I know of that thread. I was talking about making her viable with the current rework without changing her primary fire.
We know too little of the current rework to give a solid answer to that. We got some numbers and concepts (and I disagree with a few of them), but until we see it in action, it’s not possible to tell how we would “change” them to balance around stuff we don’t know about.
What I can tell you is that a good portion of the Symmetra player base agreed that her gun (beam and orb) is probably the most balanced part of her current kit. That’s why its so weird to see it changed in such a conceptual level.
Can you please tell us her health and her weapon range? Thank you very much.
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I don’t see how her weapon is balanced. It only works against disorganization or low ranks, mostly because she has little range, survivability, and requires time to deal damage. I feel like the current way she is played only works in certain situations or are dubiously useful. Against snipers and any long range attackers she was useless and her only means of surviving was on a 10 sec cooldown. I feel like this change is not only to make her more viable at higher ranks but also less oppressive at lower.
They said they were giving her better damage, range, and hitbox. Considering she can’t heal herself under normal circumstances, can’t defend herself in any way, still has to charge up damage, and doesn’t have any mobility, escapes, or extra health, I feel like her weapon being stronger won’t be too overpowered. It will be powerful in certain situations, like against barriers, but isn’t that the point of counters?
I hope I don’t come off as angry, I love seeing what everybody thinks is the best direction for symmetra and I guess I’m playing devil’s advocate because I’m hopeful for what’s to come. I think the dev team knows she’s played by people w physical disabilities, and I’m trying to be trusting that their current changes have that consideration in mind. I love her character a lot and just want to feel less penalized by choosing her as my main.
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The ramp-up effect in the beam prevents her from being a frontline DPS, but its good enough to allow you to peel for your team’s backline, or as an emergency last resort. I treat her beam the same way I treat Mercy’s pistol: It’s not bad per se, and you can pull some cheeky kills now and then, but you don’t want to use it full time as your primary gameplay feature.
On the orbs, I’ll just say that I agree 100% with Sir Swag’s definition of them, which is: I don’t know why it works, but it works much more often than it should, and I’ll abuse it until a consistent part of the players I meet stop dying to my random spam.
I don’t buy this argument just because there is no empirical data that shows Symmetra dominating low ranks. Her winrate is consistent through all ranks, from bronze to GM. This means she is neither a pub-stomper like Bastion (higher winrate in lower ranks), nor a high-skill/coordination hero like Sombra (higher winrate in high ranks).
There is more regarding her accessibility than her gun. Her whole playstyle currently relies more on predicting the next fight and setting your defenses between fights. That allow people with limited movements to use their brain skills to impact the teamfight, and the beam is a complementary damage source to that.
Her ult being a permanent static object means it don’t rely on precise aim to be placed, and it shifts the flow of the battle just by giving the enemy team a second objective they need to seek and destroy. Changing that to a wall that will probably be placed like Mei’s means they now have to properly place it in the right place and orientation, and not just “around this area”.
The orbs being slow is part of that as well, since they linger around for more time, and is relatively easy to “aim” at a small choke. Pinpoint thread the needle style shoots might be off the table for disabled players, but they can just play in big choke maps like Volskaya and hurl the ball through the main choke. It’s a lot more effective with a lingering projectile (like, also, Junkrat’s grenades) than fast-moving projectiles like the new proposed orb, that will work very similarly to Pharah’s rockets.
Turrets are mostly a lateral change, IMO. While any disability that gives people problems aiming will make the throwing turret feature less valuable, there is nothing preventing them to still place the turret the way they do today. So, turret changes don’t really impact the accessibility issues.
But the big game changer is her teleporter. We need more numbers on how the ability will work, but it can require a lot of fast-positioning in-the-fight TP to use its full power, and I don’t think I need to actually point out how hard this kind of precise placement under pressure is for people that have trouble aiming in the first place. Geoff gave the suggestion for us to use the TP to get allies out of a Graviton, and now imagine if you can barely make the mouse go where you want them to be, and you place your TP just out of reach from the allies in the graviton. It would feel bad for an abled player, but would feel much worse to a disabled one, because an able player can just move to another hero when they notice they are bad at Symmetra, but disabled players may have limitations on the heroes they can physically play.
So, yeah. i’m skeptical that Blizzard was considering the accessibility issues when developing her rework (not saying that they removed it on purpose, just that it never crossed their minds), but I hope I’m wrong.
