I’d also be fine with her being a dps. But really all I want for sym if you have a defined role and that’s it
I made some changes and made it look nicer. I forgot to put spaces. Sorry
Don’t worry about it lol, it was just a suggestion if you wanted to use it
Hah nah it was good I finally learned how to sorta do this. Besides I also got to change some of my ideas
This in and of itself, is why the rework happened, regardless of how you feel about it though. She was too good on her own, and required too much resource to deal with. She was an instant threat even if she wasn’t there. They’ve reworked her into a frontline DPS, much like McRee or Mei, that requires team play to be effective.
I disagree with the “more niche than ever”. She’s much more versatile in regards to map selection, turret placements, and overall viability. Is she the best? No. Should she ever be close to the best? No. The buff to her secondary fire and now she can contest Pharah for goodness sake. She is versatile, whether you choose to play her that way or not, is totally up to you.
However, it’s exactly what you seem to be asking for; Sym used to be OP in regards to how she played. Saying “it wasn’t a problem” isn’t much more than you justifying how her kit was used. disregarding it’s very nature, but yet still admitting that she was much better at handling things solo. Reigning in her solo viability, and making her work with her team was the right call.
I already covered this earlier in this post, sort of. Sym was too good at too many things. While she apparently feels “clunky”, she still has the highest DPS potential of all the DPS (excluding Bastion, but that’s another topic) in every team fight. It just means she needs to work with her team, and her team needs to work with her. Seriously, it’s the right call when you really think about it.
Saying that she has a low effective range isn’t exactly a fair statement either, her -most- effective range is low, but her effective range is, by most definitions, infinite. You can scoff at the Orbs all you want, but they are as effective (more effective at times) than a Junkrat spamming the same area. As for her mobility, do you really think it would be fair to give a hero like Junkrat access to Tracer’s mobility? I certainly don’t.
Her TP is not her only contribution though. I suppose that’s the disconnect we may be having. She has a lot of tools, a lot of tricks, and a lot of versatility. She doesn’t need to be that mobile and be able to make space on her own.
I’m not insisting anything of the sort. She has plenty of things she can do, but you’d be absolutely foolish if you don’t consider that to be one of them. If she can do that, then what else does she actually need? No other hero on the roster can frontline DPS like Sym can.
So I have to ask; if you could have your TP back, gain 5 yards on the beam range, but lose the reload + charge damage on her beam with a slight nerf to her primary damage (effectively removing her frontline viability completely), would that be effective or positive change for you? There has to be a trade-off somewhere. She can’t be good at literally everything.
We don’t know this objectively though. If her Orbs did no damage at all (instead of the 120-140) sure, but since she can TP > Charge > port > Beam now, she shouldn’t be able to do it at the frequency she used to be able to, she would once again over-perform. Again, I’ll go back to my question, if she got the beam nerf/rework, and was able to TP more often, but was limited to how much damage she could actually put out, how is that any better than her current kit?
This is what I mean, she’s already doing it. It’s not her only option though, but giving her more opportunities to do it, and having frontline pressure just means she’d be able to single handedly win team fights, without the coordination of her team. TP to ranged target > Turret > Orb > Beam > TP back > Pressure shield for reload > TP to next target, repeat.
issue regarding support turrets are that:
- they’re too static for the pace of the game
- they’re too fragile and too low range to be a decent healing source especially when you can’t always guarantee being able to place turrets in safe enough cover for whenever an ally urgently needs healing
- and also they’re not targeted by the player —> inefficient target priority
I mained ying on paladins who basically is a healing turret support there. she had 2 “turrets”, 5s cd each, much longer healing range than current turrets, and much sturdier. even then she
- needed cd reduction passives like “lower remaining cd if turret by x sec when one is destroyed” and " reduce remaining active cd of abilities by elx sec upon elimination" in order for her to be able keep illusions up to pace with her team (and paladins has a slower pace than ow)
- needed a literal rework to an abilities if hers to give her a targeted heal because leaving it to ai to choose the heal target simply made her bad.
the best bit out of your suggestion tbh and doesn’t need sym to be a support for it to happen.
it should be a must and it definitely isn’t simply a qol change. having one’s core ability to actively do anything up more often when and where you want it is huge. and blizz shouldn’t have taken it away from us in the first place
in terms of the overall design, something you need to work out is, what’s the gameplay are you aiming for sym to have here? because from the looks of it, you’re basically trying to combine all the versions of sym into 1 as a support. and also from the looks of it, she sounds like she’s just going to be “sit back, chuck turrets out, spam orbs all day from outside their effective range mist of the game waiting for something to happen” which doesn’t sound fun nor really healthy for the game.
I certainly can’t find it. you just went on overselling sym’s primary from what I read. and no her shield break is terrible. there’s a reason why sym didn’t get prevalence in single shield comps as a “shield breaker”.
her “high dps potential” has too many conditions and too little opportunities to reach to balance her entire kit and gameplay around such a rare niche event.
it’d be like balancing/nerfing mccree or so with the expectation that the player has a perma mercy db, zen discord and orisa boost pocket on them simultaneously. like no, that doesn’t realistically happen and it doesn’t make sense to hold the hero to such an expectation.
the “damage potential” you’re likely thinking of, 180dps primary + 3 turrets on 1 same target, legit doesn’t happen often. turrets die easily, they don’t necessarily target the same hero, and her primary has a massive long list of preconditions to satisfy.
having sym require her rng chosen teammates to play a specific comp and act in a specific way for the entirety of her play time for her to get opportunities to contribute is not a healthy design. esp when you consider:
- most people solo queue
- players rewarded individually
- it makes the matchmaker a larger factor to sym’s success rather than their own ability to play
and no, I’m not saying to buff her w+m1 gameplay. I’m saying to balance her around the expectation that primary is rarely used, and she’ll be using her tp+orbs+turrets to flank, zone, play frontline and/or give utility which is what she’s legit actually doing.
