〽 Sym 3.0: worse pickrate than 2.0, winrate DOWN 7%

General Discussion
569

Overwatch is a game with a serious lack of information from official sources. The in-game tutorial is a joke, there is no standard official source for a lot of game numbers (damage, healing, cooldown, etc), and there is a ton of misconceptions going through hearsay in the community that it’s hard to even get correct information if you are not testing stuff yourself, or checking reliable external sources.

TED-talk style videos would be a nice improvement towards informing their playerbase. As the HotS spotlight videos show, you don’t even need to scream damage numbers in those videos. Pretty much only showcase every ability in use, its intended use, one or two basic ways to use it, and then in the end the intended way the hero is supposed to be played, and what are their strong and weak points.

That is regardless of Symmetra situation. Overwatch need to teach their players better, or at least provide raw numbers in a hidden webpage, so we can at least point an official source for them.

I understand why the words of pro players carry more weight to the community in general than the words of RandomJoe#1264. That’s why I suggest using them to do some random brainstorm, so your average player also start thinking about it.

E-sports in general is a different beast, and I like that more and more people are enjoying them to the point even big corporations are investing heavy money into it (OWL finals in ESPN is huge). But just like I live in Brazil and I don’t care about soccer, I can play Overwatch and not care about OWL or Contenders.

I like Sym3 as well. While I personally didn’t really connected with her like I did with Sym2, I still have fun while playing her.

My gripe with the rework is mostly with how people that enjoyed the unique playstyle of Sym2 have no hero to fallback, and how it destroyed the accessibility aspect of the character, and lots of disabled people that literally could only comfortably play Symmetra, were left with no other accessible hero to play.

We will know when Torb and Bastion reworks arrive on PTR. If your theory is true, both will come underwhelming as well. Especially Torb, which is another hero that is severely underestimated and is pretty much one minor patch from being perfectly balanced (reduce his head hitbox).

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570

Her winrate is down because she is less of a niche pick… so its going to 50% which is normal for a non situational pick.

571

That affirmation have no weight if its not accompanied with an increase in pickrate. Her pickrate is the same in competitive play, but her winrate decreased. What this points out is that she is still as niche, but got worse in that niche.

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572

I agree that they could do more, but I also sympathize with them wanting to let the community define the game themselves. It’s two different ways to approach game development, and I don’t mind too much that they by and large let the players figure it out.

In fact, I think one of the most toxic things in the game, the ridiculous obsession with hero swapping and hero choice in general, came from people taking something Blizzard said out of context and then treating it as gospel. In response to people suggesting removing hero swapping, Blizzard said it was core to the game. People have taken that to mean that it is the sole driving feature of Overwatch and that all problems can and should be solved by hero swapping. I can’t even remember the last time I experienced toxicity that wasn’t about someone’s hero choice.

Just imagine if Blizzard said more about how to play the game and people took it out of context and treated it as gospel. :weary:

To be quite honest, I connect with new Symmetra better than old Symmetra. She was 100% my favorite character both before and after the rework.

Also, there are other heroes who are accessible. Reinhardt, Winston, Mercy, and Moira can all be played with zero aim. Many other characters can be played with very minimal aim.

If anything, the least accessible thing in the game is Pharah’s existence, since defeating her requires someone on your team to have pinpoint aim. If you get a bunch of people who rely on projectile prediction like Junkrat or tracking with Tracer/Symmetra, you’re just out of luck.

Well, they may also learn from the Symmetra rework that doing a rework and landing it as a bit underpowered can backfire, too.

Possibly. The other explanation for her old inflated win rate was her situational nature (I still think she was just invisibly overpowered). Now that it’s gone, her win rate would be more normal, and it has been. But it’s still very strong. I don’t get why people are freaking out about the win rate so much.

Pick rate does not indicate how niche someone is in gameplay terms. Pick rates are driven by meta, popularity of the hero, how broadly appealing the kit is, etc. In my games, I find Symmetra to be applicable in almost any situation and in almost any team comp, and really the only time she’s notably worse is against Pharah.

