 100% reliant teammates for peel, everyone of them has self defence mechanisms. all of them have either range, or mobility (or a combination of both) to let them fairly independently get themselves in range of allies to heal/buff/whatever to support their allies without needing tanks to hard facilitate them their desired position to do their job from.

when pretty much everyone else is balanced and designed around a higher standard of independence for their job, making a hero that’s much less independent (or in terms of the 15m primary change, keeping them much less independent) is in fact making/keeping them weak. esp if we’re talking balancing for ladder where there inherently is lower coordination (because that’s simply how ladder inherently has been set up).

46

It is the balancing we see in this game. There is a hitscan bias. Her laser is sort of a hitscan weapon. You see pros disliked projectile metas (like when junk was meta). Pros want reliability because they want to win.

Mei has a supporting style that may be changed to tanking in OW2. She could fit either way. Blizzard has the capability of making the same hero into different roles much like they designed death knights to be both tanks and damage in Wotlk.

Most supports can’t even heal themselves. They are designed around having two of them on a team. They can’t even cast their own healing onto themselves most of the cases (Baptiste can not heal himself with his own weapon >.>). Most are designed to have slow passive healing or a cd to heal themselves. They are designed around their team. Most of their success is enhanced with team mates, Symmetra maintains this. She even keeps her shields which was her support way of regening health. It encourages her to run away and regen her health and keep poking damage.

Symmetra has good 1 vs 1 capability if she uses her cds right, that’s part of her kit. Her 16m primary allows her to do more for sure with how the maps are designed in Overwatch. I would say hitscan is often more valued the projectile spam. Especially when she gets ammo off shields.

47

the hitscans that are higher up in balance don’t suck up as many resources sym with 15m would for uptime. those hitscans can reliably get themselves uptime because they have all the tools they need to do so inherently in their kit. That’s not the case for sym even if primary get 15m. that’s the point I’ve been making this entire time.

doesn’t detract from the independent uptime point I’ve been making.

the only 2 supports that don’t have an active ability to heal themselves is mercy, zen and brig, but all of them have a passive (or passive equivalent) to do so. legit every support has self heal in some form. and none of them are so reliant on another support to be able to do their own job like sym is on her team to get resources to use her primary.

like for sym even with the 15m range on primary, she still needs tank escorts + a healer pocket to let her m1 meaningfully. if she doesn’t get that, she can’t use primary except for finishing off low hp targets within its range which is infrequent. none of the supports rely on the other support to that extent to do their own job. and that large difference of standard of independence being applied in balance is what I’m saying is a problem for sym.

in context of 1v1’s, plenty of heroes have a lower TTK on her rather than vice versa, not to mention more consistency in opportunities, actually landing, being in range, etc. compared to sym irrespective of the range buff on her primary.

:man_facepalming: we’ve gone full circle.
again, it is only more valuable (as with any weapon fire honestly) assuming the level of burst it has is inversely proportional to the level of sustain the hero has i.e.

  • if higher burst for how fragile sym is or
  • if higher sustain for how slow the sustain damage dealt is

neither of which is sym’s primary irrespective of the range buff, which is why it’ll still be highly situational regardless of that buff.

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48

The point is it’s a buff. Not a solution to all her problems. Because heroes are designed to have weaknesses. Sym isn’t meant to dominate. We had a long meta where ashe and mercy were dominate. Mercy hard pockets damage. That’s part of the game. Bridgette enable Goats, but in reality tanks were always strong. Symmetra make depend on certain heroes to work but that works with alot of heroes. Zarya and Rein are like the perfect duo in many cases but each alone is manageable. It’s okay for heroes to be reliant on each other. Sym can poke or do close range. Her close range is more reliable though and her turrets are close range too. So ideally she should be porting and setting up kills , offensive turrets or defensive turrets. She isn’t meant to be a widow or a pharah. We have 2 dps slots on a team for that. You either cover each other’s weakenesses, double down on a type of comp, compliment each other’s picks, or lose. Any hero will have put their resources in a hero. For example no one has a problem putting resources to heal a genji or do a nanoblade? It shouldn’t be an issue. Close ranged heroes need more heals, that applies to everyone, long range can hide and do damage maybe even kill from far away, but they are further away to get heals from healers. We have like 2 ranged healers and more close ranged healers. The game is designed overall to group up.

Symmetra can set up rush easy, good for close ranged healer comps. Her ranged is horrible which you may rely on your other damage or switch. This change helps with staying and keeping the pressure in fights. It’s not the answer to her not being meta. Because pros prefer lethality over sustain pressure. Burst is dominant sustain will be behind unless we get more healing and defensive potential. It looks like that isn’t happening since people want to nerf stuff like baptiste’s defensive cooldown for example.