junkrat bombs have a high enough firerate to actually be spammed and cover a decent enough size area at once esp with rebound + linger. sym orbs cannot. not to mention junkrat aoe radius is the same as sym’s orbs and has higher splash damage.
like junkrat bombs, genji shurikens, pharah rockets, and echo primary don’t have fall off either but are you going to snipe them like a widow with them? no of course not because they’re extremely inconsistent that far away due to enemies being able to dodge them easily. same logic with sym orbs, but hers is more severe as shown by the math above.
to switch between her down time vs flanking vs going out to claim enemy territory vs front lining vs giving an ally access to somewhere, a tp cast or a team pocket are necessary i.e. sym needs tp to actively contribute well because waiting for forever for a team pocket to get opportunities is unreasonable as argued above. a lot of sym’s versatility rides on using tp to adapt.
having her old 3.0 finite tp cast frequency legit isn’t asking for a ton of mobility on sym. she’s not going to be zipping around like tracer, or zooming in the air like echo, etc. her tp is still static mobility between 2 points i.e. really predictable. she’d have 12s before her next cast. the main difference is that she wouldn’t be waiting forever for tp to return like current tp.
like if you imagine
- how shield tanks would play if their shields lasting indefinitely but had a 10s cd starting only when either their shield got destroyed or deactivated
- or how flankers would play if all their mobility and sustain abilities had a tied 10s cd that doesn’t start until all of them had been used (no resets)
that’s how current sym is right now.
pretty sure mei, reaper, and other dps during prime/early double shield meta replaced her out that just fine.
I’d take it but I’m not sure how you’d justify the notion of “there has to be a trade off” when we legit had an all-round unnerfed sym for >1yr prior to double shield/sigma/infinite tp nerf patch where she underperformed for a long time across various metas, esp when there’s been more powercreep since then.
if that doesn’t objectively show how she’s defs not “good at everything” rn and how she’s defs got room for straight buffs, then idk what will.
sym before infinite tp nerf/double shield patch etc.
- primary: 65/130/195 dps. same charge time as now. had initial tick bug, slightly larger beam width, 12m long.
- orbs: legit same as live
- tp: 12s cd start on deployment, 10s duration, 25m placement range.
- turrets: had 10 more dps than current and slows stacked more
- wall: had 1k more hp than current, 2s extra duration
like legit, she had pretty much better everything back then and still underperformed for several metas with that build.
also the flank combo was tp-orb-melee (150 burst) + primary to finish. yes she also did tp behind when she got charged primary, but that was as rare as charging primary up which wasn’t that frequent.
being able to switch between her modes of play more often to better suit the situation and for more hero uptime is much better than the current kit where she can’t and is heavily reliant on team pocketting to contribute (because current kit simply lacks the tool, her tp, for her to engage+disengage).
first half happened, the 2nd half not so much because she’d realistically die if she did. and no, she isn’t currently doing what she used to do (nowhere near as frequently anyways).
That was the old post. In the updated one I put only 2 turret options because having 3 as we know just makes things way to clucky. The tp was as I explained made to not only be used more often. But to be able to be used to help symmetra have her team do things such as escape a zaryas ult. Of course, it can be used to do more than that but I used that as an example of exactly what many sym players wanna do but typically cannot due to the cast time taking to long. The other point was to also give her team more mobility options as stated before her tp is basically a get out of spawn quicker option which no sym player likes. I was talking about the orb due to how essentially that is her only true main heal. We’re she too not have that it’d have to be replaced, which sort of gets rid of part of her identity; or we’d have to make it a healing orb with essentially the same properties of the damage orb. Or at least I’d do that. I understand that sym will use that more often. Though, you also have to realize that she already does that a lot. Her beam can be used given how she’ll get a passive that allows her to gain more shield health if she uses her primary fire on shields. It rewards her for using it and gives players a reason to use it over the orbs even if it’s this 1 situation. And she would need to used the primary fire to protect herself. Regardless, sym is a support and she does need to heal. Of course, I don’t want her to be a heal bot which I why she was given that passive, her primary fire takes less time to charge up, it can pierce people, however it does cost her a reduced range, and less damage. Also she has her ultimates of which I am wanting to hear more from. She can be that support that has soo much utility in a game. And yes she’ll be using orbs a lot. But she can do so much more. And if you want I’d like to also hear from everyone on ideas to help sym be a support.
This is where I disagree with you. I use to run sym 2.0 on every map even in gm. She was plenty versatile already. The main reason this worked was because the only thing in 2.0s kit that was really map dependent are her turrets which were already the weakest part of her kit in gm so it wasn’t a huge loss and the surprise factor made it a ton easier for myself. What really makes her more niche than ever is the new significant reliance on the team. Before she just buffed what the team was running now she really needs tons of help.
Sym 2.0 was strong because people didn’t know how to exploit her weaknesses and people that complained only looked at her strengths
Sym 2.0 had one broken mechanic. It was that shield gen was infinite other than that the character wasn’t op. She was a good niche character one that Was very strong yet never over centralizing to the game.
I preferred the way sym use to change the win conditions of the game she sacrificed sustain healing for stacking hp it was a very interesting mechanic for a support. Yes some people never learned how to deal with this but that’s more due to all the misconceptions about the old support. But we lost a really cool way to change up how the game was played with the loss of shield gen.
The main thing I was arguing for though for sym 3.0 is the revert of infinite tp. We had an entire year worth of it showing it wasn’t too powerful and it made the character much more fluent than she is currently.
Fun is more important than balance
Smart gamers know this
But there’s this;
So yes, it was mentioned earlier, you just like to downplay a logical point to misrepresent my position.
