Symmetra vs Every Other DPS

General Discussion
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In this thread I’m going to discuss why the current Symmetra rework to make her a “viable dps” is a complete flop when comparing her to every other DPS hero. In my opinion, this is a worse version of Symmetra. She even feels more like a support than she did previously.

Bastion: 595 DPS while being able to self heal. Can no longer force him to move while perched safely behind a barrier as her orbs no longer pierce enemies or barriers. Her ult can shut him down, but as with any other hero, the enemy team can just push past Photon Barrier, whereas the original Photon Barrier traveled to them and continuously obstructed their view for a few seconds.

Doomfist: There is no reason Doomfist should ever lose to Sym. He can kill her via his combo like any other 200hp hero or just Rocket Punch. Sym is no longer capable of defending herself from Meteor Strike without some form of godly ult.

Genji: While Sym was always considered some level of counter to Genji with her auto-lock, he was still completely capable of outdamaging her before she could kill him. Yes, Symmetra can two shot him with the orbs which seems easier now, until people adjust to their new travel speed, in which case they will function as they always did and mostly hit unaware targets.

Junkrat: Interestingly enough Symmetra is more capable of handling Junkrat now provided they’re both in an open space, and it is much easier to snipe Rip-Tire whereas previously you almost always had to get it around a corner. Despite this, Junkrat doesn’t have to charge his 120 damage, and he still only has to hit one and toss a mine. In cqc, he is still surperior, but overall, they function very similarly now.

Hanzo: Sym is now more effective at engaging snipers now again because of her orbs, but a good Hanzo will put Symmetra down far more quickly than she can kill him. His mobility and burst damage are surperior. His range and projectiles are surperior except in size. No point in trying to use her primary which is the case with most other matchups for Sym. No longer able to save herself from Storm Arrow via barrier.

McCree: Similar to Hanzo and Widow, there’s no reason McCree has ever had to be in Syms range, and even if he did come within her range, he has flashbang, which Sym is no longer capable of defending herself from.

Mei: Symmetra has never been able to fight Mei. Ever. There is one instance where Sym can win vs Mei, but iceblock has to be on cooldown and Sym needs to be at full charge. The same still applies, except in order to not be frozen before killing her, Sym had to throw her barrier to interrupt the freeze, which she no longer can. You can TP while frozen, but considering the 2 second deployment, you’re already frozen before you can TP.

Pharah: Sym is now more capable of harassing Pharah via turrets, and it’s more conceivable to hit her with an orb, but Pharah still remains one of Syms hardest counters. Blizzard gave Symmetra players the option of making Pharah suicide while using her ult just to remove it, which is unforgivable.

Reaper: Sym has always been a worse version of Reaper. Now she is a worse version of Reaper that has to aim exponentially better than him while having essentially the same effective range. Like virtually every other DPS, there has never really been any reason for Reaper to lose to Sym and it will be the same with the rework, albeit probably easier for Reaper now.

Soldier 76: Outranges Sym. Probably can’t outheal her orbs but can outdamage her as he always has. Little spray here and helix, except Sym can no longer block the helix. Can shut down Tac Visor until Soldier runs past the barrier.

Sombra: Continues to be another one of her strongest counters. EMP disables her ult and entire kit essentially. Better teleportation ability means even if Sombra can’t kill Sym in time, Sym can’t kill her either. Making them both the queens of wasting each other’s time.

Torbjorn: Symmetra no longer counters Torb turrets behind a barrier. They’re both capable of 2 shotting one another at either range (provided Torb has no armor which he always does), however, with Syms new tickrate, his armor packs make her beam useless, even at full charge. He also doesn’t have to charge his capability of 2 shotting or even one shotting her.

Tracer: Easier to hit orbs on Tracer and Sym still retains the ability to oneshot her via Orb->melee combo, but Sym can’t hold her orb as long anymore, giving less leeway to pull this off before having to release her orb and charge another one, which is more than enough time for Tracer to zip around, dodge the projectiles, and end her. Can no longer catch Pulse Bomb with her barrier.

Widowmaker: Can zone Widows sightline with her orbs similar to Hanzo, but any half decent Widow will win that game of chicken and headshot Sym. Again, like Pharah and Sombra, remains one of Syms strongest counters. You can TP to chase her, but she will just grapple away and kill you at range as she already does. Widow is one of the only heroes that is moreso inconvenienced by Syms new ult.

With these laid out, it is still abundantly clear that Sym is still comparatively much weaker than every other DPS just as she always has been, except now she doesn’t have an autolock that punishes an opponents lack of cooldown management or panic aim. She’s lost her capability of soft countering many heroes outside of her ult, and her guns new tick mechanic makes achieving any level of reasonable DPS with her beam unthinkable unless the enemy team is more unaware than you had to be with Sym 1.0 or 2.0.

Her 180 damage does not justify how bad she is. She never needed more damage because her gun was never the reason Sym has always been a troll pick (a status she will likely keep as she pretty much is still a troll pick). Syms issue was how easily her kit was dealt with, and now, that is more the case than ever. Less turrets that are still swept away by Winston, no personal barrier, no autolock to give the player more flexibility when having to deal with extremely close range targets that are all already capable of killing her before her damage ramped up.

Sym is more engaging to play now and has less downtime which was an issue, but that’s the only thing this rework has resolved. She is still a support, just one with potentially massive DPS that is able to eat barriers.

35 Likes
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This game is really getting terrible. They just don’t get it.

INCREASE HER RANGE IF YOU WANT HER TO BE A VALUABLE DPS! It’s not hard.

