they r mad because symettra has to aim now.
she used to be able to kill you with her crosshair 5 feet away from her enemy target.
it was insanely op and lets be honest didnt really require any skill or thought.
What I like about Sym 2.0 is trying to predict the enemy team’s positioning and setting up traps to get in their way. With half as many turrets that’s reduced and I’m finding it more rewarding to just try to throw turrets behind the foe from afar. There’s less reason to be trying to anticipate where the enemy will be compared to throwing them where they are.
What I liked about the auto-aim was that it dealt with intruders quickly but with the short range, it was very dangerous for Sym to get too aggressive. Sym 2.0 was a spider spinning a web but 3.0 doesn’t have that quality.
Plus, the new primary fire is terrible. It doesn’t give a visual input that tells you you’re hitting the target… which IMO is a problem because it looks like it has the range of Zarya’s beam but it doesn’t.
Huh. Interesting. Thanks for sharing that! Maybe that will change how underwhelming the ult feels among ults.
Alright, here goes. Four things.
Orderly, Disciplined Play
I’m a Starcraft player. One of the things you learn in Starcraft is the idea of playing “safely.” “Safe” play is play that seeks to avoid risks. You seek to give yourself some room for error, and win over the long haul rather than rolling the dice and hoping for a home run. If you are improvement-oriented, randomness is your enemy over the long term.
Symmetra epitomizes this style to me. I hear people talk about how she can’t carry, and I think, “Don’t you have a CoD game to go join?” I don’t want to carry, I want to win. In the vast majority of my games I’m astonished at how reckless my teammates are—trying to facetank chokes as Junkrat, etc. They’ll kamikaze Bastions, die, and then have the nerve to tell me that I’m throwing.
The autoaim goes well with this theme. “Who would want a gun that could miss?” Sym would say. “What kind of fool would take that chance?”
There’s a Magic:the Gathering card, Null Rod, that stops other cards from working. The flavor text on it is something like:
Gerard: But it doesn’t do anything!
Hanna: No—it does nothing.
Sym isn’t so much about “doing things” as she is about saying “No” to the enemy. No, you cannot go through this choke. No, you cannot dance around for twenty minutes killing my Mercy. No, you cannot stop us from coming through this choke. No, you cannot snowball one lucky pick into a teamwipe. No, you cannot sit there behind that shield.
Now, I’ll admit: she also says “No” to allies as well. No, I can’t dive with you. No, I can’t shoot down that Pharah. No, I can’t heal you.
Order and discipline? Who wants that? They’re playing a game to get away from that, right?
Well, sorry. Competitive gaming is going to demand that of you eventually.
What I wish they’d understand is that the stability and control Sym offers allows you to do much wackier things if you work within her framework. Want to leverage attack Bastion? Sym can make a nest for him. Want to go triple-tank + Reaper? Teleporter will make that extremely scary. Want to run three flankers with Halo shields? Photon Orb will keep the enemy separated so you can get 1v1’s, and Shield Gen will help you win them.
People complain about games feeling coinflippy and swingy. “How do I climb” is the title of every third post on /r/OverwatchUniversity. It’s not even that people are “bad,” they have no clue what “good” even looks like. Well, a big step in the right direction would be playing a few hundred hours of Sym, Torb, Orisa, or Ana and getting frustrated at how your allies can’t seem to just chill.
Vision
I’ve made Sym sound like a fairly joyless character to play, always saying “No” to people. But this isn’t the case. Sym is all about looking at the battlefield and imagining what it could be. In a way you’re not even playing a shooter, you’re building a castle of harmony. And, well, this is fun, just as blowing things up with Junk is fun, zipping around as Tracer is fun, and roleplaying Robot Invasion as Bastion is fun.
This “castle of harmony” business is one of the things I find sorely deficient about the rework. Symmetra lives in her head—in this intellectual, abstract, architectural, theoretical realm. Playing her is like designing a plane, or playing Factorio(h ttps://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/Factorio/), or writing code. Can you imagine if, while programming, several lines of code disappeared after ten seconds? What the hell? And this is how I feel about E teleporter and Q Photon Barrier. These are one-off tricks, not building for the long haul. They’re so…hacky. They’d feel more natural on Sombra. And the Sombra/Symmetra dyad is one of my favorite in the game—Sym seeks to create systems, and Sombra seeks to break them. I love playing both of them, for exactly opposite reasons.
