Sym's TP needs attention to make her viable ( LOTS OF VIDEOS)

CHANGES:
Deploy time reduced from 2s to 1.5s.

Interact radius increased from <1m (?) to 2-3m with faint blue circle indicator.

The teleporter now ignores railings and will always spawn under Symmetra’s feet. The teleporter will not self destruct under any circumstances, and will be pushed if colliding with terrain, exactly as B.O.B. is.

Optional changes:
*Range increased from 25 to 30-35
*Duration increased from 10s to infinite.
*The particle effect showing the direction of the exit pad is now more prominent.

Rationale:
Symmetra struggles as a DPS hero because she has no instant damage. Turrets take time to travel and activate while remaining destructible. Secondary fire requires a wind-up time.

For a utility DPS hero (you may prefer the term “gimmick” hero) to be viable, their utility needs to be strong and reliable. The teleporter, due to its plethora of placement glitches, self-destruct glitches, minuscule interaction radius, and slow set-up, is neither. The reason to pick Symmetra over ANY other DPS hero is her teleporter. It absolutely needs to be strong and as bug-free as possible if she’s to see any play besides as a taxi servant to another niche hero.

My proposed changes would make the TP much more team-friendly, as teammates would be able to better gauge when they’re in range of it. They would be able to access it more easily, not worry about it expiring after they go through it, and they would have a better idea of where it goes. The Sym player would have more play options for it as well, and fixing inconsistencies would make teleporting objects, such as sentry turrets, more consistent.

The only DPS heroes who are easy prey when jumped should be heroes with excellent long-range killing potential, ie snipers. Sym isn’t one. Right now she’s as vulnerable as a typical support hero when jumped on because, unless she happens to be near a turret nest, she does 60dps as a 200HP squishy. She has no panic button / steroid / defensive ability / on-demand escape etc.

In a fast-paced game such as Overwatch having to spend time wrestling with the TP’s deployment, the chance for it to spawn wrong, or worse, destroy itself, is completely unacceptable.

Here are a few videos showing the glitches and problems plaguing the teleporter, linked at relevant timestamps for your convenience :slightly_smiling_face: :

I know I make a lot of Sym posts, but I’m passionate about the character. She’s my favourite by far and to see her with such glaring flaws that could be easily addressed is extremely frustrating. It’s almost as if it’s a lack of awareness of these issues, a lack of care, or a fear of making her not F-tier. I just want her viable. (Not meta, viable.) This thread encapsulates what I think are her most significant flaws, and from my experience talking with Sym mains much more highly ranked than I am, they agree. I am going to to my best to keep this thread alive until it is noticed.

Symmetra was one of the original 12 heroes announced in 2014. She had 2 reworks and is still hated by the community at large because she is simply outclassed and heavily countered by many heroes. She deserves better.

EDIT: adding additional videos as they surface below:

53 Likes

I agree her Teleporter and Reapers movement is way to unreliable to use effectively in or even out of battle.

7 Likes

Fixing the placement logic would definitely help 2 characters and would be able to smooth out whatever else they use a similar system for in the future.

3 Likes

The teleporter definitely needs to be more team-friendly. You have to practically scream at people to use it and they still probably won’t.

I don’t entirely blame them, since you have to stand right on top of it and if it’s behind you, good luck finding it. Also trust issues RE: not knowing where the exit is.

6 Likes

Then you sometimes have the opposite problem where teammates are too trusting and jump to use the tp even when it’s meant for turret bombs. When they die doing that it breaks my heart. It’s like Alfred saying “you trusted me and I failed you!”

4 Likes

symmetra needs a lot more to be made viable than her primary.

im lazy to retype it but heres two threads were it talked about it

1 Like

I just want the damn TP back in the killfeed or restoration of the “my Teleporter has been destroyed” voiceline.

You can’t even hear enemy gunfire colliding with it anymore, which was extremely useful information for deciding whether to TP back and contest the person trying to destroy it or whether you should just run because whoever is destroying it might destroy it as soon as you come through.

All in all, not knowing who destroyed it is more disorienting than I anticipated.

3 Likes

Oh, is that what happened? The kill feed indicator was patched out? I thought it not showing up in the feed was a bug that happened when it self destructed.

They did patch out it destroying itself showing in the killfeed, and the patch before the most recent one removed it from the killfeed entirely. Idk why, I don’t think it clogged it up in the least.

lol they changed it again, last time I hecked her primary fire on gamepedia it was 64 128 192

1 Like

needs to be 0.5s to be viable. Otherwise it can’t counter any ultimate or be useful to the team to move into or out of bad situations.

having setup time be 0.5s is enough to make it extremely valuable to her and team comps.