Her condition is that her team is supporting her for the 3 seconds it takes to reach level 3 beam, and that the enemy team isn’t pouring all the resources into killing her. It’s much easier to achieve than you make it out to be. Also noting that McRee, nor Sym, for that matter, is balanced around having a damage boost applied at all. No hero is, that’s why Ashe can Widow snipe with a Mercy pocket.
Actually, I’m including all of her DPS, like the 120 damage Orb, followed by Turret > Beam combo for easy kills. You just want to be able to TP in and do it literally every 2s. Also, as stated above, her precondition for primary is 3 seconds. Her window to maintain is 4 seconds, her reload is 1.5 seconds.
This is true of literally every hero on the roster. If you’re a Widow main, but your team doesn’t support you, you’ll have an enemy Genji and Winston farming you until you swap.
First, quoting yourself from another thread in which you’ve taken the same stance, and presented less than objective points, poor form. Second, Sym Orbs aren’t meant to be exactly like Junkrat’s primary fire, and mainstay of his kit. They are meant to subsidiary damage from range. Which, much like Mercy’s blaster, do a significant amount of damage if landed properly. My point was, they can be, and sometimes are, more effective than Junkrat’s primary, for the sole purpose of holding a choke point.
This paragraph here proves to me that you can’t look at this objectively. It’s not an insult, it’s okay. See, what you’re saying here is that you want literally all facets of Sym to be comparable with multiple different heroes. That’s not how OW works in the first place, and Syms Orbs are as effective at dealing damage as Junkrat’s primary, just not as versatile with how they deal damage. It’s a secondary, and while you can spam a Widow peek in a straight line, Junk has to find the correct angle in which to fire. They’re also a larger projectile, so add that in there as well.
This is the point. It requires her to pick one of those options, and commit. If we’re TPing to the point, commit to front lining. If you’re looking for a TP flank, you get a 10 sec cooldown after destroying your own TP. Forcing Sym players to be smart about the TP is still the right call. I don’t see how it’s “forever”, unless you’re actively using it incorrectly. IIRC, Sym used to be able to “double TP” her entire team; setup your TP, wait 8 seconds, all use it, wait 4 seconds for TP cooldown to come up, and do it again. Allowing certain heroes much more mobility than they were ever balanced around. Her current TP has as much versatility as the old one, without any of the broken mechanics of the old one that allowed her, and her team to do incredibly broken things… like traverse Volskia from point A spawn to point B flank in 14 seconds as Roadhog. You may have found this fun and exciting, but when there was little to no defense against it, it needs to be reigned in.
Replaced is a harsh word. I’d say they were more easily accessible, easier to pick up and understand. Had immunities to avoid certain abilities, once again speaking to the ease of access of the hero. Made a positioning error? Fade or TP out. About to get hit by a rock? Cryo. They still required teamplay to be effective.
How is this objective? She was under-presented, sure. Her pick rate was terrible, but her win rate was still decent. If anything, this is your subjective opinion of the hero prior to the infinite TP patch.
I wasn’t arguing she was “good at everything”. Nor am I arguing she should be. No hero should. The problem is that Sym has the most potential out of all the roster to do just that. Sym 2.0 had “too much” for a kit, which often felt intimidating to play, and oppressive to play against. Again, being able to flank from spawn on certain 2CP maps in 14 seconds, is astronomically unbalanced. Her primary was wide enough that even at high MS, you could keep it connected to your target with very little tracking. Her Orbs fired much slower. Her wall could be placed and last longer than Tac Visor’s duration, while absorbing all of the damage, and then some, by dancing around it.
Under-represented**
Yet this was an opportunity to straight out kill at least 2 targets within seconds of each other, all while Sym was safe; sure she has to physically use her TP, but it’s not like Genji’s Dash or Hanzo’s jump nonsense, where there’s a trackable path. It’s an instant teleport; with no timing or duration like Reaper’s. Once the TP goes up, you had to react the instant the Sym came through it, which could be 1s later, or 10s later. Or never. That was also one of those dirty tricks; putting the TP up and forcing the Widow/Hanzo/whatever target to look directly at it because they have to, all while Sym microwaved the frontline.
If your argument is her personal use of the TP as opposed to it’s team value, then I’d argue you’re using it incorrectly. Having a 10s cooldown on an engage or disengage ability seems fine enough, considering Tracer’s (the flanker who can’t brawl on the frontline) is 12s.
What is this “realistically die”? She may die, sure, I’ll give you that, but Tracer can die on flanks as well. Pharah can die in spawn. The point is she can do it. Realistically.
I can sort of agree on the last part. A lot of people focus on her strengths, and don’t notice, or exploit her weaknesses. The problem with 2.0 is that her team could compensate for those weaknesses. So if your team was working with you, you were dominant. If they weren’t, you were still contributing. The problem here is how much you could contribute, with or without your team’s support. If, for example, you can distract the enemy Widow, punt the enemy Tracer, and then kill the enemy Widow, you have now basically won the team fight for your team. Without help. Her kit, the way it was, gave her too much, even if there were glaring weaknesses, you couldn’t always take advantage of them.
As for the map selection, I was more leaning into the lower ranks, where picking Sym on attack for 2CP maps is suicide unless you were smurfing. As to turret placements, Gold is a crap shoot on whether the enemy team destroys them or not, and Plat isn’t much better odds. GM they get picked off fairly easily, true, but the slow they provided was enough to prevent a snowball Lucio boost.
I’d still argue the 65m dash in 14 seconds for a Roadhog is broken. I’d still argue that the only reason she isn’t/wasn’t more prevalent is because her kit was too intimidating for most players. Not everyone could pull off what she was capable of, but those that could, proved how oppressive and abusive she could be.
