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The latest Overwatch Public Test Realm update went live yesterday and one of its main changes was a nerf to Symmetra and her beam. The width of her beam was cut in half and its damage received a small eight-percent nerf across all three levels.
These changes came one patch after Blizzard buffed her Teleporter, which no longer expires with time, and several patches since her beam changes. Blizzard also fixed a bug that happened to Symmetra’s beam, which was hindering a lot of her potential damage output. That fix ended up being a buff to her. Due to these changes and the introduction of another tank with shields, Sigma, players started using Symmetra more often in their matches.
Some of them are mad that she was nerfed now. They say she was a low-tier hero for over three years, and when she finally got strong enough to become a viable meta pick, Blizzard nerfed her.
“She couldn’t even have a single day in an actual role-queue game as a meta pick (since it’s still beta) because some dumb Genji mains think that not respecting Symmetra’s fully charged beam then complaining about it is a personality trait,” a player said on the Overwatch subreddit. Another person wrote in a second post that Symmetra players were “nerfed before we are ever given a chance to shine.”
While both players have received support from other people regarding their complaints, another group believes they’re overreacting to the nerf.
“You have to admit she’s OP as all hell at the moment,” another person said. “Just because she’s always been a low tier pick in the past doesn’t mean she should be god tier now. Besides the beam width won’t really affect her ability to shield break and murder tanks and the damage nerf is insignificant at best.”
Other users agreed that Symmetra is “extremely powerful” without these nerfs and that she “still is going to be strong, the nerfs are not that extreme.”
While players seem to be disagreeing regarding the impact of this Symmetra nerf, it’s clear that she’ll become more difficult to play with. A smaller beam width means that players’ tracking will have to be more accurate and doing so will reward them with less damage than they used to deal.
But there’s no need to panic. PTR updates are always subject to change if they’re either too good or bad. Blizzard will likely tweak some numbers if necessary before the same patch hits the Overwatch live servers.