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573

To be fair, 3.0 plays quite a bit differently.
Players had tons and tons of time to learn 2.0 and all its quirks. 3.0 only just started. And she’s much… trickier (aka more annoying) to play now. I’d say give it another month before we start pulling WRs and PRs out as evidence that 3.0 is worse. Let’s give people some time to git gud.
I mean, she is worse. Period. But we can’t fairly use playerbase statistics to back that up just yet.

574

There is bunch of people in the thread I linked that said exactly that, and I recommend you to read it. We, abled people, often ignore how much stuff we take for granted regarding motion control.

Tl;dr: There was more going into Sym2 accessibility than simply the autolock gun, and those heroes don’t provide that.

That happens in HotS and League as well, and you can’t swap heroes in those games. Some people just don’t want to play with or against certain heroes, but instead of learning new fun ways to kill those heroes, they rage in chat.

Also, you combat misuse of information with more information. If you have half dozen videos saying that Widowmaker works better if she have sight of the point instead of fighting on it, people might eventually stop asking Widow to jump into the point while its already being contested.

That was me on Sym2 as well. Pretty much only a good Pharah, Mei or Tracer could force me to swap out of Sym in pretty much any map.

IMO, that’s also why it was infuriating for people asking us to swap, because we could still see our own contributions to the fight, and we had a lot of ways to approach the battle that only required a change of strategy, not a change of hero.

Sym3 is not that different in this aspect, but she lost a lot of close range prowess because of how lackluster her beam is now. As I said, she is not a bad hero.

In coloquial terms, meta is something with high pick rate, and niche/off-meta is something with low pickrate. I know niche is not equal to off-meta (Eg, Reinhardt is niche and meta), but I was arguing that you can only justify “more people are playing her, which is why her winrate dropped” when, well, more people play her. Which is not the case.

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575

I’m no expert on accessibility, so it’s not really something I want to dive much deeper into. I think it’s also not as simple as “Symmetra was the only accessible hero.”

I know in my own case, I only struggle with twitch aim characters due to my own medical condition giving me shaky hands. Tracking isn’t bad, and projectile aim is mostly fine. It’s not as simple as “accessible or not.”

I understand it’s possible. I’m just pointing out that there are also reasons to let the community do its thing. There are advantages and disadvantages to both aproaches.

Okay, let me be completely clear. I don’t think Symmetra was niche before. I think she was just overpowered, and that her win rate dropped because she is now closer to being balanced.

However, for those who do buy into the old argument that her old high winrate was due to her being niche, I argue that her low pick rate does not mean that she’s still niche. It just means that she’s no more popular than she was before. Her kit certainly doesn’t carry this huge advantage on first point defense that people blamed for her high win rate, so a lower win rate is to be expected. The argument was never that more people were playing her, but that people who do play her play her in more situations and that she no longer has that situational advantage.

And again… Worse than old Symmetra, but still better than any other dps…

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576

I agree with that part 100%. She is much less OP than she was before, and her contributions are more visible for her team.

The problem is that it runs counter to the justification for the rework.

The goal of these changes is to move Symmetra to her new damage role and make her more flexible and viable across more areas of the game than she was previously. Now that Symmetra is no longer a support hero, she is expected to be able to dish out heavy damage, and these changes allow for her to do so. She should be more powerful and interesting in more team compositions and maps, and she should also be stronger on offense and defense.

That descriptions means the devs intended the rework to be a overall buff to the character. Everything listed in the quote is meant as a positive improvement. More flexibility, viable in more sections of the game, more reliable damage, viable in offense and defense, etc. And by making her less powerful in general, it goes contrary to their intent.

(For comparison, Hanzo rework specifically mentions that the main reason behind it was to remove Scatter Arrow)

That is the primary reason why I consider this rework a failure. It fails to meet the declared objectives, even thought it might have meet their hidden objectives (toning her down to balanced) and the patch notes justification is just lip service. But that is going into tinfoil hat territory.

For now, I’ll thank you for the discussion, but I think we agree on most points and are mostly discussing semantics now.

