I think they should make Symmetra’s lethality higher along the lines of the other DPS heroes – make the left click damage faster, or increase the charge up rate of the right click. The most unfair moment for Symmetra was when they scaled down her beam damage when pro players started playing her in OWL.
Unlike the other DPS heroes and their OP moments (aka whose damage lasted a long time before they were nerfed), the Symmetra nerf hammer was handed down too quickly.
Symmetra’s damage was nerfed because her ultimate is a giant 5000 HP barrier, and she was being played in a double barrier comp as the “shield breaker” hero. The period where she wasn’t nerfed was this horrible shield hell where there were 6 intersecting barriers on the field at some points, with the occasional Mei wall depending on how much the team hated fun.
The role they designed her to do also enables the specific comp she’s supposed to cancel, which is… not good design, actually.
And what, pray tell, is wrong with that? A lot of the damage of other DPS heroes “shield breaks”. That’s part of what damage does.
And this game has bad design decisions before that lasted for a LONG time. They let it play out, and then do changes during the usual patch cycle.
I am interested in how would you rework her. Would you move her to the support role and how will she function as a support?
Personally I would do a radical rework.
Me personally? Instead of 3 sentries, she gets 3 zen harmony orbs. And they can stack.
Did you miss the very next sentence describing the shield hell she enabled? Double barrier is already miserable, triple barrier with a potential Mei wall is a level of torture even the ninth circle of Hell wouldn’t go near.
No other hero breaks barriers, and does so much damage while they’re broken that they also produce a barrier almost on the same cooldown as Orisa. Symmetra’s ult has to go, or her DPS has to go–since Blizzard seems to think a giant wall is a good ult, guess what they picked?
Daily reminder fully charged Symmetra dealt the same damage as base Soldier: 76.
Honestly makes you wonder why they even let her have TP if they are going to throw flags for using it.
Dude, there are OP metas in OW ALL THE TIME. So yeah, seems bad to you, but only because in your subjective judgement (aka “bad design”), it feels bad.
Like any other OP meta/hero/whatevs, better to just let it play out. That’s the way it’s been for a long time, unless it’s Symmetra, it seems. And I’m not even a Symm main, and I think it’s unfair for her.
So no, I didn’t miss it, and yes, I take note of your subjective opinion, and your exaggerated bombast about it (comparing it to the ninth level of hell, lol, sure).
That one too. They rationalize these sorts of things like lawyers, but it sounds bad to the typical player.
That could work, but the issue I have is that will she be playing back line or will she continue to need an escort to damage anyone.
At least Zen can dish out a good amount of damage from range. Same with Ana/Bap. Even though Moira has low damage she has decent range.
The orbs slow wind up and travel speed are not a reliable way for damage.
It seems the devs initially designed heroes as tools. Some were general tools, and others were more specialized. But many people soon main a hero and stick to it regardless of win/loss, sympathize with it, and want all the heroes to be the generalists with different abilities after all.
I agree on this movement. Tools with different purposes seem to add variety, but it’s not in reality. They’re usually heavily map/comp-dependent, so the character selection is more limited comp by comp, map by map, it ends up with more restricted gameplay.
All characters generalists, usable without much dis-/advantages by maps/comps, preserving their lore-wise uniqueness abilities could give the game maximal variety in gameplay without loss of the diversity of heroes.
The problem with sym is the problem of most damage role.
OW1 was meant to have 4 roles. They cut one and lost most of it’s consistency after launch.
Symmetra, torb, bastion, junk and mei should be fine as “defense”.
While sombra should be fine as offense.
What the game needed was:
koth maps: 2-1-1-2
2cp atk: 2-2-0-2
2cp def: 2-0-2-2
Hybrid/escort atk: 2-2-0-2
Hybrid/escort def: 2-0-2-2
Also better align each hero with it’s supposed role. Symmetra can be fine as defense role, but is clear that she wasn’t great as support. If was her pickrate wouldn’t be bad even if her overall winrate on both support and damage roles wouldn’t that high as currently is.
Folks these days pick symmetra on where she would excel not play it broadly, meaning she is strong. Just most of yhe maps doesn’t favors her and folks don’t pick niche heroes in general after 2-2-2 because the “limitations creating creative folks” ended on “limitations creating one tricks”.
