Symm 3.0 Feedback from a Masters perspective.

This is an honest opinion. It will be biased in nature and somewhat contradictory. Keep your salt to yourselves. Thank you.

The rework was mostly a success I like the concept you’re trying to push for blizzard but I’ve got a few issues. I’m going to both praise and critique as we move forward.

The Primary fire

Having 70 ammo with the ptr setup is nice but I would like you to test 85 as it’s easy to get through. The damage changes are great but potentially higher than they need to be. Being able to charge off of shields to replenish ammo is an interesting concept. This change is underutilized partly due everyone picking what they please on PTR. whilst that’s irrelevant the real reason for its lack of use is the cqc issues I’ll address later on.

The 2 second Deceleration rate is healthy. With live symmetra, the sudden 1 second drop off completely negates the effort it took to close the gap between a vastly more mobile hero pool that we would need to flank upon. Any player worth their salt (pun intended) would know better than to walk within 7 meters of symm. If you get caught by an immobile indian, screaming OP will not justify your misplay.

Currently however the left click is presenting little value when compared to the rest of the kit on the ptr. With the loss of the lock-on ability, and increased charge time, it’s now more practical to just throw orbs like a walking pharah and tap left click to finish the job up close. Opting to just use her primary I would find myself lacking the same impact when compared to spewing orbs consistently in a teamfight. Aiming aside, the gun itself lacks real impact on its own. The only exceptions to this would be flanking or waiting desperately for a shield to appear in front of me. The tick issue and exploit isn’t helping matters either, being that the only way to get value from left clicking was to utilize the exploits.

To remedy this there are a few options that come to mind; Adjust the impact of the orbs, make the beam act more like moira’s/ reintroduce lock-on, or change the charge rate and damage numbers. Orbs we can come back to later, for now let’s go into the charge rate. Put symply, level 1 should take one second to charge. Level two 2 seconds. The same would apply to deceleration. Additionally you need to revert the tick issue when charging up. There’s enough threads talking about it already so I won’t talk about it here.

With the reimagining of the teleporter, the base level cooldown issue on live servers is removed. Implementing this one two change on ptr would of course require you to address her damage output. For now you should test it with current ptr numbers but seek to wind it down another 5-10 per level if it becomes overbearing. To clarify an earlier comment, I do think the two second cooldown from level 2 works better for symm but I had current symmetra in mind, not ptr when making that statement.

Now let’s get into the moira and lock-on portion that I’m sure a lot of people reading this would of rolled their eyes at. Whilst I would like the lock-on to return, it isn’t necessarily needed with such a loaded kit already. Which is why I’m opting more for the moira approach (Visually). Once LoS is broken and the cross-hair snaps off the model, you will need to retarget. In this way the beam is more forgiving without leaving you hanging or being oppressive. Displacements, barriers, etc would also force the retargeting of the beam. It would also make the transition for symmetra players easier. I haven’t heard anyone complain about moira’s right arm since her introduction.

Part of what made symmetra unique and at times, more viable, was the lock-on. Again, I wouldn’t be against it returning but also believe it isn’t a requirement for a healthy Symmetra. The new beam acts as midway point on ptr between zarya’s and moira’s respectfully. Visually I would prefer it to look more like moira’s. This would be both more aesthetically pleasing whilst providing accurate feedback for the snap mechanic on targets.

Part of the reason for the fallout occuring in /r/symmetramains is due to the symmetra close quarter combat change. However negligible the difference of opinion maybe, most would agree that part of the original charm with symmetra was controlling a given area. Then microwaving them down if they got too close. The microwaves broken blizzard. The primary fire is being overshadowed by the rest of her kit.

The orbs

With the current state of the new primary this is the only thing you’ll need when fighting anything not a tank. The speed and damage increases are great, which is part of the reason the primary is getting overshadowed. What you need to do in order to rein this in is;

Reduce orb damage slightly

Adjust the speed so that it scales with the charge animation

Increase the release animation at full charge (personal preference)

Remove exploding orbs and revert back to sheildpen

Basic orbs deal the same damage as her base primary. That in itself is a big issue. Then when you tack on the splash why would you waste time aiming? Going so low as 45 for the base level would be an ideal start and would deter people from just mindlessly spamming thanks to the reliable damage output and speed increase. The one two charge I mentioned earlier for the primary would further encourage people to use it over orbing it up. It’s called alternative fire for a reason, right now it’s being treated as a primary. If one does venture to charge fully then a fully chargedl orb followed by a few quick rmb taps will eat most squishies. Not healthy game design.

The speed increase is awesome but the base orb speed needs to be dialed down, having the same speed for all charge levels means you’ll never need to fully charge up the orbs most of the time. Basic orbs should move closer to the live orb speed (no lower than 1.5x live speed) and scale up in tandem with the damage. This will fix the power creep and abuse of symm’s alt fire.