I have true and pure envy for every Symmetra player that is excited about the rework. I simply can’t recognize Symmetra in the rework (and I agree it should had been better as a new hero altogether), plus all the other issues I see with the rework (orb changes being terrible, the already-mentioned accessibility issues, etc), and I’m mostly trying to play as much Symmetra while I still can before they remove her from the game.
I wish I was as optimistic as you.
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I know how to use her weapon effectively, as I’m sure many players do, but I feel like it plays too passively and only really works actively when flanking, which is a mixed bag itself. I agree on the part of your orbs: they work, idk how, but they do. I use them all the time, but I understand how it’s hard to truely understand its use unless you practice with them more. I’d love to see the orbs only adjusted slightly but I don’t see how AoE will be bad on her. Piercing really is only balancable with slow projectiles or cooldowns (or at least that’s what I believe the devs think), and I can understand why they’d change it.
When I said oppressive at lower ranks I didn’t mean more viable, just less fun to play against. I think changing her design to be less “prepare beforehand” and more “active and contributing in the fight” is the right direction.
I think the descriptions of the changes are probably more drastic than how it will feel to play her. But I see your critique. I can see how, besides her weapon, aiming will become more important than before in many ways which will probably affect handicapped players.
But this is all just speculation over some loose descriptions. My opinions will probably differ when it officially arrives and I can’t really do much more than wait and try to be optimistic that they won’t ruin my favorite character. Everytime they’ve “ruined” characters the devs always brought them back in line (like mercy and roadhog), so if not now, i think eventually sym will be fine. New players will see her new playstyle and like her, so i’ll try to keep my thoughts focused on her future rather than dwell on her past iterations.
That is the point where we will mostly disagree, for two reasons.
First off, is that I don’t think Symmetra gameplay is passive. The fact that she needs to micromanage so many stuff, keep her orbs pressuring the frontline, keep her eyes in the backline to peel with her beam, and having to keep mental track of key ults (Barrage, Shatter) to time her barrier means she is always busy with something. As Symmetra, you don’t have the luxury to react to the enemy attacking your team, and work around that. You have to be constantly analyzing the situation, and I can’t classify that as not “active participation”.
Second, because of personal preferences. I enjoy playing with any system that allow me to prepare for stuff in advance. If I get a random game, and it have a pet class, summoner class, minion master, building-based class or something like that, I’ll be inclined toward that. The brief time I played WoW I played a lot more my Shaman and Hunter than everything else. I was an Engie main in TF2 (and I love the mini-sentry loadout). Final Fantasy 12 is my favorite game in the franchise because of the Gambit system. And a lot more examples.
So, while I have 26 other heroes that I can play if I feel the urge to play something “in the fray”, there isn’t really a substitute for the gameplay that Symmetra give right now. The closest ones are Torbjorn and Sombra, and even them mostly rely on a single ability (turret/hacking packs) instead of their whole kits.
So, I’ll just suggest that we agree on disagreeing in this specific point.
It’s possible to balance with damage as well. One suggestion I gave was to make orb speed dependent on the orb charge, giving current speed to max-charge orbs, but allowing smaller orbs to fly faster, for those moments where we have a fleeing enemy that is just out of reach from our beam, but the orbs are too slow to spam at them. If the 30 damage orbs were rocket-speed it would allow us to land a hit or two on those targets, and give us one more way to use them between orb spams to mess up with the enemy trying to time our orbs.
And I know the devs can make it work like that, because Hanzo’s arrows already work like that, with both projectile speed and arcing depending on his pull charge.
I’m sure I’ll probably also enjoy the rework, and learn to play with it. It will still have turrets and the new infinity wall ultimate sounds awesome for a zone-control freak like me.
However, it don’t mean we have to accept it quietly when you think there is better ways to handle the main issue than the one they are pushing. And that’s what I’m doing right now.
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Honestly, she is incomplete right now. She’s supposed to be a defense/support hybrid, but she’s not that great at either. Her weapon is that of a support that can defend themselves, not a damage dealer. Blizzard had to choose between which side she should be better in (dps or support), and they chose dps.
Yeah, I disagree with that, and I replied on it earlier. So, I’ll avoid creating a circular argument on this specific argument.
