Well, maybe he should watch Stevoo play Sym on stream from time to time. All of the static tp spots I know were learned from him.
I saw his visual representation of the value you get out of infinite TP vs the old one, but it only described the value you would get out of flanking for it to be accurate.
If you use infinite TP defensively, then it will always generate value when the situation presents itself (which is quite common).
Like how setting a TP from the staircase by the Eichenwalde defense 1st point bridge to the health pack mini in the security/computer room. You would farm wall by shooting through the small slit on a peculiar spot on the staircase (itâs only a few pixels in width), and once the tanks try to push through the choke, you would take your tp to the mini room and have an excellent angle of getting more ult charge and becoming a severe threat that provides lethal pressure.
Another is 1st point route 66 defense, you set a tp from the gas station mega to the bottom of the rocky ramp with turrets. Now you can pressure the payload and have a 250 hp heal on demand (because your supports often ignore you as Sym). You can safely disengage at will and return to the top of gas station or wherever. These strats work even in top 500 ladder, probably not OWL but who cares imo.
I do believe this applies to all niche heroes. Your example of Doomfist in dive is a clear one. He looks like he can be played in dive but he is not played in dive.
He is played in brawl and brawl only. He is not as good as those heroes at getting in a mind out safely but in my opinion itâs fine to only have one thing a hero is better at than others.
It was the problem with McCree before the nerfs - he was too good at too many things and thatâs a bigger problem than a hero being too niche in my opinion.
Yes, I take your point here. I would say that her 120 phat orb plus a follow up is still burst much like helix plus pulse rifle is burst.
The question did not come out of nowhere. It came from you seemingly refusing to accept Sym has no reason to be selected above any hero.
There is nothing that hard limits you from using any hero against anything otherwise we wouldnât have top500 one tricks.
Yes sorry I meant narrower niche than Doom but thanks for answering the question anyway. You chose one answer here but another answer is simply that Symmetra is a better rush DPS. I.e she is better than Doom at his own niche.
I understand you wanting independent uptime but to use your words - your example is a false equivalency.
Here comes my reason for mentioning strengths. Regardless of how much TP has been nerfed and itâs flexibility, one of the biggest win conditions in Overwatch is positional advantage and she is the only non-tank hero in the game that can give that to an entire team.
Is this worth a trade off in independent uptime IS a design choice.
You are free to disagree with it but to compare it to two snipers with one being able to only headshot is frankly ridiculous.
First off, Sym works in OWL because she has incredible potential to quickly reposition the team with her TP and high damage output however, it requires immense team work and communication.
OWL playoffs didnât show why Sym doesnât need a buff. It showed that Sym works only when her team is supporting her and that will not happen in regular comp.
It just shows that they need to buff her individual aspects and to actually maybe nerf her TP to not allow for teammates to enter it as exchange for a hero that can survive alone without needing her team constantly backing her up.
Hard facts. Last time poor Mei was enjoyable to play was 2 years ago, before they trashed her. To this day she is a pushover because of that massacre with no actual compensation
The amount of patience and respect I show to people is inversely proportional to how much stupidity and fact and logic denial they show.
I guess by your definition of what an âopinionâ is, youâd also classify the statement of âsymâs pickrate being low for years consistentlyâ as an opinion despite being fact for years.
like why do you think her pickrate has been so bad for years? why do you think so many people donât want to play her AND donât want to play with her?
could it be that the pre-requisites to making the hero work be asking too much of the team causing all that dislike i.e. unreasonable expectations assumed in balancing?
(these are rhetorical questions to demonstrate a point btw)
Iâve already demonstrated to you pretty much at the start how draconian symâs conditions for uptime are due to how unavailable tp has been nerfed to be and how her staple weapon fire has terrible numbers to not be effective in most ranges, while her sustain doesnât compensate all her lows on all her parameters, of which is highly reliant on the team to fill in those gaps for most of her match time.
and itâs clearly not hard to see how such a high ask for just simple uptime of her will mean the probability of her conditions being satisfied to even have a chance at uptime simply is low, esp when you compare to most other heroes that can get uptime much more independently.
that, is not an opinion. thatâs just logic from analysing her kit.
