Symmetra is a hero where simply just one change can make her very strong. We saw how it went with the beam bug fix.
What i think she needs is adjustments to her primary fire, ultimate and teleporter
First off with her teleporter, can we just test 10 seconds? i feel like 12 seconds is way too much with infinite tp.
Her wall nerfs should just get reverted back to 5000 hp and 15 sec duration. We dont have double shield meta anymore with orisa and sigma.
Her primary fires dmg should be 70/125/180. It’s range should also get increased to 13 or 14 meters.
What do you think about these changes? I feel like Symmetra is in a okay spot, but she NEEDS something. She shouldn’t get all these changes on the same time. Just testing them one by one
6 Likes
I can think of these two:
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She needs self-sustain for someone who is close to mid range, maybe beaming shields will regen her shield part of her health.
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Being able to retrieve her turrets would be a nice quality of life change. Maybe each retrived turret will return as 1 out of 3 charges. This would allow her to reposition turrets and adjust defending positon. (sort of like Caustic from Apex Legends)
(Holy crap, thanks for 10 upvotes) 6/15/2020
14 Likes
10 seconds on her TP is still too much. They should honestly just revert it back to the way it was before they infinite buff.
I think her ultimate is fine. 15 seconds is an incredibly long time in a team fight and there’s also nothing stopping the enemy team from backing off to just wait it out anyway.
Her primary damage should be adjusted to 90/135/180. She can’t crit and has a limited range, there’s no good reason why her beam should do 60 damage for the first 1.3 seconds. I think the range is relatively okay, but if they’re going to increase it, they should make it match Zarya’s at 15 meters.
A flat buff to 125 hp/125 shields would also at least give her the ability to stick around for a second longer in a team fight. Considering how slow her kit is though, I’m not sure if that would be enough on its own or yet another band-aid like the alt-fire damage buff.
2 Likes
I think infinite tp is very good, but i think it has too long of a cooldown
1 Like
it was moreso how double shield meta hard enabled the w+m1 minor aspect of her gameplay to be the majority rather than the bug fix. if double shield didn’t happen along with the bug fix, people wouldn’t have cared about it on sym.
given the below equations and how we have >1yr data across various meta showing how old 3.0 tp was fine objectively, 10s cd isn’t going to cut it.
it’s a fair QOL change. defs not significant enough to really improve her status quo.
not enough i.e. primary is just a lost cause to invest anymore buffs than what you’ve said into and more effort should be on orbs + tp, the stuff that actually gets used most of the time and the stuff that can be buffed without crossing an OP or oppressive line.
because at the end of the day, primary is a sustained weapon i.e. only gets value when used for longer period of time. sym doesn’t and can’t get the sustain to live like within 12m of the enemy for >3s, she’d need zarya levels of sustain for that which is unreasonable to give her in her role. either it needs to be redesigned or the rest of her kit should be balanced with the expectation that it’s going to be used a lot less compared to the rest if her kit.
in fact focusing sym gameplay on primary is exactly what makes her niche and team dependent because of the above.
she lacks a good mix of effective range, mobility, sustain and burst unlike the viable heroes in the game. why she’s “niche” and “team dependent” is caused by this lack of a good mix.
2 Likes
I think it was a nice idea, but Infinite TP ultimately doesn’t benefit Symmetra in any real way besides like dropping it near the spawn to help people get back to the point faster. Even if you try to set it in the backline so you can escape with it, there’s nothing stopping a flanker (who will absolutely beat you in a 1v1 afterwards) from simply going to the back and destroying it. Then you have to wait 12 seconds to put another one down.
At least with the old teleporter, it went on cooldown as soon as you placed it, even if it destroyed itself shortly afterwards. Temporary TP had almost no downtime if you used it smartly, but there’s no room for skill expression with the oppressive cooldown tacked onto the current TP because it lasts forever unless you break it or it gets destroyed.
1 Like
Revert teleporter. Make it last 12 seconds with 15 second cooldown that starts on deploy.
Extend beam range by 3m’s.
Change her orb from a charge weapon to a fire on demand weapon with a fire rate.
2 Likes
What she needs is reverts to infinite TP and some of the double shield meta nerfs she received.
- Revert TP to temporary
- Revert turret damage from 40 to 50
- Make her Lv1 beam do 80 damage instead of 60
- Revert alt fire damage to 120 and buff the projectile speed of the orbs instead
- Revert the duration of her ultimate to 15 seconds
And there we go,Sym would be in a much better spot. Heck,just making TP temporary again would make her feel much better to play.
But Blizzard will just ignore our pleas for reverts,so we’re better off playing other games instead.
3 Likes
In order to balance symmetra properly, they need to get rid of her turrets/tp and replace them with different abilities that doesn’t require the use of teamwork 100% of the time. The fact that you can’t get value out of her abilities by yourself is what’s holding her back
I’ll leave my long suggestions out, but that turret suggestion is actually really cool; it would also be good to show the active turrets like Brig sees her available armour packs
1 Like
I’d like to see more information regarding that. Because as I heard at the time, she wasn’t even strong. She was barely viable. And sure, that’s most likely just forum exaggeration, but what was her pickrates/average damage/eliminations during that exceedingly brief time period between the bug fix and the subsequent nerf?
Because absent that, I can’t think of any single and reasonable buff that would make her strong, because everything in her kit is dramatically underpowered to the point of absurdity. It’s like everything was nerfed to make up for the power level of some other potent ability she doesn’t have.
Therefore I’d like to see some buffs, done in stages, until she is viable. I don’t need her to be “strong” in all circumstances. I don’t want her OP or meta. I’d just like to see her as decent.
