I would argue it was a mix of both. I know for a fact 2.0 was not a popular hero to have on attack or after you lost 1st point on hybrid.
And for the whole “she was sooo strong at defense, Sym mains loved her for that.” She was still much worse that 3.0. Those inflated winrates were coupled with even lower playtime because of how damn niche she was (and still sort of is)
Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, there was a lot of that too. Sym 2.0 basically lived or died based on whether or not she could get her shield generator up before the first point was lost. If the enemy took the point first, there was a lot of pressure too get sym players to switch.
I was there at this time of this release, and I can tell you, people actually HATED Sym 2.0. They wanted something done with her. Which actually lead up to the next rework, which people also hated, if not, hated More than Sym 2.0.
You COULD consider this to be a mini-rework, but honestly, I don’t even know if you’d consider it to even be a mini-rework or not.
I heard from the devs that she was meant to be a situational pick, only used in certain situations. For an example, Pharah. You can research why people say Pharah’s situational from there.
We can agree with at least something in your post.
Ok, if people legit refuse to play a character cause of skin colors, now that’s just… I think u all know the word I was about to say. 
Well, I believe that we could get around Some of the problems that do exist for her. For example, how you think there’s only 1 way to fix Sym, being a rework, but I believe if the correct buffs are applied to her, she might not even need a rework. People did like the buffed 16m beam back in April Fools, and some have asked for faster projectile speed for her Orbs, so like, maybe go from 30m (from last I researched) to 45m. There’s a couple of buffs to at the very LEAST start off with (or something that can be adjusted around some, a.k.a. the idea with her Orbs). We should at Least agree with this: Sym needs some help. I’d argue the same for Bastion, but we r talkin Sym here. How we should help her, that can go down more than one road for solution.
Thanks 4 ur time,
The D.va, Brigitte, Tracer, Orisa, Mercy and Widowmaker at ur service,
Marcane
I wholeheartedly agree with most parts, BUT part 4 is just simply not true.
Symmetra being autistic wasnt even known until like 1 or 1.5 years ago when someone wrote a letter to blizzard to raise awareness of the autistic fact or something like that.
These accusations are just the same as saying that people dont like to play Soldier because of his sexual preference, or that people dont like to play Doomfist because he is black.
This is just not true. It all boils down to having a preferred playstyle and which characters fit that mold entirely or its at least close enough.
In my case, this is basicly: tactical thinking, preferrably close range hero and not heavily aim based.
I could not care less about what is the sexual preference or skin color is of said hero.
I wont deny, there are characters who i definitely want to be able to play on a decent level because of her/his looks but i cannot, because it just dosnt fit that mold that i like to play.
Just to mention one: Ashe, i like her looks but i cannot play her on the level as i could on Sym or even Junkrat.
Or its just an unfortunate situation like Brig, where i very much like her looks and would fit the mold that i like to play, but she is basicly gatekept for an audience that despises to play her, yet they are the only ones who can get value out of her.
The unfortunate situation is that DPS is a category that mostly attracts people who has long range, hitscan, fast pace mentality and they only consider the game a healthy environment when those heroes excel over everything else. And since characters like Symmetra are not fitting that playstyle or could counter it entirely if she is decent, they will never allow that to happen in the DPS category.
If by 1/1.5 years ago, you meant ‘1 year after the official release of overwatch’ then yes. She’s been known to hold representation for people on the autism spectrum for the majority of Overwatch’s life. And even before then, it could be heavily inferred from the ‘Better world’ comic released a year prior to the official confirmation.
Miss me with the blatant misinformation lol
and that defeats the point of making a new hero. why would a dev team heck or any team try to spend so much time, money and resources to make a new product or new feature for a product to only have it not be used much at all? like making a entirely new hero in a game isn’t something trivially quick nor easy.
that was 100% the objectively worst nerf they’ve implemented thus far. one does not simply hard nerf the core mobility tool of a hero with lower effective ranged (yes that includes orbs; they’re that slow), low sustain and low burst . like they simply won’t be able to get uptime well.
it’d be like hard nerfing snipers’ range or flankers’ mobility. you don’t trash heroes’ core uptime tools like that. esp when the hero in question has been underperforming across various metas for about 2ys prior (no that doesn’t include pre-3.0-rework period).
Seeing that change go to live despite all the protests showing how objectively bad that change is and STILL is with us at this moment, makes me want to give up on OW entirely. If they understand that little of their heroes to be able to apply any decent balancing, why bother playing any hero that isn’t a fan favourite? why bother learning other heroes instead of mindlessly playing whatever X streamer or Y pro is playing?
To me it just seems like Blizzard struggles to balance anything other than traditional hit-scan heroes. I doubt it’s a coincidence that many of the characters that have languished at the bottom are either projectile based (Mei, Pharah), builders (Sym, Torb), short range (Reaper) or has something “unconventional” in their kit (Doomfist, Bastion).
The most interesting case is Sombra, who does have a kit that should make her viable, but because of the hate that exists playing against such abilities are left in a state that will result in most players under-performing with her.
Genji is another interesting example of a character that is not hit-scan but has actually been decently viable during most of the game’s life-span, likely because of his very strong ult compensating for a more inconsistent kit. It has of course resulted in the people who play him feeling like he’s an ult-bot, but at least it has kept the character afloat at a level other heroes could only dream of. Worst case scenario this is perhaps the direction that has to be considered with Sym and others for them to be considered decent picks…
I dunno if there’s any saving of Symm mains to be had.
A large part of why Symm isn’t getting buffs is sentry bombing. But Symm mains are weirdly protective about that dumb cheese.
