This juxtaposition makes me think that you’re putting way too much weight on her weaknesses and not giving enough credit to her strengths. No other hero in the game can pop out of nowhere with little warning with 150 dps on top of their normal weapon. That’s really powerful. Give credit where credit is due.
As I have said, I do think that Symmetra’s low health and lacking mobility outweigh the potential damage of her primary fire. I don’t think it makes it totally unplayable, but I do think that it’s a bit undertuned, and that the risk should be lower, the reward should be higher, or both.
However, I don’t think she or her primary fire are total trash, and I’m not going to buy into that in the name of getting a bigger buff than I think she actually needs.
150 dps that can be completely destroyed by a melee attack, and “Popping out of nowhere” that takes ~2 seconds and has a very loud and audible noise to alert you “Yo there’s a teleporter here” Lol alright.
The same can also be said with charging beam on barriers for full effect. If you spend time, “farming the beam” you are essentiallying making the fight a 5v6 (5.5v6 if you want to be generous) instead of wasting time (even with your team) powering up beam by damaging barriers and enemies with it you could use orbs to do more damage faster, killing enemies and gaining the upper hand quicker. Making beam the worst choice.
If i were going to use a close range attack to secure a point (with the team) I wouldn’t waste time away from the fight for 2-4 seconds when a Reaper can do more damage than Symmetra at the same range WITHOUT charging up at any capacity.
It is when you consider how her killing power is distributed throughout her kit and not placed on a singular attack.
This is an example of how well she can be played when you utilize all her power properly.
I am with my team which allows me be to the side and out of harms way.
My team is providing me cover so I can setup my turrets which are part of my killing power and utility.
My team is using my utility by baiting and pulling enemies into my turrets.
My Beam is a superior choice in this situation because I need INSTANT damage for when a target is vulnerable. Orbs are burst damage that are only effective against barrier-ed opponents if precisely timed. Beams do not require this. They are already shooting and doing damage. I likely would not have been able to add to the damage on Brig or Wrecking ball had I been charging an orb instead of using my beam.
Which brings me to another point. The value of damage is not determined solely by the amount done but by HOW it is applied. I could have been spamming orbs in this situation instead. But most of it would have been trash damage against a barrier and almost none of it against a target.
I understand why so many people have the misconception that her beam is terrible. It feels much better to watch an enemy drop to half health instantly then to watch it tick away. Especially in a meta where burst is highly valued due to armor.
However, You cannot dismiss the validity of beam weapons or chip damage solely based on this meta. Nor should buff them just because this meta does not entirely favor them. That is what we call power creep. Something I am sure none of us want.
in average play, a situation like this is 1/100 games at BEST. it’s not even good play, it’s just your team taking the attention off of you and allowing you to sit there and hold LMB. Bastion could do this just as well and Better. This is not a showcase of her at her best, It’s a showcase of her primary damage doing what it should be doing at least a fourth of the time which it doesn’t.
So its bad play because my team made it possible for me to get my full potential out? What?
Bastion does not slow targets. Brig would have likely gotten away. Same with Wrecking Ball.
You are once again disregarding all the factors of what is occurring and thinking of only the numbers. Numbers are not the only determining factor in a fight. It is how those numbers are applied as well. It is quite possible that bastion could have been a good pick here. But that does not mean he would have been BETTER then Sym as the CC was quite valuable.
See “putting way too much weight on her weaknesses and not giving enough credit to her strengths.” I mean, you can do that all you want, but trying to cite disadvantages at me isn’t going to convince me that the plays I use to great success are now trash and need a buff.
You’re describing fights as if they’re old military standoffs with both sides standing still and shooting at each other. This is Overwatch. There are cooldowns and positioning and tons of other stuff that provides for downtime in the fight that then pays off in big bursts.
Waiting a few seconds before going in so that you can get a pick instead of throwing damage into a shield is the better play all the time. That’s why you don’t see Widowmakers spamming shields, and instead waiting patiently to land the kill. It’s why Tracer exists at all, who has such a short bit of damage before reloading that she’s basically all burst and little sustain.
Finding ways to charge your primary without detracting from the fight isn’t easy, but it can be done. And I think the payoff at the end is worth the charge time for a good player (though I totally agree that people who aren’t good at using primary fire should stick to the safer alt fire).
My problem comes when the primary fire is already charged and I can barely do anything with it due to how squishy Symmetra is.
I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell me what I was looking at as if you had my brain and my eyes thank you. I saw all of the factors involved and came to that conclusion. The time it took for you to ramp up your beam on Brigitte’s barrier and slowing her for the .75 seconds that she wasn’t straight up blocking the turret with her shield would have been better spent doing superior damage WITHOUT ramp-up and breaking her shield and thus killing her and everyone else more quickly. And congratulations to you for having teams that actually listen and cooperate with you then i guess.
See “putting way too much weight on her weaknesses and not giving enough credit to her strengths.” I mean, you can do that all you want, but trying to cite disadvantages at me isn’t going to convince me that the plays I use to great success are now trash and need a buff.
What plays would those be, I’m genuinely curious. I’m “not giving enough credit to her strengths” because all of her strengths have some kind of draw-back to them, and have no straight up value to them. Not to mention they VASTLY OUTNUMBER her strengths, as I’ve said before. Does she have huge raw damage? Yes. But it’s low range, long start-up, and weak to armor. Why would you pick that when you could pick Junkrat or Hanzo or Soldier to do everything she does but better?
Which is further proof that you are blind to the application of damage and only think about raw numbers.
I could have only contributed to brigs death with my secondary had I had one ready to fire. Which would have required me to have the ability to see the future and prep a charged orb before hand or lots of luck. Because I had my beam going I got to feed off of her which helped ramp up my damage for my next target.
