Symmetra is bad, but here is how to fix her

General Discussion
85

actually it’s not mutually exclusive, terrible hero means really low pickrate and thus means the few people that play her are actually very good at her
also nobody knows how to play against heroes that they never see

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86

She is a builder. I wouldnt count those things as accumalive health cause well… They aren’t always present. Turrets are basically like a junkrat trap plaveable on ground and walls. They dont work in air but could block a shot (blocked a widow from headshotting me once lol).

She has 50 hp 150 shields. Her shields mean you dont want to stay in combat very much or have short encounters so she can regen. her health. She has barely any Synergy with her primary and other kit though. I have gotten better at tracking with it but really its best use is when you have a team to take damage for you. It doesnt do much damage either and there is no way for Sym to crit. Meaning its tough to take down targets getting healed.

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87

Well then, if she is so great, then how come is her pick-rate so low, and how can everyone always yells “switch off symmetra?”
Her win rate and her pick rate are two totally different things. She has a high win rate because people that actually enjoy playing her are good with her, but she has still a lot of problems non the less.
Here, ill demonstrate it for you in a very simple way:

Picture for example a season of comp.
And in that 1 season, Symmetra got picked, for example a total of 3 times.
And lets say that 1 out of those 3 Symmetras were bad/lost/switched.
And the other 2 were stubborn and somehow WON the game.
That means her win rate was 60%-70% for that season because of those 2 stubborn Symmetras who were actually good or got lucky to be carried by their respective teams, but her pick-rate was very slightly above 0.2% or something because she got picked only 3 times in the entire season, because nobody likes playing Symmetra.

Im pretty confident that you never even played Symmetra to know how demanding it actually feels to play her, not to mention climb with her.

And also, Symmetra is virtually ALMOST NEVER picked in high ranks. Like…you have a higher chance to get hit by lightning then see a Sym in GM. She just gets picked in the lower ranks, diamond and bellow, and even then its rare. I really dont understand why you are making such a big fuss about her win rate if you never even have to see her in masters, which, you claim to be in.

89

low pickrate means niche

terrible means both low pickrate and low winrate

she’s niche, low pickrate high winrate
she’s good at what she does

also dismissing her high winrate because some people are good with her is a terrible attitude because of two reasons:

  1. she really doesn’t require a special big brain to play, anyone can do good on her
  2. if a handful of people can make her work, anyone can. just because you are lagging on her skill curve doesn’t mean she’s bad, just means that you don’t utilize her properly/play wrong
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90

I dare you to get good and climb with her then. No i triple-dog dare you. Endure bullying and everything else, and then see for yourself.

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91

Why would I? I don’t find her or her playstyle enjoyable, I prefer something that stimulates my cortices a bit more. New sym is at least an improvement over 2.0 in that regard.

Nor do I have to prove anything to you that players far above my skill already have proven. You can keep complaining that she’s bad but blizzard is looking at those top tier players and recognizes that the problem lies in the average forum sym, not in the hero.

Can she use some qol changes? Sure. But she’s fine, people on the forums just need to learn to play her (or play in general considering the amount of sym one tricks in the game, that alone indicates that her floor is way below any other hero).

92

It’s not a hot take to say Symmetra’s pickrate is still low because her 3.0 rework was originally underpowered. Beyond that many just didn’t like her.

Still some DPS players don’t want to put in the work in with Symmetra, they’d rather click heads.

Symmetra can’t headshot. You play differently. You organise your team, you lead, you put down TPs, save your three turrets for a push with your wall.

Pros have been picking her up since her tickrate was fixed and she can be a total pain to take out. The more Pros play her the more the community will want to pick up Sym too.

I’ve seen so many players have Sym as their most used hero this season and they’re not Sym mains.

Symmetra isn’t bad. You’re bad. :tea:

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93

omg please, please i hope blizzard actually looks into this post

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94

May I remind you that OW isnt a traditional FPS where you just “click heads”
Every hero requires their own skill set. To say that one hero is more superior to the other in how mechanically demanding they are is at very least ignorant, not to mention insulting to others.

Take Mercy for example, she is an “easy” hero I have been told, but im personally not capable of playing her. I suck with her. And in game you can clearly tell the difference between a good Mercy and a bad Mercy.