Probably the best feeling as Sym is when your team has done well enough that the enemy team is under time pressure and starts throwing themselves at the point. It seems like she’s doing work at this point, but actually all the work was done 20-30 seconds ago, and this is where you’re reaping the reward. The time interval between the two explains a lot of the “Schrodinger’s hero” phenomenon where allies think she’s throwing and enemies think she’s OP.
Macro Power
All this “order” and “discipline” stuff is pointless if it doesn’t lead to some whammo effect. And TP/SG are definitely that. The last piece of the system, the part that makes it complete, is Sym’s ult. Powerful, subtle, stationary, and beautiful. It adds a strategic layer to the game, forcing players to think at a larger scale than a single teamfight. If they don’t—if they’re “trapped within their own minds”—then they’ll be unable to break through the forever regenerating shield HP, or they’ll fight endless waves of teleported enemies.
This macro level is a good thing. It makes Overwatch a deeper game, and opens up alternate styles of play.
A Principled Stand for Teamplay
Sym is an engineer. She’s not meant to be some 1v1 goddess. I have no patience for the idea that “her 1v1/mobility is terrible, therefore she is terrible.” FFA deathmatch is right over there for those who want to be 1v1 gods. By being the exact opposite of a “combatant” — slow, squishy, low-range — Sym is a, err, Sym-bol that Overwatch is about more than “Imma carry u nubs.” The talk I hear about “low-skill auto-aim char” and “low skill ceiling” only reinforces my suspicion that the main body of criticism she gets is coming from short-sighted, individualistic players. Why should I care what they think of her, except that somehow they seem to have gotten Blizz’s ear?
12 Likes
Because I enjoy her being a more side line non-healing support, they’re making her too active to play. If I want to play active there are tons of heroes to choose from, but non-healer supports? Soon won’t even exist.
It’s nearly impossible for them to properly balance Sym 2.0’s kit without causing major issues. That’s one of the reasons why they changed her primary from a lock on to a straight beam, since they just couldn’t give her the damage buff she needed without changing how it worked. With that said, I feel like it shouldn’t have become a fully straight beam, and should’ve been changed to be similar to Moira’s, but that’s just me.
Four major, simple reasons.
- A lot of Sym players have hand problems. Even if they don’t, M1 requires too much aim (especially because of the tick increase) for what it rewards. Even high-ranked Syms that got to where they are using insane M1 tracking aren’t bothering with it. It’s simply not really worth using over M2. Dropping the tick rate drastically should help considerably.
- No Photon to protect herself. Effectively a melee hero with 200 HP. Second lowest EHP in the game (and everyone apart from her and Torb can survive drastically longer). Further pushes the point of M1 not worth using since it makes using it even riskier.
- The new ult is just hella boring.
- You can no longer pick up corpses.
2 Likes
This is beautiful. Thank you for writing that.
I miss photon barrier as an E ability, it enables you to do much more, cause you can walk behind it and towards enemies, or it simply enables your whole team to move forward (like Dorado’s first point, on that bridge).
Her new TP is awesome.
Her turrets are fine as well, I don’t care to have only three instead of six, if they do have more health, damage and slow effect, but it could be four. Even tho we keep saying she needs to stack more towers than she can actually use, cause it has low health and high cooldown. They could either decrease the cooldown or enable her to stack towers, but that has nothing to do with the new Symmetra, but the character.
Her secondary fire is good, I’ll miss piercing orbs, but they were too slow to be effective.
Her primary fire is hard to use. It’s too short and it doesn’t do that much damage, unless you can charge on shields. Maybe if you had old photon barrier to walk behind, it would be much better, so you doesn’t get killed before you can even get to someone.
