“Sym is fundamentally flawed because her potential dmg output is the highest in the game, but it takes time to get there and in reality you dont have that time. But sometimes you do, which is the problem.”
A reply he gets from a member of the server:
“But her realistic damage output is nowhere close because she gets deleted so easily”
To which he responds:
“Which is why if you let her always get to that scary stage she becomes broken hence why im against increasing hp. They need to make her more consistent even if that means making her potential dmg lower.”
So how about it? Reducing her damage potential, but making her damage more consistent? For example:
DPS changed from 60/120/180 to 90/120/150
Ramp up time reduced from 1.33s to 1.2s.
Beam width increased from .2m to .25m
These changes make her much better at dealing damage at the lower levels, increases the width (consistency) of the weapon, and makes it quicker for her to reach a decent damage level.
The compensation here is -30DPS on her Level 3 beam, which makes her less scary to play against.
She could still need survivability because even if you give her consistant damage she just becomes Reaper but without the survivability.
In the end, its not a thing of survivability vs constant damage, because those 2 go hand in hand, its a thing of taxibotting vs dps performance, as we know that Blizz has has been nerfing Sym’s dps performance as a compromise to keep taxibotting in check. They said so as much on the ITP patch notes.
I mean, I’ve suggested this before and the forums wanted to eat me alive. They called me a Sym hater because I even considered compensation nerfs. It’s why the forums are a toxic place
I said lower her maximum damage & increase her range, that’s all I think she needs.
If she has more range she will built charge sooner & get to max charge faster, as well as keep it for longer because she’ll be able to hit from further away
The forums think “weak hero = no compensation nerfs” when the reason she receives so few buffs is because it’s hard to buff her without making her absurdly oppressive.
This whole “glass cannon” schtick doesn’t really work in Overwatch.
I think her turrets are amazing. I use them at choke but also in duels, they take aggro off of you & give you space control. If someone is pressing W towards you they either turn to shoot them (meaning you aren’t being shot) or they ignore them and are slowed/damaged by them
When dueling I quickly throw them to the sides of me and they really do work great
Here are my preferred changes
Beam length increased from 12m->15m
Damage changed from 60/120/180 to 70/120/160
Secondary fire damage increased from 120->125
TP activation time reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds
TP interaction range increased from 1.5m to 2m
Literally what I’ve been saying from day 1 of the rework.
She has the POTENTIAL to do a lot, IF all the stars align, IF her team props her up just right, IF things all go exactly as she needs them to go. But it’s not based on skill, or aim, or gamesense, it’s all just based on luck, because the things you need to align are things that you, the player, have no real control over. It’s normal to have some characters to have some elements of luck in their overall kit, but not be the be all end all of everything they can and can’t do, like Symmetra.
Plus she has so many really genuinely good counters it’s frankly stupid to pick her if they have even one of them that’s half decent. Many heroes might struggle to be as good as before, but Symmetra gets her turrets destroyed and she’s virtually off the board entirely.
In what universe do you play where people don’t see you throw the turret and immediately destroy it mid flight or once it lands, well before it takes the five years to activate and start doing anything?
I play in gold at best and people rarely just ignore the turrets and let them activate when I try and place them on the floor like I used to with 2.0. They take so long to float, set up, and start doing anything that unless you have them set up ahead of time (or are able to get them to set up at mid fight and hope you get a few seconds of damage off of them before someone destroys them because you put them behind the enemy or something like that) they basically just can’t be used mid fight.
The new turrets suck IMO, because you have significantly fewer of them, they take longer to set up due to ‘float time’, are SIGNIFICANTLY more obvious and loud than before, and do less damage / slow than before. They’ve been nerfed significantly and they’re supposed to be her primary way of doing damage.
edit: Especially now that she has no proton barrier to use to protect them! 2.0 could pop a turret on the ground, launch her shield and protect it while she shield danced with her enemy. 3.0 has no such capabilities, because she’s weak and stilted and messed up.