That’s just it though. If you’re only using the TP for your benefit instead of the team usage, the new TP is actually better than the old one. Having the 2s delay in TP usage is nice, but as has been pointed out had too much potential. Having Sym commit to her actions and being responsible with the TP is better overall, especially considering how abusive her TP was when you had access to it during the cooldown.
“But, but, [Hero X] is not my ‘Main’/they counter my ‘Main’, so they deserve to be bad, bro.”
OR
“[Hero X] was META one time, so they don’t deserve to be viable ever again (unless, of course, that hero is my main, then they need a buff, right now).”
^Most of the Forums (sadly)
not true because the excerpt you’re pointing to is talking about 2.0 whereas my reply to you has been pretty much all about 3.0. the mention about tp being he method to switch between modes of play should’ve been a dead giveaway that I was talking about 3.0.
- it’s not “team pocket her for 3s”, it’s “team pocket her into 12m of the enemy, then keep within 12m of the enemy until the fight’s over”. sym will get shredded quickly if she stops getting pocketed in 12m irrespective of whether her primary’s charged or not. and no sensible team will just stop collectively pushing and run off doing something else after banding together get close and brawl in close range for >3s for sym to get charge unless the fight’s already over. it’d be throwing the fight otherwise.
- the analogy is to show how unreasonable it is to “balance”/keep sym of hard requiring a team pocket for her to contribute. of course mccree, ashe, and various other heroes aren’t balanced to require the same level of team pocketing to contribute: because it’s completely unreasonable and unhealthy for the game to do so and that’s my point. why say it’s fine for sym yet holding similar unreasonable expectations for many other heroes aren’t?
are you actually? because if you actually take into all the factors such as consistency for each of her tools, you’d see how unrealistic it is to claim “easy kills” and to take a stance of “she’s fine because of her high damage potential” esp when comparing to other heroes. like even if we wanted to look at the max damage potential that can possibly be done and ignore everything else about heroes for such a stance, sym wouldn’t be that high either since heroes like widow and mccree would be ranked higher in being able to 1~2 shot everyone all the time with headshots.
I explicitly said old 3.0 finite tp cast frequency. that’s not having a tp cast every 2s.
all which requiring a team pocket to get in close in the first place as well as to keep sym alive to use and maintain it up until she can get out.
does genji need a team pocket or some other equivalent team gatekeeping for him to have opportunities to flank or kill? no. he’s got enough mobility himself to get himself in his closer effective range and enough burst for him to not need to stay long (because he doesn’t have the sustain to stay long).
does widow need a team pocket or some other equivalent team gatekeeping for him to have opportunities to flank or kill? no. she’s got the longest effective range in the game being a hitscan sniper so that wasd is mostly enough for her get in effective range to start contributing meaningfully. she even has hook to get her better angles.
sym? low sustain, low effective range and with tp being trashed in down time —> low mobility and lost a lot of availability on her burst combo —> rely heavily on team pocketing for her to get opportunities to meaningfully contribute.
why would I go through the tedious effort of re-typing the same objective math and points that prove how orbs’ effective range being short when I can quote/copy-paste them?
- they’re not because most of the match time is spent >12m
- you literally cannot expect a hero with low mobility and low sustain to be using a low range sustain damage weapon fire for most of their play time, especially when such a weapon fire starts at a low 60dps. like is hog’s or mei’s m1 their mainstay fire? no because they’re too situational just like sym’s m1 and hence they use m2 for most of their gameplay.
- because of the point above, if any weapon fire’s the subsidiary one, it’s sym’s m1.
except I’ve literally shown you the math that proves how the “if landed properly” for sym’s orbs is a really big “if” in many ranges hence their effective range definitely not being infinite.
again, do you snipe with genji’s, echo’s, junkrat’s, pharah’s or other slower projectiles like a widow would (with the same expected accuracy outcome) just because they don’t have falloff? I don’t think so.
except they’re not better nor do they match junkrat’s zoning value. they cover less area due to sniper-like charge time (less spam), they’re just linear without mechanics to linger to cover more area, they deal less splash damage, and junkrat bombs have more angles because of rebound which can also let him do so without los (i.e. in cover).
I’m not saying orbs should be the same as junkrat bombs, but they aren’t good for spam.
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uuhh if you can’t compare between 2 things, you can’t judge as to which one’s better, and if you can’t judge which is better, you can’t possibly make any claims as to whether if either of them is fine or need changes.
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that paragraph is just a counterpoint to your argument of “it doesn’t have falloff range, therefore by definition it’s effective range is infinite”. idk how you construed subjectivity or bias in a (factual) statement regarding the (lack of) viability of trying to snipe like some sort of widow with slow projectiles. projectile speed matters. the slower a projectile is, the more time it gives enemies to see and react/dodge them. idk what bias are you seeing in such a point.
like do I really need to show all the steps of how I got the above numbers? I’ve already provided the projectile speed of 25m/s. most heroes move 5.5m/s and splash radius is 2m. and speed = distance/time. surely it’s not hard to verify now that you definitely have everything needed to do those calcs.
ok a lot to unpack here and it’s had to unpack in a structured order because everything’s interwined.