That said and point made that everything in her kit is underpowered by a significant degree, I’d set up three stages of buffs. First set of buffs go through, wait three months to see how her pick rates go. If not enough movement, go to second set. If not enough, go to the third. Make minute adjustments if something close to a happy medium is found so you don’t have to go to the next buff stage or revert.
Stage 1: quicker now
- Teleporter to 3.0 or equivalent. Cooldown starts on casting, cast time reduced to 0.3 seconds to enable reactive movement and escapes.
- Secondary fire automatically charges to full - no more holding to charge. Hitting button merely fires it off just the same as hitting the button to fire off helix rockets.
- Cooldown on turrets reduced to 6 seconds apiece.
Stage 2: reinforcement
- Primary fire linked to a passive ability that gives Sym either damage resistance, shield regen, or movement speed bonuses depending on beam level.
- +50 hp on turrets
Stage 3: further still
- +3 m on primary fire
- +5 m on turret range
I chose these because most are just numbers tweaks that can be done without needing major recoding efforts by the development team (exception noted for the passive). So these can reasonably see the light of day between their other projects and duties.
If you go through all three and Sym still isn’t viable on any sort of basic level, wait until a major rework can push in some more creative things to fix her. Ideally I’d still like to see that eventually, with a heavier emphasis on her light building (which other people have made longer concept write-ups about the different things she could do for the team). I’d just like for her to be more broadly usable in the meantime.
1 Like
Revert the teleporter change, was more of a nerf to her than anything.
Sym in general needs something to allow her to stay in the fight for longer because being a 12m range, low mobility, squishy DPS hero requiring charge up time to be effective is pretty ridiculous at this point especially by DPS hero standards.
3 Likes
Turrets, probably but teleporter no. You can get value out of her abilities alone. You can do a tp bomb, where you place 3 turrets and teleport them
Her TP is perfectly fine, and the whole point of Sym is that her TP brings so many different strategies and combos.
The cooldown however for Infinite is absurdly long, that needs to change
But no one uses them because they are mindless in how to do it, and what is compatible
Lots of these are very unnecessary and OP.
.3 cast time from 2 seconds is an Absurd buff, 80 hp turret sounds like a nightmare to deal with, and just because Zarya has 15m doesnt mean Sym should have it too.
Symmetra:
- Photon Projecter charge up rate increased from 1.33 to 1
- Secondary fire damage decreased from 140 to 90
- Secondary fire no longer explodes
- Secondary fire penetrates players and barriers
- Secondary fire projectile speed increased from 25 to 35
- Secondary fire charge rate from 1 to 0.7
- Teleporter cooldown from 12 to 9 seconds, starts when teleporter is destroyed
- Teleporter duration to 4 seconds
- Teleporter range from 30 to 35
- Health increased from 100 to 150 (250 total hp)
- Turrets removed
- New ability, increase primary fire range from 12 to 22, generates shields at a rate of 25% damage. Lasts 4 seconds, cooldown 8 seconds after ability ends.
- Photon Barrier hp from 4000 to 2500
This returns Symmetra’s unique secondary fire, increases her close range combat effectiveness, and gives her an increased effective range. She retains her ability to quickly more her team across the map while removing the ability to permenantly reduce spawn return time. Her photon barrier is properly breakable, but the rest of her kit should compensate.
TP cooldown 4 seconds if manually taken down and 12 seconds if destroyed, cannot be taken down if under fire.
Primary fire restores her shields at 100% damage when firing at barriers, and 50% when dealing shield HP damage.
Right away we solve both the “Sym is Gannondorf tier” and “Double shield or dive are always meta” problems.
Those nerfs weren’t even made during double shield either, they were just random.
1 Like
She doesn’t need a damage buff and certainly doesn’t need a rework. What she needs is more consistency to her kit. Her Primary Fire is unreliable unless charged up on an enemy barrier, her tp cooldown and cast time are too long, and her turrets aren’t individually strong enough to have a 10 second cooldown.
3 Likes
Symmetra is a hero with very unbalanced abilities that quicky fall out of balance. Best example was the first introduction of 3.0, with Turret Bombs everywhere ruining enemy Zen/Mercy/Lucio’s Life.
TLDR: Small Changes can make her overpowered or wont help at all, due to fundemental flaws in her kit.
Here is what I would do, one Patch after another (depending on how good/bad she gets):
1: Health increased to 250 (100HP/150Shield)
2: Replaced Teleporter with Old Photon Barrier, Cooldown down to 8 seconds
3: Reworked Primary to function against flankers on a short range
4: Piercing Orbs
Alternative, if Teleporter has to be kept:
1: Add Shield Generator as alternate E: Gives every Teammate 50 Shields in a 25 meter radius. (Instead of 75 in 55). Cooldown: 30 seconds, lasts infinitly.
If Teleporter is used, the cooldown is reduced to 10 seconds upon destruction.
2: Piercing Orbs
3: Reworked Primary to function against flankers on a short range
4: Replace Turrets with old Photon Barrier
Note: If Shield Generator turns out too strong: Limit Duration to 30 seconds
I would prefer the first version since Teleporter is the biggest reason why Symmetra is still such a weak hero. I’m also all in for a Primary Rework since it is totally outdated since Barrier Nerfs, but I’m afraid the “CS:GO” community wouldn’t like it. Therefor, Health increase and Photon Barrier are the first ways to go.
Side Note: If Photon Barrier comes back, the Ult would be renamed to Photon Wall.