What would Symm be in OW2?

General Discussion
31
  1. utiltiy isn’t a blanket cheque to excuse to write-off poor uptime design.
  2. “more damage” isn’t an argument when talking about issues regarding how the hero gets uptime to heal or deal the very damage you’re pointing to.
  • e.g. do you think a damage hero 150hp hero with a 1m range primary 0 sustain abilities and 0 mobility is going to have all their uptime issues resolved if their primary deals like 200dps or so? obvs not even if you give them “utility”.

what makes you think that your sym design isn’t a “rush support” design?

like if she’s not getting enough mobility for her to catch up to allies to heal them for her limited heal range, how would she not end up only being playable in rush deathball comps?

cool now that addresses the damage uptime side (somewhat). but what about the heal uptime side?

as an aside:
:eyes: aren’t you one of the people pointing to OWL usage of sym (who legit build comps and strats to specifically “mindlessly m1 all the time” essentially) to justify that she’s fine?

uuh no. barriers themselves in this game generally have pretty good utility (whether it be blocking damage, blocking enemy heals, denying los from certain effects, etc.), esp zarya’s since hers is the only one that has a cleanse side effect. again, utility isn’t a blanket cheque to write-off uptime issues and obvs that notion hasn’t been in mind when designing and balancing zarya and various other heroes.

We’ve seemingly derailed from your design to current sym so I’ll address this from 2 perspectives (current sym and your design) to demonstrate the point I want to make about sym’s uptime:

current sym:
max dps is lower than sym’s, but actual damage dealt numbers obvs isn’t the case (you can see in overbuff hero pages) because conditions to deal damage (i.e. how they get uptime) simply is worse for sym and better for zarya.

like the claim that sym charges up more consistently isn’t really true when you actually consider what she has to get that charge i.e. what tools does she have to not only reach 12m of the enemy (already lower range that zarya’s beam), but also what tools does she have to stay there long enough to get and maintain charge (getting charge is ~2.5s minimum if 100% aim)? esp when sym has to start from 0 most of the time because unlike zarya, sym loses a level upon 2s of not dealing landing primary fire ticks on enemies or enemy shields whereas zarya maintains charge for longer passively (i.e. the decay rate is a lot slower).

like very evidently 225hp simply isn’t enough. meanwhile zarya, who has much more sustain + actual abilities to stay alive in effective range to be able to more reasonably actuate value from a sustain damage weapon, doesn’t face the same uptime problems.

Hence why you see zarya be able to deal more damage stats-wise than sym despite the fact that sym has turrets oin top of weapon fires whereas zarya just has weapon fires. Now let’s look at your sym design.

Your design:
so you’re adding 2m onto primary and in terms of sustain, and not much is added on sustain (if barrier is like old barrier, it legit isn’t much sustain in effective range) unless maybe when it comes to shield gen except you’ve reduced the damage on it (i.e. making you need to spend more time in effective range to get something done with it). is sym going to be reasonably getting uptime with that? I doubt it as she’d be highly reliant on deathball comps to get that even if she’s a support.

a 100dps 25m beam would more adequately address this, but you’ve made her heal method pretty much the same which suffers a similar issue but is more focused on mobility because getting close and staying to allies != getting close to and staying close to danger.

32

It kinda is, a hero cannot have high DPS AND good utility. Imagine mei with soldier gun.

No. But that’s a massive, unrealistic hyperbole which I didn’t suggest at all.
Think of it this way.

A hero could have 5 star damage/killing potential, but 2 star utility
A hero could have 5 star utility but 2 star killing potential.

That is balanced.
What you’re suggesting is 5 star utility but negative star killing potential, negative star sustain, etc.

I meant that rush support isn’t necessarily a problem, but moira is so focused on healing clumps of high HP pool targets.

Sym can be a rush support, but she wouldn’t be an AOE healer, so she wouldn’t need to worry. Plus, we haven’t even tried this design.