My personal buff I want to see is everyone can headshot, junkrat, pharah, symmetra etc. Sym would be really good if she could headshot. Other games make lazer weapons that can headshot and they feel very good. That isn’t the case in overwatch.

49

No the joke patch really is a joke. Too much creep everywhere with every main thinking their changes are worth keeping. It shows just how joke the game is, because the only ExC we need is a new dev team. Priorities we need right now are competitive integrity i.e. ladder fixes against rigging and alts.

50

you want a buff that doesn’t effectively nothing about her problems but the reason you want a buff in the first place for sym is because sym’s problems are that she has too many weaknesses leading to really high down times and thus poor balancing…
:thinking:

preeeeetty sure rein and zarya aren’t as dependent on each other as much as sym’s primary is dependent on basically being team pocketted for meaningful uptime.

sym’s poke is objectively terrible and it’s very blatant when you compare it with various other heroes’ poke. if you want to see a numerical proof of it, you can expand and see it in the proof section at the end of the OP of this thread.

not when you’re talking about primary considering various heroes are able to kill her or outlive her much more reliably than vice versa. which again, the 15m buff would do nothing about.

except she’s bad at that too and not to mention that’s not primary’s function which I find interesting that you want a buff for primary despite wanting sym to be able something else.

not as many resources as one does to let a sym m1 irrespective of a 15m range primary tho. many flankers (i.e. close ranged dps) and ranged dps don’t require a tank + support pocket to get in range, let them stay in range, and then escort them out.
Close ranged dps/flankers all have mobility tools and sustain tools to facilitate themselves.
Ranged dps have range and mobility tools to facilitate themselves.
that large difference in standard of independence being applied is the problem. and the solution to that problem is improving orbs + her self mobility tp.

except her close range capabilities aren’t good and neither will this change do anything about that as explained numerous times already (high TTK against others, low sustain, etc.)…

51

Your buff idea sort of makes it similar to Pharah. Her straight line orbs are basically Pharah rockets. Sym shouldn’t be a better Pharah.

It is an iconic duo. Sym isn’t played enough to get that sort of iconic duo combination commonly seen to support each other.

Her orb is used and was used for zoning. But if you combo that with her teleporter her orb can serve as a good sort of shock gun opener on an ambush. Her poke is also a pretty big projectile making it generous for shooting where your enemy will be. Any speed improvement’s would sort of make her feel like a Pharah.

She has two ways of shooting for a reason, you can combo both and weave them. Her best damage is close range.

She uses as much resources as any other close ranged hero? The fact that she has to charge her kills is probably what you are concerned which can be bad at times sure but learning how to move and dodge is part of mastering Sym. She is a good target to shield for example with a Zarya since Sym has big hitboxes. She can port her rein/orisa/monkey fast so they don’t have to waste a cd to get into position. Her synergy works both ways.

Her close range aren’t the best but they are still good if used properly. The fact that she doesn’t have to aim for headshots to get 180 damage and it refills on shields is pretty cool. Her kit does the most damage when she can laser people down next to her turrets.

Baptiste and maybe Mercy can enable her to poke more. Moira would go good with Symmetra, the baptiste ult combo makes her orbs 240 damage each. Which is good, I do miss the 280 orbs though.

52

All I say is when I’m in the middle of a team fight I use the beam more often than the orb.

Orb is better suited for long distance or emergency close up fights which I tend to avoid anyway.

I like the longer ranged beam. I think we all do actually. With 12m the only way I can get charge is really off of a tank, half of which will kill her pretty quickly. At least with a longer beam I can try to charge off of other heroes.

53

more like it’d make her into a more sniper-like version of pharah rockets i.e. lower fire rate, higher consistency to land a particular shot because more aimable from higher projectile speed.
namely pharah’s rockets will be better at spam, orbs would be better at precision.

combine that with the tp suggestions and we get how sym won’t get overshadowed by actual snipers: she gets better angles, and can perform multiple dps subroles at an ok level (not being an expert): flanker, brawler, harasser.

iconic duo != a hard requirement. there’s a big difference between the 2.

like choc chip on cookies is an iconic duo, but it’s not a hard requirement that cookies have to have choc chips in them.

sniper-tier charge time encouraging aiming them but terrible projectile speed that makes it infeasible to do so in many ranges as shown in proof… like even for zoning, it should be either

  • aimable so it threatens targets into cover (like how ranged hitscans do),
  • or it’s got higher fire rate in conjunction to its size while having lower projectile speeds so that it can get actual area coverage to zone

if it’s neither route, it’s simply bad. and that’s currently what sym orbs are rn. ._.

