Symmetra was nerfed within 9 days for being 4th picked DPS

They aren’t and never will be. You aren’t forced to play any of the meta characters also

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Yeah, it’s why she shouldn’t ever be meta with her kit the way it is currently.
Nobody wants to be a Turret-TaxiBot

IDK why they can’t have different balance levels where if you’re playing on ‘Casual’ mode it’s got X set of balance rules where the characters that give less skilled players a hard time are nerfed, but then when you play in ‘Hardcore’ mode the characters that high skilled players have a hard time with because of whatever reason are nerfed. Like, I honestly wouldn’t mind or be surprised if a character like Moira who gets so much bang for her buck was nerfed at high ranks, because if you ARE a high ranked player theoretically you should be capable of getting a lot of value out of Ana and Bap right? So you have other options. It would add a level of challenge to the game and give them more flexibility with the characters that they clearly can’t figure out how to balance with both sets of people in mind.

At the end of the day if you’re not a high skilled player you STILL deserve to be able to play the game and have fun, the game is made up of a majority of bronze, silver and gold players. To act like it isn’t is to be just silly. Blizzard should be doing things that keep both camps happy.

Why does that matter if she were meta you dont have to pick her?

Meta teams don’t always win there are tons of counter strategies

Who does it better?

You mean the ones that now have 30 HP instead of 1 and can fly now instead of not being able to fly at all?

You can still do this but now even more easily and now you don’t have to throw them directly at your feet. You have options for where you want them to go. She just has less survivability now without the barrier. Fight around your team. Sym should rarely be in a 1v1 dueling situation.

Same.

And you could provide that cover by using her proton shield, no? That was a possibility if you needed to win a duel.

I mean I can’t tell you how many times I used that proton shield to protect a turret on the ground, walked with it, and made a McCree or a Soldier choose between shooting me or the turret. If they chose the turret, they would have to advance past the shield and be in my noodle range, and take time destroying it before going to me. I’d usually try and be diagonally aligned with it, so they’d have to turn to face me after destroying the turret. With the lock on beam you could usually win a duel (though you’d usually take damage) if you were able to disorient your enemy enough and make them choose between you or the turret, because if the turret dies it’s given you time to be attacking that person while they’re attacking not-you.

I think that there were often times to redeploy turrets mid-fight if you were paying attention to timing or prioritization. I would often prioritize letting my turrets set up for a second and using my shield to allow them to do it so that those turrets would be active for the rest of the engagement, because then I’m either getting ult charge or, more likely, the enemy will make the wrong call and ignore the turret, go for me/my team, and then the turret can suck them dry.

Symmetra, IMO, is all about forcing the enemy to make different and increasingly bad choices.

Talking about skill is a bit off at times. I feel a heroes skill is so often related to the opinion of them and skills of character itself is often misjudged.
Also, Ana IS getting a lot of value at high ranks, and Moira actually isn’t doing too hot. Baptiste isn’t either.

I think balancing for ‘casual’ and not is a little more difficult than pro play and just the regular game.

TBH I don’t think the balance differences would need to be that huge, I’m talking like a 5-10% difference overall. Not different abilities or anything like that, just slightly different values and cooldowns.

Like, I tried really hard to get both my wife and sister into this game. Watching them try and learn how to play around characters like Doomfist who just deleted them in a second was heartbreaking. I understand that Doomfist may not be ‘OP’ anymore like he was when he came out (when they were trying to learn) but there are elements of his kit that, for beginning or low skilled players, are extremely punishing. I don’t think it would hurt Blizzard AT ALL to consider that maybe they should have a portion of the game where characters are maybe just a little less lethal so as to give players a little more wiggle room to play the game instead of walk out, die, walk out, die, walk out, die.

Because neither my wife or sister were very enthused and the number of smurfs and everything else just ruined the experience for them.

The problem with using the photon barrier for the cover was the slowdown that happened when you placed a turret. It would make you an easy target.

I always found it much more effective to use the barrier if I needed to and hide behind cover then I could use the turrets and bait them into a disadvantage.

This is the biggest problem I played at gm with sym so the enemies typically had time to break the turrets and start shooting me again before I recovered. That’s why it was always much more effective for me to either escape or block and ability with the shield and commit with the beam and rely on my movement. The turrets would typically just put myself at a disadvantage

Redeploying turrets might be viable for some ranks where player aim is a bit less it just wasn’t a usable strategy for me

It actually would be more usable with the current turrets only because you don’t get the slowdown effect when placing them and place them behind the enemy

Statistically though, Torb is way better than Sym. Plus, area denial should be less about deployment and more about how much pressure you put on the enemy and from what distance. Torb’s turret is way better at area denial than Sym’s turrets which can be eliminated extremely quickly. The range also makes it easier to destroy and render them useless.