or maybe you just donât know what youâre saying logically implies
do please apply her infinite tp cd mechanic to any other heroâs core uptime ability and tell me whether if that completely ruins the heroâs kit or not.
e.g.
reinâs barrier now goes on a 10s cd upon being destroyed or deactivated
tracerâs blink and recall have a linked cd that both can only start when both have been used all (including all charges)
widowâs scope now goes on a 10s cd upon getting out of it
etc.
spiking up the downtime massively (to be >=10s guaranteed) of a heroâs core uptime ability is absolutely a big nerf objectively. and it definitely is trashing the hero.
do you try to find common ground with someone claiming the world is flat?
no, because theyâre just wrong.
thatâs what this is rn, except instead of you claiming the world is flat, youâre claiming that infinite tp wasnât a nerf and that how draconian symâs conditions for uptime rn simply are based on reasonable expectations.
âwhen the situation presents itselfâ really isnât all that common unless youâre moving tp around to relevant places a lot which you canât post infinite tp nerf, and you might as well have the old cd mechanic as you should be updating and repurposing to be less predictable anyways.
if I were to redraw the timelines for âdefensiveâ/âinsuranceâ use cases itâd look like this:
Most other abilities and symâs old 3.0 finite tp:
timeline of cd: |-------------------------------|
timeline of getting value: | |+| |+++| |
Symâs current infinite tp:
timeline of cd: |-------------------------------|
timeline of getting value: | |+| |+++| |
and thatâs assuming you destroyed tp upon immediately knowing you wonât need it anymore.
the down time of tp before was just âtime not really using it while upâ (<=10s) + 2s and time to next cast as always 12s (the cd time)
now down time is âtime not really using it while upâ (unbounded) +10s and time to next cast = tp uptime + 10s.
and when you factor in how much more fast paced the game has become from all the anti-static balance changes to tanks they did + shield nerfs, that extra downtime and lower cast frequency because more important as teams reposition more often.
Yes I agree. The tp mechanic can absolutely not stay in its current state. Thereâs a lot of ways they can go about it (sheâll end up being a generic killing machine though, letâs be real). If OWL is a concern around balancing TP, then they can just make it so only Sym can take TP and balance around that
Iâm pretty sure df doesnât need a team pocket to get uptime most of the match time as he actually has tools to get in and out of effective range + actually having sustain and burst to be able to compensate how much time he has to spend in effective range to get value. unlike the case for sym of which is the matter at hand.
and if you donât exclusively look at GM and OWL, df is played in general dive and sometimes not even in dive comps .
I mean⌠only if level 3 is achieved of which is a very big if. not to mention the effective range of orbs literally isnât long as mathematically shown in a linked reddit post I wrote.
again, the point was that everything she has has massive caveats, much more than most heroes to the point that their capability in getting uptime simply is terrible and thatâs a problem.
except there really is little reason to pick her. like itâs already demonstrated empirically by how her pickrates are so low all round and been that way for literally years and Iâve already shown you the contextual reasons to that fomr the earlier comparisonsâŚ
like sure, sheâs better than bastionâŚbut is that really saying much?
uuh there is when devs hard nerfs/never provide decent numbers on the heroâs uptime tools leading them to need to rely on teammates facilitating their uptime most of the match time, of which has been the problem Iâve been pointing out from the start.
except it isnât a false equivalency.
expecting 5 randomly chosen players (whom each would have random hero pools that arenât necessarily synergistic for said hero and another random layer of what they want to play which also arenât necessarily synergistic for said hero) to specifically build a certain comp, specifically play a dedicated strat entirely focused on enabled said hero, and to do so on specific maps simply is a very unreasonable expectation to hold. just like how itâs unreasonable to expect high hs frequency in the example provided.
itâs simply very unlikely for all those per-requisites to be ticked off inherently by how many there is and how restrictive they are.
like why do you think all supports have some sort of self defence, damage, escape and/or self peel capability rather than depend on the team for peels as much as sym does for general uptime? because itâs simply unreasonable to expect the team to actively peel for them essentially 24/7.
analogously, 5 team members canât be reasonably expected to actively hard facilitate 1 heroâs uptime for the majority of their match time, esp if they also need to pick specific hero compositions and need to be on a specific map to do so.
and esp when the vast majority of the cast arenât held to such a high bar when balancing them.
again, thereâs a very big difference between a design choice whereby itâs reasonable and sensible to work, vs a design choice that basically directed to making the hero just bad with unreasonable expectations.