And if its sooo easy to do well with Sym, then how come everyone yells “switch off sym” ? And why dont flex players use her to climb if she is so easy?

95

With this logic D.va has infinite health because DM has no health

If you let a Sym stand in front of you for 4 seconds charging up her beam you deserve to die to it.

Yes because it’s so OP to let a slow no mobility hero have a small moving shield the enemy can walk past

Then focus her before you use them

they have 30 health and are just larger than her head what dmg is that gonna block?

Yes, one swing of her mace does more dmg than them and they only have 3 more meters of range than her she can just shield while they focus her so others can kill them safely also, it’s not that hard to aim let alone aim at a stationary target.

No not really, charge them fast but they move slower and pass through shields and enemies like they did previously?

It’s an ultimate, they’re meant to seem kinda OP, also shield gen did this but with no input from her teammates.

No, no it isn’t. You clearly don’t play her.

  1. thats her biggest counter

  2. it’s already useless

If you can kill or focus a Moira or a Brig, you can kill Symmetra .

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96

Im gonna admit here that I am probably bad. Hey, i never declared myself as a Symmetra Jesus. All im saying is that she needs a few fixes and tweaks, just to make her life a little easier. I would be perfectly content with just her health buff, if I had to chose one of these changes i suggested.
You are a Symmetra player too, surely you have also seen places where she needs fixing.

97

yes. But she’s not bad. The title of this post is literally “Symmetra is bad”.

Obviously that’s going to generate emotive responses. Now, I have no idea what you play like, me saying you’re bad was just in response to the title and nothing personal.

She doesn’t need anything major.

Faster TP maybe, maybe more base damage with her primary. Her tickrate fixed solved a lot of her problems. She’s less reliant on her turrets now.

I fought a lot for the tickrate fix. Post after post. Got banned for spam. However it’s fixed. I’m done fighting for tweaks.

All I want is a golden glove/ highlight intro victory pose with her golden gun.

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98

Mercy is an extremely easy hero though. You failing at her doesn’t change that, it just says something about the quality of the player (in this case you).

Extrapolate that to your position on the symmetra-skill-curve, and it’s very likely that you’re somewhere in the lower end of that curve. Improve your gameplay, and see better results. It’s 99% likely a you issue, not an issue with the value of syms kit.

As for the comments of team mates, I first recommend to not be too sensitive about it. As a mei main people (generally the clueless ones) tell me often enough to not pick her and yet I seem to do fine. Second, she has a negative stygma of being a troll pick, it has less to do with her current state and more with 2.0 (which was the very definition of skilless and useless).

I will say this: I think her teleporter can use some buffs, in my limited experience I found it a bit clunky to use in clutch situations, while it could potentially be an amazing tool for exactly those situations.

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99

There we go. No personal offense taken.

I just rly would like her tp to be faster and for her to have a little bit more health to be able to do something with her primary. And i dont think her primary needs a damage buff. Its like 192dps at lvl 3, asking for more is a bit absurd even for me.

100

that’s a misnomer. No way would Blizzard make damage values like that. It’s still 60/120/180dps

When I say base damage I mean without charge.

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101

I play Mei too a lot. Ik exactly what you mean.

There we go, we do agree that she needs something, but nothing too drastic.

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102

lmao Mercy is an extremely easy hero ? Sorry bud but your arguments don’t mean much if you don’t actually understand the game

Also can you explain what is the “niche” you are talking about ? Describe it ?

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103

There are 40 million players.
Sym is picked 0.83% of the games.
That is 332.000 games.

Out of those 332.000 matches, she wins 186.119

Sombra, soldier, doomfist, tracer, bastion.
Heroes that people complain are op.
Does worse than symmetra.

The game is mostly played by low ranks.
High ranks doesn’t matter if the hero is broken at lower ranks due to their kit.

Runs out.

If you let a sym, and her whole team, consisting of tanks, healers and dps*

Yes.
It would.
You can now stop almost every ult in the game from ever touching your team, you can’t be taken down by any ranged hero, and you can set up turrets and the teleporter without any problems from the other team.
Not to mention the buff to your orbs.

“Just kill the entire enemy team before you use your damage ults”

90 damage.

Can’t reach anything outside 6 meters range.
Guess what, the turrets can outrange that.

So every hero should be reworked so that they can’t be counterd?