How about healing scales with distance. Like beam falloff.
Something I’d like to see is like a really vivid yellow color beam at close range, but a pale yellow colour at large range. The max distance would be 25m perhaps.

No.

It’s decent. But nothing compared to syms utility is my point.

They aren’t really alike at all. Syms utility, and charge mechanic, etc is wildly different from zaryas.

A sym tping her whole team across the map gets more value than both bubbles and arguably her ult combined. But a zarya staying alive and dealing more DPS on the frontline gets more value. Etc.

33

high dps != good uptime. like even mei and sombra despite being “utility dps” all have reasonable uptime tools.

mei actually has range via icicle and wall placement range (like 35m iirc) not to mention higher sustian of cyro + 250 to compensate how her damage is lower.

sombra has perm invis + mobility so that she pretty much always has the initiative + be able to get in range often and stay there.

again, killing potential != uptime. yes my example is extreme and that was on purpose to show you a counterexample to the logic you were in fact using.

utility and damage simply aren’t a blanket cheques to write-off for poor uptime design.

like you were (and still are) saying damage/killing potential and utility can nullify uptime issues, and I gave you a design that 100% follows that principle but absolutely unquestionable in how trash it’d be.

uptime has 2 aspects:

  1. reaching the effective range (mobility vs range), and
  2. staying in the effective range long enough to get value (sustain vs burst).

and for support designs there are different uptimes i.e. heal uptime (whereby depending on the heal mechanic, may not be concerned so much about 2.), damage uptime, utility uptime if applicable, etc.

you design for support sym absolutely runs into a heal uptime issues due to mobility not compensating lower range, and possibly a damage issue depending on which solution of beam you decide to go with.

the rush support is kinda the problem. moira’s only decent in deathball comps rn because her value drops off quickly when teams that play more spread out (which will happen in 5v5 with only 1 tank + making tanks more brawly + dps mobility creep).

your sym design, who’s likely going to have less mobility, will suffer the same problem even if she doesn’t aoe heal.

it doesn’t really solve the issue. you’d still want to only really play her in deathball comps so that teammates would get the heal by slowing down. like having falloff scaling only just makes the problem only slightly less black and white, but the dichotomous difference is very much still there.

34

Honestly, I think Sym is going to be pretty much ignored for PvP. I don’t have high hopes.

I think the team will be putting a lot more effort into giving her the best of all her previous iterations and more in the PvE content.

35

And sym has her teleporter, her turrets, and she can spam from range. That’s reasonable uptime. Sure her primary fire has less uptime, but thats the same for meis primary.

Rush isn’t going anymore as long as lucio and rein exist in the game. Problem with moira is she only provided AOE heals. That was all she gave. sym will provide more.

It gives her more uptime. I’m not sure what more you want, for her to have 0 weaknesses? 25 range yellow beam?

36

you legit
did
not.

TP:
legit one of the longest down time mobility abilities in the game (10s min, can have more than 10s because if you have it up somewhere and you’re not using it, that’s also down time. and this even will be more and more frequent as the pace of the game increases). not to mention it has a 2s deployment time. not to also mention if you use it for any team tp or so, that you don’t have it for yourself anymore until you get another tp cast.

Turrets:
just because you have have a turret somewhere further away, that doesn’t equate to sym having longer range. like do you consider junkrat being long ranged just because he can leave a trap on the other side of the map and still have it trigger?

like it’s simply unreasonable to consider turrets as equivalent to a weapon fire or to be as significant enough of their gameplay to count the hero as longer range esp given how counterable they are. like are various heroes’ “range” destructible, or on 10s cd each or heck even when you put them far, they still need the enemy to actually walk past into their los to actually damage while they’re still being able to shoot you back even if they didn’t walk past them?

