Symmetras beam falloff is 100% damage falloff at any range more than 12 meters
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This. It’s absurd to me why the drawback that only existed to balance the auto-aim was left after auto-aim got removed. Even if it meant lowering the damage a bit, I would rather have reliable DPS than a clunky, impossible to maximize weapon that punishes you for aiming well.
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Having said that, don’t you find it odd that they made one of the least aim intensive characters one of the most aim intensive characters literally overnight?
The best Zarya player in the world only has a 67% tracking with her beam on average, so “git gud” doesn’t apply here.
I’ll be the first to admit, re-learning to play Symmetra hasn’t been a walk in the park. Her aim mechanic is significantly changed on both left AND right click. It’s basically re-learning a whole new characters weapon mechanics.
Having had some previous skill with Zarya, I probably took to it quicker than the other mobility challenged and die hard primary beam reliant Symmetras, but that doesn’t make me phenomenal by any stretch of the imagination. It negatively affects my longevity on the field of battle, because I’ve taken that play style with Zarya (IE: Getting in peoples faces, deliberately utilizing shielding to obtain charge) and then applying it to Symmetra. Symmetra doesn’t have the resiliency to pull that tactic and live to tell the tale.
In my opinion, 3 stages of weapon charge is pointless, as is even 2 stages of weapon charge, but 2 stages would be a considerable buff to her current setup.
I’d gladly take a 3 second jump from one charge to the next charge level, if I could start out with a charge level that had enough damage potential to warrant utilizing. 60dps is garbage, you are basically a worse version of one of your stationary turrets. You maintain this lackluster damage for an entire 2 seconds while waiting to jump to the next tier, which is only slightly better than your turrets due to aiming inconsistencies, until you finally reach the 180dps threshold and…reload. Start back off at level 2 again for another second, and then pop back into level 3 with half your ammo available. You enjoy that for another second before it’s time to reload again, and then you can finally enjoy that 180dps from the outset after reload.
The next issue, is now that you’ve been burning through enemies (or dying) during that time, there are no more enemies left to kill, or your charge has been negated because you’re pushing up daisies. The latter being far more likely than the former.
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Save that how accuracy is calculated on beam weapons creates faulty results. Pre-firing beam weapons is part of ensuring efficient damage by applying damage as soon as the enemy gets into range. This results in a reduction of accuracy but an increase in damage potential.
In addition its unavoidable that you will have post fire after a target either dies or leaves range thus reducing your overall accuracy even though you were able to get the max damage potential possible.
Not to mention that the average accuracy over an entire match does not reflect the accuracy of any given engagement. Meaning that the “Best Zarya player” (or any other player for that matter) is likely to have some amazing engagements with the tracking of a god and others where the fight did not go in their favor as a team which lowers their overall accuracy.
No… having to track does that. Having to charge up is just an added punishment that literally no other DPS has to suffer besides Widow (to a much lighter degree) and that’s because she can one-shot over half the roster, while Sym still takes 3 seconds to chew through over half the roster.
Let me just say that I actually really like Symmetra in her current state. I greatly disagree with the people who want to revert her or think she’s worse than before. Her kill potential and flexibility has gone up immensely. But there is no defense for having a charge-up mechanic this clunky on a highly aim-intensive weapon. It’s literally nothing but punishment, the “reward” should be given for being able to aim precisely in the first place, not aim precisely for 4 seconds without dying where you don’t belong and THEN you finally get a reward.
Gaining ammo back from shooting barriers is a clever mechanic but incredibly dull in practice. Imagine if Soldier/McCree/Tracer/any DPS had to literally shoot a wall for 4 whole seconds to not have their damage gimped, and be forced to do this repeatedly throughout a game to prevent it from becoming gimped for literally no reason. It’s fun to shoot enemies. It’s anti-fun to be forced into shooting inanimate objects for what can amount to 1/3 to 1/2 of a teamfight!!! This makes what would otherwise be a very active kit feel incredibly passive during the most intense parts of the game.
