This is gonna be quite long, I need both to vent a bit and let you all know that you can absolutely get banned for playing Sym in competitive mode.
Please listen to my story and take steps so that what happened to me, won’t happen to you too. Here goes…
Overwatch was my first fps ever and i’m an older player (30+ years old). My reflexes aren’t that amazing and my aiming is super bad. I’ve experimented a lot with various heroes. To see what I can and can’t do,and to be quite honest I suck with everything that requires aim. It’s that simple. I know that such lack of ability carries a huge stigma in the ow community so I’ve tried throught the seasons various heroes. Mostly those that required no aiming, but also some that do. I ended up for many seasons in bronze. Low bronze. No matter how many hours I tried to practice my aim both with soldier and sombra, bronze it was for me. I have been at 800sr but on average hitscan heroes never managed to go over the 1100 mark. That was my skill ceiling with the things that required aim. After that I switched to healers (not Ana cause although she’s fun, she still requires aim and quick reacting and I got none of that). With Zen I found that I was a bit better with projectiles but still nothing to write home about. I tried Mercy, Lucio all sort of healing heroes. I managed to go up to 1400 with them. And there I stayed for many many seasons playing healers and trying to improve.
At some point came Orisa so I thought why not, and gave her a try. It was horrible. I did manage to go up to 1500 and hit silver but never over that. Always around the 1500 spot. I was either too aggressive or not aggressive enough. The biggest problem with tanking in this game was that there were only 2.5 main tanks. Rein, Orisa and Winston. Tried them all. Rein was just horrible for me. I couldn’t connect to the hero at all, I was either not aggressive enough when I should, or too aggressive and thus the shield was down for too long. I lacked the discipline and focus and game sense to be that front line rein. Not to mention that for the life of me, I couldn’t land a single charge (same as with doomfist where I can’t land a single punch either, but let’s not get into that). As for winston… well that was a catastrophy. I knew what I had to do, but somehow I managed to failed doing it. As one of my -ever so kind- fellow comp players remarked “smol bren”. That was my problem. I won’t even mention all the super embarassing times when I messed up the winston jump and slammed face first on a wall, or the side of the ledge or balcony I was trying to get up to (I wish I had some ss of the comments from my team). Finally, I’ve realised that as a tank, you’re pretty much depending on your team so so much. Your healers especially. if they at any moment decide that someone else needs priority over you, that’s it. There’s nothing you can do. Your experience and enjoyment of the game are gone. I won’t go into my adventures as hog, diva, zarya and hamond cause that’s just emparassing. Thank god those happened in qp cause had they been in comp I think there would be a petition to crucify me or something.
So I went back to healers. Moira had come along and oh joy of joys. Finally, a hero that doesn’t require high mechanical skill and is quite powerful. Simple to play, easy to get a huge return from her. But more than that, a hero I had fun with. So onwards with Moira. It was quite frustrating but at that point I was all in. Genjis shouting they need healing when they were behind enemy lines, pharas hanging from the skybox commenting how our healers were bad cause she gets no heals, Reins who flanked like they were tracers, players who I’ve litterally saved from death by spending all my healing juice and a healing ball running away leaving me to die (and then telling me that really I need to learn to position myself better). The verbal abuse about how much i sucked (I know lad, I already know how much I suck trust me on that), how bad must i be to have a silver protrait (back then i had a silver protrait, now it’s gold) and be in silver still. How stupid I must be to only play Moira. I endured everything and anything. And after putting in the hours I climbed slowly and painfully at the 2000sr mark. I can tell you I have never been prouder in my gaming career (which up to that point was mmos and rpgs almost exclusively). I could finally see it, my ultimate goal not so far away from me, the coveted 2500sr mark. I could finally become average instead of being at the bottom 5%. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never go over the 2050sr with Moira. At was at my wits end. I was tryharding so intensly that I’ve ended up becoming “another ow ar$ewhole” ™. I became the thing I was hating the most. I was being ironic and mean to ppl. I’ve even recieved an official warning. That was a wake up call for me. I thought to myself, “wth are you doing here?” and so I stopped.
And then, well, then came Sym 3.0. And everything was perfect. I didn’t have to aim, I had turrets doing it for me. I didn’t have to stress to save the tank, that wasn’t my job anymore. I didn’t need to have super reflexes cause I would always spam my right click from afar. I could stay back and see everything that’s going on before my very eyes and react accordingly. I had time to think. Sure I had to practice with her a lot. Knowing where to put the turrets became a sort of an art for me. Dealing with winston and his instant turret delete required practice. Putting turrets high up to catch the phara unsuspecting felt amazing. Being on the lookout for that annoying doomfist and putting down the teleporter just in time to get out of his dive became a game all of it’s own. Encouraging the team to flank with the teleporter was great. And those few times I’ve saved ppl from a grav with a teleporter felt awesome. And it was all so very fun. I watched every youtube vid from steevo, practiced my turret bombing trying to emulate him (let’s just say that i’m 40% there, takes practice to do it as fast as he does and as efficiently without getting dissoriented but i’m getting there). And the joy I’d get from getting a compliment from the enemy team about being a good sym was a highlight for me (since compliments on my play never happened before that, only insults and more insults). I’ve achieved a 55 to 56% win ratio with Sym which i know isn’t super high, but it was the highest I’ve ever achieved with a hero and just a few days ago I reached 2370. Couldn’t be happier with myself.