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577

Yeah, it’s kind of confusing. Honestly, I think if you just assume that everything they’re saying there is talking about her perceived power and viability, then it makes a lot more sense. Also, if you consider those words in the context of pro/organized play, it also makes more sense.

It’s also very likely that Blizzard had some internal disagreement about what the actual issue was, and they worked to come up with a solution that pleased both sides of the issue. However, I don’t think they ever had the goal of increasing her win rate, since it was already too high.

I really only think they failed in changing perception. I imagine they’re probably pretty happy with her actual power level (I know I am; I’m only hoping for small buffs for a very specific part of the kit). But I imagine they were hoping that the community would be more open to what’s effectively a new hero. I doubt the expected the stigma to barely shift. I hope they’re trying to figure something out, but it may just be a “wait and see” issue…

578

I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite post in the Citadel.

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579

Yes, but she had an inflated winrate because of how situational she used to be.

That doesn’t mean that she’s bad.

580

How do you explain Sym mains with the same winrate in all situations?

581

Meh, it takes time to learn the ropes of a new hero, even I’m still learning new things about Symmetra. Many players even now are completely unaware that she can teleport stacked sentries by dropping a teleport gate on top of them for instant max-damage flanks. And while new players are still figuring things out, older Sym players who dislike the changes are dropping the character. It might be awhile before her full potential is completely unlocked. And of course, there are shiny new characters like Hammond drawing players away from her development. I’m really interested to see how she’s played when the next OWL season starts up.

582

I don’t think we’ll see much Symm in OWL… I don’t think she will be impactful enough. Perhaps we’ll see her sparingly… would be interesting.

583

There’s one thing I haven’t seen anyone bring up although I’m sure someone has somewhere.

Torb’s turret shoots Symm’s turrets out of the air in no time.

584

That’s nothing out of teh ordinary.

My Pharah winrate is 56%.

But Sym having an average of 52% now means those with 57% winrates are being averaged out by the players with 47%, which are the occasional Sym players or low levels.

It’s not the end of the world, and I expected her winrate to go down since her rework would basically gut the situations she was good in (thus inflated winrate) in order to make her well-rounded.

I wouldn’t have a problem with anyone saying they didn’t like her rework because they changed her too much, but I do have a problem with people misinterpreting stats and saying that she’s UP when

A) it’s still too soon
and B) her winrate is now no longer skewed, and thus it had to be lowered.

585

OH EM GEE, you want to say that the hero that was really only liked by weird people to begin with has a major rework during other reworks and a new hero, and is…like…I almost don’t dare to say it, still picked by only a few weird people only that they also still have to relearn her before feeling confident?

Pure insanity we weirdos demand a reevaluation of the rework!
And the other people just want her deleted, you can’t have everything.

586

That is not the case at all. The community is extremely fickle. Did they care about the stigma against Hanzo when he got buffed? Nope, they picked him right up.

Did anyone care about the stigma about Sombra when she got her rework? Nope. Her pickrate shot up from trash tier to 2% immediately, leading to her nerf.

When the rework for Sym first hit, everyone wanted to try her. The community is willing, but the sad truth is shes just not strong enough in any particular area for most ppl to justify picking over anything else.

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587

Sym needs a OFFENSIVE-ULT in order of make “AFRAID” her enemies. She is a damage character now and this ultimate is a bad joke

My suggestion for buff SYM-ULT.

Double Coalescence:

Sym will use her Two-Hands to launch BEAMS at the size of ZARYA 100% charged, 20 meters range and for a duration of 5 seconds and dealing 180 DPS.

Also people understand SYM is like ZARYA she is NOT a popular character as DVA, MERCY, BRIG. So is natural her pick rate is inferior to the other heros

588

A hero’s role and their ult doesnt have to be the same.

Sym and Mei are both DPS w tank ults.

Widow is one of the most powerful dps rn, and she has a support ult

Sombra is also a dps w a support ult

DVA and Hammond are tanks w DPS ults.

Photon Barrier is great as an ult, it just needs to be available more. If they made the duration 10-12 seconds and reduced the cost to 1000-1200 ult points, it would be perfect.

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