She benefits from the right kind of comps. Something like where she can boost Garrosh move speed to run in and throw an enemy back.
You are kind of right though. Zarya doesn’t feel that strong to me either. I don’t really think she has adequate power spikes in her talent tree. It’s like she’s a weak hero that slowly needs to gain tools to enable her play style that’s mostly dependent on her team.
When I play her I find that her only real individual power spike comes at 20… For the most part she feels too risky to play up front and very underwhelming to play poke. She needs some quality of life buffs. She has a ton of talents (4 on multiple tiers) and to me that sound like too many options for a weak hero. Condensing some of those or adding weak ones baseline should be worth testing.