And yet is the most killed hero in the game at all ranks, which suggests he does NOT have the tools or sustain to get in and out.
However itâs a design choice.
And you think Symmetra is not run in rush in bronze?
And my point is that every hero has caveats and trade offs which makes them unique.
Except her win rates have been the highest in the game for years. Which again says she has a niche AND IS GOOD at that niche, which you donât want to accept despite having consistently the highest win rate on ladder and being the DPS of choice for pros on some maps if playing rush/brawl.
I accept that you want more uptime but you refuse to accept she excels at her niche.
âWhat strengthsâ is so ridiculous when the data you are even referring to suggests she is the strongest DPS in some situations.
I understand those saying they want to flatten her niche but I donât understand you saying she doesnât have strengths or that âher strengths have caveatsâ when that applies to all heroes that are balanced.
I was thinking the same while watching that cr4p. Delete Sym and Mei from the game.
(that feeling when i come in with two non-constructive crticisms while above me there are two quantum scientists arguing in equations and quantum theory lenght essays. just too funny of a visual.)
So the time has come. We agree on something. You know blizzard really messed up. I was watching those matches with my friend and Im asking him how can I take these âprosâ seriously when theyre on sym and arent even aiming. bruh I remember the old days when we had Pine on Widow and stuff.
OWL died the moment Pine left. Sure hes back now but I think he didnt even get to play? Lol. Shows u alot about what the game has become⌠the most mechanically skilled player not even being used cuz it basically aint about that no more. Symmie and Mei also slowing peoples movements down so that these players who cant even aim can kill someone.
not really because his number of deaths isnât necessarily solely be sourced from a lack of tools for uptime as opposed to how dead meat df is upon being ccâed compared to other flankers or how much riskier it is for dfâs engagement compared to other flankers that have range. those arenât problems with how df can go get uptime.
and those other reasons being why his deaths are higher have more weight when actually analysing his kit i.e. he has plenty of mobility on top of a shield hp passive to compensate for his melee range, and having high burst so that non-tank level sustain is more reasonable for him to get something done.
uptime is not the issue for df as he actually has tools to go get it himself. that is much less the case for sym. hence why Iâm saying itâs a false equivalency.
I have 0 clue as to what happens in bronze to comment. but a lack of sufficiency in tools to get uptime is definitely something that impacts lower ranks.
except there has to be standards for things to be viable.
every support needs a spammable heal method to be able to compete with the rest of the supports that have it.
likewise every support needs to have at least 1 mechanism to self-peel or escape threats because no team is going to actively peel for them 24/7 esp when dive comps exists.
lower mobility hero either has range to compensate or are tanks whereby they have massive sustain to compensate. low range hero has more mobility to compensate them to get into range.
lower burst heroes have more sustain to live long enough to get value. lower sustain heroes have more burst so they can get more done in the less time they have in effective range.
and the very obvious trend here is that all the heroes (no matter the role) that havenât historically had viability issue all had this 1 thing in common:
they can very independently get uptime for their respective jobs as they followed those above principles regard range, mobility, burst and sustain.
yet sym falls outside of all that. she literally has low of everything objectively. this is not a matter of âdesign choiceâ. this is simply a matter of her being worse.
and before someone tries bringing up âbut uTiLItYâ. no. utility is not a blanket cheque to write off oneâs capability for reasonably independent uptime. not even the âutility dpsâ have such uptime issues nor even supports. they have all been designed to specifically to be able to force feed their value and get uptime for their jobs by themselves.
like if they made a hero that can only bring value on 1st of January every year and literally 0 value for the rest of the year, are you going to justify that blatantly poor design and balancing with âwell every hero has caveats that make them uniqueâ? Iâd think not.
Thereâs a big difference between design choices that have viability for the game environment vs design choices that are for and giggles that arenât realistically going to do well.
sym being balanced to have low of all those parameters leading her to struggle to get uptime themselves, contrary to the standard of pretty much nearly every other hero in the game, simply is not a mere âdesign choiceâ, itâs just balancing her to be bad.