But her ULT is just… Meh. I don’t know how it could be useful. Everything you can do with this ult, like counter dva bomb, pulse bomb, you could do (even better) with old photon barrier.
Long-short history: Old E ability > New ULT. BTW I don’t think people are being this negative about her, I follow a lot of big Symmetra streamers and they liked her new kit, except for the ULT.
And answering your last question: I love Sym not only by her strategic play-style and the fact that she allowed people with bad aim to have fun, but her personality. I love Symmetra’s sass and attitude. Her story is also great.
I personally love the rework. But since day one I’ve wanted the lock on removed and secondary fired increased in speed.
1 Like
I don’t think that’s true. Though, I agree that the lock-on needed to be removed in order to buff the damage and range, I don’t think they actually needed to do either. The microwave on live was strong enough. A 7m lock-on beam isn’t significantly different from a 6m melee attack - it’s a little stickier but you lose the AoE. I don’t think it’s any harder to balance than a melee attack, but it needs to be treated as such.
However, the lock-on has perception problems. It feels unfair. That alone I think is still a good reason to remove the lock-on and replace it which a Moira-esque beam.
I’m not trying to nit-pick. I just think the conversation suffers from looking at the lock-on as a balance issue. It’s more of a general game health and player perception issue. Like removing the barrier piercing from her orbs or not giving Hanzo the ability to shoot through walls. Still very important concerns, but not balance problems per se. (Actually more important than balance, IMHO.)
2 Likes
And they had said you could escape grav with this, but it’s not happening. I’m very sad with this new Sym. You should not change the primary fire of a hero.
Take my like, this is an amazing description of what makes Sym’s gameplay work.
I’m not with the crowd but after more experimenting, I would say her gun is too weak.
I like the teleporter. Whether it will be weak after people get used to it, I’m not sure, we need time to tell. But from my experience, some people just use it too obviously which is why it gets destroyed too fast. Even if that, the ability to reposition teammates between team fights is a lot of value. If it turns out not working, they can always increase the casting speed.
The biggest problem I found with her gun is the charging time comparing the the maximum dps. 180 DPS sounds a lot, but it is because Sym’s old gun was lock-on - Now she isn’t lock on anymore. So compare this to other heroes like Bastion, Tracer, junkrat etc - 180 DPS is pitiful, not only that, you have to charge 4 seconds to reach 180 DPS - The whole reason it needed to be charged was that it had lock-on - without lock on, it is just super lackluster, not to mention that it has only 10 meteres range.
During the 4 second charging time, you are not able to place your turrets nor teleporter. So you are just blindly trying to aim other characters within a 10 meters range - Imagine Tracer needs to do that - people would whine immediately.
I’d say even if the gun starts from 180 DPS, it wouldn’t be comparable to other DPS because it only has 10 meters range.
3 Likes
For comparison, using only the primary fire:
- Bastion have 525 DPS in sentry form (can’t headshot).
- Tracer have 240 DPS while firing, and can headshot for double.
- Junkrat have 199 DPS, and can deal splash damage if he miss.
- Soldier have 191 DPS, and can headshot for double.
- Sombra have 160 DPS, and can headshot for double. (But probably wouldn’t)
- McCree have 140 DPS, and can headshot for double.
- Pharah have 131 DPS, and can deal splash damage if she miss
- Torbjörn have 116 DPS, and can headshot for double.
So, while technically she deals more base damage at full charge than most heroes in the list, the lack of headshot makes it incapable of rewarding precision or bursting people down in a pinch.
3 Likes
maybe for you, not the primary thing for and many other people though
Yes, and her gun has only 10 meters range…
100+ hour Sym main here. FYI not all of us dislike 3.0 
1 Like
I didn’t play Symmetra until just after her first rework, which brought strategy into her kit in droves. That’s what I love(d) about her.
- You had photon barrier to engage, charge forward, defend; yourself, your allies, your turrets, torbs turret, to take pressure off your tanks, to save an overextended dps, to nullify a sniper for 4 seconds, to stop a stun, a hook, a phara ult. You could use the PB in a massive variety of ways, all useful, you just had to choose when and how to use it, re: it was massively strategic, it took careful thought and planning to use effectively and you could use it effectively in so many different ways. From one game to the next I could play sym as a flanker, a defensive DPS, an off tank or an off support, all based on how I chose to use my photon barrier and my gun.