Even reducing it to a constant 150 DPS would make it feel so much better than it does. The tick rate would still be an issue, but baby steps.
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Alright, thought on it a bit and I may have an idea that is a solid compromise that address’s both my concerns about giving her to much while also addressing others concerns about it doing not enough.
Currently Sym’s beam upgrades by tiers based on the amount of seconds of sustained damage it has done.
What if we changed this from a tier based upgrade system (where it increments upward) to a system where it immediately starts ramping the damage up in either smaller increments or in a meter like way?
Example: For every 0.1 of a second of damage done overall damage of Sym’s beam would increase by 3 damage IMMEDIATLY.
Progressing like this:
60 at start
63 at 0.1s
66 at 0.2s
69 at 0.3s
72 at 0.4s
75 at 0.5s
78 at 0.6s
81 at 0.7s
84 at 0.8s
87 at 0.6s
and finally
90 at 1.0s
Resulting in an increase of 30 damage per second of sustained damage applied up to a max of 180. It does not change the overall max potential but gives immediate benefits to using it which would even out its overall dps potential.
I am quite honestly not certain if this is possible but I think it would allow lower mechanically skilled players to still get some charge out of it and benefiting from the charge mechanic to a lesser extent while still rewarding higher aim capable players with its higher end damage.
Even further if this is not enough we could even apply a slower damage decay so that perhaps she can retain charge better both during and between fights.
Fair compromise or am I just crazy?
It would definitely be an improvement by rewarding the effort of tracking period, rather than rewarding tracking only if it’s done for x amount of time. It would also address the issue of her TTK without touching her potential which isn’t a problem besides that potential being unreasonably difficult to obtain.
However I still think it makes no sense to force a DPS hero to earn damage beyond the aiming that is already necessary to earn that damage in the first place.
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That would be a very tiny babystep of an improvement, but it would need to ramp up much faster, but Symmetra would still be in the same problem she’s in currently: it starts out too low. If it started at 100 DPS and ramped up to 180 from that point, over say 3 seconds, then that would be better at least. At least from there she’d be able to out-damage healers if she maintained good aim.
That doesn’t address the issue of her charge doesn’t last nearly long enough though. Which is a problem in of itself about the aiming to begin with. It takes X amount of time to gain the charge, which really is work, and risk, to do so, and the charge disappates almost immediately after losing a target to maintain it on. If there’s any amount of time for a pause in a fight, say reload or enemy runs around a corner or behind cover, you lose charge. It takes more time to regain the charge lost than it does to lose it to begin with. That’s not skill-based, that’s just making her weak.
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I am going to ask you to consider something for me though. I am not asking you to agree with it. I just want you to take a moment and consider it.
Perhaps its okay to have this mechanic when Sym has other ways of applying damage at the same time? Not to mention when you couple it with her massive amount of utility she provides?
Having her deal the same amount of primary damage as other non-headshot level DPS while having effectively more utility then most of the DPS role might not be a great idea…
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It would definitely assist in bringing a more consistent feel to the weapon. It would also allow for better skilled players to ramp up faster than worse skilled players, which I believe is ultimately what we’re after here. A fair compromise to , as was stated previously, separate the wheat from the chaffe.
The thing is, there would need to be some kind of hold over on retaining the charge. It needs to be longer than the reload time on the weapon, by at lease .5 seconds, but I would prefer it to be long enough to reload, or long enough to toss a turret and not lose charge. Tossing multiple turrets, or turret tossing and reloading would cause you to lose charge.
If the damage ramp were linear like you’ve got above, I think I could learn to love the primary fire. I know you’ll probably disagree with me, but I think it should probably start off at 80-100 damage, and then ramp up from there to 180 over the course of 2-3 seconds.
(I promise I was typing what Temujin typed, and didn’t copy him! We had the same thought at the same time lol)
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Ramping continuously would have the effect of essentially increasing the lower-tier DPS though.