Yep, that is a big part of that. And I think even on that vision they went wrong in a few aspects.
She don’t have a huge zoning ultimate like every other defense hero, they reduced the area she is capable to cover with her turrets both by reducing its stash size and allowing the enemy to shoot your turrets while they are flying in the air, and IMO, her Photon Barrier have much more protective potential than her new TP, if they just gave it a faster cooldown.
I meant that she isn’t great because there are better options for both sides. If you want dps, someone like Junkrat works better. If you want support, healing is more valuable.
What do you mean?
Her barrier could work as zoning ult by splitting the battlefield in half. I’m honestly interested in how people would place it. As for the turrets, they not only do more damage but they also slow more. We’ll just have to wait and see until it’s on the ptr.
Oh, right. That is the Torbjorn Conundrum.
McCree is better at range. Reaper is better close. Torb gun is harder to hit at distance than McCree (but have the same damage), and the alt fire is slower than Reaper (but also have the same damage). Either hero is better than Torb in their specific specializations, but Torb have the advantage of being able to swap between long and short range between each shot.
Symmetra “healing” (shield gen) is similar to Lúcio in that its mostly useful to remove poke damage, and her “Resurrection” is a 10s-delayed Mercy. But neither of them have the same zoning capabilities of Symmetra. Junkrat is a better spammer/zoner, but he lack tools to empower his teammates in the way you do with Sym ults, turrets and barrier.
That is always the issue with hybrid versatile heroes (not OW-specific). They can’t surpass the effectiveness of the specialized heroes, but they save a team slot by giving a discount version of both heroes in a single hero.
I don’t feel like the descriptions we got thus far put her fully as a defense hero, and I think that closing the doors to any future non-healing support by embracing the philosophy that all supports should heal will be bad for the game future in general. And if they change their minds and make a non-healing support in the future, some Symmetra players will be very angry if they remember her history.
As far as we know, each turret will have the potency of two current turrets. We don’t have proper numbers, but for the sake of the argument, presume it is just that.
You place one turret behind a door to hit the enemy crossing the door. The enemy look at the turret, hit it, and break it (30 HP is still low enough that intentional breaking is as easy as it is today). You dealt damage equivalent to that time the enemy took to find your turret and break it down. Let’s call this damage “X”.
Now let’s do the same with her current turrets. You place one turret in the lower left frame of the door, and one turret in the upper right frame of the door. Just like the previous simulation, it will take some time for the enemy to turn around, find the turret, and break it. Assuming equal reaction time, by the time the first turret is down, the enemy will also have taken “X” damage. However, the second turret is still active, and it will deal additional damage until the enemy “find” the second turret and break it as well. If they are close enough, the time may be short enough to be irrelevant, but when you create a proper turret web, it might requires multiple turns and aim adjustments to break all turrets surrounding the enemy
Thus, more turrets deal more damage than half those turrets at double potency, except if they are all gathered together to the point they all break pretty much at the same time.
To judge if the rework is fun and viable? Yes, I agree.
To judge if changing all those stuff at the same time is the best course of action? Not really.
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I just cannot see how this will work. Symettra has to position an exit, an entrance and her team all have to interact with it all during the 4 seconds or whatever it is for grav?
I just don’t see this being practical. Hopefully it works…But I doubt it.
And yet this makes it less likely to be actually useful
Why ? is having your mercy press a button to escape really that hard ?
Can she target the tele and use it before the dragons get there though? Probably not.
The entrance will appear infront of her automatically the exit will be targeted like reapers shadowstep and they may allow it to be an instant teleportation so in reality all that would be required is for Sym to have line of sight and her team mates to be listening out for whatever voice line she will now use i assume her i have opened the path one and then spam the key that you have bound the interaction with it to
It’s literally just a button press ,it won’t take 5 seconds to activate after pressing the button ,just put your finger on whatever key it’s bound to and press it.
Sounds like she is going to become one of those heroes who doesn’t get picked often because she requires both aim and team coordination. Guess we will see though.
Having to press a button to activate the TP doesn’t change that though ,it only makes it so that you don’t get forced into a bad position by bad symmetras or forced into the enemy team by a troll sym.
Also ,there are heroes who require coordination and aim and are still picked a lot ,like Zarya and Zenyatta
I think the entire skill sounds flawed, but happy to wait and see how it plays out.