And the worst accusation of all, “can spam orbs from range”:
just because projectiles don’t have falloff doesn’t mean they don’t have an effective range :point_down:

like do you consider genji or junkrat to be long range just because they can spam far? are you going to go into duel snipers from long range with genji or junkrat and expect to have a good or decent success rate with that spam?
obvs no for the same reasons you don’t expect that from say reaper, tracer, sombra, bap, or any hitscan with a shorter ranged hitscan.

sym (all iterations) simply doesn’t have sufficient tools for uptime. what changed was that old syms legit didn’t have tools for it at the design level, and current sym has really bad tools for it.

and I honestly don’t see your design actually making a good improvement on that core issue, let alone all the drastic gameplay changes you’re imposing form merely changing the core purpose/goal of the hero that I haven’t gone into yet.

I doubt it considering from we’re seen so far with OW2, there seems to be a decrease in tanks’ sustain to facilitate them being more brawly and so whether if it’s viable to speed boost a rein with shield up to take the team closer is a big :question:.

do you consider a reaper sniping with his primary while all mobility abilities are on cd as uptime?

what I want foremost is a design to make sense (i.e. actually conceivably viable) first, and then we can discuss whether or not such a drastic change in gameplay design is “fun” or even reasonable as a rework for sym (this “fun” subjective side I legit haven’t even gone into thus far) as well as whether if there is any point in such a design in context of what’s already in the cast.

legit look at all the other heroes’ designs (who haven’t had historical balance issues) in how they get uptime.

  • mobility compensating low range or vice versa of longer range to compensate
  • sustain to compensate low burst so that they reasonably live long enough in effective range to actuate the sustained value or vice versa of higher burst to compensate low sustain so that they don’t actually need to stay in effective range long.

and when you consider the above principle in context of OW2 whereby teams will generally play more spread out, there will be mobility creep in both dps and tanks (tanks because they’re going to be more brawly, case in point: rein will be able to manually cancel charge, that’s going to lead to reins using charge much more for general mobility), do you honestly think that a low effective heal range support with low mobility and meh sustain is necessarily keep up with most other heroes to do their job well?

I highly doubt so.

you may think what I’m saying is “oh you just want no weaknesses”, but legit look at how various other heroes have been designed and numbered:

  • mercy despite being 15m ranged for beam has a 2s cd GA with 30m range to let her very leniently reach allies to get in range for high uptime as well escape threats. not to mention has a passive self heal on top of how mobile she is which already makes her hard to shoot at.
  • lucio is similar in that as long as he’s alive he’s always healing or speeding people around him and he’s got speed boost and wall ride speed boosts to chase down allies to ensure they get his benefit despite it’s radius and can heal himself while healing allies as well. his healing might be low but his ult provides really high burst sustain for key moments where needed and can boop to peel.
  • ana and zen despite low mobility has decent if not long range on all their abilities so that wasd movement is enough. both have self healing methods. ana has sleep to self peel or peel for others. nade for burst sustain or burst offensive (or both). zen can abuse corners well for shield regen + his volleys for ranged burst that is also his tool for dealing with flankers. and like lucio, has a high sustain ult for key ultimates to compensate low base heals.

etc.

like yeah, those heroes obvs have weaknesses, but the point I’m making here is that when you look at the designs of all the heroes that haven’t had historical balance issues, all of them have tools in their design to try and actually compensate their weaknesses to a degree. heck look at tracer: her weakness is supposedly her fragility (and it is) yet she’s been given also recall that also heals her back up. dps snipers have mobility to get angles and escape flankers despite supposedly not being all that mobile, etc.

like that’s the kind/level of “weakness coverage” we’re dealing with for the vast majority of hero designs in the game already. any new hero design will need to meet that standard to be viable.

37

Because their kits were underwhelming to compensate.

Overheal can come back but the limitations would either make it useless or the rest of the hero’s kit would have to be crap.

38

I was more thinking of what if people use the teleporter they get a temp(shield) boost of lets say for example 25

39

Putting more eggs into the team TP baskets is not the sane thing to do when the issue is that most of Sym’s impact is into said unreliable basket.