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Jeez it’s almost like nobody wants to be forced to play anything.

Jeez it’s like nobody in here wants Sym to be meta like we’ve said countless times, just not trash. You people always try and frame the argument wrong as a not so subtle way of expressing distaste for the character.

Look at Genjis pickrate this week in GM on overbuff. That is insane and unheard of for a DPS character. He’s in over half the games as a hero in a role with 17 heroes.

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And to me that just says that at GM people are probably able to aim at one thing, destroy it, and reorient their aim to a new target faster and more consistently than most players - and that seems fair.

To say then that part of her kit is ‘useless’ or that a strategy literally CAN’T work when, yes it can, just not if people are able to counter it, is dishonest.

Symmetra’s strategy of using her turrets mid duel did and could work, but if you were playing against someone who could aim fast and well, it was not as useful. Is that a statement that is not true of MANY characters, especially those with buildables like Torb and Sym?

I feel like you’re saying she was useless when she wasn’t simply because in your games, in your experiences, she wasn’t as useful as you wanted her to be. That just means she needed some buffs or tweaks to be better at high levels, it doesn’t mean that she couldn’t do the things I’m saying she could do, get what I mean?

edit: rereading this even to ME feels confusing lol jeeze - what I’m trying to say is that I think using turrets mid fight was a totally viable strategy, and that most likely the people at GM level are just GOOD at prioritization, they aren’t making the stupid mistakes that I, a lower level symmetra, am often capitalizing on.

That doesn’t inherently mean that the strategy isn’t useful, it just stops working once players hit a certain level of ‘good’, ergo, she’s not really as useful in the same ways at higher levels. You’d need to get… Different value out of her at GM and beyond because those players know and can hit her turrets so reliably.

Not really dishonest. I’m just saying you can be a very successful sym without using that

Actually I thought she was a bit to strong I wish they just nerfed shield gems duration rather than gutting the character

I didn’t mean dishonest like ‘ah you’re a bad dishonest person’ I meant it in the debate term, sorry ~ it’s an old lingo thing I picked up from a teacher and I forget that it’s not super common.

And yeah I agree, if everyone had a problem with shield gen they should have just tweaked it. Given it a life timer so it could only last 60 seconds or whatever, or make it like the TP so it deployed a certain quantity of shielding and then destroyed itself - though I still feel like her buildable objects gave characters like Tracer, Reaper and Sombra more purpose and value to the game by giving them other objectives to complete that would bring value to the team. Now they are flankers with no reason to flank, because separating from your team is basically asking for death.

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What would be cool if she had a Chell-esque “portal gun” teleporter that could go through walls. Now that would be useful.

It’s all good.

I just felt sym was a bit strong only because of shield gen that ability could last the entire game and constantly keep your team in advantage state. It gave sym snowball potential

Just having a limit to either duration or the number of shield it could provide would make her much more fair to fight against

And if you want to give a bit of compensation without providing almost anything just buff the cooldown of photon shield. That would be a net nerf but would feel nice for sym players

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That WOULD be cool, though probably a bit beyond Blizzard’s coding ability. I know that they have trouble with the maps clipping and stuff like that, I bet a teleporter gun would be a bit much.

Personally if I had to fix Sym right now I’d give her her proton shield back and make the current TP ability her ultimate. She gets to set up the mouth and the exit herself, anywhere on the map, and each one provides say 35 shields when you’re within 15M of it. That way if someone attacks the TP you or your team would be slightly defended while defending it, and you wouldn’t have those stupid LOS issues that currently make it useless.

Oh and give her back the noodle beam but with a flat damage, none of this charge up nonsense. Players don’t like it because it goes from tickling them to insta-killing them and it’s hard to predict or react to, if it was a consistent drain they would be more able to counter it AND it would be fair again because Symmetra would be able to actually hit things again rather than struggling to hit them with Zarya’s laser pointer.

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I like to think someone said this exact thing during a meeting where ideas were being pitched.

“Money go pocket!?”

“I like money.”

Support character that only holds the portal gun and teammates can shoot through it. That would be the big hot. I would definitely play that all the time even if I had no way of dealing damage myself

Hell if they just allowed teammates to shoot through syms portal and see through it she would become one of the coolest characters in the game. Even if it was like it is now

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Probably verbatim, followed by hysterical screeching and picking bugs out of eachother’s hair

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