Iâd like to point out that a niche hero is only balanced if theyâre proportionally stronger in their niche for how narrow it is.
now can you honestly tell me from her GM winrates and pickrates that is honestly the case when her winrate rn of like 53~55% matches various other heroes that are much more general than she is as shown by how those other heroes have significantly higher pickrates than the 0.6~0.8% sheâs had in the past month - 6months?
Heck Iâll even be generous to your side of the argument:
suppose that
global overall average winrate accross ALL situations for a balanced hero (niche or not) = 50%
now lets look at the most generous data points atm for sym in the all ranks tab in terms of pickrate:
i.e. in the last 3 months for all ranks, she had 0.82% pickrate and 58.01% winrate.
normalising that pickrate across dps heroes (because we have role queue), that works to approx 2.489374621% dps pickrate.
letting dps pickrate be an estimate of the probability of symâs niche occurring (i.e. portion of the game that is symâs niche), we get the following formula
global overall average winrate accross ALL situations = probability of niche x winrate in niche + probability of outside of niche x winrate outside of niche.
so lets support sym is perfectly balanced right now i.e.
50% = 2.489374621% x 58.01% + (100% - 2.489374621%) x winrate outside of niche.
which implies that
winrate outside of niche = (50% - 2.489374621% x 58.01%) / (100% - 2.489374621%) = 49.79551059% approx.
but is that actually the case right now?
is symâs theoretical out of niche winrate as high as 49.8% which is so close to 50% which would indicate that sheâs a generalist rather than a niche hero? evidently not because we all know how niche she is.
if a ânicheâ hero isnât compensating how weak they are outside of their ânicheâ with how strong they are in their ânicheâ, then by definition they simply are weak as they objectively just have more weaknesses than they do strengths overall.
For symâs case, sheâs not even ânicheâ from the design perspective, but rather sheâs just stuck with a hypernarrow niche because she canât get uptime herself as sheâs been balanced that poorly.
You explained the reasoning behind why Doom dies but the net result is what matters. He is the most killed hero, therefore he does not have the uptime you are suggesting.
This is not an argument to say Doomâs uptime needs to be changed - I donât think it does even as a Doom main. Itâs to again say itâs a design choice.
Your calculations assume Symm is only winning in her niche which is a ridiculous assumption.
She is clearly extremely strong in her niche, hence the win rate but is obviously winning games outside of a rush/brawl outside of GM/diamond because people donât religious lot play team comps in lower ranks.
Carry on with this line of thinking if you like but if you presented a more balanced view, Iâd be more inclined to discuss with you on the balance between her uptime and power in her niche.
At the moment, it looks like you are saying Symmetra is weak in all scenarios & has no strengths over and above other heroes against a backdrop of excellent winrates across all ranks and being THE comp defining pick on multiple maps in pro play.
Now youre just revealing yourself to have been my spirit animal all along.
Ive been complaining about this for years now. Any time I tried to give OWL a chance. Any time. I come into the stream, look at the heroes - Torb, Sym, Mei, Sombra. Amazing.
And I immediately know. All these supposed âprosâ are Not going to show me anything skillful or professional. Lol Its just a disaster. Rush comp could still be fun to watch if they were using Doomfist and Reaper.
Lot of skillful things they could do with doom with Rollouts n stuff. But they out here with Mei and Sym instead. They could play those 2 while asleep.
I was dead inside every time a team fight was won cuz of Meis ultimate. So much thinking and mechanical skill went into pressing that Q there and suddenly everyone is stunned for 80 seconds. Gamers.
Ill just say it like this. Imagine if these people were using McCree, Soldier, Ashe, Widow, Tracer, Genji, Doomfist instead. If those other heroes they were using werent viable. Or didnt exist. God imagine how FUN it would be to watch. This is something I saw many years ago when Pine was doing his first run. Nowadays its always just boring sym, mei, torb, sombra. LOL
Yes exactly, it feels like their games are âtoo safeâ. There is no need to make risky plays like Pine, or even flank as a flanker when you can just brawl with all 6 big bodies. Shooter game indeed.
Symmie and Mei also slowing peoples movements down so that these players who cant even aim can kill someone.
and giggles that arenât realistically going to do well.