Maybe this is where its wrong. I think she should go back to the support role and given some healing abilities of some sort. With the way her gun currently works i don’t think there will be place to her in the game after the healing nerfs. The patch that fixed her tracking issues (same with Zarya) made her damage absolutely nightmare that melted everything that moved (especially with damage boost)
I think nerfing her in the middle of Double Barrier was a HUGE mistake. She is supposed to be the DPS Barrier-Specialist, between her primary, her ult, and her ability to create crossfire through turrets and TP. But, as always, people whined about her being good in her best niche, and she was instantly nerfed. I just wanna mention she has the same damage ramp-up numbers now as she did when she was a support, but she is less reliable with that damage. They moved her to the Damage category, and when she started doing damage, people freaked out. Turrets are practically a joke now, unless you’re using all three of them at the same time; even that’s only good if they target the right enemy. TP-Bombing is still decent, but uses 3 10-Second CDs of turrets, and her TP. If she doesn’t get enough value from TP Bomb (and it’s pretty hard if the enemy is expecting it), she’s now used everything and can be run over with ease.
Because it went from balanced to suboptimal instead of overpowered to balanced. Light nerfs have never affected a OP hero so drastically.
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Considering sym has always been a suboptimal, niche pick it wasn’t weird that her pickrate decreased after it drastically increased with one bug-fix in those two weeks.
Tier 3 damage was a bit much 195dps down to 180dps is fine I’m just angry they didn’t move that 15dps to her lvl.1 60dps to make it 75dps which distributes her power more evenly.
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I want to remind you that the bug that was fixed was that the 1st tick of damage dealt AFTER MISSING by beam was dealing less damage than prescribed. i.e. the bug only made a difference if you were missing plenty, which you wouldn’t be dealing plenty of damage anyways.
What made one of the most situational primary weapons in the game prevalent was how unnerfed double shield comps being played on both sides was the best environment for primary to shine.
The biggest mistake the devs made was infinite tp. it essentially put a guaranteed 12s down time on the hero and did a complete 180 on the sym3.0 rework. Subsequent nerfs were nails to her coffin.
Sym3.0 fundamentally needs a more frequent tp whether for herself or for utility. Jeff himself said he wants OW to be fast paced → no time to bunker down for a static tp. Sym needs the mobility for her effective range. Sym had more skillful combos or strats to pull off with more frequent tps. literally infinite tp with such a horrible cd mechanic just doesn’t make sense.
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Not really. It takes a long time to get to that point under normal circumstances and comes with short range and a squishy hero, so it needs the very lethal damage to justify it. Same reason Reaper’s damage has been high, or most shotguns in range. Without it she plummeted it in her own meta precisely because she has to do a lot of work for little gain.
As far as I recall, the initial damage instance did way more damage than the following damage ticks. Pros had a name for her but I don’t remember, it was pretty funny but described the situation sym was in.
I agree. If anything it seems like Blizzard are going backwards with syms current state. She’s turning more into a situational pick than she was before the bug-fix. She should at least be able to get 6 seconds of she destroys the TP. I don’t know about you but I would prefer (as it does seem more realistic than getting 2.0 back) pre bugfix sym with non infinite tp, then balance could be taken from there on.
She either needs damage/range buffs, more hp, or a new shield gen ability or passive.
She’s never going to be viable again in her current state.
unless you’re talking about the very very early ptr bug, I don’t remember any primary bug like that.
This was the bug that was fixed:
tbh I actually can’t think of a better/more fair (for sym and others) way to implement a frequent tp. old 3.0 tp ticked a lot of boxes:
- had cd mechanic for frequent enough casts and fluid transitions
- lasted long enough for plays and to need commitment to the placement
- rewarded enemies for destroying it
It could’ve used a duration HUD element, but that’s kinda it. I’d much rather devs revert to that where we know it was pretty good rather than play balance roulette in trying to get a better cd mechanic tbh.
