Syms balance from a high level sym main and how to fix her

Im a gm sym main with hundreds of hours on her. Iv been a gm sym main since season 7. I feel new symmetra overall is better then old sym but still far from being good, balanced, viable or even somewhat good

She doesnt fit into a team comp well. When you factor in TRASH DAMAGE you realise sym doesnt do very much impactful dps. Many high tier sym mains actually regard her as utility support. She cant fit into a team as a dps because she doesnt provide enough. But she is not going to fit in a support slot.

Symmetra is also as vulnerable as zen no joke. She is easily divable and flanked and is not scary to fight at all. Shes flimsy and weak which limits what she can do. How can she provide dps to help her team and protect the supports when she can’t protect herself?

Her best value comes from tp. The issue is that 90 percent of the time your team wont use it properly. So it only works 10 percent of the time. But you dont even get to use your tp for your team often anyway because you need it to run away because your so flimsy

Shes hard to integrate into a team, is super vulnerable and her best value is rarely ever achievable. Shes just as bad against dove but worse agaisnt deathball.

She cant shred barriers because she cant get close enough to beam the barrier because she is so vuonerable. Its like telling zen to frontline to hit the barrier. He doesnt want to be that close and neither does sym. Because shes so vulnerable she can’t really be in the middle of the fight. She doesnt want to be in the brawl.

Her primary is also terrible . Look at mei. Meis secondary fire is good at mkd range. But its not that good in closer ranges. So her primary fire covers for her secondaries weakness. It is good at close rnage but useless in mid ranges. See how meis two versions of firing cover for each others weaknesses. One excels in mid range but is bad at close range and the other excels at close range but sucks at mid range. They cover for each other. Thats why multiple versions of firing your gun exists.

But syms orbs are good at midrange but not too good at close range. Especially agaisnt flankers. She isnt going to win close range fights with her orbs too often. So you would think thats where her primary would come in. Well no. Her primary is arguable WORSE in close range and useless anywhere else. This is just bad character design. Nearly all sym mains say never to use the primary fire. You only use it maybe 10 percent of the time and thats actually a lot for a sym main because it has pretty much no use. Sure its good once charged but as I said above she cant get in range to charge it off barriers and it is impossible to charge it off heroes besides tanks ( which again she cant get near to) because you need to have a weapon accuracy of at least 60 to be able to charge it up. And btw thats the accuracy of pro zarya players. And thats the bare minimum accuracy you need.

She has glaring issues and they need to be solved

Also new sym has a worse pickrate then old sym

Right before sym got reworked she finslly broke and stsyed at a 1 percent pickrate because of shield gen and its synergy with brig

Guess what

Thats gone

So here is how to fix her

Her base damage of the first stage needs a buff

Her dps should be 75 to 120 to 180. This will make her more scary in close range while still making her balanced as remember you can only get this dps with 100 percent accuracy

Then make it possible to charge yoir beam off heroes. Dont make it easy but make it possible. Make her gun go to the next stage after 1.5 seconds instead of two

Then make her tp deploy faster

Finally give her 5p extra shields so she has an effective health of 250 sp she can live a bit longer. ( this would still be worse then old sym as old sym had SG)

Edit: apparently pharah is getting some buffs so thats ANOTHER nail in symmetras coffin. Way to kick a hero while shes down.

40 Likes

Use Sym on 2CP attacks!

Profit!

Even when the beam is charged all levels of damage get a 50% damage reduction from armor. Who has armor? Tanks. Who is the new Symm supposed to counter? Tanks. Dont even get me started on the pathetic level 1 damage.

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Its basically impossible to get it charged AND its still not that good

But shes a dps hero lul

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My biggest issue is her primary fire. By the time the damage ramps up on it, I’m either dead, low on ammo, or the enemy is able to flee. I literally barely ever use it now, except in those rare moments Rein is all on his own.

Also, her turrets are either always on cooldown, or not very effective unless it’s a 1v1 battle and I’m around them to give the enemy another target. They’re basically a mild nuisance.

Finally, her teleport. Most of my teammates don’t even have a button set to use her teleport, I find this out midgame far too often. Or they refuse to use it or don’t use chat. Or it lasts such a short time that I end up having to wait around and place a second one, in order for it to be used.

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The should use the PTR to actually test different things for Sym and let the community decide.

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If you’re using her beam, you’re using her wrong…

It has uses, but generally, orbs are where its at.

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THIS bothers me to no end. They need to add like a warning or something in red like “Your action key is unbound, you will not be able to use Symetra’s Teleporter”

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The issue when it comes to shredding barriers is mitigated by tanks. Symmetra has always required a shield tank like Rein or Orisa, that’s just more true now than ever.