This is a major issue doing so little damage against enemies that can kill her in 2s puts her at a huge disadvantage with no mobility or health or defensive ability.

3 Likes

Honestly it’s fine at 2s. 0.5s removes almost all counterplay to TP. At the moment, Bastion, who has the highest DPS in the game, can destroy TP before it’s active, but even his damage calls it close.

Meanwhile, 0.5s would make turret bombs almost impossible to react to or do anything about for a large amount of the cast. 1.5s is the least it could be and even that’s pushing it.

Pretty sure that can be easily fixed by lowering its health.
Currently Syms TP can’t be used for counter-play which is the bigger problem.

But there’s already heroes that can destroy it before it’s active (Pharah, Junk, Widow, Bastion etc), so lowering both health and cast time creates the same problem, but it just happens more quickly.

It can be used for counterplay, but it’s not the only element you need to counteract, say grav. And that’s exactly how it should be. It shouldn’t be yet another basic ability that counters one of the most powerful ults in the game.

Besides, faster cast time wont make your teammates take it, and we both know that’s the truth.

It really can’t, unless you Type in General chat,
“Please don’t shoot us I need to place a TP that takes 2s to spawn.”

Considering Deflect, DM, Ice Wall, Shield, Sleep, Hook, Flashbang, Hack exist
It shows how underpowered it is compared to other existing abilities.

3 Likes

The last four are actually more unreliable for stopping grav, because I’m not sure Zarya can actually be stunned out of her ult.

DM, Deflect, TP, and Ice Wall are IMO the only real counters to it (unless you count Wraith and Fade). That’s enough. I’d say I escape at least half of the gravs I get caught in and always place TP for teammates that get caught, people just don’t use it.

If theres a barrier in front of you in the grav, you usually have ample time to set it up. It’s fine imo that it can only be considered a soft counter, because realistically, Syms barrier is also a soft counter. She has two. You can monitor the enemy Zarya like you would monitor the enemy Rein for shatter, and catch grav on the wall if you use it to split Zarya at the right time.

Well, I think it’s high time grav had a consistent counter so I’ll respectfully disagree with your position. I don’t consider photon barrier much of a soft counter at all, since the most powerful combos with grav (shimada ults, rein/brig swinging) totally bypass barriers.

In addition, using deflect / dm to counter grav requires very good prediction and reaction and luck.

Zarya is super strong and meta, even moreso with the armor nerfs. Sym is not particularly strong and is the complete opposite of meta. IMO it’d be good to add another facet of counterplay, esp if it gives a severely underused character more of a role. It’d open up team composition flexibility too, as having Zen/Lucio wouldn’t be an absolute must against grav combos.

Symmetra counters nobody and is countered by many. Let her have this.

Plenty of otherwise powerful ults are easily countered by normal abilities. Sym’s tp also has a relatively long cooldown so the enemy Zarya can also play around that.

2 Likes

Teleporter shouldn’t even need an interact key and auto-lock would help her a lot.

Perhaps, but DM/Deflect difficulty is right up there with catching Grav on the shield, I feel most Sym players simply don’t look for that tbh. More often than not they will wall after the grav to try to save everyone, but if they’d targeted Zarya with it just one second earlier, you could make her whiff and despise you for the rest of the match. The follow up ult doesn’t matter if you stop the initiation ult.

I disagree she counters no one, as her turrets are a nightmare for many heroes (Reaper is a good example). As for being heavily countered, lemme ask you this: If your team swaps to counter Syms counters, what counters Sym then? The answer is nothing. Put a Bastion with her and Winston/Pharah become unplayable. The shield the Bastion undoubtedly needs shuts down ranged options. Anything is easy to counter if it’s by itself and you are playing said counters.

That’s a problem in and of itself tbh. I don’t think it should be this way. Even if I did, buffing TP solely to counter grav would still have very strong unintentional side effects and those are the major reason I feel it’s cast time will never be touched. Y’all are asking for a DF.

What I mean by that is he got so many buffs before the bugs that made him unplayable were fixed, then he immediately became a nightmare.

Fix TPs bugs first, then we can worry about whether it truly needs buffs.

At least we can agree that fixing tp bugs and inconsistencies is definitely the top priority when it comes to looking at Sym, regardless of any balance changes.

1 Like