Firstly, it was “choose between team use or own use” before infinite tp as well because it was a fixed 12s between casts minimum i.e. you had to commit to a placement back then too.
old 3.0 finite tp had a pretty fair balance for dynamic vs commitment. if it was place poorly or destroyed early, the closer to 12s down time you experienced. if it was 100% utilised without the enemy destroying it, then the enemies were punished in sym having 2s experienced down time. it doesn’t make sense to punish sym with basically the full cd length of down time irrespective of how well she placed and utilised it which is what infinite tp does with its current cd mechanic.
infinite tp in adding that extra forced downtime isn’t making sym try to be smarter, it’s simply just adding in excessive limitations that prevent smart play.
even in this example it shows what I’m talking about. like you put down a team tp and waited 8s before using it, that’s 8s of down time added. and if the enemy didn’t do anything to counter that, whether if that’s destroying tp, cc, camp or simply taking a better position for whatever the tp was for, that’s literally the enemy being bad and it doesn’t make sense to punished sym for them being bad.
not to mention, where would you be team tp’ing that’d be valuable AND can have cover from the enemy for 8s as your team just sits around 1 spot? like many valuable spots aren’t very hidden and often just needs 1 corner turn to see where 1 of the entrances are at (esp given los for placement condition on tp).
it was a hyperbole but now, you have many chunks of >=10s periods of hero down time i.e. time where sym is stuck outside of her effective range with no tool to get herself into effective range for something else that’d be actively valuable. no moving turrets to a more active spot (without destruction in midair for a lot of angles), no flank, no front lining and no team utility, unless she gets team pocketed. of which sym doesn’t have much control over.
Not to mention if you put tp down for a purpose (like say spawn tp or high ground tp) but you (or your team) aren’t interacting with tp in that uptime, that period is also down time because tp isn’t contributing anything during that time and you as sym have your core tool contribute stuck for something else.
you may say “so destroy tp then to get it back sooner”, but the problem is how you’d be getting many fixed 10s chunks of hero down time for that which then encourages you to leave it where it is (assuming if relevant enough). this in contrast to old 3.0 finite tp where you would’ve been able to more fluidly transition to another use case where you saw fit to meet the team’s needs.
hence what I mean by excessive limitation preventing smart play.
it literally does not. having to wait 10s before being able to switch purposes or positions is much less versatile than one which you periodically get casts that let you choose between keeping the current use/position vs moving.
we literally had old 3.0 finite tp for years across various metas and it hasn’t been a problem at all and sym was underperforming throughout those years. not even in the really coordinated pro setting where they legit pretty much used it for the same taxi purposes back then just like now.
sym in double shield was legit pretty much w+m1. sym defs was replaced in that meta. why try breaking shields when you can go around it whilst not needing to charge up? that’s why she was replaced.
winrate doesn’t mean much when there’s a very few amount of people picking her because higher variance. sym 1.0 had low pickrate and even higher winrate yet her kit was really trash.
not to mention your stance wouldn’t historically make sense. sym back then definitely was stronger than now due to all the nerfs. you’re saying sym back then was OP due to tp, but she definitely wasn’t meta back then nor had any prevalence making a contradiction. even an overtuned hero would have prevalence over like the 2yrs or so we had 3.0 finite tp. and if tp was actually OP, the pros definitely would’ve “discovered” abusive uses esp since they definitely did explore it considering how they came up with the team tp → widow switch strat.
you tell me when you re-read what you said below:
ok you defs don’t play nor see much sym play.
- how the hell is a 2s deployment time on tp “instant” or “not trackable”?
- how is sym needing to legit appear in around melee range of the enemy to use the combo ON TOP OF THE 2s DEPLOYMENT TIME WHERE TP BLOOM ANIMATION SHOWS WHERE SYM WILL APPEAR SAFE? esp when her combo doesn’t instant kill and needs like 1s of primary after the melee to get the kill?
- also what are you talking about regarding 2 quick successive kills? that’s genji dash not sym’s tp.
and as I pointed out earlier, if sym is waiting while tp is up, that’s down time for her. meanwhile from the target’s perspective, they can work on destroying tp while sym waits i.e. net loss on sym’s side (hence why syms don’t place it down then delay interact). esp the case if there’s multiple enemies there in which tp will be destroyed in under a second. a lot of heroes can destroy tp in around 2s by themselves (remember the 2s deployment time btw).
if sym was using tp as a decoy, either she’s already in effective range of you or she’s already riding a team pocket push. the former is no issue (just shoot her) and the latter is easy to check if she’s planning to go through tp or not because of the interaction range on tp (not going to go through if not close to tp)).
except tracer’s 12s blink cd is ticking away continuously during her uptime rather than like current sym’s tp in that the cd is fully and always only starting when her downtime starts, which in turn makes her downtime longer (much longer). i.e. tracer blink cd is ticking away as she is fighting. her recall cd is ticking as she starts another engagement too (assuming she isn’t too low). with infinite tp sym does not have this parallelised efficiency.
like I have legit shown you a timeline diagram showing the difference. idk why this difference is so hard to grasp for people?
team uses are highly situational unlike sym’s individual uses whose opportunities arise much more frequently. like a team doesn’t need choke tp when away from choke, nor a spawn tp when no-one’s close to respawning, nor a high ground tp of they already have high ground and don’t intend to alternate frequently, etc. but sym infiltrating to claim new area, flanking for picks, escaping threats, grabbing better angles foe orbs or primary, etc. all of those uses have more frequent opportunities arising.
team uses are legit the situational ones here. and if a sym isn’t using tp for herself at all, THAT’S the incorrect usage as there’s plenty of opportunities for value being missed. hence why infinite tp that inherently forces you to pick 1 use case and then either lock you into it or lock you out of tp for long periods of time, is catastrophically detrimental.
if a sym goes for a tp-orb-melee combo flank, most likely they will get low from that engagement. if she then tps back and transitions immediately straight into a “w+m1 battering ram” situation, she’s most likely dead. going for a tp-orb melee flank to immediately front lining is simply unrealistic. esp when you consider how such a play can even occur positoning-wise
i.e. you place tp down for 2s, the flank itself is probably another 2s or so. meaning somehow the frontline did not progress in either direction for like approx 4s while tp is also somehow near the frontline without being camped nor destroyed (and somehow not giving away sym’s flank) just so sym can immediately transition to w+m1 frontlining.
a lot of your arguments rely on “potential” but never on how realistic the potential is. I’m telling you a lot of what you’re expecting is unlikely and gave various points backed by data and facts on her kit e.g. the calculations on how orbs showing how low their effective range is, showing the difference in tp cd mechanics, various comparisons, etc.