Most folks who actually plays OW1 post RQ resort to mirror matches or main heroes or one tricks. Not using the counter system, the proof of that is that even OWL promotes that kind of behavior too. Folks just want to play broken stuff and not leave their comfort zone because they can play most matches with a few bunch of heroes and rely in a few strategies to win.
There are more than a few OWL matches where teams rotated comps to counter each other. The reason you don’t normally see this is because the coaches practice specific comps/strategies with the teams, and the players aren’t really going to deviate from the practiced plays too much. This is why you see some really big thonker plays from teams where they keep getting dumpstered trying the same thing over and over, it’s what they practiced in scrims and they’re trying to execute it properly.
One-tricks in OWL are extraordinarily rare, and they need to be Fleta deadlift levels of good for coaches to not force them to learn other heroes. A player may be known for a signature hero (sparkle on Genji or Doomfist, for example), but they won’t play those picks in every comp regardless of what the team is doing.
The problem you’re looking at is why specialists don’t do anything better than generalists, and that’s a Blizzard problem more than an OWL or role queue problem.
They already made her unrecognizable when they reworked her from 2.0 into 3.0. The only trait that stuck was her turrets, and that’s barely anything.
Zarya and Symmetra have about the same amount of similarities as Sym 2.0 and 3.0.
It’s a reputation that’s carried, pretty much.
The best comparision I can make is Janna’s two reworks in LoL. She used to be a very “sit back and shield your ADC” kind of support, and then they reworked her and forced her to be SUPER active. She ended up becoming a 1-trick monster champion who had a 65% winrate with 1 tricks. People STILL called her braindead despite everything.
And then they reworked her again recently and it only brought her skill cap up… again… and people still call her braindead.
I want them gone 
See above
But mainly…
I’d like for symmetra to be a NON HEALING utility support. I know that may scare a lot of people, but considering that Zen only heals 30 HPS… I think it’s closer to the realm of possibility than people know.
I’d like Symmetra to take aespects of her old kit back. Mainly, I’d like her old dinner plate photon barrier, and brig-esk shield she can throw to allies to temporarily increase their maximum health.
healing /=/ support
support = damage mitigation + utility
Zenyatta heals for 30hps outside of his ultimate. That is almost nothing and only outheals melee attacks. I’m sure, given the right abilities, a non-healing support WOULD work.
Overwatch players are the only ones who seem to be rooted into the idea that a support MUST heal. If you took symmetra into any other game she’d immediately be identified as a support hero. To be fair, overwatch is a different game… but again, we have Zen who heals for almost nothing outside of ult.
There are ways to provide sustain without direct healing, just as an example, converting ally health to shield health, and then allowing for that shield health to regen sooner (ex: 1 second no damage to regen instead of 3).
have you considered that people do this because they liked the old hero?
No one spams the thread with Torb posts… Y’know why? Because people LIKED his rework.
Also love this idea. Let her stick sentries to allies to give them buffs!
The crazy thing is that they have let ALL kinds of other buggy crap happen without red flags.
I don’t know why symmetra doing it was an exception, frankly, it feels like strategies like that are generally enjoyed and add a whole new dynamic to the game.
I don’t think they’ve ever allowed a team to abuse buildable placement bugs for an advantage in the middle of a tournament match. If they did in an earlier season, it was a referee error or they changed the rules because of that incident.
Like, what universe did anyone think “hey, let’s let exploits run rampant in our competitive game” would be a good idea?
I can’t find the exact clip, but in 2018 on Dorado, a Mei used her wall to boost her team over a roof on first point push. This was (facing towards attackers spawn) on the right side of the “market.”
The wall you can go over as Genji/Hanzo near the gate? As far as I know that’s a buildable location and you can get to the setup point normally.
The example that would have been better for your case would be the case where a team tried to abuse a small buildable pixel near the death pit on Gibraltar C and slide down onto a Mei wall to teleport behind the defender’s spawn. That exploit was fixed and the team that was trying to do it died each time they tried it anyway.
No,
(again facing attackers spawn)
Y’know the highground “tunnel” room on the right side, it leads to a mini health pack and a stairway, as well as the right entrance to the first point. Above that, there’s a roof that you can slide over to get behind the defense team.
Found it? https://youtu.be/9z5VRez2gHQ
Apex pre-dates OWL by quite a while. OWL has had a pretty firm “no geometry exploits” rule for a while; they told all the Doomfist players they couldn’t use any of the weird surfing exploits they use to stay “falling” off a no-walk roof indefinitely.