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I agree with this concern and this is why I proposed multiple times lowering the DPS of the weapon while making it constant. My main issue with the charging mechanic is that it feels very bad to use. Whether or not it is possible to balance, I feel it will never feel good when it is purely a punishment kept in place for balance purposes when the weapon could be balanced in other ways that don’t feel punishing - such as dealing a lower constant DPS. At least then, I am getting exactly the damage I deserve when I connect with a target. Right now, I feel as if I am not and it feels terrible, making me not want to use it.
I also realize that this is a subjective thing, but judging by how many people seem to refuse to use it, I think it’s safe to say that few people find it feels good to use, which should be the goal in designing a hero’s kit.
Alternatively, my ideal scenario would be to scrap the beam entirely and design something that actually fits Symmetra’s kit, ie. something that doesn’t force her into close range when every other aspect of her playstyle screams midrange. But this is also the least likely option to happen so I’m hedging my bets as best I can.
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Her Primary Fire isn’t the issue, it’s her low hp and incredibly long deployment time for TP. They need to give her 250 hp and reduce her TPs deployment time from 2 to 1.5 seconds. Plus, having more hp would give her more time to make use of her Primary Fire.
Glad to feel a certain level of agreement on this. I am glad I took the time to consider this idea and others perspectives.
I can get behind this. Having a delay consistent with the casting of one or multiple turrets/teleports would allow for more dexterity I think without making her to powerful. Even reducing the overall decay speed as well so she can better benefit from rightfully earned charges.
You are right…not a huge fan of it. As I think the distinction of choosing between higher burst damage with her secondary as opposed to investing a little in her primary to push beyond its burst potential would be either highly diminished or non-existent.
Which would change her secondary from her primary dueling weapon back to spamming longer ranges. Not really a bad thing. just less engaging in my opinion.
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I don’t think that’s the case at all, actually.
Look at it this way: The alternate fire is what you use when you’re closing the distance, and once you land the orb, then you turn your beam on them and finish them off. A one two combination. Synergy between the weapons firing modes would be achieved, and a balance would be restored.
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The problem with reducing her overall damage potential with her primary would be that her secondary would immediately be even better then people perceive it to be currently. It needs to have a down side to choosing it over her secondary due to a reduced amount of damage on the front end AND a benefit on the other side for extending past it.
Perhaps in some situations like you describe you are right. When you are taking the initiative and engaging on your own terms this would occur. However, what about when the enemy gets a drop on you before you prepared your primary’s charge?
Her primary would still be better overall because it would all to quickly overcome the small difference in overall damage. Especially if its at the higher end of what you were talking about. 100 damage that moves up by 3 damage per 0.1s will VERY quickly overtake the damage of her secondary. So much so that her beam would become her primary dueling option leaving her secondary as a spam/pouncing tool.
Not my ideal. Would prefer her secondary remain her dueling weapon. While making her primary her team fight oriented weapon.
No. But I can maintain 70-80 percent easy. If you wanted her to have permanent 180 damage, shed need to have Reaper effective range. Like 6-8 meters.
I respectfully disagree. My ideal would be 150 DPS which is still higher than her orbs, giving you a reason to use it over them (in addition to being better against barriers and having less delay in dealing instances of damage when you need to finish someone off). It would also have the drawback of being a close-range weapon making it situational when you have the range for alt fire, yet not horrendously slow when you do happen to be close to an enemy - rewarding the risk of being close with 30 more DPS right out of the starting gate.
I agree this wouldn’t be perfect - perfect would be an entirely new weapon concept imo. =P
You are describing the main balance that Sym2 had before the rework. You used the orbs at long range, and used the autolock beam at close range because by the time you charged and shot one orb, the beam would already be at melting level.
Sym3 broke that balance by doing two changes. First, is making the close-range option as unreliable as the long-range option. Second, by buffing her orb so its a reasonable option full time.
If you have one long range option and one short range option, and they average about the same damage, you shouldn’t be using the close range option. Ever. That’s why the beam need to have a base damage equal or close to the orb, and scale up from there. Her current beam starts at 60 DPS and stay at that for two seconds. In this time you can fire two orbs to deal double the damage, and that’s also usually enough to finish off a squishy.
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