It’s like being able to get rid of something on-par with what’s keeping Bastion from getting buffed. But there’s no redeeming qualities to it.
The only reason why rein is meta so often is, imo because he’s the most popular tank among the player base
Tank players are already scarce and Blizz needs someone to play tank because dps players are crying about 20min+ queues. So look at all the tanks, rein is obviously the easiest to pick up and him being a good appeal to more players pushing them to play him.
He’s also incredibly easy to play around, unlike other main tanks such as monkey and Orisa where communication is necessary to get as near as much impact otherwise with a Rein.
Rein’s design has very little room for hate, the only reason players hate Rein is because they are forced to play him and most of this is coming from a very small minority of the entire overwatch player base.
No one hates playing against Rein, they hate having a trash Rein or being forced to play Rein. I could be wrong here, but through experience no one saids they hate Rein as a hero.
Make Rein unplayable and watch dps q times go from 10-20mins to 45mins
While I agree with some of your points and this is fantasticly written, they do test buffs internally before we ever see them (and nerfs) so I’m sure that they test things for different heroes all the time. Perhaps nothing worked.
Sym 1 and 2 were very tricky heroes. Much like Mercy right now, buff anything and she could be OP or the buff has 0 effect.
Damage? too high or not much difference.
Shield health given? Too high
Teleporter charges? Would last too long
Range? It is auto aim that wouldn’t be very fun
Barrier health? Useless mostly…etc
I think they were hard to balance.
As for 3.0 she’s been changed so so many times and a lot of her nerfs I believe were justified.
She did a couple of months later receive her 140 orb buff, which was reverted in the powercreep nerfs and I believe that is fair too.
She received her teleporter cooldown buff shortly before this where they also tested her beam charge decay buff (Decaying after more time), which didn’t go through. I think because it allowed her to keep charge too long.
She then received her 25 shield HP which was a big buff.
And then a month later received her teleporter destroy on death (which I personally use ALL THE TIME).
So recently (or at least a few months ago she was receiving a bunch of attention even if a bit was nerfs. She even got the skin event and story. She isn’t awful per se but has room for improvement still.
So it’s not like Sym 3.0 has not received attention, in fact I believe she gets a lot. Although I would like to see more changes especially QoL such as making teleporter placement spammable so it doesn’t cancel if you click somewhere invalid >:(. There is far worse off heroes than Sym but that’s not exactly a reason to leave her where she is.
Hopefully they’re focusing on Rein Zarya (the tanks in general) and McCree right now since it’s been over a month since our last balance changes went live.
Except when it comes to giving her another one lmao
I don’t think so. Imo Rein’s playstyle is a reason why tank playerbase is so small. It’s not appealing. Hog or Zarya are way more appealing tanks to play.
Actually Rein is a fairly respected character on OW related media and it is really surprising. He has ALL the things for players to hate him.
Mitrovarr enters the chat
Anyway, on topic, Devs seem to be not sure what should they do with niche heroes. Sym is the most extreme example, but overall niche heroes often recieve some number tweaks but remain niche and also generally weak. Reaper, Junkrat and Bastion, for example. They should be strong in a certain scenarios, however, blizz probably dont want any hero to bee too strong no matter of situation (which kinda defeats the purpose of having niche heroes) and dont want niche heroes to be good in general situations. Actually until like 2021 Sym was amoung top winrate heroes any time I cheked overbuff, also sporting abysmally low pickrate. So her niche-ness at least worked as intended, but then devs probably thought it works better that intended and reverted a buff to her alt fire damage, and then she dropped in winrate as low as her pickrate is. So I guess they got what they wanted - Sym is now not niche, she’s a very consisted hero now, although she consistently sucks 
Sentry Bombing just isn’t it though. They change Sym all the time with buffs and nerfs.
Sentry bombing is weak. Very weak. Easily counterable by any splash. The best use for it is to teleport often a SINGLE turret and go through yourself to flank. Without this her turrets would be a lot weaker since their 1.5s minimum deployment time make it very hard to get them out in the middle of combat a lot of the time.
It’s a useful thing to do, she shouldn’t have to lose it because it allows for some suboptimal cheese strats that barely work on lower ranks more than once or twice because they learn what splash damage is.
Where did “they” state this?
What destroyed Sym and others was the decision to go away from switching and hard counters and niche picks.
They regret making a diversive cast which are fun to play instead of a generic homogenized shooter they can balance for esports easier for cash.
Which is to say, Overwatch should have never existed and instead we should’ve had another cod or cs?
I am still glad we got Overwatch instead of Cod Blizzard version.
theres brig…doomfist…hammond…
I wonder what would have happened if Jeff and co had gone with their original plans of having separate rosters for Defense teams and attack teams.
Would symmetra have been as much of a failure(since like OG torb, her main strength is definitely area control and utility on defense)
Having two different rosters available could have both made these niche heroes more viable(this is what they were originally envisioned for), and also broadened what kind of heroes they could have made depending on attack and defense(we’d probably have variants of some of the heroes on both sides)
It would also exclude some of the mirroring effect of todays Overwatch. The go “Rein or lose” kind of deal.
I don’t know if it would have been better, but wish I could actually see how it would have been.
It’s definitely not you. Those heroes were already designed to give their mains a heartbreak down the line.
Probably. Symmetra isn’t/wasn’t great on Payload maps, and KOTH probably never would’ve been made if they had a split roster. Since she’s decent in KOTH, that arguably would’ve made her worse since the KOTH maps would be split between 2CP and payload (meaning more maps she’s bad at). Assuming they didn’t come up with a different third game mode.
no, people would often get flamed and harassed and possibly reported because they played an offense hero on defense