Well, this might not be entirely fair to those players. We warned the devs early in the PTR that this was going to happen, especially with controller users who have limited keybinds. The devs chose not to address it. Thatâs on them.
You canât really blame those players. Binding Interact has a pretty poor return on investment. Symm has a really low pick rate. The teleporter has a short duration, so for other players itâs rarely where they need it when they need it. Thus, thereâs barely any play time when the keybind is relevant and youâll, realistically, probably get more value out of putting âI need healingâ on that button.
If they want to make âInteractâ a generic âSpecial Actionâ button, then thatâs fine. I can see good uses for that. But, they actually need to do that by combining it with the weapon swap function. So it would cover Mercyâs/Torbâs weapon swaps, Sombraâs Translocator recall, and similar actions for future heroes. Even doing that, which should be done regardless, I still think the teleporter should use Jump for interaction instead - itâs just cleaner and more intuitive.
The teleporter is supposed to be the part of her kit that creates demand for her in a team. The UI issues with it are legitimate balance problems. Fixing the keybind issues and making the duration infinite (until destroyed) would be a big improvement in terms of increasing the value of her teleporter to her team, I think.
Small anecdote
Had a game yesterday where I spent a lot of the round perched on the tower in the middle of the Oasis City Center point. Ana would stop by occasionally to keep me company, but sheâs a busy lady so we didnât spend much time together.
Now, if the teleporter had an infinite duration, I couldâve set it up behind one of the walls near the choke and Ana couldâve popped back and forth between the sniper nest and choke at will. But, with the short duration, it just wasnât always convenient for her, so she got less value out of it than I think she could have. Plus, the slow flight speed of the turrets kind of necessitates using the teleporter for turret bombs (which puts the teleporter exit in dangerous places).
Basically, my needs and Anaâs needs didnât always fall into the same 10 second window, which limits the teleporterâs utility. This couldâve been overcome if we were on voice chat, but voice chat should not be required for proper hero balance. Ana obviously had Interact bound, but I wouldnât blame her if she didnât, because she didnât really get that much use out of the teleporter. At least, relative to what she could have with an infinite duration teleporter.