40

actually it was 5 meters

41

She needs a new ult. A hard-light disco ball that shoots lasers everywhere.

42

I’d say a faster travel speed for her turrets while they’re airborne and a slightly longer beam would probably do wonders for her. I remember really liking her faster turrets in the April Fool’s experimental.

And fix those darn bugs where your teleporter just breaks sometimes

43

We don’t know if her healing will be changed.
But I agree. Moira has her fade (-> mobility) and orb (-> range) on top of her primary fire to get value but she still struggles a lot in high mobility comps.

I don’t know why people want a healing beam for Sym. Just look at Mercy and Moira. How do they compensate for having low range?
They have mobility, survivability and abilities which extend the effective range.
Will Sym have similar skills to do so as well? No.
She would end up hunting her own team mates 24/7 because she can’t reach them consistently. Which is boring af.

And even if she becomes a healing support she should not become a main healer.

44

They think its cute for “The Queen” to heal. I assure you, if they go that route Sym will be relegated to trash forever as a Support. At best, at very best, she should have an alternate to Wall which is a healing station, that’s it.

45

I legit did. And if you’re struggling with uptime, you should consider watching some higher ranked sym players. Also don’t play her on her bad maps obviously.
Plenty of people can get value out of current sym just fine

I disagree but we’ll have to see.

No? But sym doesn’t only have one short ranged gun does she?

Ok but what more do you want? She’s going to be a survivable mid range/long range high healing support with decent mobility. What you seem to be wanting is an extremely survivable, high range, high damage, high everything support.

46

>me: explains how objectively sym has poor tools for uptime as she’s legit low in every parameter (effective range, sustain, mobility and burst) amongst the cast
>you: “jUSt pLaY beTTeR. it’S a YoU ProBLem”

I legit gave you a mathematical proof of how bad sym orbs are at range.

again, do you consider genji shurikens or junkrat primary to be long ranged just because you can spam them far? obvs not. why? because they so inconsistent at range that you wouldn’t do much at all from that far as is the case with sym orbs, just like all those shorter ranged hitscans.

ideally I’d want to remain as dps and blizz actually pulling through with making her better as a dps (orbs renumbered around being faster moving projectiles, tp betters as self mobility by letting sym herself be able to interact with it sooner unlike her team + a better cd mechanic on tp for self mobility).

with your design, she’s not going to be very survivable at all given lack of escapes, her sources of sustain pretty much is either a barrier that’d only give like 1s or so of cover at best when engaged and/or shield gen which she needs to charge up.

whether she has enough mobility in a OW2 setting is highly questionable esp given

  1. you seem adamant on around 15m effect heal range despite the mobility creep that’s coming to the other roles
  2. you seem to also want her to be switch between heal and damage beams often, which even if you did make the damage beam longer, there is still the problem that sym still has to anchor herself closer to allies to be able to heal them on demand

all in all amalgamating to the overall problem of “play her in deathball rush and actually actively deathball around her or nothing” which legit solves nothing.

and this hasn’t even gone into the fun factor yet which’d also be questionable because from the looks of it, the majority of this design’s gameplay will literally be “walk around chasing teammates or enemies with wasd and beaming them”.

1 Like
47

Because people assume that healing will make Sym as good as she was in 2.0 since she ‘‘was a support’’ then (hint: she wasnt).

48

‘‘just look at [streamer I wont name]’’ hasnt never been a really good argument.

You can mimick GM Sym strats all you want but most of them are much reliant on the player quality and coordination of your team to a point its simply not viable to expect them from randos in 99.9% of the ladder.

In the end those standards arent expected for other heroes to excel much less function, except Symmetra (and to a lesser degree, Sombra).

49

Yes. And I’m not interested in biased “reasons” which are crazy theoretical scenarios. I mean, you made it sound like TP, one of the best abilities in the game was bad. That’s all I needed to hear.