Only there was a small problem. My team mates. They REALLY didn’t appreciate my Sym. Like REALLY. As a matter of fact I’ll go so far as to say that they hated my guts. Every match, win or lose, there would be one player telling me “Sym switch you’re useless” or that I’m a “Sym trash”. Every match I’d bring the info pannel and see I had gold kills and gold damage, but somehow, for whatever reason, it was my fault. Always my fault. Ppl would tell me to get cancer and die, or that I’m a sh1tty player with a gold portrait that’s gonna be forever stuck in gold because I play Sym. I’d get the french community calling me a “puttain”, the russians (oh god the russians) would just give me the “vladimyr putin” treatment over voice chat (either in heavy russian english accent or in flat out russian), and the rest of the english speaking world would encourage everyone and anyone to report me for throwing. I tried explaining to them that I wasn’t, that I was giving it my all, that sym is really and trully my best character and that I can’t aim with soldier, that I can’t kill that phara in the sky for them. I wish I could, I trully do, but I can’t and I’m sorry. I offered to heal the team if anyone was confinent in their aim, Moira was something I was semi-competent with, but nobody changed. No it had to be me, I had to switch to soldier and improve my bronze aiming otherwise I’m throwing. I’ve had my profile open, so ppl could see I wasn’t lieing, but when I asked them to check my career profile nobody did, they didn’t care, I was the bad one, I was throwing and it was absolutely ok for the team to verbaly abuse me on voice coms and in typing. On every match I’d report ppl for the abuse and every other day when i’d log in i’d get a small thank you message from bliz for making the community better and less toxic (lol). I started not joining voice chat cause quite frankly i got tired of it. Besides, another 130sr and I’m there right? I’m average, I did it, right? All I had to do was hang in there a while longer. And wasn’t I a toxic person when I was playing Moira? Perhaps this was “karma”. To be on the recieving end now. But it’s ok right? I mean, another 130sr. Another 6 wins and I can say I made it. It’s worth it. All I had to do was stay focused, refuse politely, use the block button, don’t join voice chat, give it your all. Surely your team will see your merit when you win right? WRONG. VERY VERY WRONG. See when we lost, it was always my fault (“thank you sym” and “please report our sym” and “complete trash” “this is why u are level 1000 hard stuck gold” “brain dead team”) and when we won, well I was carried, despite having gold damage and kills. They didn’t matter, as one of my -ever so kind- fellow players comment, it wasn’t impactfull damage. His was, cause he was soldier and hanzo, and everyone knows that those heroes are strong. I mean “Your overwatch” said so so it must be true. While builder heroes are bad, super bad, and played by creatures of lower intellingence such as myself. But despite the calls to report me, I was confident that bliz wouldn’t do anything since it’s not a bannable offence to play one hero over everything else (otp) right? And surely even if i was reported they’d see that i wasn’t toxic, and that I was climbing the ranks with sym so how could i be throwing matches when i was going up in rank?
well, I was wrong. And yesterday it happened. I got banned. My account was suspended for one day due to “disruptive gameplay”. Yeaps, it happened, and I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t happen when I was try harding it with Moira and being an ironic tilted d!ck to everyone. Nopes, that was super fine, i got off with a warning. But when being polite and giving it my all with Sym, an upopular character… well that can’t be tolerated. I appealed the ticket. They replied. Here is their reply to me “Penalties are not applied on accounts because of a single match. They are applied after an accumulation of many reports from many different players over the course of an extended period of time (several weeks).” So for weeks all those ppl that were reporting me, even though I was trying hard, playing my best character and being polite, mattered to bliz. The ticked ended with "In other words Evangeline, this action on your account has been fully reviewed and will not be investigated again. ". They “fully” investigated my account apparently and found that one tricking symetra was gameplay sabotage. The unfairness and injustice of this thing chokes me. I’m still in disbelief here that this happened to me. The abuse i had to endure, that was ok for bliz, playing symetra wasn’t. That’s gameplay sabotage for you.
So to my fellow players I guess congrats. You got one dangerous sym out of comp and I hope you’re really happy now. Someone has to be cause I know I’m not. I’m bitter and sad. All my patience and effort invalidated like this. I’m not sure what it is that I must do now. I’ll give torb a go I guess but not before I wait a bit to make sure the community doesn’t consider him a throw pick. He’s got a turret that can do the aiming for me. You can kinda spam from afar with him too. Maybe I can adapt, who knows. I don’t want to play tank or healer ever again. I don’t want to become that toxic person ever again and I don’t have what it takes to tank either. So I’ll just resign myself to brigitte or something. A jack of all trades, don’t have to save anyone with heals, no need to tank either. The community thinks she’s op so I won’t get reported. I don’t much like her, but who knows, maybe she’ll grow on me or something. Or maybe she’s really op and I’ll achieve my dream of being average at the game. Who knows. Still it’s a sh1tty thing that happened to me and if there’s anyone else who’s playing sym out there I hope this post helps you and you switch to another hero before you get banned too for throwing. Sorry for the super long post, I needed to vent a bit and the forums are as good a place as any. Good luck to you all.
ps - now that my ban has ended and I got in the game, I got a warning that I might be banned for gameplay sabotage if I’m not careful. I pressed ok, and then got another one. Immediately after the first one. Glad to see the system works. Just backwards, first you get suspended and then get the warning that you might be suspended. Awesome work bliz. Keep up the great work.
![:confused:](https://d1kzxbyyijk9k6.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/confused.png?v=6" ":confused:")
I don’t know man, Reinhardt is all mindgames and prediction, perhaps he could be something for you?