Part of what made the penetrating orbs practical was the lower speed at which they moved. Modulating different orb speeds would help keep things unpredictable when shutting down pushes. Another big thing for me was the way the fully charge energy ball animation finished before casting. It might just be the way you’ve animated RMB on PTR but it feels like orbs release from the animation half a second faster. If we’re weaving around corners, prepping to light someone up, that extra half a second matters. The faster animation for charging is fine just return the frame duration to what it is on live.

Finally the penetration. ( ͡◉ ͜ʖ ͡◉) I left this till last as it would be easier to relay my thoughts to you with the aforementioned introduced first. Having penetration orbs at current ptr speeds would be obscene, regardless of whom they were on. Which is why scaling the speed, and dropping the damage were necessary points to bring up first. The explosions have introduced damage creep into symmetra’s build. Further driving us away from symm’s original character we fell in love with. There’s far too many explosions in the game already, and not enough penetrating abilities. No one likes dancing at choke points and contending with multiple barriers and a bastion/torb cheese setup which is why pen abilities are mandatory to interrupt that pulse.

I’ll talk more about how symmetra manages momentum when we get to the old PB for now we need more tactical ways to interrupt the flow of battle and literally cut the cheese and halt the march. Juggling the enemy with slow moving orbs that go through barriers added to the mind games one needed to play in order to succeed as symmetra. She only functioned as a bait and switch hero, there was no other way to effectively play her given how limited previous kits have been. Now with the added mobility from the reworked teleporter, that play style can be amplified but a piece is missing. After running a strawpoll to see which version of symmetra’s orbs people prefered it would appear I’m not alone. You can view and potentially add to the results here.

https :// www .strawpoll. me/15913947/r

The new teleporter

Effective, efficient and fun. Gives symm the extra layer of utility she desperately needed with the inclusion of mobility she previously lacked. This new level of mobility has also been extended to other vertically challenged heroes. That being said, I don’t like its implementation. It is a little awkward to use. The F key input shouldn’t apply to symmetra upon casting. Reusing yes, but casting no. This change would make the initial interaction more fluid and practical when you need to escape/engage. Completely removing the backlog should you need to tp whole teams out of danger. It would also mitigate her vulnerability when casting.

There’s also a bug with very top of her teleporter when sending sentries through it. I’m yet to test if the results will be the same with other transferables. I’ll update this part with gifs later on. A really nice touch is the minigame that comes from lining up transferables through the tele. It’s been a lot of fun. Postman symm anyone? Beyond that TP is fantastic.

Photon Barrier - OLD

Whilst I do enjoy the addition of the reworked tele, losing the old PB is a big deal for me. Replacing the old barrier with tp invites season 1&2 survivability issues that were previously addressed. Regarding her ability to get in close and personal when required. What’s more is that it removes part of the skill that went into symmetra. As follows the shield lets you; better manage the tempo of battle, deny key ults and abilities, create space for herself and her team to push, and win out barrier wars. Dialing back a tad, being able to shield and go into 1v1 situations enhanced her viability not only on defense but also on attack. Which was part of your original plan to see more symm outside of defense point A.

The capability to block skill shots and ults with the right timing was part of the charm that attracted a lot more people to pick up symmetra than you were previously used to. As a season 1 symmetra main myself, it was a welcomed amplification to the play style I was seeking with her. The only thing I would change with it is being able to hold down the casting button to reduce its speed when travelling forward. Think of the interaction like mercy’s glide and GA.

Alternating shields with your anchor tank was a viable tactic. Holding on to it waiting for pharah to ult, gave us a reasonable response to an otherwise oppressive counter. Having this additional shield gives rein/risa more space to breath, so they can focus on the consistent and ever present threats, whilst you took care of the immediate ones.

Developing the timing to counter and predict shatters, flash bangs, dva bombs etc were amazing. To a lesser known extent, if you shielded between an enemy lucio ulting and his teammate, the teammate behind your shield would not get the benefit if timed correctly. All that depth to an otherwise flat kit(preworked symm) just disappeared overnight. Its for those reasons I’d like to see it return in some form as a standard ability, or as part of a SG change I’ll mention later on.

Photon Barrier - NEW

With the aforementioned, it is indeed possible to do all of that with the new ultimate.It is also rather impractical and somewhat linear in its application. Blocking flash with it being one use case for its impracticality. The old photon barrier allows you to control interactions within a larger playing field. Being able to choose the trajectory and having more control over damage interactions. With the new barrier you lack that depth with the 2-D shield. Now with its increased ult charge requirement, you also need to wait to flip a coin and slap it across a wider area.

