Look, I like Sym, but neither of these changes solve the fact she cannot contest hitscan, and as long as they dominate the DPS slot, she’s never going to be valid outside of a few maps.
And it’s honestly a crying shame because of how unique and healthy the hero is to the game.
And it’s why I’ve written multiple posts regarding her reverting to Support with some slight reworking. I firmly believe the right changes make her a valid support, and she would boast a higher pickrate than she likely ever will on DPS, as the Support role simply needs more heroes.
You’re failing to incorporate Sentry slow and damage and therefore the statement and work is flawed because no indication is made based on how much easier it gets when the target(s) are slowed (by up to 60%). Your proposed changes don’t work, because you failed to adjust the damage downward to make up for the increased speed while, again, not taking into account the slow and damage Sentries provide. So, again, the statement remains flawed and pointlessly irrelevant.
Won’t happen. Teleporter is and continues to remain incredibly powerful for bypassing natural and static defenses. Teleporter also remains rather durable with regenerative health and the ability to transport objects and devices through it the moment it is summoned. These are not accounted for, and again the statement is flawed.
This is false.
They would need to be reduced in damage, splash and movement speed for this to happen.
Four turrets might be an idea. She already has two teleporters, you probably want four.
You need to incorporate everything that deals damage before you start accounting for damage elsewhere. Sentries hold the target in place (as much as they can anyway with a 60% slow); and then the target is “finished” with an Orb.
This was intended for a lot of heroes. See how well Pharah works in two of the three maps in Nepal. Or the lighthouse map on Illios.
Granted, there are heroes that are more generalized; and Blizzard has made attempts to improve the flexibility of some heroes. It can happen for Symmetra; but ultimately it’s not unusual in OW for certain heroes to excel on certain maps and in certain modes (attack or defense).
It is unlikely that Symmetra and Bastion won’t go through some changes in OW2.
You are still failing to account for sentries.
3 body shots is equal to 1.5 seconds. Also 50% of McCree’s ammo. And you also need to account for miss rates. So the average kill rate for McCree tends to hover around 4 seconds per target.
You’re correct in the 1.5 second burst kill is the fastest allowable (there are faster, but travel time and other factors need to be considered).
Pick rates are so low that win rates are practically irrelevant to the conversation. Not mention, that they don’t really indicate much in the way of balance, either way.
Unlikely to both, but it would be fairer to say that teleporter is more likely to be removed for something else than to turn Symmetra into a tank.
Ramp up mechanics aren’t necessarily bad, but there’s the added element of Symmetra which is focused on a builder play-style.
One possibility I’ve thought of is the creation of a “hard-light” cannon that she can create instead of teleporter, and this would charge up and fire off M2 orbs for a set amount of time. The other possibilty would be to be an alternative to Sentries (since they utilize her beam-tech primary as a sort). Thus removing pressure or adding versatility toward her devices than through her weapon.
You’re right in that it’s very easy for ramp-up mechanics to break the game. I’m not sure I would agree that Symmetra needs small changes, but if they can make them work, then all the better.
Pharah, Mei, Junkrat, McCree, Doomfist are about the only ones in the Damage role. Symmetra fits in here and does more damage any of them.
False. The explode after two bounces and are substantially smaller. Traps are what keep targets in line for more direct damage.
False. Bad positioning prevents sight or blindness.
False.
Guess we can Echo to that trash as indicated by her less than one percent pick rate too.
This is false.
False.
Symmetra can contest, but she has to be very careful as to how she does this. Yes, this means more thought has to be put into how she is utilized compared to others, but that’s not really a fault of the game’s design.
I mean, unless we aim to make Sym OP, the dominance of hitscans is really just a separate matter here. and it’s not like reigning in hitscans will fix sym’s uptime problems unless we’re talking about trashing every other heroes’ kits to the level that sym’s is at rn.
I disagree that making sym a support would solve anything. and would likely bring more problems than solutions.
being a main healer = completely deleting the hero as the gameplay goal/objective changing is simply that big of a difference.
being an off healer that’s dps oriented still means they have to fix her uptime problems as a dps anyways which brings the question of why bother with the role change in the first place esp when staying as dps makes balancing her dps capabilities much more viable and easier.
and in both cases, neither guarantee that the devs will necessarily implement it well or even make a good design for the direction.
like we’ve seen them aim to make sym more generalised with the 3.0 rework, they had a design that legit is possible to achieve that (as shown by how minimal my suggestions have been to actually achieve that generalisability from that design), yet they screwed up hard with the implementation and balancing with terrible numbers everywhere + trashing of the cd mechanic of her core tool.
and they still don’t see the way out of her current rut like what, >=2yrs post 3.0 rework release?
I highly doubt that them trying the same thing but with a support focus will be any different. esp if you looked at how poorly numbered sym1.0 was on release and how sym1.0 and 2.0 legit severely lacked a method for them to actually get uptime.
Honestly I think instead of her tp cd stopping at halfway of the time, it should just keep going down.
This is what made infinite tp more of a nerf than a buff anyways. Sombra’s translocator cd starts when it’s deployed and she can deploy another one when she uses it so I don’t see why the same isn’t the case for Sym.
If you increase her orb speed again then the damage has to be nerfed… especially if you want the orbs to be smaller too. That’s actually a huge buff in a big way.
Personally I think Sym is fine where she is, but her meme ult should’ve never happened. Her shield generator was her best version of herself and always will be. Not sure why they replaced it.
Possibly… Or not… I don’t have concrete numbers. All I have are some calcs for some approx contextualisation:
Wait wut how? Smaller projectiles are easier to move out if their trajectory…
Is this about visibility of the orb? Because I don’t think orbs even at like 60% size would be hard to see esp given how bright they are.
