I have made and posted on a lot of Sym posts since the rework, almost completely quit playing the game, and now when I do play, almost never play Sym, and here is why.
Sym 3.0 is worse than Sym 2.0, but appears more viable.
You can say that is an opinion, and you disagree, and new Sym can do so much more than old Sym, but the truth is, Sym 2.0 was better. I say that knowing Sym 2.0 was arguably the second worst pick over all, with only Torb being a worse pick.
The arguments I hear in favor are that she now has a higher skill ceiling, and she is now viable in every situation, not just certain points on certain maps. What it really comes down to is the people making those arguments did not know how to play Sym 2.0 properly. That is the key factor, because Sym 3.0 doesnāt have a higher skill ceiling, she has a lower skill ceiling, but she has a much lower skill floor.
Sym 2.0 was viable on every point on every map, on both attack and defense, but only if she was being played correctly for each stage of the map, and what would be correct at one point was not at another. Sym 3.0 has only one tactic you need to know, back line orb spam. That is all there is to being a successful Sym currently.
What this means is that Sym 3.0 does one thing pretty good, where Sym 2.0 did a lot of different things that had to be coordinated together, to get the most out of her. Now anyone can play her and do well, where before most couldnāt. This has lead to a change in perception that she is ābetterā and āviableā. Not because she is better or viable, but because she is better and viable for anyone that hasnāt put a lot of hours into playing her.
In conclusion, Sym 2.0 was better than Sym 3.0, but because of the much lower skill floor, Sym 3.0 does not have the same negative perception Sym 2.0 had. So, she is a huge success at fixing common player perception, and a failure at making her more viable if player skill is not an issue.
As someone who was very good at Sym 2.0, Sym 3.0 pisses me off. She plays like a Pharah that has a tele instead of flight, and no longer requires timing or much in the way of tactics, where before timing and tactics were everything. Stay back and spam is not the role I wanted to play, if it was, I would play Pharah, which I was never that interested in playing. Her new kit does not require the skill her old kit did, and a lot of it simply does not work in most situations, because of how buggy, and/or clunky it is.
This most certainly is an opinion. No matter how many times you insist itās the truth, doesnāt change the fact that your opinion is one of many differing opinions.
Sym has always been and still is a teamwork hero. that has not changed
stop that
Its almost like every hero in the game spams in one form or another because everyone has a gun. There is strategy to her in her current form. Turret bombing, turret backlining, TP jumping, turretguard wall, splitter wall, positional wall. Sym 3.0 has a lot of diversity in her kit but you simply dislike it
Thatās because it requires different skill. on account of being a different kit
Iām not even a hater of her old kit. I know you saw my response on the other post because this post speaks in a manner that felt responsive to what I said there. I liked her old kit, and I agree it was misunderstood and viable. But now you are the misunderstanding one friend. Her kit is strong. Better or worse is subjective and anecdotal, but you are speaking like your opinion is fact.
My opinions are solidly rooted in what her kit does, or in most case does not do. You can say āopinion, opinion, opinionā but so long as you donāt argue my points as to why my opinion is what it is, all you are doing is throwing out an unsupported opinion to counter my well supported opinion.
Certainly, but her teamwork potential has dropped. She can not tele people in from spawn, provide shields for her entire team, or use her barrier every few seconds to block ults or shield a teammate from damage. What she has gained is a barrier ult that is easily played around, and a tele that is buggy, gimmicky, and takes too long to deploy for it to be good for most situations it would be nice to use it in.
Right, and that is the problem. Sym 2.0 was not a sit back and spam pick, Sym 3.0 is. Which makes Sym 3.0 just like most other picks in the game. So why play Sym 3.0, and not Pharah? Btw, turret bombing is a joke and a bad one. The other team has 2 seconds to figure out what is happening, and then can kill all 3 of your turrets in a split second, which leave you with a 30 second cd to get your turrets back. Turret backlining was possible before, you just had to flank to do it. Sure it is easier to do now with the tele, but sym can no longer engage close up like she could before with the barrier and microwave. So her actual strength when flanking is severely diminished. TP jumping is great, but not as great as TP snowballing from spawn. Also, that long and obvious deployment makes it a sub par method of escape or in many cases flanking. All those ult uses have one major weakness, any pick on the other team with mobility. They simply move through it, and quite a few picks like hanzo, or zarya can use it advantageously for their own ults.
Let me Rephrase: Her new kit does not require the skill level her old kit did. It is easier to use. There isnāt as much of it that is viable to use. Her kit is not strong. It has the potential to be strong with a bunch of fixes, but her old kit had that same potential.
I am not saying Sym 3.0 is much worse than Sym 2.0, what I am saying is there is a much lower skill floor, a slightly lower skill ceiling, and a change to her design that changes her from a tactically diverse pick to a back line spammer with a few tricks that kind of almost work.
Her rework is a success in how she is perceived, which is evident from the above posts, but a failure in actual usability because of all the new problems introduced that make her effectively worse than her previous iteration. Instead of fixing the problem that was Sym, Blizzard just changed the problem to a new one.