What other character can you just stop them using their weapon? You can’t just hit Sombra’s hand and make her drop her gun, but you basically can do that with Symmetra.
The reason why she is hard to balance is not her damage, however, so it doesnt make sense to nerf an already worse version of soldier’s primary fire.
The reason is literally team TP. Its literally there. It needs to go so Sym can be a dps instead of a taxibot intentionally gimped so she isnt a must pick in OWL. Keep personal TP if you want, but she needs to stop being weighed down by taxibotting first and foremost.
Seriously. If they don’t have the cajones to make her an actual DPS character that can reliably do DPS damage, then they should just admit it and put her back in the support category and give her her noodle gun back, because then at least I could get eliminations myself again rather than trying to charge up my beam so I can maybe do some damage wait oh no someone shot me in the face and I’m dead again e_e
This is exactly why I kept saying to people 15m primary, 250hp and/or spamming sustain buffs on sym simply isn’t going to work.
15m primary and/or 250hp wouldn’t be enough because she’d still lack sustain to stay in effective range and would still need team pocketing to reach and stay there.
spamming sustain buffs on sym to make her work will lead to making her oppressive because the sustain she needs to overcome her engagement, disengagement and time in effective range issue is legit tank levels as you can see with zarya in how much sustain she needs to do that.
The direct solution to give her more independent and consistent uptime (and consequently more consistent damage) is:
making tp cd mechanic better to allow sym to use it individually
her mobility tool to engage and disengage
renumbering her orbs to be actually aimable in midrange i.e. balanced around being a faster moving projectile.
extending the effective range of the hero because undoubtly, sym is using orbs as a staple weapon fire and primary is just situational inherently.
looking further at sustain to solve the “time in effective range” vs “time to get something done” should come after that which would likely be just numerical changes to balance out burst vs sustain.
and you can’t look into the “time in effective range” vs “time to get something done” problem when her opportunities for uptime atm simply isn’t consistent either unlike other heroes.
Or maybe giving her her 6 turrets again because they are often easy to destroy, do chip damage, don’t stack slow so even clustering them up doesn’t make that big of a difference, and would give her the ability to reliably just put more damage on the board without increasing her HP or damage to her guns in any way.
I’m not sure why people don’t think that she should have 6 turrets, she’s supposed to have turrets that are expendable vs. torb’s one strong turret, that’s why his turret hits like a tank from across the map and hers barely have 15m radius on them and barely do any damage at all.
turrets simply aren’t reliable damage anyways no matter how many you give her. at the end of the day for turrets, they have to wait for enemies to walk through them for los to start contributing even if you put them far forward, because they’re fragile and shorter ranged.
it is because of that fact that turrets cannot possibly be a substitute for weapon fire damage. weapon fire is more on demand (legit when you want to shoot, you point and go), more in control to target prioritise, of which neither is the case for turrets at all. not to mention weapons can’t be destroyed either.
e.g. even on defense, you put turrets up on a choke and the enemy is poking from behind them. in that situation your turrets are doing 0 to them and they’re still shooting you and much more effectively because their weapons are likely better than sym’s.
Will it make sym viable? Probably not. But it will definitely help her at least have more consistent damage. Wouldn’t mind seeing on an experimental card.
That’s why the smart Sym player doesn’t stand around where she can be shot while not equally baiting the enemy into battle. I’d far rather have 6 turrets than 3, and we’re talking about helping her be more consistent - giving her the ability to actually regularly have turrets in a fight rather than seeing them get destroyed and having nothing on cooldown would significantly increase her viability and consistency. Rather than only being able to cover one side, you could afford to put them at multiple chokes. Or you could save them for a more aggressive strategy later, but it would be your choice and you’d be ABLE to do it, rather than being hobbled like she is now.
We can’t make her gun any better, we can’t make her unkillable; the best option is to increase her ability to do damage with her turrets because they aren’t heavy hitters and wouldn’t make her OP like changing anything else would do.
im glad someone likes the turrets