😡 Why Sanjay (Symmetra 3.0) is Not Symmetra and Why You Should be Angry

[Nibelung-1264]

Apologies accepted.

@GladiatorDGN-1997

Although, it is worth a try before drawing a conclusive opinion on it.

Usually, yes. But I wrote a huge rebuttal on why it’s not really a good idea to “shut up and wait for PTR”:

@Nibelung-1264

After Geoff give us a tasty and meaty update on Blizzard’s plans to Symmetra 3.0, a lot of Symmetra players are expressing their criticism on those plans, and a few forumites are getting tired of all the Symmetra talk, and usually resort to the phrase in the title.

“Just wait and give it a try before saying she is ruined”

While I agree with the spirit behind it, there is three major issues with this argument:

Tl;dr: We are giving our feedback by talking about how we feel about it, Blizzard’s history show us that once things are in PTR they rarely change, and asking people to stop discussing a matter they care about is rude.

@GladiatorDGN-1997

Imagine the stupidity you could do with the new Teleport! Sure, backcaps are going to become a lot harder, but since when have they been viable? The new barrier seems like a cool idea, that could be brilliant when properly executed

Definitely, all ideas are cool, and individually, I don’t mind trying them out and see how many new options they will open to us (except for orb, that was a dumb change).

My (and OP’s) major complaint on the topic is how they are changing everything on her kit at once. Pretty much the only thing that will stay will be her turrets, but they will change enough in so many aspects (placement, area coverage, damage, resilience, stash size, etc) that saying the ability is equal is like saying Sombra and Tracer guns are equal, and mentioning both have 120 DPS as proof.

Imagine if they gave Genji his Dragonblade as his only weapon (nerfed to be balanced, of course), his shurikens were a short cooldown ability or alt fire (think like Doomfist hand cannon), removed his double jump, his dash would only be active during his ultimate, and deflect would cover a larger area as have a increased duration, but no longer send the bullets back to the attackers. But during his ultimate, he would become a super ninja, have increased speed, double jump and dash back, and his dragonblade would deal more damage.

That is how I felt when I read about Symmetra changes.

@GladiatorDGN-1997

I feel that Symmetra will be much more viable and usable.

I hope to be wrong, but I feel her TP will be much more situational than people are expecting. For instance, if her team already have good mobility, they don’t need the portals to reach high ground.

We don’t know how long the TP lasts, or its cooldown. So, before that, we can’t really say how much mobile this will make her team. If she is able to spam portals every 4 seconds, this can make for an hectic fight where people are switching sides very often (imagine crossing from one high ground to the other mid-fight in Anubis or Numbani).

But if the cooldown is more akin to Mei’s wall (another vertical mobility tool), it will mostly be used like Reaper’s Shadow Step, a reset position button, not something to be used mid-fight. Then we get back to the point that if her team don’t need a stepladder to reset positions, she would be much more useful by having her occasional photon barrier.

Ditto for the wall. We lack a lot of numbers before we can decide if its a good ultimate or not. If the wall is permament until destroyed/replaced, and can be cast multiple times (ie, placing a wall don’t prevent you from earning ultimate charge), that is amazingly strong. But if it is on a time limit (like Supercharger) in addition to being able to be destroyed, or if it prevents Symmetra from earning ultimate while the wall is up, the difference in value is very different.

@GladiatorDGN-1997

This new Symmetra overall, imo does what the older one did quicker, but requires more work, practice, and management on the Symmetra’s part.

I disagree on all aspects of that affirmation. But, again, we need more solid number to back any of those declarations. But what we read so far points to the opposite: she have less turrets, her orb is much more spammable and require less thought into each orb, her gun is “solid” DPS all the time thus requiring a bit less caution on approach (knowing when to flank so her gun/step sounds are masked by the battle itself is a major aspect of current Sym), and her ultimate will affect the whole map, instead of the limited range of TP/SG (if TP is too far from the point, its useless. SG need to be close enough to give its bonus to teammates, but far enough to be hard to break).

The new TP and Photon barrier are both situational picks in different areas. To me, they sound like lateral changes, not buffs or nerfs. It’s just different.

The only thing that distinctly requires more “work and practice” is the fact that she will have to aim. And as I said before, I think aim is severely overrated as a “good skill” in Overwatch, unless you play something like Hanzo, McCree or Widowmaker.