104

This was even more true for 2.0 unless you were in low diamond or below. For old Sym (at least in higher ranks) her only reliable source of charge was, yep, you guessed it, barriers and targets ignoring her.

Which is why she synergizes so well with Rein and Zarya. When she is placed into that duo of tanks, they can allow Sym to be more aggressive in which she functions similarly to a third tank in the sense that her beam when charged can allow Rein and Zarya to be very aggressive vs the enemy tanks. In an Orisa/Bastion comp where she’s TP’ing Bastion, Bastion is the DPS that shines, but Sym has a better chance of shining with Rein/Zarya.

They never said this. As I stated above, the reason her gun eats barriers is because that’s how old Sym got reliable charge at higher ranks, so the devs worked with that concept. Aside from that, she does have good matchups vs most of the tanks in 1v1 situations at least, especially Rein, who literally cannot win that fight. She is a tank buster of sorts, but not the w+m1 kind. You still have to outplay them.

For many heroes to accomplish this requires focus fire actually. Anything with large amounts of burst like Junk, Pharah, Bastion etc can destroy TP before it’s active, but many heroes simply cannot destroy the TP alone before its up, so imo it is balanced and fine. You shouldn’t deploy TP if you know it will be destroyed, which you only get a feeling for the more you use it vs a variety of different team comps. However, Blizzard removing TPs destruction from the killfeed was an unwarranted nerf to Sym that does nothing but cause disorientation.

You’d be surprised at the amount of people that either don’t know this or do know this but simply forget/don’t do it. Unless you are playing one of the heroes I mentioned earlier than can destroy her TP before it’s active, you should simply distance yourself from TP and her turrets.

She can’t have any form of her old Photon Barrier back because being able to consistently defend her turrets outside of her ult would be too powerful and garbage to play against. Honestly, I already don’t even like Sym mirror matches, especially against another good Sym, because she is very annoying to play against when played properly.

This is literally one of the only things Sym needs. She’s too heavily punished for charging up on anything that isn’t a barrier via her ammo count. The only reason it is 70 is because many of the small nerfs to her gun like that were born from the devs not knowing about her tickrate exploit when they were testing before she hit PTR.

Considering the sheer amount of things that could come out of the TP (most commonly 3 auto aim turrets spitting out 150dps), it can’t have its deployment time lowered at all really. This is because the deployment time being 2s, meaning the average hero with a walk speed of 5.5m/s can get exactly 11m away should TP be cast directly on them. As I said, 150dps turrets are very common with TP, so being able to get 1m out of their range just in time is balanced. And this is ignoring everything else that can pop out of TP.

Nah. She essentially does have 6 turrets if you’re utilizing them properly. IE: You win a fight, set up, by the time the enemy team attempts to push again, you have 3 set up and all off cd, so when they’re destroyed you have the other 3 immediately.

While their damage is integral to Syms damage as a whole, their main function in regards to Sym is to distract a target, as Sym thrives when someone is not looking at her as you well know. Having all these bright, shiny, painful abilities that force you to stop looking at her is what they are there for.

She can’t have this back either, at least not as you’re suggesting. Like she’d have to have the old one fully, as in travel time and 2s charge time. She would not counter GOATS even if they pierced at the current speed and charge time. She would be too powerful against non-GOATS comps while actual GOATS would just heal through her onslaught.

Not really. For one, Sym herself should make it as difficult to cross that line as possible. Ideally, when the barrier is up, you should be in a position where your back is to a wall (again, this is ideal, but not completely necessary). <10m is good, as your turrets that you should be immediately placing behind the barrier or use the barrier to shield pre-existing ones, so that anyone that approaches it directly is met with 150dps plus Sym charging for free.

On top of that, and I cannot stress this enough, your tanks cannot back up. That is the major part that allows people to simply walk through, aka your team ignoring the massive amount of space Syms ult creates.

The same could be said for old Sym, who also was hardly played the higher in rank you go.

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105

So does TP, you’re just proving my point for me.

so her entire team has to charge their beams now?

Do you know what focus means?

30hp =/= 90dmg

no, Symmetra’s design is made to be countered by dive.

Shields block dragon blade, why can’t you bait out the shield before ulting? If she is blocking all your shots swap. Boohoo Symm will have good orbs and you won’t be able to 1v1 her and come out with 95% of your health.

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