When you have such meta with overbuffed Genji or Hog, you can´t be surprised, that some players are happy to take a break from this characters for a while…just a while. they don´t have to be “bad” forever.
This was a really strong. But there are some things the team couldn’t contribute that sym did take away. Mainly sustain healing your team with a sym is pretty much always going to be at a healing disadvantage. And if the team uses a heavy range comp it won’t be good for sym. When I played sym I always preferred either flanking dps or dps that would still be in front of the supports. Mainly because I could always cover the other healer myself so I want the dps to be in areas where they can tunnel vision all they want and get picks.
This is were I have a bit of an issue but I definitely agree to a degree. Tracer and widow is a horrible combo for sym she really struggled if both were on the enemy team. Because the way to counter each of them are extremely different. Widow needs the shield and orb spam( not charging them up). And tracer needed sym to hide in corners and orb melee combo. So if widow and tracer both took on sym they would have a very good chance.
Sym definitely shut down heros rien bastion hanzo get shut down by sym but there were plenty of comps that have a very positive matchup vs sym it’s just people never learned that because sym was so rarely played. Dive was good if coordinated. So yeah sym could be a monster but it was more due to how obscure she was. If people fought sym much more frequently her power wouldn’t nearly been as good
This is something I really can’t relate to. Because it’s from the perspective of people that don’t know the character. A good sym could definitely carry at low ranks. That just happens when those people don’t know how to play sym. It isn’t an issue with the character but instead the player. I actually liked 2.0 on 2 comps attack she was slightly at a disadvantage on most payload maps except gebralta.
The problem of sym was her shield gen if it had moments of weakness then good teams would have more opportunities to counter her and she wouldn’t be able to snowball. Because it was infinite made it broken
That’s sort of what I mean. You could still contribute, but you could absolutely dominate games if your whole team is supporting each other; a good example would be to run Genji/Tracer while you run Sym, with a Rein/Winston for shielding, Zarya for bubble, and obviously heals from your supports. They made 2.0 a monster pick.
This is sort of where the pick rate vs win rate conversation comes in… she may not have a high pick rate, but she was definitely winning most of those games. Although I do agree that most players probably didn’t experience why Sym deserved to be nerfed, along with Zarya and Mei, but there was good reason.
Hence why I added the “unless you’re smurfing” 
Actually it’s referencing why she got reworked into what she is, being 3.0. I thought that was pretty clear as to why she is the way she is, and why she doesn’t need a revert or change.
This example sort of sounds a lot like Platinum play. I’m not rank judging, I’m just saying if you’re not using natural cover, or if your team is pushing with their faces, obviously Sym isn’t going to get any value against a ranged comp. That’s just logic. You’re framing this like it’s QPC, where everybody is just all over the place, and nobody’s doing their job, or you’re running 6 DPS…
An unsupported McRee contributes as much as an unsupported Sym. That is very well the case for almost every hero.
Yes. I feel as though you’re not, and trying to pick apart her kit and compare it to other heroes who are meant to be used, such as the Junkrat or Pharah comparison made earlier, as a ranged character. Sym is not a ranged DPS character, her “time to shine” is within 12m, but she is still lethal outside of that 12m radius.
Okay, to avoid a really long post where I have to describe it 14 times, I’ll try to simplify it here;
2.0 TP rotation on Volskyia; Setup TP from Point A spawn to left side ledge. TP (to high ground for Point A), walk towards Point B, get on rotating platform, setup TP to flank enemy team, win game.
Absolutely none of this is done within enemy sight lines, unless they are camping the courtyard, and even then it’s too late for them to respond. The “downtime” you’re talking about seems to me, like it would’ve been downtime anyway, regardless of TP (walking towards point B instead of TPing.) How do you respond to that though?
Literally, 2.0 has 2 seconds of cooldown between her first and second teleport, which can, and was mind you, abused. As I stated earlier, as Sym 2.0, your TP was a threat, regardless of whether you used it or not.
I’ll reiterate the example; you could throw your TP up at the enemy Widow, while your team is pushing their frontline. That Widow has 2 options, but really only 1; stay and fight, or reposition. Staying is suicide, because it’s not just Sym that could be coming through that TP, but it might be just Sym, and that’s still enough. So the Widow has to use relocation and thus is getting no value in the team fight, 6v5. If she uses her grapple, she’s an easy dive target now, so it’s still 6v5. Now while all this is going on, Sym is still getting value, because she’s with her frontline pushing the enemy, and has caused the enemy Widow to get 0 value, and her TP is already cooling down. So Widow didn’t use her grapple, realizes you’re not using the TP to get to her, but it’s her best vantage point to snipe your supports, figures there’s maybe only 3 seconds left, and grapples back to position by your TP (stupid you say? It’s a high risk, high reward play. Widow wants to snipe your healers, and risks that you’ll jump to her in the ((maybe)) 2 seconds you have left on TP, but that’s her job, and your team isn’t making it easy from her current position) you jump through the TP with a charged Orb, throw a turret, and possibly TP back, or wait 2-3 seconds and use your new space to find another target to TP onto.
The point I’m trying to make abundantly clear is that the teleporter itself was the threat because of what could come through it. The fact that it only had 2 seconds of downtime was an issue, considering it takes (as you said) even the highest DPS in the game heroes at least 3 seconds to destroy it.
In Gold or below, I guess? I don’t have a lot of experience with teams that face push, but if you’re doing that with Sym, any variation she’s had, you’re playing Sym wrong, with or without TP.