Man Iāve had so much fun with new Sym and I do not find playing with her to just be a matter of spamming right click. Granted, thatās absolutely part of it, but thereās also a ton of fun to be had in using her turrets to secure points, deter flankers, or even put out mid battle to screw over specific opponents like Brigs. Her teleporter is also a lot of fun for either getting a better attack position or evading dive tanks.
Iāve just had so much fun using all the different elements of her kit and the high level streamers Iāve seen playing symmetra seem to as well, so when I hear salty old sym players say that they just see her as a budget pharah I can only assume thatās a personal problem of theirs and not a legitimate flaw of the character.
Well supported how? Youāve just backed up your opinions with more opinions
This is ludicrous. She lost a TP that relied on a failure scenario to be valueable (Guess what, she can still TP people from spawn and save them about 6 seconds of downtime). She lost a shield generator that does NOT provide teamwork scenarios, quite the contrary, it makes everyone more self sufficient so they donāt NEED to work together. And she lost an extremely personalized barrier that at chokes (the only area where it covered enough space to be used by a whole team) would become useless in 4 seconds
She gained a TP that can teleport anyone anywhere, as well as teleport certain abilities. She gained an ult that can be used actively for a team rush (Wall splitter). Seriously this is crazy logic
Requiring aim is automatically a skill floor raise. Her turrets are also scarcer which is a resource management skill floor raise, her TP is one of the strongest gamesense tools whereas photon barrier E was usually a panic button, her ult is tricky to use, unlike TP and Shield Gen which were the most straightforward ults in the game.
Place in the right spot
My experience and othersās disagree, so again, this is anecdotal and subjective, and you are acting like it is fact
You do realize that she could do all those things before, and arguably better when she had 6 turrets instead of 3 right?
It is absolutely a flaw in the character. Just because people enjoy it, doesnāt make it untrue. I didnāt much care for Pharah, and now that Sym is a lot like Pharah, I donāt much care for Sym. Taking a unique character and making her like another character is not a good design choice.
No, Her old TP should not have been used in a failure situation. That would more than likely result in her TP being found and destroyed as there would be no pressure on the opposing team. Her old TP was either to maintain pressure by getting friendlies back from spawn faster than the opposing team could so an even fight quickly became a winning fight, or to use as a quick recovery in a losing fight that is still ongoing, which took a lot of skill to judge whether you were ina losing fight that tele could win, or in a failure in which tele would be a gamble at best. The shield gen neither encouraged, nor discouraged team play, just like her new ult. Yes, her old barrier would only cover teams at chokes for a few seconds, but it also covered a team from surprise bastion fire, pharah ults, dva ults, rein ults, mccree ults, and covered a good chunk of the team on pushes, and blocked hooks, and flashbangs, and bought time to reload in 1v1ās, and could be used to check for enemy Sym turrets, and could be used to prevent burst damage that would otherwise kill her, and to block sniper line of sight, and allow safe poking. It did a lot of work. The new barrier ult can do most of that as well, and arguably better, but it is an ult, not a short cd ability.
Her TP would be good if it wasnāt so buggy, and did not take 2 seconds to deploy. However, without her barrier, it is almost required to either use it as a team play move or to move from one backline position to another, because she canāt safely play up front. Her ult, as stated, is weaker than shield gen. It is too easily bypassed by too many picks.
Yeah on her primary fire, which is currently trash, and has one time it is decent to use and that is to charge on shields when it is safe to do so. Also, Zarya does more damage at full charge, while getting 400hp and a self shield, and is a lot easier to charge.
Sure, her turrets are scarcer, but are no longer as large a factor in her overall dps. Which means it took more skill to know how to use them before, because now most of the dps is coming from her alt fire, and turrets are more of a perk than a core mechanic.
Maybe for you photon barrier was a panic button. After about 20, 30 hours of Sym play it was almost always calculated on my part. It was a hell of an ability, it just needed to be fixed because of itās slow cast time, and projected deployment.
Again, maybe that is how you thought it was used, but first you had to know which ult to use. Which would involve a huge calculation, regarding overall survivability of your teammates, what each team had comp wise, how aggressive the other teamās flankers were, what style of fighting you were going to use after deployment, wether or not your team was good at maintianing pressure, and how aware the other team was of your previous ults. Once you knew that, if you decided tele as better, you would have to decide to either hold it for a quick snowball, which is usually a better choice if the other team was more aware, or aggressive, and your team had a problem maintaining pressure. You would want to also check for what ults people had, in order to time it so you could tele in an ult if need be, and then you would choose where to place it. Do you place it aggressively as a one shot deal to tele in an ult, or do you place it semi aggressively to maintain pressure, or do you place it further back to still help the team, but not get killed? On the other hand, if you choose shield gen, are you using it to help the team, or to bait a flanker? If you are using it to bait a flanker, then are you going to stay and defend it, or turret and leave. Do you want to put it in an easy to find location as bait, or a hard to find location?
If you thought her old ult was all about just picking a location and plopping it down, then you were doing it wrong, and my argument that you were not a good Sym stands.
Alsoā¦ I still donāt understand people who think Sym 2.0 was ādefense onlyā like yeah maybe if you have a dumb Sym on your team, but I know many people, myself included, who could make Sym work on any and every map.