Or just make her orbs heal teammates with splash, idk like 200hp heal max charge orb or something, with 50% of that for splash heals, reduce her damage output, remove the ramp up time, reduce the damage on turrets and Viola, new support.
You’d encounter all the current inconsistency/unaimable/low effective range problems of orbs still.
Of which will feed back into keeping pretty much all the same overly narrow niche and terrible ability getting uptime problems
You drammatically change the gameplay of sym to be much more dull in trying to passively wait somewhere as you just spam inconsistent orbs onto teammates in the backline most of the game waiting for a w+m1 pocket rather being more engaging like now with how she dynamically zones and dps all around the battle field
Niche Heroes will never be properly balanced - at least not in a game like Overwatch.
This way of arguing would only work, if you would have to lock in heroes before you knew the map and couldn’t switch after the game started.
In reality Symmetra gets basically exclusively picked on maps that heavily favor her, so being bad on maps on which nobody is playing her anyways doesn’t make up for being OP on others.
A buff is a buff is a buff.
As long as it doesn’t come with nerfs that make her weaker in her niche, it will only make the issues with her worse.
Many Tanks have a low range and make up for it with tools which allow them to get in range without dying too easily.
Doing that with a Barrier instead of a Teleporter should work pretty well with her after a bit of fien tuning.
Not with that attitude. Plus technically speaking we already do have niche heroes that are balanced. E.g. lucio has a clear niche of grouped up comps (obvs not as natrow as sym’s, but is still a jiche regardless) and he is well balanced overall.
I don’t see how because the overall logic there is that all balanced heroes, no matter what niche they have, should have a theoretical winrate of 50% when averaged across all situations (i.e. maps, matchups, team comp, etc.).
If her current like <1% pickratw supposedly indicates the portion of situations that are her niche and her winrate for that <1% situations is 55~65%, then it’s quite clear that her current average winrate across all situations is below 50%.
And in fact swapping is moreso a factor the inflates winrates —> more of a factor to show sym’s actual winrates are lower, so idk what point you were trying to go with that there.
“Doing that with barrier” is at best an engage, not both an engage AND a disengage.
Let’s benchmark with a tank to guage out what level of sustain is necessary to achieve the results you want through the sustain route:
Zarya, whose effective range is 15m (slightly larger than sym’s current effectice range if not there abouts), needs
400hp,
200hp barriers, and
lower ttk on enemies (her weapon fires have lower ttk compared to sym’s as they start off at higher dps)
To be able to get in and out kf her effective range + stay therr reasonably long enough to get things done, all without mobility.
And even then she still needs another tank to frontline for her part if the time.
Now, that’s the kind if sustain that’s needed to get that uptime via pumping sustain into sym while she has 0 mobility (i e. If you take away tp). So, how do you think you can reasonably give that level of sustain through just a barrier on sym without making her OP or oppressive?
Because from what I can see, that’s almost impossible.
Zarya’s effective range is much larger than indicated; she has a alternative fire that travels far greater distances. Zarya also cannot be compared to Symmetra as Symmetra is not a tank, nor a close-ranged hero.
Finally, Zarya’s TTK is longer than Symmetra’s, because again, Symmetra can deploy up to 3 sentries to assist in her damage, in addition to slowing her target(s).
Zarya does not need another Tank, but she benefits from having one; better than what the rest of the team provides. This is true of many tanks, as most Tanks share similar levels of dependency. The benefits of having two tanks is greatly magnified, especially for heroes like Zarya, D.va and Sigma.
There’s no resistance to buffing Symmetra, but several things need to be understood (which clearly aren’t here); before suggestions can be made about buffing Symmetra.
Symmetra is a defensive builder. Her closest approximation and comparison is towards Torbjorn. Not Zarya, not Moira, not Mei, not Winston, not any other beam-using hero.
Symmetra is heavily geared towards area control and denial, this makes her more primed for defense than offense. Going in with Symmetra on attack runs is going to be a disadvantage in the same way Widowmaker is a disadvantage on attack runs.
Symmetra has incredibly high damage, on par with or just slightly below Sentry Bastion. That damage comes at a cost and that means, you can’t keep that damage while trying to change how flexible it can be to utilize. This means, if you want those 120 damage orbs to be traveling faster, you need reduce the damage and size. If you want Sentries to do more damage, you need to get rid of the slow. If you want Sentries to have more health, you need to reduce their damage.
Symmetra is incredibly flexible. She has mid-ranged shot, charged shot, turrets that can slow and deal damage, she has close-ranged beam that charges up on barriers, and she has a teleporter to move her team around. That flexibility also comes with a cost.
Assuming you want something changed, you have to take in account of what Symmetra does and you have understand that changes have to come with those costs. At best, the only change that could be reasonably made without any costs elsewhere, would be to reduce the cooldown on Sentries from 10 seconds to 6 to 8 seconds (favoring the latter). This would cut charge time from 30 seconds, to 18 to 24; ensuring that Symmetra has the ability to replace Sentries as needed.
Everything else, is going to require a cost somewhere else. Increasing Symmetra’s damage is a no-go. It’s not going to happen when she’s capable of slowing better than Mei and dealing three times her damage.
Until players understand this; until players grasp some fundamental concepts about what Symmetra’s basic design goals are; any feedback is going to fail, and Blizzard is going to have to parse out unintelligible slop from real constructive feed back.
In other words; stop trying to make Symmetra into Zarya, Mercy or Soldier; and focus on what she can do as a builder hero like Torbjorn. Anything else, is pointless.
Is there a reason why we must conform to her current design?
These buff suggestion are trying to make her more viable outside of her intended niche so that she would not be at a disadvantage on attack vs defense.