So much so that we did not NEED to break the barriers because pressure was being applied constantly. The evidence is that we did not NEED to break brigs shield to kill her. The evidence is that Rein was the last to die and his barrier did not break until he was almost dead anyways.
It is because of the choices I and my team made as a team. My orbs would have been near useless in this situation. My beam was amazing. My turrets were amazing.
Yes, but what does standing on a payload net you in HPS? Isn’t it 40hps? So he was doing 1/2 damage on an armored target who was getting 40hps healing to that same armor. Add in any ancillary healing he may have been receiving from HoT effects of Lucio or Brigitte, and you’ve got one heck of a gap to make up before you can do appreciable damage.
In that video, had he ramped up on the Bastion/Orisa, and then changed targets to the Mercy, he might have killed her, and then had the Bastion not chewed him up, maybe even the Orisa sans Fortify, or the Bastion. (doubtful though, at that range Bastion would have eaten him)
At any rate, the beam needs some love. We all know this. We’re all arguing for change. None of us (to my knowledge) is stating that it is perfectly fine where it’s at. If there is someone saying it’s fine, I’d like to hear the justification behind the statement so that I can give a decent rebuttal. Most of us have been on threads exactly like this one twenty times previous, so we’re all our own sounding boards. It’s difficult to get a clear picture when the same people who are proponents for the primary weapon buffing chime in so much.
I want it buffed in such a way that it makes sense. Give it piercing, or increase the range significantly, or remove the ramp up, or add lock on back, or any other number of suggestions I’ve read since it was “fixed” on the PTR.
how in the universe is giving you an example of an identical situation except where bastion replaces symmetra blind to the application of damage? You’re really stretching to discredit me there buddy. No one mentioned your orbs because you didn’t use them. Your turret wasn’t AMAZING, and neither was your beam. You’re stretching so hard to make yourself look right that you’re just embarrassing yourself by trying to make your play look way better than it actually was.
Exactly. I can’t kill a Tracer or genji anymore like I used to because I can’t hit them with my beam. I either have to be lucky and hit them with a ball (lol), or coax them to go into my turrets (fat chance).
No counter points. Just “I am right and you are wrong.”.
I have explained why the beam was better and why the orbs would have been worse. You refuse to talk on those points at all because you have no counter arguments.
How damage is applied is just as if not more important then the numbers themselves. Because damage in of itself when applied improperly becomes trash damage. Orbs would have been trash damage against barriers and would not have likely been applied at all to an actual target.
Which is we why beam is weak. If you do waste time using beam (4 seconds) in a brawl, with your team, you are cutting DPS down substantially, you factor in enemy heals, armor and abilities, beam is useless in a chaotic brawl. The only time it is useful is when the enemy has no awareness (good luck with that at higher levels) or if they are all funneled and are not focusing you (even with your team)
No counterpoints? You’re right and I’m wrong? Alright let’s look at the facts. You’re wrong. You weren’t even level 2 when brigitte was killed, meaning that orbs would have been better in that situation. You only dealt approximately 2 total seconds of level 3 charge which is only one less orb. Orbs would not have been trash, in fact they would have done the job just as well considering brigitte would have died EVEN FASTER and Hammond would’ve taken more damage from your orb as you spent some of your damage damaging his armor alongside Reinhardt.
Oh but sorry, giving facts and numbers isn’t “damage application” so it’s not valid, right?
It’s useful in tank or shield heavy comps.
I got a quad-kill using it when it was ramped, but I normally use my projectiles, since they do more reliant damage!
I treat it like an ability. Albeit it could use the range buff that were waiting for.
Orisa would be getting residual heals from payload due to proximity at 10 hps. So just add +10 to the end results. Still within range. Also she was not receiving heals from other sources. Notice how there where gold/yellow crosses on bastion. That means he’s receiving heals from another source (mercy) Orisa got those at the end after the assault and milliseconds before Symmetra was gunned down.
So being able to predict the future or being lucky and having an orb ready for when she was pulled in would have been better? Right…
I would not likely had an orb to hit her with since the pull in was so fast.
See previous comment.
or I farmed more charge off of him, building off the foundation I had started from brig. Damage that I would NOT have gotten in on brig due to how fast the pull in was. So no. I got more damage in then with orbs.
I regularly assassinate supports and backline dps with turret bombs and then get out with hardly a scratch. That’s often enough to win a fight.
About half my plays of the game feature a significant amount of fully charged primary fire.
In over half my games, I have major plays with my primary fire where I kill two or three heroes in a team fight by sticking close to my team and end up dealing most of the damage.
I also often get to level three charge, get a kill or most of a kill and then die. But I’m working on being less aggressive and letting the charge pass if the moment isn’t right.
I also often will weave in some alternate fire against targets as I run up to them (even if I’m fully charged already) and against armored opponents.
Because her teleporter is absolutely incredible, and nothing else in the game can do what it can do. The turrets are also incredible when used well. The ultimate is so satisfying to use when you place it well. The primary fire is very difficult to use and probably needs a bit of help, but when you make it work, the plays are a work of art. And the alt fire is strong and does what it needs to do, even though it’s slightly inferior to Junkrat/Pharah.
Does she have her weaknesses? Yes. Do those other characters have weaknesses? Yes. I like how Symmetra plays. I enjoy using her strengths and don’t mind working around her weaknesses (mostly). If you really think literally everything is better than her, maybe her new kit just isn’t for you.
As I’ve said, the charge time is something I can work around. The problem is that the level three damage isn’t high enough for how incredibly risky it is to use given her health and mobility.
As I keep saying. Give her 50 more health and/or 20 more dps to all charge levels. Then, I think she’d be pretty much perfect.