I think the Sym changes are a nerf (long-ish detailed post)

General Discussion
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TL,DR - This change overall pushes Sym into more of a niche, team-oriented pick and removes an aspect of self agency that she used to have. This is a net nerf on ladder play for all ranks.

Background: Hi, I’m Arcadium and I’m a Sym main who plays her at a low top-500 level. I’ve spent a good chunk of time practicing and adapting my Sym playstyle post-patch, analyzing the changes, as well as collecting feedback from other Sym specialists. We don’t all agree about this, but I’m firmly on the side of these changes being a net nerf.

THE BUFFS

Orb
It’s hard to justify complaining about a flat buff so I will give credit where it’s due. The orbs are strictly better after this change.

However, what people need to understand is that the two-tap potential is NICHE. Orbs are highly telegraphed, both in terms of audio and bright visuals. In addition, to position for an off-angle using the teleporter, this costs a large cooldown which itself is highly telegraphed with a very loud warning sound.

To secure a two-tap, the target must not be in the vicinity of any AOE heals whatsoever (not even 1 HP), and a nearby support must be unable to react after over 1 second. This is a highly unlikely scenario. Compare this TTK with heroes such as Pharah or Junkrat who can pull it off much faster and much safer. An excuse for Sym to have poor range damage was her turret damage. This has been gutted and the compensation, in my opinion, has not been adequate.

Beam
I mean, “cute” is the best way to describe this change. Yes it’s a small bonus passive added to the beam, but it is tremendously situational both in terms of application and benefit. This passive only kicks in if the enemy runs certain heroes. In addition, if you’re trying to beam a tank, such as a Reinhardt, and are in a position where you’re vulnerable to damage, the 30 HP/S will not save you from anything. Again, not a “bad” change per se, but I don’t think it was a wise use of her power budget.

Sentry Turrets
Spy cam is a nice QoL feature but depends on your team to follow up on it for it to be useful. Sym herself isn’t going to do much with the info gained from this. Again, leans into her team reliance more.

THE NERF

Sentry Turrets
Hoo boy. I have big problems with this change. I, like most others, was always in favour of removing power from her sentries and giving them to our weapon. More agency, more power, less frustration on both ends. However, we were not given a fair deal. These things are gutted, and their ability to help us take or hold any space has been vastly diminished.

Previously, Symmetra had the option for a self-agency playstyle where you could set up and hold a small space (think side room beside point in Oasis University etc) and have effective counterplay against a rogue flanker, or a lone hitscan trying to grab an off-angle. This was especially valuable when you were playing with an uncooperative tank, a dive tank, a poke comp, or just a chaotic comp. This was something you could do to provide value and play on your own, the way every other DPS hero can. Now, this pressure is completely gone. Any enemy DPS can come bully you out of the room and kill you before you kill them. The sentry damage is negligible, and the beam/orb still suffer from the problem of needing a windup to secure kills.

Previously, to deal with flyers, placing high turrets was an option for significant poke damage to try and finish them off with an orb / ally followup. This has been significantly nerfed, and flyers hardcounter Sym even harder.

In a heavy stalemate with high sustain, turret bombing was a niche yet sometimes effective gambit to try and get a backline pick (something other DPS can do btw) and this is now gone. In a match on Havana yesterday I sent 3 turrets up to a Widowmaker, hit her with a direct orb, and she still escaped. That’s 3 sentries, 1 tp, and 1 orb all invested to pick one out-of-position hypersquishy and it wasn’t enough. She has 175 HP! Our damage is a joke now, honestly.

CONCLUSION & THOUGHTS

Now, you are effectively forced to only run Sym in a brawl-style comp and play strictly off of your tank. The hero has become more tank dependent and your success is directly tied to the tank gap. This goes exactly counter to what the design and balance philosophy of OW2 was supposed to be. “More agency, more playmaking ability”. Well, you’ve done the opposite with Sym and given her less agency, less self-reliance, and made her even easier to counter by things that already had an advantage against her (which is most things btw).

What would I fix?
Revert a bit of the turret damage. 25 is too little. 30 would be fine. (In season 1, turrets were bugged to only deal 30 instead of 40 damage and it wasn’t awful. That’s a fair level of power for this tradeoff.

Orbs could see a bump in power to 105 for a direct, or a reduction in charge time to say 0.9s from 1s. This gives them more insurance to help secure an earned double tap.

And then wait. If she’s still weak, the beam could use a low-end buff e.g. bringing stage 1 to 80 dps from 60. And in addition, one of the biggest things that would make Sym feel less “run over” by everything is a REDUCTION IN POWER CREEP. The power of ranged hitscans, pocketing etc. just gets stronger and stronger with each patch and Sym just gets blown up by half the roster before she’s even in the game. Let’s look at that too.

Thanks for reading.

28 Likes
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Finally I saw somwone who vocalized the issues.

2 of symms playstyles were nerfed (flank and poke) and she was forced into brawl where she is already outdine by mei and reaper

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I really like the photon projector buffs, never understood why two fully charged RMB’s did not kill a player. Feels much better at 100, don’t think it needs a buff. The addition to shield regeneration on her LMB is nice too. I agree with you on the turret damage being too much of a nerf and slightly buffing to 30 would be a bit better. The main thing that should be looked into should be adding more utility on her turrets. I agree with you that the vision isn’t all that useful, and maybe experimenting with new utility effects on turret targets could be a good addition.

Possible turret utility options: anti-heal, armor piercing, or a dmg buff to herself and allies near her.