The real issue between these two shields is this; managing momentum and proactive vs reactive shielding. With the old shield you could better manage the pulse of battle as it unfolds, it allowed for more dynamic interactions. With the new shield you need a reasonable amount of game sense to properly utilise it. That is not a bad thing it does however remove some accessibility for first time symmetra’s and those of a lower skill rating. You need to be constantly keeping tabs on the enemy team and know what they plan to do before they do it.

It is less forgiving in its application. With all that in mind I’m not totally against its position in the game, in fact I do enjoy it. My issue is with the lack of control when shielding that comes with the PB change. Admittingly having both barriers would be over tuned.

Removal of shield gen

When I was first writing this my initial thought was “why can’t i just tp to place gen then rejoin the team” but now I’m not totally convinced it needs to return. At least, not as it is on live servers. Places like katya’s or the first defenders spawn on rialto were great spots but being away from the team for such long periods of time put symm in a bad place. It did so for several reasons, the major one was being absent from the teamfight for so long. Even so, running this new tp with the SG would make for some new and exciting interactions in new areas.

Part of my theory as to why this was removed is your unwillingness to address any placement issues that may come with the SG&TP interactions. That was made evident with the recent fiasco regarding invisible walls destroying both SG & TP. Whilst I’ve broached the subject, there really wasn’t a need to make platforms destroy them either. That spot above r66 spawn 3 was golden . numbani offstage, anubis and horizon spawns were also not necessary changes but I digress.

At times the 75 shield was enough to swing fights that otherwise were not winnable. Without the need to apply shields, the new global ultimate now does a better job at shielding than SG ever did. One final minor point about playstyle. With the changes to TP and removal of the SG the capability to jebait tracer/ whole teams to go on a scavenger hunt has changed. TP baits as they were called was a fun little mini game that forced the enemy to divide its attention. This tactic can be more consistently implemented with the ptr version of TP but it has been less practical to do so from my testing thus far. Just like spawn camping or sparing baby D.va, this was another way to effectively stagger team pushes.

I have a suggestion that would both improve the experience of utilizing the new PB and return the SG in one swoop. Make the ult buildable again. Instead of applying shields outright, let the gen create a shield dome around its location within a given radius. The use case would be the same as the ptr PB, but would come with less shield hit points and a recharge rate. With a cooldown of 8-12 seconds after the shield hits 0 before it begins to recharge.

With this we can still recreate the minigame to force flankers to divert their attention away from the fight. This change would also retain the behaviour of the new PB without losing its impact whilst adding that much needed depth for sky battles. Going further this might be a little OP but if the gen dies whilst the shield had hit points, it would grant those within the radius a 75 decaying shield over several seconds. As for the nature of the dome shields, it would only grant protection on the dome’s edge just like this new PB does.

Despite my earlier comment regarding teamfight absence, this issue has been addressed with the reworked teleporter. You can reliably take a step back to drop the SG off then return as if you were never gone in the first place. With the sentry update, your team will cope better without you for those precious few seconds. Moving on.

Sentry Turrets

I was pretty skeptical to the changes prior to play testing. For the most part this portion of the kit has been a huge success. Like the teleporter though, its not without issues. When attempting to send sentries over long distances they can easily clip onto passing structures. From what I’ve observed this is down to the edge of the reticule touching a wall you weren’t aiming for. This has led to some unsatisfactory results. The reason they clip onto unwanted surfaces is down to the fact they are targettable mid-air. I’m not suggesting you remove this ability to target sentries, instead reduce its ability to interact with nearby elements. This is a minor issue but an ever persistent and unwelcomed one.

With the new behavior of sentries its become a little irritating to place them within close proximity to ourselves. Making the previously effortless job far more taxing paradoxically. There are places on every map where this is present but for the sake of time I’ll focus on kingsrow point 3. I’ll start with this. As you enter onto the 3rd point, you’ll notice two sets of pipes either side of its entrance. Previously we could place turrets within its body at two seperate locations. Now they no longer able to enter them. It’s not a matter of abusing the environment with the sentries popping out through the model, there is legitimately space for sentries to be placed inside. In the first defenders spawn you can throw PTR turrets through the fenced off area, why can’t I cast sentries into these pipes? Moving on to the payload route.

