Wow if only said abilities were ultimates gated by ult charge instead of being cooldown abilities that involve near zero skill to use properly.
Mass Rezz wasnt removed for that at all. In fact its worst use was 5-man rezzes. It was removed because of no discernible reason other than paving the way for OWL.
Taxibotting refers to her entire impact being on team TP gimmick strats.
Taxibotting is strong… in OWL where people are hyper coordinated. But it does not translate to ladder, where in all ranks people will rather report you than support you if you pick Sym outside the 2 and a third maps she is considered viable on.
You remove TP taxibotting, something that Sym has NO control over because her team can perfectly ignore it even if the player is crying in VC asking people to take it, and Sym is literally just a gimped Reaper with terrible damage and made of glass.
Thats not even to mention how it reduces Sym to be awful in most maps where taxibotting isnt abusable. She literally has 2 and a third maps where she is a passable hero. When pre-rework she was viable to strong in every single defense map, every koth and a couple of offense maps.
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Sym is viable, even good, RIGHT NOW. So this never nonsense is simply nonsense.
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Where? In OWL? Because I couldnt care less if hyper coordinated teams abuse E-TP in ways that the playerbase can only watch. Sym is the most blatant case of OWL performance and opinions not mattering for the balance and fun of 99.99% of the playerbase.
If you mean ladder then lmao Sym is awful in ladder. This is an uncontested fact. Cant contest as a dps hero in any way and depends on begging her team for E-TP gimmick strats to be a worthwhile pick. She has been nerfed for years to make space for E-TP.
ML7 even admitted that his rework was for Sym to be a taxibot over anything else. She has been effectively reduced to being a taxibot. So much for the 3.0 rework.
The actual would contest that fact and we have a nice top 500 leaderboard with quite a lot of Sym players to further contest that fact.
Top 500s are only a inch below OWL in how utterly unrealistic is to expect Sym’s performance with hyper coordinated teams to be replicated across all ladder.
Thats not even to mention that there are around 10~ or so Sym mains across t500. Top200 only has 3. I dont know where you are getting ‘‘quite a lot of Sym players in t500’’.
not really. because unlike mercy who’s pretty much a generalist, how good sym is in her “niche” isn’t so good to compensate how trash she is outside of that “niche” to consider sym balanced esp considering her “niche” is actually simply the most optimised comp that’s built entirely to enable/cater for sym w+m1 (literally any hero would be good if they had entire comp and strat build entirely around enabling them + only playing their good maps).
i.e. there absolutely is capacity to improve sym outside of “get team to deathball rush around her specifically to enable her w+m1 and taxi tp on specific maps” without making her OP.
namely
- renumber orbs around them being faster moving projectiles so they’re more aimable in more ranges and thus have a longer effective range
- deathball sym rush can’t benefit from better ranged orbs because they’re too busy trying to rush into the enemy for w+m1
- make sym be able to interact with immediately upon placement
- deathball sym rush can’t benefit from sym being able to interact with tp sooner because the whole comp + strat is built around moving as a singular unit, and to go alone before everyone else is engaged for most of their tp spots is suicide.
- make sym tp have a better cd mechanic like “cd starts upon placement and pauses halfway until destruction”
- deathball sym rush can’t benefit from this because they’re too busy trying to leave it perma somewhere to hold 2 entrances or just single use one way tps that they destroy near immediately after taxiing.
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I keep seeing people say that taxi Sym is why she’s kept weak, but what really happened is they instituted some beam changes shortly after the TP change that caused Sym and other beam heroes to be dealing way more damage than intended. This was during double shield, so to make Sym basically disappear from the meta with Doomfist, they nerfed pretty much every aspect of her kit. Including her total potential damage with her beam, beam width, her turret damage, and her ultimate, despite little in her kit having overperformed prior to the beam changes.
I’m pretty sure the sentiment at the time was the infinite TP was actually worse than the temporary one as it had a longer cooldown and made it 10x more difficult for Sym to reposition herself and her team quickly. I personally think it’s pointless unless you’re like leaving it up near spawn as a quick jump. It’s better to never use TP unless you’re using it for a reason, lest you risk not having it when you actually need it.
I feel like they could do more with Sym as a DPS even with TP the way it is, but she hasn’t had any changes go live since October 2020 when they gave her 25 extra shields.
For OWL the TP change was a buff. Cooldown doesn’t matter because they only use 1 or maybe 2 TPs per attack. Especially after the cooldown buff.
Buffed range allowed a lot more team plays on hanamura for example.
TP change only nerfed selfish Sym on ranked.
The range of the TP is too small. If she could choose where on the map to put the entrance and exit, probably some amount of minimum distance from spawn, then perhaps we would see more interesting ways for people to ignore it
Just on the ExC I think it would be nice if they changed the TP to shield generator.
All you do is place the TP entrance and it acts as a temporary shield generator providing low shields to players in an area at a rapid rate before destroying itself.
Like a mini rally or something.
TP can be great for mobility. The problem is the rest of her kit is static, so she can’t truly take advantage of her TP.
Sym will always be forced out of viability because she’s not good for OWL. Ditto for Torb really.
I mean if they really wanted to force her out for good, they would nerf Teleporter since it’s busted on Lijiang and Hanamura. Since it’s her only good tool and she’s used as “taxi” for memes in owl, they won’t nerf it just so it can be a “haha funny meme strat look we used Sym in OWL LOL” moment.
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just make her primary and secondary heal if you shoot a teammate. also, remove barrier and replace it with a healing ultimate. maybe all turrets and primary and secondary fire healing go into overdrive and she gets 3 temporary extra healing turrets?
Frankly, I want to see information-gatherer Symmetra (utility Damage hero):
- 6 Sentry Turrets that act more like tripwires.
- Changes to her primary and secondary fire to be more intuitive.
- Teleporter becomes an ultimate, but also has the properties of Seer’s Exhibit.
- Photon Barrier as a cooldown ability that leaves a speedboosting trail.
- Unique passive that grants Symmetra charge on her primary and secondary fire when revealing enemies.
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And yet across all my games and all my maps I’ve never see anyone complain about a sym pick besides on very specific maps where she is fundamentally a throw pick.
We just go full circle on this forum, the root cause of most issues with the game is player skill.
“Sym is bad”
Not really she just requires you to micro your teammates which is what I do.
The issue here isnt that Sym’s kit is static, its that its flat out anemic and weak. She cant make use of TP’s mobility because she has no burst and no way to survive thought her own delays. Her TTK is atrociously high and her survivability is non-existent. Even if you reverse TP to its non-infinite duration mechanic, it will simply become a way to expedite her own death since she is a close range hero made of glass.
Its quite literally the reverse. She is forced out of ladder viability because taxibot Sym is too good for OWL.
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They could change TP and maker her a better dps, but will they, unlikely. After a couple of debates a conclusion is that the devs intend to keep Sym this way.
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True. For me, I personally feel like Symmetra should be the Damage hero for Support players, like how Mei is the Damage hero for Tank players.
The reason I’m not fond of the idea of Support Sym is due to it just not resonating with her lore and design: Symmetra focuses on mostly barriers and shields, so there’s no room for her in the predominantly biotic energy roster that is the Support role.
Perhaps if Overwatch wasn’t geared towards having two healers, then I could see the idea, but that’s not the current case.
I hope for the next experimental they can try a Sym who is a better dps since we already have a taste of Sym as a support.
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