Yes. Overwatch is a team game. A Genji, or any hero, is only as good as his team, and the enemy team, allow them to be. If Genji goes on a mad flank, and runs face first into an Orisa or Hog, what do you think the outcome is? What happens when Genji goes for a dash kill but the target gets healed up just before he connects? IF the enemy team is good enough, they can prevent Genji from doing anything at all. Subsequently, if Genji’s team is as good at enabling him, he can kill easily. The same can be said of literally any hero.
Actually, Widow is a hero that needs quite a bit of support to play, and quite a lot of skill to play effectively. You can’t just sit in one spot and click heads all day, I mean, you can, but that’s only if the enemy team lets you. If the enemy team isn’t letting you though, which they shouldn’t, what exactly are you doing? You’re using your grapple to evade Winston jumps, but he’s got a much shorter CD so you’re basically dead, unless you have the support of your team, like your DPS partner focusing the (now flanking) Winston, or your tanks dealing with him, or a support healing you while you deal with him. It is a team based game. No hero, no matter how good you are, can solo carry an entire game, unless the enemy team lets them.
That’s how you describe Sym. Subjective opinion. Low sustain? Highest DPS potential per fight, reloads on (nerfed) shields. Realistically or otherwise, Sym is perfectly fine the way she is.
Mostly because your points about Syms DPS potential are based in the “real world” and your math is based off perfect movement and ping skills, also allowing that enemies can -see them- coming; basically, your arguments are all over the place. Sym’s “DPS potential” is realistically garbage because M1 isn’t what she should be doing. Sym’s secondary is garbage because as shown by this perfect math flow chart I drew up, anybody can dodge them without even trying!
Yes. Literally all the time.
You spam choke points with the Orbs. preferably chokes that you have turrets setup at. You’ll get a lot more free kills that way. They match his zoning capabilities with regards to choke points; I could agree that his rebounds and splash make him better at it, but both are effective as peek preventers.
Incorrect. The point is that Sym is not Pharah, nor Junkrat, each of which have their own do’s and don’ts as heroes themselves. They have their purposes in game, as Sym does. So again, I ask what’s the trade off for making Sym better at Junkrat’s job than Junkrat? She can’t be good at everyone’s job.
First, I didn’t say “because it doesn’t have damage falloff, her range is indefinite”, I said her effective range is infinite. It’s not just because of the Orb not having falloff, but she can literally fire them at a choke point from any LoS to said choke point, thus still getting value. The same as Genji, Pharah, Junk, or any other hero you’ve named thus far. Second, your bias is simple; you want Sym to be better than she is, and you’re trying to justify it with math that has no realistic application, and denying her potential by saying it has no realistic application. Do you see the disconnect? Projectile speed matters when it’s your main form of DPS (what you’re intended to be able to do, vs what they get used for). Again, potential is where we seem to disconnect; her potential is fine, and the old 2.0 TP was broken.
I didn’t really need the math in the first place; though my comment was more heavy handedly pointing out that you don’t include the following factors into your equation; Projectile Width, Target Width, Projectile Angle, Target Angle, Projectile Visual Obstructions, Target Visual Obstructions, etc, etc. In your math, it’s Sym firing at a pixel at 15m, and saying they can move horizontally out of the way with ease, which has no realistic application.
Except, again, the time between placing it and it being destroyed; In this paragraph here, you’ve explained your point, and I obviously haven’t explained mine well enough. It was possible to never punish yourself or your team as Sym with coordination; A simple communication with your team: “TP’s going up in 3, 2, 1, TP up”, and the enemy team could never punish Sym for her TP usage, no matter how well they communicated, because it was nearly impossible to destroy the TP within a second. Even if you’d know that’s where they were going to be, they already planned on you knowing that, and planned to be there anyway.
In this example the “wait 8 seconds” isn’t just spent standing around doing nothing. You’re obviously moving toward the TP and grouping up, or poking at the enemy flankers, or waiting for someone to spawn (which you should be doing anyway). The point was you’d use it as a team, at the same time. If you were smart about it, you’d wait until the Sym said “4 seconds left” to use it so you’d be in that space for as little time as possible, depending on where it was, and especially if you’re trying to sneak a TP team flank in.
Volskyia has plenty, and I keep going back to it, because I think it’s Sym’s most dominant map selection. She can setup her TP to the right high ground on choke point B behind the pillar, have her team use it, drop down and TP to the right high ground behind point B. Giving a 4 second window for this to occur, and thus react to, is broken. Yes, you can make the claim that a single “boop” is a TK, but you literally have to be prepared for it, and there are other valuable spots on the left side as well. Not to mention Sym can TP a punching Doomfist to counter your boop as well; the second TP’s duration doesn’t really matter, but the window between the first and second does, in this scenario. Currently, that window isn’t 4 seconds, but 10, which is fair.
This is just bad coordination; which is where I find a lot of Sym players just use it as a spawn TP at that point. Yet, she still contributes in other ways. Look, I’d agree with you if her sole contribution was her TP, and it was being used for spawn TPs, I really would. I don’t think Sym is in a bad spot right now though.
I’ll just flat out say it then; if you are sitting behind natural cover and doing nothing while your TP is on cooldown, you are playing Sym very incorrectly. I don’t consider her downtime to be anywhere near 10s, and if it was, it would be punishment for really bad TP usage.
See, you had to wait 12 seconds before making that choice before though, didn’t you? Now you have to commit to your initial TP, destroy it, and get 10s before you can reposition; which is much fairer (that doesn’t feel like a word, and I should put “more fair”, but I’m loling at the autocorrect using fairer), imho.
Again, this isn’t a point though. Regardless of how things are used, or what they are used for by the masses, is still heavily balanced over potential. The “meta” game used by pros is always boring (see GOATS), and predictable. It’s intended to be. Sym isn’t that kind of hero.
Sym could walk through shields too, and use them to charge and reload. The only problem she’d have is if she had an Ana/Bap support combo. Mei and Reaper both have immunities, and thus are easier to pick up and play while not getting punished for positioning errors.