A Rein isn’t going to hold his shield up in front of a lone Sym, he’s going to swing. If it’s Sym, Rein, and Hog/Zarya? His barrier is going to be obliterated. 2.0 was good at this as well, as her old beam also shredded barriers if she was able to charge it while surrounded by her own tanks.

The beam isn’t that bad. The only thing that makes it seem that way is how the first two charges are genuinely useless compared to her orbs, since level 2 has the same DPS as her orb, but as sustained damage which in OW is always worse than burst damage. But these are a matter of numbers which can much more easily be tweaked without the lock on detracting from that possibility.

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Just because people don’t user her teleporter which is the key to her kit doesn’t maker her bad, it makes her team bad.

As a Mei main who probably has Sym as a third play a lot, her (Mei’s) secondary is awesome close in… not sure why you say that it isn’t. Yes, there is wind-up time, but in an experienced Mei’s hands, it shreds with headshots. Likewise, Sym does reasonable damage doesn’t she close in with secondary as well as at range? I mean its got the same charged output of a half a Pharah rocket… with some splash…

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I agree

I said that in the post

Read the post

Doctor Fate main as well? Injustice 2?

Also you’re right 100%

No its not. Even if you ahve a barrier if the enemy decides to push into you then you as sym are in a terrible position. Do you leave zen right behind reins barrier. No because thats terrible. Same with sym

Someone did the math and found just how terrible it truly is

Search up sym 2.0 vs 3.0 it should be the first one that comes up

2 Likes

Be cool dude…no need to make the forums a worse place to be…

It’s been said hundreds of times across the forums. Lots and lots of good suggestions to tweak

The best IMO have been:
•Turret cooldown reset at death or reduce cooldown.
•Extra shield (around 50/75Hp) or a passive to generate shield via primary fire.

•Throw turret or 2.0 Photon Barrier (similar to Moira orb option) or Shield Gen/TP on the same mechanic.

•Buff primary fire. Either a cooldown that allows 2 seconds of lock on to charge/ fix the tick rate/ animation centred

•Allow secondary to pierce shields if it passes through shields but at half damage. So 60dps (given that it can fire twice as fast)

•Increase cast time of ULT and TP.

Even the inclusion of one or two of these things would greatly increase Sym’s QoL.

3 Likes

Im not cool

Im livid

Sorry if i took that out on u tho.

So, what would you change then to fix Sym, as a GM level player what is your assessment?

Her base damage of the first stage needs a buff

Her dps should be 75 to 120 to 180. This will make her more scary in close range while still making her balanced as remember you can only get this dps with 100 percent accuracy

Then make it possible to charge yoir beam off heroes. Dont make it easy but make it possible. Make her gun go to the next stage after 1.5 seconds instead of two

Then make her tp deploy faster

Finally give her 50 extra shields so she has an effective health of 250 sp she can live a bit longer. ( this would still be worse then old sym as old sym had SG)

2 Likes

Symetra was fine. It’s perfectly OK to have specialist heroes. But no we just had to cater to the crying about “one tricks”. Ironic considering that most of the people whining about it were in fact Genji and Tracer one tricks the same crowd that started the Mercy dumpster fire. This pipe dream about all heroes having the same pick rate is getting annoying…

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If their tanks are pushing your tanks then your tanks aren’t doing their job of creating space, which isn’t Syms fault. If they have something like a Bastion behind their barrier, then yeah, they’re definitely going to win the shield war obviously. I’m not saying you should be balls to the wall frontliner at all times, but saying she can’t be there at all is like saying 2.0 couldn’t be there which also isn’t true, you just have to be more selective.

And I know the math. I had full charge 1v1ing a Brig that had just finished her Rally and literally didn’t even burn through the entirety of it before she killed me, and thought the entire time that I was being too aggressive and she’d kill me for it. Unarmored targets, however, get deleted especially, with the added damage of the tanks/other dps you’re pushing with.

You can’t look at her beam as a damage source, because it literally can’t be without first fulfilling its requirements to be level 3, which definitely needs to be reverted to 1 second imo. At the very least, ramp down should be two seconds. Her old beam was 1 second up and 1 second down, so it would make more sense for her new beam to be 2 seconds up and 2 seconds down.

Even after all that, you factor in her turrets, which is what pushes her damage potential up to an actual DPS level (even though she only does 30 more potential dps as 1.0/2.0), but with her turrets and orbs, she has slightly more reliable ways of applying it. Despite this, her turrets being still so easy to mitigate while essentially holding half of her damage isn’t a great design, but you can’t really change that, and making them even stronger would make her a nightmare.

1 Like