We’ve been dancing around this issue for years, and this 4 second duration just admits it, Symm just NEEDS to keep her beam constantly at 180dps to be remotely viable but one thing it doesn’t do: it doesn’t make her good.
Because 180dps is not as powerful as most people think.
Soldier’s primary fire is 180dps but with way longer range AND the capacity for headshots (360dps) and even then he needs the insta-shooting helix rockets for quick enough TTK. 180dps is a big deal for Zarya because she’s a tank.
Sym’s short range beam without headshots could quite safely always be at 180dps and it would be just fine for the hero.
The problem is that it’s an aim requirement on a hero that is basically built from the ground up to NOT require aim.
I understand people think the only thing that matters in OW is aim, but it’s really not. They hobbled Symmetra by taking away her noodle gun and personal shield, and gave her this pathetic laser pointer that takes SO MUCH EFFORT to track someone that the entire time you’re doing it you’re just thinking to yourself ‘ugh, if I was playing Reaper, or Hanzo, or Tracer, and I’d been shooting at you this long, you’d be dead by now!’
Instead you’re just waiting for your beam to charge while it constantly loses tracking because tracking mobile thin heroes in the game is rather difficult to do for most people with a thin little laser pointer beam. At least Zarya’s is thick enough that you have some leeway, Sym’s is so ridiculous that unless you have a fat tank sitting in front of you letting you hit them for free, there’s really no point to using primary fire.
Sym needs her noodle gun back at a flat 80 damage per second. It can’t instakill anyone, it would take 2.5 seconds to kill a 200 hp target, giving literally everyone a chance to ‘escape’ or kill her to stop it.
And then Sym could have a weapon that was both unique and useful. It’s really not complicated, but the dev team seem uninterested in keeping the unique aspects of her kit that made her Symmetra to begin with. Let’s forget that no other character got such a terrible and strange rework; Torb’s abilities are by and large the same and operate the same. Mercy just lost her ultimate. Sym really got shafted by contrast.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but my impression is that most Symmetra players enjoy the charge aspect of the gun and see it as part of her identity.
She’s already lost a lot, stripping more unique parts of her kit away doesn’t seem the right way to go even if it would technically make her more viable.
Sym ia hard to pull hero, I play her a lot and honestly you need a team around you to play it properly as a DPS and not just a taxi driver.
That being said, either you clearly don’t know how to engage with the beam or you,re using sym in bad matchups. You don’t engage alone unless the beam is maxed out. You charge off the shields if needed and this is where it becomes viable.
In fact, if you put up a primary of 180DPS on her beam fixed, you would basically play an Echo with Focus beam doing a little less, but without the <50% requirement. That thing melts down a lot of things really fast. You’re absolutely underestimating the power if you think fixing permanently the beam at 180dps without a nerf to something in it is a viable option.
Imo, the beam isn’t the problem whatsoever, it’s the rest of the kit that isn’t as engaging as it. She retained most of the old days Offense/defense categories before they clashed as Damage. You need to pull creative things sometimes to make Sym work at best, while on defense she’s a force to be reconed with, if the enemy doesn’t run something to outrange her.
Which is 99% of the time. I mean how often are people NOT playing range heroes in OW? I get tired of people acting like her beam is okay when it just isn’t, I’m sorry. It’s great that you like it but I am just sick of it. Why would I play Sym with her terrible beam when I could just play Zarya with her better, stronger, easier to use beam? The unique part of Sym was that it was a noodle gun and you didn’t have to aim as much, you just had to get it on them and keep them in your general LOS, that was what made it different from all the other characters in the game. Given the absolute insane mobility of most heroes it really shouldn’t be that much of a death sentence, but the fact that Genji’s were too damn stupid to use their dash to get out of her minimal range meant that we had to lose a bit part of what made Symmetra Symmetra.
Ugh I just hate her stupid beam, everyone acting like it being able to crack shields is just soooo amazing because in certain situations it can be strong, while completely ignoring that this kind of thinking ignores all the other times when it leaves her absolutely useless. Shortsighted.
You’re implying that you play Sym like you play Genji at the beginning or something that can flank and get value. You don’t do that with Sym honestly.
Indeed, you can ask yourself, why would I run Symmetra. In fact, it sounds so stupid, but Symmetra is the unexpected pick that works early in a game (e.g. the taxi strat and rush comps), but also works when the enemy is clueless on what to do. Also, you can’t pick Zarya if you queued as DPS in current Overwatch Role Queue format. It’s weird, but that beam she has is really really actually good against big boy Genji or even Tracer if you can track (beam is forgiving I can tell you as well).
There’s not many reasons to use Symmetra’s kit when you get caught, but the turrets divert attention and if they don’t destroy it, big boy genji slows down and is easier to track.
I never implied it cracks shields did I. I simply said you get valued off of shields : you get ammo reload on it and you ramp damage at the same time.
Look, she needs dire need of attention at the balancing HQ for buffs imo, I played heroes at the bottom and I can make them work. I played Junkrat when he was an absolute joke or Torbjorn when he was a troll pick. Everytime it’s the same : there is and will always be a better option to them. But, to my gameplay style, these heroes fits much more my capabilites in the game than the hitscans themselves : they have wacky kits, some are projectiles and some others are team reliant. I make those works almost better than hitscans.
Sym isn’t fine, she needs to be look at in her utmost kit currently, but the beam is nonetheless as fine as it was. If really people wants the old beam back, it’s just to afk and win the game honestly, I loved all of her iterations, but this beam is more active gameplay than the noodle was. Wouldn’t mind having back piercing orbs doe again.
I ran the numbers, I went through so many iterations of damage scaling up to 180 damage and one thing I kept coming back to
“Spending any time at a power level below 180dps just makes the time to kill utterly trash. Everyone does better than her.”
The way you’re supposed to play Symm depends too much on luck.
If you just get unlucky and can’t keep pressuring the enemy then boom, your beam is down to 60dps and you’re totally screwed if you end up needing the beam in a close range fight.
Yeah, her focus beam isn’t good.
What does 250 damage quicker, her primary fire or her beam?
At least post on a potential non-alt account with a private profile that has the playtime of a new player but yet has almost 3.6k posts before baiting people
This is true especially since people are acting like Sym still has lock on for some reason which is just outright delusional.
However I’d rather they just increase the base damage on her beam because 60 at low charge is pretty pathetic for a DPS hero, let alone on a weapon that needs aim.