Now I can’t do any of that, but sure, her new ult can… make it a little harder for the enemy widow to kill me, and that’s a fair trade(?) apparently…
- You had 6 turrets which let you make multiple strategic choices that you cannot make with 3.
Do you set up all 6 on their spawn door for risky quick ult charge? if it goes wrong you lose all set up and have to wait 60 seconds for your turrets back, but if it goes right you get anywhere from 1 kill and 35% ult charge to 2 kills and a full ult in the first 10 seconds.
Or do you set up the full nest around the choke? it probably won’t get much charge that way but it locks the enemy off from just walking through and has great stall value. If you’re lucky it’ll even kill the first few flankers who try to rush through/over and get you your ult that way. Heck even if none of that happens it might stop the first enemy push altogether by helping kill them off quicker.
And those are just the obvious ways to use them, as zoning and damage, then there’s setting up 1/2 turrets at each non-choke flank route as a surveillance system so you know if flankers are attacking from else where.
You can set them up half at the choke and half on the point to defend both, or set up 4 at the choke and 1 at each of the other main flank routes (there’s rarely more than 2) and do both surveillance and damage/zoning.
I’ve set them up at my own spawn before and caught people trying to deep flank/spawn camp, I’ve set them up around multiple small heals I know are popular and caught low hp flankers running from the fight.
You can’t do half this stuff with 3 turrets. flat out. most importantly you can’t choose most of this any more, there’s no strategy, no thought. They’re just there now, you just throw them out mid fight to scrape some more damage, you don’t think about it, you don’t prepare it before hand; you don’t pick between damage here or damage there, you don’t pick between damage or surveillance, you don’t pick between zoning or damage, you don’t compromise damage to get more strategic value or vice versa.
- You had the choice between Teleporter (TP) and Shield Generator (SG), which was a very tactical decision in so many ways, everything from which to use when and where you put them mattered so much. Between her turrets and her ults, a good Sym had to understand the map she was playing, you had to know the path your team would take from the TP to the point in a rush, you had to know if the SG would reach the point AND the choke, you had to know where the enemies would come from to attack them so that you could either defend them, or lead the enemy into a trap with them. Not to mention the situational awareness you needed, because you had to know who would be attacking your TP/SG, defending from a genji, or a phara, or a sombra, or a solider, are all very different set ups, requiring different placements and different amounts of turrets to get the most out of them.
And that’s all without even talking about what goes into the decision on which of the two you’d use, Both offering so much to your team but only being useful under very different circumstances, one helping your team recover, the other survive.
All that? Without even mentioning her primary fire, which also used strategy.
That’s why I love(d) Sym, all the things they very specifically ripped out of her kit, all the things they utterly removed from the game for no good reason, and all that is why I’m so mad about this rework, it is a sham, it is a mess, it is bad. IDC if “her damage is higher now” (It’s not, not her total damage) IDC if “She’s so much more viable now” (She’s not, she’s just more “acceptable” to you dps players) and IDC if “The devs know what they’re doing they’re the devs!1!1!” (They clearly do not otherwise the game wouldn’t be in the state it’s in now and they wouldn’t be scrapping a hero amidst her playerbase begging them not to), the rework is bad, because it kills Sym’s identity as a strategy hero, and the game is worse for no longer having her in it.
6 Likes
Redo the ult, give her the projected barrier back, I’d be a lot happier with the changes then.
1 Like
I think that they should touch 2.0… but not a total rework. Something like maybe touch some numbers… or maybe buff her towers in damage and range (range is important) and make her be able to send away like now…but only down to 4, not 3.
I am with the mate, the lost of the PB hits hard to her. Was a survival tool very important to Symmetra…and she wons nothing to balance his lost.
and the old TP was a skill that can change the course of a game if is well placed or ninja placed xD. As well the shield generator if you are able to keep it alive