It’s virtually impossible to TRACK heros when they are 3 to 5 meters in front of you because of how close they are to the screen…

This is why midrange characters are weak against close range characters when they get close…

Widow is weak against a Reaper/Brigitte/Rein/Genji when they are close…

Same goes for Hanzo….McCree…

I don’t get why they can’t figure out the SIMPLE nuances of gaming. Close range heroes need to have a law of raw power dps for them to work if you are going to restrict them to close range damage.

Winston is close range…but he doesn’t have to hard track to get damage, because that would be unfair to the user at such close range…etc.

You give Symmetra a whopping 10 meter range…with a gun that does 60 damage?! And get this…in order for it to ramp up to heavier damage…you have to TRACK someone for a full 2 seconds? Oh the irony. Sometimes I wonder if people actually THINK before just throwing ideas out there. Stop just THROWING stuff at us and actually think it over relentlessly…

why not get insight from the people who actually played her to better understand the nuances of the character. She’s actually MORE of a support now, because her primary isn’t going to do jack knowing that the range is severely limited and it cannot output raw damage.

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Uhm.

Teleporter?

You hear “meteor strike!”

You throw your teleporter back behind safe lines.

Listen for where doomfist is sneaking around. He goes for you? Use teleporter.

He doesn’t.

Don’t use teleporter.

Tada.

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I won’t say her orbs aren’t a drastic improvement even if I don’t like the fact that they lost their piercing ability. It just feels terrible that her orbs are essentially her main form of damage even at close range now with how bad the beam is.

No team with half a brain is going to sit there and let Sym eat a barrier for max charge or just run behind that shield to kill a squishy unless the team with the Sym already has numbers advantage.

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She can actually block rocket punch by shooting a turret in front of her. Stops Doomfist dead in his track.

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Tp isn’t exactly a reaction based ability and takes 2 seconds to deploy. With DF ult speed increase, there’s really no escaping unless the tp is already up and you’re already standing on it. He doesn’t need his ult to kill Sym either.

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Which means doomfist has one second to activate his ult, get above, and accurately target the sym. Because just the locked in cast time for meteor strike is one second.

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She can already do that on live and she can block it with the tp, but slam or uppercut into RP denies that counterplay completely, so that’s not a good argument.

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I disagree with a fair few matchups that you’ve written. Sym will be fine imo, if anything I’d be worried about her being too strong.

I can only really see her working in double support comps because of Hanzo’s power level though.

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Give examples

20 cha

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It amazes me how people don’t understand how strong the new sym can be.
She won’t shape the meta like brig but she’s going to have a big impact if she goes to live untouched from PTR. That pesky grav + drangon strike everyone is crying about? Tele the whole team out of it. Her tele is basically still an ult every 10s, it’s nuts, especially the things that can interact with it.

Right now with the first tick “bug” (assuming) where she can wave on and off her target to increase her damage (like old winston m1 tapping) because the first tick damage is higher. If that goes through, her damage is broken. If not (hopefully) she still deals a crazy ammount.

The turrets are basically invisible until they start zapping you.

The new ult is a bit underwhelming but with the rest of her kit, she’s still way more of a threat than before.

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The tick bug has been fixed which created the larger issue of needing pinpoint precision in order to both gain full damage (without a barrier or tank to shoot at) and the increased tickrate makes her damage is negligible vs armor. I watched Steveos stream earlier. He was tracking a Brig perfectly with half charge and didn’t even penetrate her armor.

TP out of grav isn’t reliable. Sometimes the TP doesn’t place where you’d expect it to and maybe 2 people will get out of the grav, but one or more people will undoubtedly stay in it, meaning the grav will likely win the enemy team the teamfight anyway.

The utilities it can provide and what can be sent through it are gimmicky at best and people will adjust to it eventually just like they’ll adjust to the orb travel speed (which like I said, will end up serving the same purpose of catching unaware people with a 120 burst). And no, her turrets aren’t invisible. Mine are shot down all the time if the enemy Sym turrets don’t get the midflight anyway. Again, gimmicky and will eventually be adjusted to by the playerbase.

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People seem to be giving the TP way too much credit. Use it to escape during the fight? You have to set it up which takes 2 seconds it’s basically the equivalent of using Reaper’s shadow step in the middle of a fight (no one’s just gonna stand there and watch while u set up your TP). Also considering that most teams focus fire when a grav goes off, 2 seconds is too much time for a TP set up. At best the TP has to be set up before hand and away from enemy eyes.

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Lets be real, her hitbox is somewhere inbetween the size of zarya and moira. It is very forgiving compared to most heroes attacks. Maybe for sym mains who are used to not having to aim it will be harder at first, but it is still going to be easy.

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With the tickrate increase, not necessarily. As I said, I watched Stevooo with a mercy pocket for quite a few seconds, and even while pretty much being completely accurate, he couldn’t even break her armor. She won the fight after the Mercy died and had full health.

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So she gets to do half dmg vs armor, many heroes are already in that position, use alt fire vs armor then.

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But she’s not bad. Having played her on the PTR, I think she’ll be just fine with these improvements.

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Then I’m assuming you’ve not played the current Symmetra enough.

If the majority of Sym mains including the most notable Sym main all agree that she will retain her status as a trollpick, then that’s probably what’s going to happen.

Her altfire is better. That’s about it.

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I want to agree with you but I cannot. Not because she wont be troll pick, she still is weak - close range, lack of real mobility, lack of self sustain, 200 hp. People will adapt and stomp her harder than now. Buuuuut her alt fire isn’t only thing that is better about her. On defense during set up teleporter will be crazy useful. Or during attack on Volskaya whole team flank. There will be maps that she will be good only because of teleporter. With right protection

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She needs more range. Way more range on her Primary Fire. This will fix everything that is wrong about her at the moment. Maybe an extra Turret wouldn’t hurt. :wink: