at this point wouldn’t be surprised if they chose the embarassement over buffing her…
That feeling when sym’s new poopy ult can be completely removed by Sombra’s ulti. RIP. More disappointment
There has never been a meta for Sym, and as long as the devs refuse to buff her, there never will be.
Her winrate being high on its own does not mean she is good. A low pickrate and high winrate means she is only good in her niche, and compared to Sym 2.0, shes worse in that niche than she used to be. This rework has failed.
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We had 2 years of ruining others ults with a photon shield, so I guess it’s turn about fair play.
Her pickrates habe stayed consistent through every meta
So idk what ur talking about
And what meta was syms meta then?
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According to everyone who plays meta, she’s part of the “throw” meta.
Eesh…
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On beta, the meta was two Genji, two Zenyatta, one Symmetra, one assorted DPS (usually Torb for armor).
She was so dominant in beta that she was overnerfed before launch, leading to the terrible, terrible Sym 1.0, that only became reasonable after getting a rework that were full buffs (Sym 2.0 had zero nerfs and downgrades).
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Overbuff is God, God is Overbuff. What Overbuff states is pure fact and inrefutable evidence of any and all data! Hail Overbuff!
Primary Fire:
*Charge Time reduced from 2 to 1.7 seconds.(Decay time remains 2 seconds).
Teleporter:
*Deployment Time reduced from 2 to 1.5 seconds.
*Bug fixes still needed.
Not true, in fact the only thing different between beta and 1.0 was her shield ability which originally gave her allies 50 shield, even then she was weak.
Sym 1.0 actually was ok until she was overnerfed the month or so before comp started, because tracer synergy. Symtracer was the old pharmercy (same w tracerzen).
Ppl said at the time it was tracer that needed nerfing, not Sym, but Blizz didnt listen.
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The splash damage on her secondary is also useless, you can’t use it as an explosive projectile if you want to be effective because it doesn’t do the flat 60 damage. You are lucky if you get around 30. Meaning you have to go for direct impacts ground level if you want to be effective. This pretty much cuts how she can be played in half and reduces the utility of her teleporter greatly.
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No, that was beta. She hit live already giving out +25 HP instead of 50, and 12s cooldown turrets.
Among other stuff, like TP being reduced from “until destroyed” to 10 charges, then 6 charges, and she no longer being able to get ult charge while TP was active (at the same time, her ult requirement was severely reduced so she could get it back quickly).
Symmetra on beta got nerf after nerf after nerf. She was in a situation similar to Mercy in current meta, where no one “liked” playing with her, but grudgingly accepted her because she was absurdly strong. That’s why Blizzard always was ultra careful with her kit, and probably why they never touched her outside both reworks for anything other than QoL stuff (like the ultimate call giving out TP charges in chat).
We have a nice compilation of her prowess in this video, for those who never played Beta Overwatch
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It’s funny… I said her pick would be the same if not worse with her rework when she was still on the PTR and people went off on me saying she’s way better. They kept saying her teleporter would change the game and how amazing her ult is. 
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iprefer when i was allowed to have that teleporter charge as it was set up on the field. I always HAD another one ready when it was all used up or killed. it was amazing.
Honestly, I’m beginning to think the biggest failure of the new rework is that they didn’t make Symmetra overpowered, so they didn’t counteract the extremely negative preconceptions people have in the first place.
Symmetra could be perfectly balanced, but it would be almost impossible to tell because there’s such a huge stigma coming into this essentially new character. No one is going to pick up new Symmetra if she’s just fine, and not overpowered, because they associate her with being bad. And this is only worse due to her win rate being lower than before, even if her new win rate is more healthy and still very high compared to other heroes. A balanced hero isn’t going to shake a stigma that’s been around for two years, which means that reworking her to be balanced is still going to fail to change the community’s toxic preconceptions.
Frankly, she needed the Hanzo treatment where the rework made her way too powerful, and then she got reigned in over a few months. At this point, though, it’s probably too late. If they buff her up to the point that she can overcome the community’s preconceptions, people are going to be upset that they grossly overcompensated with buffs, and then people are going to be upset again when they reign her back in.
I personally think that she’s very close to balanced. I think she has a terrible pick rate due to the community’s extremely negative perception and the fact that her kit appeals to a smaller audience. I expect her win rate is lower because she’s more balanced than old Symmetra (I think old Symmetra was actually overpowered, but it was in a way that was mostly invisible and useless at the pro level, so she was perceived as being way less powerful than she actually was).
Sadly, even if this is the case, it’s going to take ages for the community’s perception of her to catch up. It’s almost definitely going to take pro play in a tournament to turn some heads. In the meantime, it’s going to continue to be a challenge to play her in solo queue where she lacks the coordination to make the best of her abilities and will be on the receiving end of tons of toxicity.