Armor piercing would increase the damage the enemy takes by Symmetra by a flat % when targeted by a turret

The dmg buff could act as a “damage stealing” utility, where she takes a target’s dmg by a flat % effected by turret beam, and increases her and her teammates dmg that are in her vicinity

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Imo; revert the turrets entirely and keep the weapon the way it is. Or, scrap her entirely and rework her from the ground up.

She’s a Damage hero. I don’t know why they’re so afraid of letting her be a Damage hero. Can’t be balanced around Team TP? Okay, then remove it. Why balance a Damage hero around an ability that so blatantly belongs on a Support hero, and KEEP her as a Damage hero? It’s bizarre and they clearly have no idea what to do with her.

She was pretty okay before these changes, now she’s just terrible again. Not only terrible, but somehow even more dull gameplay wise. You have less of a motive to attempt turret bombs or even put turrets down in the first place, making her even less of a builder and more of an M1 bot designed to counter shield tanks… when she doesn’t really even do that.

She’s just a bad Pharah.

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they are a nerf, the ones acting like it is a buff are the same ones, that wanted a nerf… Trying to trick the masses

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If they want to make the turrets into more of a support/intell tool they could

Increase number of turrets from 3 to 6, lower individual damage to ~15
Reduce individual slow by half, reduce recharge time.

That way you could use the wall hacks more often and cover more ground, while still allowing the play style of holding a point to still work by having multiple turrets.

Just a random idea

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Honestly, kudos to how organized your thoughts on the Symm changes are and for identifying issues. Especially:

is such a good way to put it. I don’t feel like we talk about her power budget a lot, and this change definitely doesn’t use it well.

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This echoes most of my thoughts on the change. I was open to the concept of redistributing power away from turrets, but I was fairly certain that Blizzard wouldn’t compensate the nerfs fairly, so Im not surprised with how it turned out.

I wont reiterate everything, but basically, turrets got nerfed too hard, Secondary needs a little more to reliably be expected to 2 shot, and the primary buff is too situational, especially considering how minimal it is.

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I’d like to either see orbs at 120 or penetrate shields like they did in OW1.

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i rather they go back to noodle beam symm and give her 6 turrets again with shield porter at spawn and that spawn photon shield ability but yea that wont happen

one can dream tho

if it did happen you wont see “SYMM GOT MEGA BUFFED!” videos you’ll see angry whining videos of how symm just ruined the game

edit: i also notice there are hardly any symmetras in top 500 for all regions. i wonder if she is the least represented dps hero atm

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Well on overbuff she’s been the least picked hero for a while now even behind other tragic heros like bastion, roadhog or lifeweaver.

Also Echo outheals Sym. And Rammatra. And they don’t even have healing abilities. WTF.

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Yeah, that is how I feel

I said it last year and now we actually have hindered so I’ll say it again – lets try making sentries apply “hindered” and disable mobility skills while tethered.

Change damage/slow numbers if needed - it just seems like it would flow better than the wallhacks. Stop teasing me with this Cassidy change! :joy:

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Yeah what I was expecting was them making her into an actually competent DPS hero but instead what we get is them making her more matchup dependent. She’s one of the only heroes in the game where her primary fire is only really useful into like a few heroes, and if they’re not present she’s doing less DPS than most support heroes with it.

They somehow managed to make the niche character even more niche meanwhile they give Soldier 3 straight buffs with no drawbacks.

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Yes! Thank you. Literally all she needs is a tad bit more utility that would increase her kill potential/securement.

Be it applying the hinder effect, or even allowing her to control her turrets to prioritize a target in a crowd.

Wouldn’t it be so cool to be able to control turrets through her LMB? Enable them to attack the same target you’re beaming. This would justify the huge damage nerf she received recently to them.

Just any utility. :yum:

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This would’ve made WAAAAY more sense. Considering everyone despises cripple though, I doubt it’ll happen.

There’s lots of other options they could’ve explored. Many have been mentioned on this thread.

They could experiment with turrets boosting her laser, or accelerating charge.
Hinder
Harder slow.
Accelerating damage/slow on the turrets themselves (like main laser)
Heavier damage vs shields
Giving herself overshields/health like Doomfist

So many options. I don’t think turrets should have any damage back, but there are plenty of other options they could have explored to make them effective without it.

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I just don’t think this game needed ANOTHER form of 100+ dmg blind projectile spam attack…

Was there really no other way to buff sym?

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A good rein will pretty much laugh and crush you over if you don’t have your tank with you ,

That being said I say they scrap the turrets in. General. And replace it with a slower and smaller version of sym 2.0 shield. And give her 120 orbs p. Right now her whole kit is just spread out.
Echo can place stickies which compliments her other ability , beam

Soujourns rail gets complimented by her primary

Junkrat has his own one shot combo

Pharah , her concussive let’s her dive hitscan which , is the only way to deal with them as u have to get on top of their heads to catch them off guard. It compliments her movement.

With the shield she gets a reaction base save , save from barrage , dva bombs , shatter + it makes her less gimmicky , and gives a solid utility that compliments her identity as a shield support utility dps with tp as mobility. Also shield will help her a lot in her brawl playstyle , and with 120 orbs her poke would be justified as well

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This issue stems from the fact that she is highly map dependent. Some maps are good for her, some maps just suck for her. Im pretty sure its very difficult to get sym to work on any map in top 500, which is why i dont get why people keep calling her no skill.

Trying to get sym to work at high ranks is alot more tiring than trying to get soldier to work at high ranks. Thats my logic at least.

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Funny how her Primary Fire wasn’t touched when it’s been the weakest part of her kit since Sigma’s release :unamused:

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I’ve been saying this since the patch droped, but ya more on this is always good.

Were out of the speculation phase right back into actual results.

This change in particular hurts syms ability to flank with tele bomb strats, and removes any sense of area denial the turrets once had.