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Yeah it did. Her issue was not her TP at all and I don’t think I remember the reason they decided to “nerf” (some tend to call it a buff…) her TP. Making it too frequent would have it issues, that was why I was skeptical of the instant-deployed tp bug on ptr.
Aren’t you advocating for 2.0 sym to come back?
when have I ever? o.o always been on the “sym3.0 before infinite tp” side. I might have made some comments correcting people that might have gave you the impression, but certainly I’m not a “sym2.0 reverter”. she was fun, but definitely not balance healthy.
Oh, I don’t know how I got that impression. It just felt like a good portion of sym mains on the forum tend to like 2.0 far more than the current one, maybe one of your comments confused me, my bad! But I guess we do agree on how sym should be balanced then.^^
I agree that her infinite teleporter should be reverted to its previous iteration.
What I personally also want for her is also:
- Reduced heat hitbox
- Turret slow effect not being stackable with other Sym turrets (slow of a single turret could be increased without being too strong when a player gets hit by all 3)
- Recovering ammo on shield hp and not just barrier
- Changing damage stages from 60/120/180 to 90/150
The change to turret slow could make room for them to do more damage and the change to her damage stages would increase her minimal damage to be somewhat threatening while reducing her maximum damage to something that isn’t almost one-shotting squishies.
Definitely want infinite tp to be reverted though. And god bless us so that Sym 2.0 never comes back (at least not into pvp, there might be legitimate room for that in Overwatch 2’s PvE).
She’s not close range. She’s a utility coverage off dps which bridges gaps in map or tempo control.
Too advanced I know, but close range M1 is a small component of her kit. Let’s not make it the centerpoint. Too many brawlish archetypes already. Too much focus on objective splash and sustain already. Too much power creep for raw damage and hp already.
Please rip any sym demands that aren’t little QoL changes like a faster tp cd on self-cancel, or some clip/reload improvements.
Yes but that is only a certain scenario where she can charge her beam. No other chance of that happening. Also at what cost? Being in front of the entire team desperately trying to build charge because of how dangerous it is to be withing 12 meters close.
Also if she can charge up to level 2 or 3 she darn well deserves it because it is so hard to charge up. Unlike others like reaper or hanzo which can out dps her at any point in time easily.
Symm requires perfect tracking just like zarys primary beam so you absolutely should be rewarded for it if you have good tracking.
She needs a buff to her primary and secondary probably.
Maybe 1m to her primary or back to 100 ammo
For secondary either faster orbs or being able to hold her charge.
All baby steps and see how that goes.
she is close ranged and not simply only due to primary either. her orbs practically have a ~15m effective range since at that range it already gives targets ~0.6s to reactively dodge fired orbs, longer if further away i.e. really inconsistent to land no matter how good your aim and prediction are. and I think we can all agree that orb usage makes up most of sym gameplay.
like her time outside of her effective range is really excessive which is the issue, and that’s because of tp being so infrequent and root, along with low sustain and low range.
and pointing fingers at powercreep isn’t right either because even if other damage heroes get lower dps or so, they are still far more consistent and better than sym because they don’t have such internal conflicts in their kit that make them a team resource drain to do their job effectively.
yes, sym is supposed to jungle around, zone out key areas dynamically and isn’t supposed to play like a reaper battering ram or a sniper for the entirety if the game, but if you want to do well as sym, she will need to switch between various playstyle modes to meet the situation optimally and actually go out and be a damage hero more than sitting back somewhere trying to be some sort of call center operator all day. and the fact of the matter is, her conditions to actually be a damage hero are too poor.
can’t get in and out of her range reasonably independently because tp is either rooted somewhere or on cd.
can’t live long enough in effective range to do her job.
can’t do much further away where she is safer.
can’t switch between playstyle modes to adapt to the situation or positions or claim different areas because her tool for that, tp, makes you wait 12s before you can actually do that.
3 Likes
She doesn’t even need to be meta, just viable. She’s just clunky to play right now.
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15 meters is the magic number. Just that. Nothing else. Make her primary range 15 meters and call it a day.