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It will not happen, unless, like Hanzo, she becomes so strong that she is a must pick. Even if she gets used in the World Cup by a few teams in a few maps, doing and enabling some amazing plays, if she isn’t seen everywhere, she will still be seem as a niche pick at best. Just like Mei. And we got some very serious a-mei-zing plays in the OWL:
Hey, a fellow soul! I’ve been saying Symmetra was OP since her rework because you have a hero that some people can play:
- without communication
- without team coordination
- with some people in her team actively sabotaging her win chances (eg, swapping off tank out of spite)
- under threat of being banned by false reporting
- Extreme community ill will towards the hero in a basic level
And even with all that, she was still the hero with the highest winrate in the game in all ranks. Every other off-meta hero that lack this kind of power had much lower winrates, like Mei and Sombra.
I said it before, and I keep saying it. The only problem Sym2 had was her reputation within the community. Her kit was not underpowered, which is why using a rework to try and remove that ill will didn’t worked.
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Well, I think her kit was problematic. So much of the power was effectively invisible that her actual power and perceived power were way, way off. That’s really bad because either she’s balanced and people think she’s a troll pick or people think she’s balanced but she’s actually ridiculously overpowered.
Also, a big part of her kit had zero place in pro play or even the highest level of organized play.
New Symmetra doesn’t struggle with either of these problems. Her contribution to the game is no longer invisible or passive, her kit has a ton of power in professional/organized play, and her win rate is actually quite healthy. Honestly, if people weren’t so toxic towards her, and content creators weren’t ignoring her just as much as before, I’d be super happy, even though I think she needs a tiny bit of help still.
I honestly don’t care about pro gameplay pickrates. I understand people who enjoy watching it, but I stand in the side that thinks the game should not be balanced uniquely for their behalf.
Having a unique hero, that brings some diversity in ladder gameplay, and have zero usage in pro tier is fine in my eyes. I don’t mind never seeing Symmetra played in OWL, as long as she is balanced for ladder play.
Which brings the other point you raises…
That is a problem. A huge, huge problem, and the main source of all the negativity towards Symmetra. But since it’s a perception problem, and not exactly a balance problem (unless she was deemed OP by the devs or the community), the way to tackle that is by… educating people. Get some streamers to talk about Symmetra strengths. Get some OWL players/choches seriously talking about what they would do if Symmetra or Torb or other off-meta heroes were “required” to be played in their team. Do some educational videos like League have their Summoner’s Code.
Heck, at least make some basic videos explaining the strengths of each hero in the roster and where you should be looking to play them, like HotS do.
Any of those would help her a lot more than a rework. Especially one that was this controversial, didn’t raised her pickrate in general, and didn’t solved the issue of people being reported on sight for playing her.
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I hope you can see from this juxtaposition why pro play does matter to everyone. A big part of how the community educates itself is by watching the very best players. If the very best players think she’s trash and never touch her, that’s going to affect our teammates on ladder. People will always take the easy way out of demanding swaps instead of something that requires them to learn and adjust their own play.
Besides, for Blizzard, having one of their heroes ignored and even joked about in pro play is really bad, even if not all of their player base cares. They’re not League where they have so many heroes, you can’t possibly expect them all to see play. Plus I can also tell you that some people don’t watch pro play because their favored hero/heroes aren’t represented (that’s about 50% of why I don’t follow it).
Also, it’s been two years. I don’t think Blizzard running little TED talks to try to convince people that certain heroes are actually better than we think would be effective if two years of “she has the highest win rate in the game, bar none” didn’t catch anyone’s attention. There’s also a certain level where you have to consider how people feel in the game, and recognize it as valid; if playing with someone feels bad even though they’re not actually reducing your chances to win, that can still be a justification for change. This is a video game after all; fun does matter.
As I’ve said, I think the rework succeeded in creating a hero who is better balanced, isn’t invisible in her contribution, can be used in pro play, etc. The main thing they failed to do was to set the rework up to make a big enough splash to wash away the stigma attached to the hero. It’s so frustrating that she’s barely even mentioned by content creators and constantly written off as “still niche” even though the only “niche” people place her in is “team mobility.” You know, that same “niche” that has these same people slobbering all over Lucio half the time.
I’m hoping that with a few small buffs, she can get to a perfectly good place and that the toxicity will fade over time, and that she’ll start getting more attention… It’s irritating that it’s going to be way slower than, say, Hanzo’s rework and how it helped him. Maybe Blizzard intentionally tried to avoid that because of the frustration with Hanzo.