Like seriously, there’s no reason for these nerfs other than to screw us over.
-Photon Barriers nerf is BS, considering it’s one of the best things to counter most of the hitscans team killing ults. Let alone the health of it will allow hog to break it before he’s finished resulting in potential damage from an ult that could’ve been blocked entirely if the wall had 5000hp. I would’ve been fine with them nerfing her ult charge and not messing with Photon Barrier seeing as she can charge it pretty fast if you’re good at Symmetra.
-As for the turret nerf, idk how this will go seeing as there’s many different uses for her turrets. I don’t think it will be that bad but considering the damage nerf she just got it would be nice to see how she does first before nerfing her turrets.
-Photon Projector seems like the only reasonable thing that was balanced, I’m fine with this change.
The change to Mercy seems more for consistency than anything. Valk beams being blocked by shields doesn’t really make sense considering her primary beam ignores them.
I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time on Mercy and I didn’t realize valk beams were blocked by shields to begin with - so I’m happy with the change!
And before you tell me his ult does nearly 5K dmg, I know this, I’m saying most roadhogs will NOT use their ult just to break Symm’s shield because a) he is extremely vulnerable during his ult ESPECIALLY if there are 6 enemy teammates firing at him from behind the shield, and b) ults are meant to kill enemies, not Symm’s shield ult. Most people will just wait out the Symm ult rather than waste a bunch of crap trying to take it down…so they can kill actual enemies, and not a shield that is going to go down anyway in a set amount of time.
I honestly didnt really mind her pre nerf primary fire. They just have to get rid of her ult and rework it into something else. We dont need more shields and visual clutter. Maybe reduce the turret slow.
I will never get this logic, it’s the same as Mei’s wall. If something has health that should mean that it’s realistically meant to be broken if enough investment is put into it.
If you don’t believe any amount of damage should break it then they might as well just make the wall invulnerable to damage completely.
The barrier expands the entire map. There are a couple methods of breaking Symms barrier.
The barrier expands the entire map. You don’t whole Hog into it directly infront of the enemy, you find a nice spot outside LOS and burn it down. Your Ult is fast charging and an excellent counter
You can bisect the barrier and still hit the entire team
Certainly there are scenarios where Hog will fail but it is the furthest thing from impossible.
The duration of whole hog is enough to almost deplete the current Photon Barrier it does 4,928 dmg, so with that being said, the nerf is reducing her shield to 4K which allows hog to destroy it entirely. You understand that it wouldn’t just be him doing damage to the shield and that Symmetra usually deploys it immediately after she sees hog ult so that she can block it, leaving the hog to either focus it or get cover so he doesn’t get focused.
If your hog is good enough to take down the barrier and then get the ult again super fast after that? Sure, fine, it’s totally possible, I’m just saying it’s not a very attractive use of an ult meant to wipe out an entire team/clear the point. Idk, I have a crapton of playtime and I’ve only seen Symm’s shield broken MAYBE one time? On EITHER side. Idk, it’s not a nerf that strikes me as “bs”, that’s all I was saying before.
Photon barrier isn’t Mei wall, you can walk through it(big difference between Mei wall) and it’s a defensive ult, not an ability, so it’s supposed to be hard to destroy. Not saying it should be invincible as you can already destroy fairly quickly it if you focus it with certain characters, Sombra especially as she can instantly break it with EMP.
I know about Sombra emp, I specifically said damage.
It’s either you think it should realistically break with damage or not. I can’t recall a particular instance where I’ve seen my team break down the wall. I don’t know if it has a breaking animation even.
5000 damage even over 15 seconds is a huge amount. Especially when the enemy can shoot you while all your attention is on the wall. If the devs meant for it to realistically broken sometimes then 5000hp is really an absurd amount.
Everything is situational. Including the reason a Symm uses the wall. I have shredded that wall many times.
Most often it’s best to wait the wall out but in cases where it was used Mid-fight or say to stall a losing point, pulling out the Whole Hog to counter the value she seeks is a big play. Not flashy of course but important.
Would you not consider removing an obstacle as large as Symm barrier clearing the point?
I mean I only ever break Symm barrier with 2 heros, Hog and Bastion. (Sombra too but she disables it lol). In most cases I don’t need to break it but it’s nice to be able to if needed.
I’m sorry but it’s a defense ult what do you expect, it’s supposed to be hard to break.
There have been multiple times my team has broken a sym shield and many times my shield has been melted. Like I’ve been saying you just have to focus it. That’s like getting mad at the enemy being immortal and wiping you even though your team didn’t focus the lamp that was clearly in front of them.
It’s a wall and if you can’t hit the enemy WALK through it, it’s happened many of times to my team where I deploy wall and they still die because people can walk through the wall. Photon Barrier is used for protecting the team from HIGH damage, mainly ults. So paired with a bastion and basically any high damage ult, the barrier is going to be melted easily.
This really worries me. In the current meta it’s good. But when I start thinking about how the game was played normally, I think sym is going to be very very weak again.
It’s now harder to charge ult because she does less damage.
Turret bombing is no longer a decent option to deal with a single target, so the best use for the tele is to leave it behind you, which makes her more stationary.
Sym is gonna need to huddle with a tank or a support for the entire game to be consistently effective.
Even then, handling flankers is going to be far more difficult now.
Hard to break is different than statistically almost never broken.
All ultimates are supposed to be strong skills. However most characters can have their ultimates shutdown or stopped outside of extremely niche situations. Stop pretending like Sym is different.
Breaking it isn’t the only counter to it for Christ sakes. It doesn’t provide any additional advantage other than it being a big flat shield so that means you can still push the enemy team as you would with normal tank barriers such as Orisa’s. They’ll most likely be grouped up after the wall is deployed so you can use an ult that would basically take that into advantage such as a very effective one ,Mei’s blizzard, as it can freeze through shields and it’s big AOE. There’s many ways you can effectively “counter” the wall without destroying it. Since deploying photon barrier makes the team group up you can use that to your advantage and use ults like junktire, grav, dragon-strike, Nano+dragon-blade, etc.
Never said sym was different, she’s broken and needs attention. Not this nerf that does nothing to improve her play-style. She’s going to have a hard time gaining ult charge with all these nerfs making her even more team reliant, nerfing her shield isn’t the problem they needed to fix.