Yes. She’s mostly a close ranged hero with her TP to move her around the map. She can still spam from range, etc. What you seem to be doing is thinking of a scenario where syms played on havana (Most of your examples were in a scenario where you seem to be playing from havan 3rd point attack spawn room). Again, that’s a you problem, not a hero problem. But even still, you can spam at barriers (easily), tanks, or you can pressure snipers by throwing orbs at them.

God how many escapes do you want? Zen has literally 0 escapes, 0 defenses. Sym will have a 25m range 100dps beam with a teleporter as an escape, plus a personal barrier for self protection, and a skinny hitbox + 225hp.

50

because it is bad as self mobility :man_shrugging: like why the hell do you think OWL only plays her in rush deathballs? like if was actually good for self mobility, why is sym not played in more spread out comps+strats?

heck I didn’t even bring up scenarios at all except for orbs and turrets to demonstrate why it’s highly inconsistent to consider turrets and orbs as things to claim sym as anything but short ranged.

the simple fact of the matter is that it absolutely has one of the highest down times of the mobility abilities, and it absolutely does have a long wind up which most mobility abilities in the game simply don’t have.

just because you can give mobility to teammates, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good mobility for the user to get uptime.

Most other abilities and sym’s old 3.0 finite tp:

timeline of cd:            |-------------------------------|
timeline of getting value: |+++++++++++| ability down time |

Sym’s current infinite tp:

timeline of cd:                        |-------------------------------|
timeline of getting value: |+++++++++++|       ability down time       |

and that’s actually an oversimplified diagram because if you have tp up and you’re not using it (i.e not simply waiting for internal interact cd but like actually waiting for god knows how long to actually make use of it like with most insurance tps or the worst offender, spawn tps) that is also down time because it’s stuck somewhere else or stuck for some other purpose that isn’t needed right now.

like atm she’s not zipping around as much as you think. esp if you take into account how putting tp up purely for teammates (e.g. high ground tp for them) most likely means you not having that tp for your own mobility.

  1. again, spam doesn’t mean they’re not short ranged. again, do you think junkrat or genji are not short ranged just because he can spam at longer ranges?
  2. legit I didn’t provide a scenario at all
  3. if you need a lot of corners to hide most of the trajectory to make it less reactively dodgable for it to land, how is this not demonstrating that it is in fact not long ranged?

ah yes it’s totally my fault that the projectile is so slow that it’s so easily dodgable in most ranges despite the projectile size. silly me, let me just go into the source code and adjust that and deploy that to live. /s

ah yes and I suppose you’re going to say it’s my fault that the orb spam is actually low damage as it is
120 damage / (1s charge time + 0.25s wind down) = 96dps < a bodyshotting mercy of 100dps.
silly me :clown_face: /s

sure if you want to suicide considering they have about the same firerate as your orbs meanwhile their shots are far more consistent at range + sym’s hit headbox is legit huge.
oh silly me, I forgot, any con in sym’s numbers or kit is obviously the player’s fault :clown_face: /s

and he’s just going to do swimmingly in OW2 with

  • 1 less tank in comps,
  • the only remaining tank is likely going to be pushing harder (including possible opposing dive tanks),
  • cc (significant peel tool) is getting nerfed/reworked away for most heroes, and
  • non-supports are generally getting mobility crept

:clown_face: /s

how long would the cd be? what’s the cd mechanic? what’s the cast time? because if you’re force to have to use it to catch up with teammates all the time, you obvs won’t have it for an escape.

and again, barrier (if it works like old photon barrier) simply isn’t an escape. how old barrier wasn’t an escape was because you throw it, it blocks like a shot or 1 ability, and then it quickly flies through the threat (esp if they walked forward or used any mobility ability) and then now you’re back to square one (in danger) as no way you would’ve walked very far by then…