Except the whole “lock on and drain people” while spamming awsd and crouch. Going to argue that was trash? Unless you were Widow/Hanzo from range, or a tank, you weren’t winning that 1v1.
Except all the buffs her rework gave her… right? The beam width nerf came at the same time as Zarya/Mei/Moira/Winston, and was sort of a “brushed” nerf to all beam width, IIRC. I mean, which nerfs and buffs are we talking about specifically? She only got her infinite TP “nerf”, and I think a small nerf to her projectile speed for Orbs since her rework… that and minor tweaks to her primary fire, and ultimate, but we all know how good those are.
Okay, I’m going to point this out, just once; “META” stands for Most Effective Tactical Advantage. That doesn’t mean “highest DPS”, or “most mobile”. It means which 6 heroes not only enable your team, but disable the enemy team. Why do you think we had to literally change how the game is played because of GOATs? Do you think Zarya or Dva are high DPS heroes, and do more damage than Hanzo or McRee? Just because Sym isn’t “meta”, doesn’t mean she isn’t good.
I was going to say the same about you, lol. I will spell it out for you though;
Not what I was talking about; I admit, in that quote, that she has to physically cast the TP, but once she does, it’s there. It’s not a “trackable movement” to use the TP, considering the range you can use it from, and there are no points of contact while TPing, which is instant from each pad. That means there is no travel path, like Hanzo’s jump, Tracer’s blink, McRee’s roll, or Genji’s dash, in which to counter play.
Bundling for clarification;
Say you’re attacking Numbani for cart control; You’re playing Sym, and you get to the first choke; there’s an enemy Widow peeking the choke, but your team has a Genji, so she backs off to the secondary position (best known as high ground top right, if attacking), now she’s pretty comfortable, and as old Sym 2.0, you could drop your TP basically on top of her, and pressure the frontline at second choke (any of the 3 routes). Now you could instantly use that TP and go after Widow, but smart play says she’s either repositioning, attacking the TP (less likely), or standing there aimed at the TP waiting for you to come through it (least likely). Now what you call “down time” I’m calling frontline pressure in this scenario. Either of these options mean you’ve taken the Widow out of the fight; but furthermore, if you’re frontline pressuring while waiting for that magic number to TP, you can;
- Kill the Widow if she’s still there and use your still placed TP to port back to the frontline.
- Use the TP and claim the high ground flank position, dropping down.
- Use the TP claiming the high ground with your team.
- Use the TP to poke flank, while using the high ground position to TP again in 2-4 seconds.
- Let the TP die without using it.
Remember, in all of these choices, and there are obviously more, you’re still fighting at basically 6v5, and enabling your team to make all these choices individually as well. And Widow is a pretty good counter to a lot of Sym play, unless you’re straight out dealing with her in the most 1000iq ways possible.
Even if half the enemy team turns to destroy the TP, they’ve taken themselves out of the fight.
Also, you don’t get Ult charge for destroying Sym’s TP, and it takes Widow 3 shots to destroy the TP (that’s 3.5 seconds, min). So even if you lose the fight, somehow, you’re better prepared for the next fight, than the enemy team.
It’s not just Sym that can go through the TP though, right? If you want to put it out on paper the exact breakdown of a team fight, there are a lot of people in Gold that would love to know how the rock paper scissors of it works. Hell if you can predict everything that’s going to happen in every single teamfight, why are you not number 1 on every single hero yet?
This is why I think you’re in the lower ranks. Again, not judging. If you think any pro level Tracer thinks about engaging with more than 2 seconds CD on Recall, you’re crazy (of course they’re thinking about how they’re going to engage, but they def aren’t doing it). Tracer’s uptime is when Recall is off CD, her downtime is when it’s on CD. Or else she’s basically dead, because she can only blink 3 times, and Recall is only 3 seconds past, which makes her movements so much easier to track. Unless you are 100% sure you’re going to kill a lone target, it’s never an engagement while Recall is on CD.
The same is said about ultimates though. Why is it that Hanzo can gain Ult charge while his Ultimate is active, when almost the entire roster cannot? What if Widow gained Ult charge while her Ult was up? It’s comparing apples to oranges. Sym isn’t meant to be Tracer. The only reason I put the 2 in perspective of each other was that Tracer has an equal “downtime”, as per your definition, by your own comparison. Sym 2.0 TP was too strong. End of story.
Sure, and she has to commit to those choices now instead of transitioning between all of them. I don’t think you realize how many maps are actually pretty well designed to have a 25m range on TP feel like any character can hit you from any angle, anytime (with a 12s cooldown, but still maintaining the 2s window for doubles). Having a fixed rate, and a static placement period is effectively balancing it.
Right, because frontline supports don’t exist, nor do supports that heal you while you flank…
A lot of your arguments just aren’t realistic, so, jinx? Though, I’m not sure what we’re defining asa “fact” here anymore…
Your misrepresentation of math is astounding, and you call that data? I pointed out earlier that your napkin math is based on a pixel moving horizontally from a Sym firing at 15m. It has no realistic application. It’s useless.
Facts? “Sym hasn’t been meta for blah blah”. Again, just because a hero isn’t meta, doesn’t mean they aren’t good, or overtuned. A great example is Reaper’s 50% leech buff that was inconsequential at the higher levels, thus making him “not meta”, but was absolutely carrying games in diamond and below. He was overtuned, and brought back down, but wasn’t meta. It’s not hard to distinguish. The fact that you even bring the word “meta” into this conversation shows your bias; you want Sym to be meta.
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Yeah but in Blizzes infinite wisdom alot of heros skills overlap in function. So some heros skills get more value then others by there very nature and then blizzs is stuck with an ability on a hero there trying to balance that is either overtuned or nerfed to crap.