Underneath the walkway, where you have those cross sections that make up the underfloor corners of the healthpack room, not all of them are easily targetable. With live Symmetra you can stand near or crouch and place sentries there without issue. PTR symm instead clips onto a few of these whilst catching the payload route for the majority of them. Effectively applying a subtle nerf to symm on this part of the map. If we go closer to the end of the map, the casym also has issues. Before I could crouch on the dip and stick sentries on the lowest point of the HP room protruding south. Now if I were to attempt the same on ptr it clips the dip. I can only get sentries down there when aiming from the point. If a blue post requests it I can provide other areas on other maps where these issues are present, however most of these would be remedied by my first sentry request to reduce the hitbox as far as LoS casting is concerned. To alleviate close quarter casting issues you need to reintroduce a visible sentry UI. Preferably for all ranges however it’s only really needed within a 10 meter radius. There are several ways you could implement this;

Holding down shift brings up the UI and releasing casts the sentry

Press shift then left click to release sentries just like you do on live

Enable a toggle option to turn on/off either one of the above (depending on which you implement)

Practically speaking the third option would be the best one, giving players the choice to either blindfire or be more accurate with deployment. A 4th sentry would be nice but also not required. My only argument for a 4th sentry would be to cover flank routes without losing control on the main assault. With all that out of the way I’m pretty pleased with the new play styles these flying sentries create. Since you’ve made it this far I’ll share two sentry tricks I’ve found already.

Fire an orb throw a sentry. If the orbs were slower it would be more effective. Treat this animation like you would charging a full orb on live followed immediately by sending out photon barrier.

Firing a sentry at the second teleporter will cause it to send the sentry through the first. Once it passes through and reaches the second teleporter again it passes through the visual until it hits a wall. Imagine the literal telebaits you can pull off with this.

TL;DR

Primary

Ammo clip is quick to get through consider testing upto 85

Reloading off of shields is interesting but underutilized for several reasons, some not listed above.

2 seconds charge system would be great for live symm. Instead make it 1 second charge between level 1 and 2. Keep the 2 seconds for level 2 to 3. Deceleration included.

Lock-on returning would be nice but not needed if the primary tick rate was fixed

Without proper protection like zarya, the primary leaves symm exposed to danger similar to seasons one and two.

Give the interacting visual a makeover similar to moira’s. At times it’s not always clear when your gun connects.

The microwaves broken blizzard.

Couldn’t make space for this above but occasionally the left click sometimes refuses to produce a beam at all. Usually happens when swapping from spamming orbs.

Alt fire (The ptr primary)

Its too fast, slow it down a tad.

We don’t need another pharah, revert back to shield pen orbs and its damage. There are meta game aspects this change would remedy.

With its high speed and damage output, there is no need to ever use primary fire.

Add the 0.5 second delay back onto the end of the animation before firing orbs.

Have speed of orbs scale with the charge duration of the orbs to avoid power creep and pharah syndrome.

At this time, 76% of the 200+ people who took the strawpoll are in favor of shield pen returning.

Teleporter 2.0

Brilliant concept to create new opportunities for every hero, not just symmetra.

Input is clunky and unnecessary but I understand why its implemented.

With the input, make it so symmetra is teleported instantly upon casting but would need to input to return.

Fix the bug where sending sentries near the top ⅓ and lip of teleporter won’t send sentries through.

Photon barrier old and new

Its removal from a standard ability changes how symmetra behaves in a team fight. We’ve lost the capacity to dynamically respond to immediate threats as they occur, whilst also losing the means to properly manage the tempo of engagements. Since you moved the PB to ult it loses a lot of its usefulness and becomes less practical by proxy. A 10 second moving shield that can deny a 360 space is far more useful than a line symmetra draws in the sand.

Shield gen

Reworking tp and removing the gen also makes TP bait strats harder to pull off. On both a micro and macro level, having a buildable ult diverted flanker attention away from the teamfight. We’ve lost a key part of what made symm effective despite the flaws in her live kit.

The gen needs to return. Instead of applying shields outright, let the gen create a shield dome around its location within a given radius. This way it fixes the ptr PB issues (to a degree) whilst adding some strategy back into symmetra’s new kit from her old one.

With Live ult options, symmetra was away from the team for too long to be effective. With the new tp and this adjusted gen, she’ll divert attention in multiple locations and won’t ever be too far from a fight.

Sentries

Was skeptical, but mostly pleased with the changes.

If the edge of the crosshair lines up with a wall I’m aiming past, the sentry will clip onto it.

Reintroduce the blue sentry when setting up turrets. Make it a permanent feature or create a toggle option for its presence of shift. Holding down shift then release to create sentry or press shift then left click to release are both worth considering for this.

There are several places on every map that no longer interact with sentries the way they do on live. There aren’t clipping issues with map elements present on live, and as such these minor map nerfs should not be present.

Creating sentries closer to symm is now harder to do that it was on live ironically. Please address the prior points to remedy this issue.

Give us a 4th sentry.

In summation. Overall the rework has been a welcomed success but like most things is not without its flaws. I’ll update this gifs, screenshots or videos where appropriate when I feel like getting around to it :3 Feel free to discuss or even challenge what I wrote above. I had to rewrite this a few times because the team kept making changes to symmetra. With that, I’m going to the PTR to try and steal Jasmine from you first time symmetra DPS mains.