except her tp has been nerfed and orbs aren’t all that very consistent in general… hence my suggestions to improve them…

and contrary to what you were saying about the 15m buff, it only helps with securing picks on low hp targets which would help this flank, but the main hurdles of this flank is how blizz trashed on tp and how orbs are inconsistent. hence my suggestions.

if you want her to be using m1 for not just finishing low hp targets, yes she absolutely does use more resources than other close range dps. all the other close range dps have much more uptime on their mobility abilities, actually have more sustain for how low their range is and how much burst they have. e.g. reaper has self heal + 250hp + burst (able to 1hko squishies) + 2 i-frame mobility abilities because his range is so short

and you can’t use “learning how to dodge” as a defence because that applies to nearly every single hero and is not a sym exclusive feature. i.e. all my previous arguments about TTK defs still apply.

you argue that we should be looking at combining orbs with primary (i.e. tp flanks) and then you change your mind going back to the side of “she’s good in close range because of w+m1 so 15m buff is good”… like which is it? :expressionless:

and no, I explained how w+m1 is bad, highly situational, dependent, etc. numerous times already. refilling on shields mean nothing if she dies before it matters. same about 180dps or even reaching 180dps.

54

Good sym players do both! Orb with teleport makes it good as an opener for combos. 2 turret tele and orbs are good burst!.,. For close range… where she excels. The laser is her filler, you can do the orb as a filler too. I always used the orb as a shot gun even as a support, she was always good at close range with her orbs but they took 2 seconds to charge and the laser was always worth trying for the third unless you were confident in orbs and can overdamage the healing. The former piercing orbs were good as a sort of shotgun for a while. But that was when 222 wasn’t a thing so we could have more varied comps. Symmetra always felt like a good third support. In 222 she fits well as damage healer who can support her team without healing. A saboteur. Her laser is pretty reliable from both her damage options. The orb is okay if you know how to predict. I played Sym before I played Zarya playing Zarya helps learning to aim on Sym. Ideally her best burst comboes come from preparation. Using turrets already set up to avoid the long set up time (which is why 2 turrets before you tele is good timing wise). Experience should teach you when to teleport out, sometimes a good orb and laser combo can pick off people.

Daniel Fenner showcases some good Sym play and comboes if you want to check him out.

55

except 1 is highly situational with high down time and the other simply has really long down time with how blizz trashed tp. see why I’m suggesting for orbs + tp to be improved?

it really isn’t given all the conditions it has.

I’ve already shown you the mathematical proof as to how it isn’t.

except tp got nerfed to have really high down time.

daniel fenner also agrees with me at how terrible the current down time is on tp:

again, hence why I’m saying improvements to tp and orbs matter much more.

56

What do you mean downtime? You could cancel as soon as you port and get your cd just like the old version.

57

here’s a text art visual demonstrating how infinite tp has longer down time and lower cast frequency compared to old finite 3.0 tp:

Non-serialised (i.e. most other abilities and sym’s old 3.0 finite tp):

timeline of cd:            |-------------------------------|
timeline of getting value: |+++++++++++| ability down time |

Serialised (i.e. Sym’s current infinite tp):

timeline of cd:                        |-------------------------------| 
timeline of getting value: |+++++++++++|       ability down time       |

this is a simplified view of course because the +'s line isn’t necessarily continuous and will have moments of down time there (i.e. tp up but no-one’s using it because don’t need to yet). i.e. with infinite tp and if you leave it up semi-perminantly there’ll be long chunks of downtime experience even while tp is still up.

but the point about higher down time with infinite tp is still demonstrated with that visual. not to mention less casts —> less adaptability. which is a very big problem now post tank nerfs because:
tanks forced to move around more frequently —> what the best place and/or usage of tp changes more frequently —> sym needs to move or repurpose tp more often.

58

Hmmm Actually I am beaming from further away in the ExC… don’t need to teleport so much meaning that is mute.

And with preplanning you can sort of play to your advantages.

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59

I saw the stealth speed increase and immediately thought of you! If these changes did actually go through, would you be happy with infinite stealth?

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60

when you’d legit still have all the same resource requirements to w+m1 as live rn, I highly disagree that sym won’t need to tp as often with a 15m primary with live matchmaking.

like if the frequency of getting such pockets has been a problem so far and the change doesn’t actually do much about the resource requirements, there’s no reason why the problem wouldn’t still exist.

61

It is just so FUN.
I was definitely both right and wrong about 15m beam. It is a bit too safe though. I think that keeping 15m or 16m beam and either increasing time to charge slightly or just tightening the damage values like 75/120/170 or something would be perfect compensation.

62

Yes
I would probably not want any other sombra buff

Now 30hp Translocator would be nice, but 75% speedboost is all she needs

63

bruh just give sym a railgun for primary

64

It’s not balanced, she’d be overtuned for sure, I think 14m would be good.

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