What? No Sym was never a DPS

General Discussion
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Kinda long so if you’re not interested in sym or are a main you’ll probably snore lol but here are my thoughts…

I keep seeing threads and comments on how Sym was always a dps because they could focus down supports or because torb and sym happen to have turrets and he was on defense/dps. I think people fundamentally didnt understand Symmetra’s design philosophy and just flat out played her wrong. They tried to force a dps playstyle on her and then complained that it didnt work.

Let me break it down for you:

Her energy balls were made to deny area. The kills you got on them were more the enemies fault than yours. Why do you think they were so slow and pierced barriers? To deny an area and provide supplementary fire.

Why do you think her sentries were so weak, had a slow and had a short range? Because they were meant to distract, make enemies easier to hit for your team and to be used alternatively as monitors for flanks. Theyre “Sentries” not turrets. Theyre there to stand guard not to kill exactly.

Teleporter was a longer lasting rez. It was made to last through a fight. It was pretty self explanatory support ability. It also was another way she could compensate for not healing by simply bringing you back faster if you died.

Why did her sustain (before launch when she was actually good) recharge? Why was she allowed to give extra health that self healed? Because she was made with the idea of being a pseudo healer. She “healed” you by preventing damage or recovering that health if you lost your own. Say she gave 100 shields and you are a 200hp hero. You get hit by 200 damages worth of things. You survived because of sym and now you gain that 100 hp back bringing you back up to your original state. She was a healer in that sense and its why armor packs arent the same kind of support as photon shields were.

Lastly her ONLY reliable dps ability. Her beam. Her lock on beam had ramp up for a reason. She was meant to help you clean up. To back you up and support you. She couldnt easily run around and kill things because she required ramp up that would realistically come from a teammate taking the heat off of her. Even her primary was made to support.

Do you see a theme? It’s subtly. I’m remembered of a comment Jeff Kaplan had made back before the game came out. A team with a Symmetra has a higher chance of winning. She was supposed to be a very subtle hero. She was a support but didnt heal. She supported through auxiliary gameplay. Essentially buffing your potential.

Now? That probably wouldnt fly. In fact she was already a dead concept when the game shipped and she was nerfed to not gaining ult after she placed a tp and her shields were only 25. Her concept kind of never made it to live, or at least it made it in a gutted state.

Can she be made into a non healing dps through shields again? Now that role queue is a thing maybe since she cant be abused and stacked with TWO healers. Maybe, but I think the more realistic choice would be giving her an off heal to allow her utility support concept to still have a space to exist. In the world of supports having a simple heal lets you be more flexible in gameplay. but thats just my personal thought.

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If it shoots like an infantry, pushes like a frontliner, spams like a defensive, frequently positions like a flanker, spends downtime like a builder, and denies space like a defensive DPS…

…it’s a support.

I know, I know, it sounds contradictory, but… trust me.

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I dont understand lol are you disagreeing with me? I think you are?

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PREACH SISTER! let the truth will be known!

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FWIW, the original comment on her being a DPS was from Blizzard… they only put her in Support due to the Shield Generator and Defensive aspect.

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Im fine with her being a support, as long as she is not a main healer, but a utility support.

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The community decided supports must heal despite blizz pushing for non-healing supports. They decided sym was a detriment and did not want to play with her shields, which recover health while no damage is taken within a few seconds. They did not see that Sym as a support needed playstyle changes and that healing your mistakes was way more important.

Sym being a dps is better for her design kit, similar to mei/sombra. She is supportive and dps. And her ult is supportive/denies damage and allows for some more situations to happen.

If they do make old sym’s kit it should be on another hero.

Her lore does not show her as a healer. She is more of an offensive support/assasin. Taking the fight close with her gadgets.

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I am.

I get what you’re going for in this, but the theme behind otherwise disparate gameplay components, which have each since caused emergent gameplay quite outside that alleged theme, is just cannot be objectively defined nearly enough for this to be convincing.

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They were made for that but the direction the game went, they eventually were only really good for getting TP/SG quickly. Getting TP down without dying was priority.

Again here, what they were made for and their actual usefulness are two separate things. Again, they were mainly for ult charge and concentrating damage in an area, usually a choke. Scout turrets have always been a waste of turrets. Gamesense and awareness is all you really need to see a flank incoming.

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Sure. and thats kind of why sym has always been a weird hero. She’s an awkward fit in every role.

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Ah yes, I remember when I used to lift my enemies’ bodies up and throw them in the void. Everyone likes when things are clean.

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I agree that her gameplay was pretty much thrown out the window when players used her. It was probably a flawed concept from the start on Blizzards part. Neat idea but way too vague for execution.

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She was always a utility DPS. In Overwatch, non - healing supports simply don’t work. There is too much damage and the game is too fast.

They initially tried to make her a “MOBA” support. But that doesn’t fit and they knew it. Hell, they have literally said that they could just as easily have put her in defense. And what if they did? This entire Sym support argument would literally not exist. It’s all semantics at the end of the day. They can call Rein a support, doesn’t make him one.

No heals, high damage. Honestly she’s been a dps longer than she’s been a “support” (quotes intended) at this point. Nothing holds up.

We need to focus on fixing her current kit and make her a functional dps hero. You can’t turn her into a healer without gutting her. She won’t be Sym. She’ll be a different hero with the same model.

Propose a new shielding / healing support. Sym has always been characterized by trying to claim and hold space. Tp, turrets, high potential damage beam, orbs for area denial, shielding (with the best barrier in the game, mind you). You can’t have all of that on a support kit without said support being scuffed.

Semantics. If it walks like a duck, etc. She never had the kit of a support hero by Overwatch standards.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/overwatch-symmetra-defence

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Not much more so than Mei, Sombra, or even Torb and Junkrat.

She’s a utility-centric DPS. She’s not exactly alone in that regard.

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1.0 and 2.0 Symmetra was always a Support, she just needed some healing aspects.

Moving her to back to Support allows Symmetra to get aspects of her old kit (TP, Shield Gen) to return with changes. People felt like 3.0 stripped her of her identity. Well, this is our chance to get it back.

If it would interest anyone, I’ve made a rework proposal doing just this.

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She can be a decent shield buster against double

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Actually, the beam was an area-denial tool as well. The longer you stayed in Symmetra’s area, the more damage you took. And you had distractions like turrets and teleporter to take care of, preventing you from killing Symmetra easily. Her kit flowed well into one.

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It did not strip her identity it actually made her get updated with the speed of the action the game was played. Obviously blizz thought people would be on the slower side with all these high cast times. I feel current sym is pretty good. The community decided supports must heal because providing merely utility wasn’t good enough. So they moved her to a better category. If we ever get a support like the old Sym it would have to be with a new hero like how they reworked torb’s old ult into Bob.

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Correction Defense hero

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She was Support originally back at least in 2017 era.