She’s the worst character in the game already. Y’all failed to rework her, TWICE and you nerf her to the ground more and more. But why stop there? It’s clear the devs want her to have a 0% pickrate, so to accomplish that goal I say, on top of that orb nerf, revert the tp cooldown buff, reduce her health to 150, increase her hitbox size (yes I know it’s bigger that mei’s already, but might as well spring for roadhog) and make each turret CD 30 seconds with a max of two turrets up at a time. Also, buff pharmercy and widow.
Seriously though, I get they wanted to stop power creep, but she’s one of the only heroes completely LEFT BEHIND by power creep. She just seems to be getting worse and worse. If you don’t want to buff her, whatever, but don’t NERF her?
You know for a hero that blizzard put extra man hours to completely re-balance twice, people sure do accuse them of not caring about her.
Not only did they rework her twice. All of her iterations had new animations, new buildings, new particle effects, new voicelines and all that costs time and money. Now tell me how. HOW DOES THAT SHOW THEY DONT CARE?
What is going on?! Am I going crazy? Am I not seeing the same thing others are? Is she not one of the few heroes that had new mechanics for both of her reworks?
I know Sym is usually considered garbage, but shes pretty trash against the current meta of hog and snipers. At least with snipers you have a bit of counterplay, but against hog, unless you have a defensive tp up, you cant really do much 
Symm 1.0 received NO changes from her launch.
Symm 2.0 got 3…
How many times did soldier get changed without needing a whole rework? Rein? Ana?
Yeah no . Work itself isn’t a measure of “care”. Symm 3.0 has gotten more care than 1&2 combined. And it’s still just proving that: no one likes her.
to spill the tea here, either they don’t care or they’re hugely incompetent.
Examples:
-
infinite tp
- why would you butcher a short effective ranged, squishy hero’s mobility and burst combo enabling tool to have a massive down time? it really should be common sense that low effective range, low sustain, low mobility and low burst on a hero simply is the wrong direction.
- they could’ve easily reverted the change yet Jeff claims that he plays sym a lot and then brushes off how blatantly detrimental the infinite tp cd mechanic is to her, and to this day we still have it. incompetence or hate here? idk, but it’s 1 of them.
-
not noticing incorrect dps values reported on sym3.0 primary in release patch notes for at least a year
- it shows that they definitely weren’t reading feedback about her all that time that quoted the incorrect 60/120/180 dps at the time DESPITE promising to keeping a close eye on her and looking at feedback. whether this shows they don’t care or that they’re incompetent, it can go either way.
-
buffing orbs to deal 140 damage
- the problem with orbs is that nothing justifies the sniper-like charge time. 140 damage wasn’t it. it was too inconsistent.
- either increase orb projectile speed (more aimable; most healthy and preferred route) or reduce charge time (more spam route to actually compete in spam). in either case it
- but devs chose to buff damage to 140 which is a spam route that doesn’t touch consistency (not a healthy choice, completely missed the mark), again, DESPITE Jeff’s claims about “we’re talking about her often” or that he plays sym a lot.
- again, hate or incompetence? idk, but it’s 1 of them.
- the problem with orbs is that nothing justifies the sniper-like charge time. 140 damage wasn’t it. it was too inconsistent.
This has yet to go into all the bandaid bug fixes that lead to more bugs or nerfs (e.g. self destruct tp, no tping in/from spawn, etc.), nor even the contradiction of nerfs on her whole kit in double shield vs their statement about “prioritising hero individual balance” (i.e. balance outside of meta).
A lot of us want to be wrong about this, but it’s hard not to draw such conclusions when reading through a lot of sym’s “balance” patch notes.
I give credit where it’s due tho. sym3.0 rework, at a design level was on the right track. but then from infinite tp (inclusive) and onwards, 
hit the fan.
What if they 
reworked her again haha jk unless?
They probably aren’t going to realistically buff her. Blizzard balances mainly for higher ranked play - and none of those people who are influencers care about her enough to suggest a change. She’s always been in such a weird place and even now she still is, her ultimate is the weirdest among the DPS — not nearly as flashy as the 6k ults in the game. Not to say that’s a bad thing but her weird style of play is one of the reasons she’s not always done so well. She’s so bad in the current meta, without shields for protection — or shields to farm change off of — and a considerably weaker beam I’m not sure if this is something she can come back from. It hurts because she’s one of my most played heroes, recently got her golden gun and I find her kit very fun to play around with. Oh well…
Tp isn’t shadowstep. It’s a supportive building that aids your team in movement and can also be used as an escape. Sym isn’t supposed to be a mobile flanker. She’s supposed to be a defensive utility damage dealer.
Infinite TP was one of my favorite changes to her. It actually made her tp versatile. She could leave it in gaps to help the team come back faster or place it on high ground to help her team. It can also be used to escape. Having to replace it every 10 seconds is annoying when you need it to be in a more static passive place and only has a 10 second cool down.
It’s a building on a defense hero not a movement ability on a flanker.
They nerfed the worst dps
They brought everyone down together.
That being said, she can be an effective flanker at times
The issue is that the devs don’t understand Symmetra, and why she has such an awkward place in this game. Symmetra is the antithesis of Overwatch. Most heroes benefit from high mobility and fast-paced action, but Symmetra doesn’t. She benefits by doing the opposite. The developers don’t understand that you cannot force the game into just mobility and fast-paced action. You need to balance it out in the opposite direction as well, for a near-infinite amount of reasons. For one, it makes it far more interesting to both play and watch.
Brigitte doesn’t go in the opposite direction. She makes it meet at 0. They do not know how to keep their game in check, and Symmetra would be the main one to allow them. Mei as well. Bastion too. Notice how all of these heroes are in awkward spots almost always? Torb used to be the same way, but they just turned him into a completely different hero. Talk about jumping ship.
HAAAA
Even tho you’re the top picked character in the game. Hes got a little too much
She didnt need to be brought down
Or at the very least they could have compensated her
I hate Symm with a fervent passion but have come to this conclusion:
Symm isn’t to bad in payload as there tends to be a lot of flexibility in the routes on the maps. But I don’t think she is well-balanced in some control maps. For example Inner Sanctum does not have a great deal of flexibility in how you approach the map; certain maps for the most point funnel players through narrow choke points which makes characters like her and Junkrat insanely unbalanced in those specific situations.
I don’t think it’s specifically the character, but the combination of the map and the character.
If you want her to have 0% pickrate, blizzard should take the brig approach and just blanket nerf every single element of her kit.
No more regen shields, turrets on a longer cooldown and deal slightly less damage, Teleporter’s gotta have 20 hp total, primary and secondary fire damage and/or ammo reduced by half, and a compensation buff of “turrets travel faster in midair”
please read the following thread:
she IS supposed to be a flanker. not in the traditional sense of say genji, but definitely one that goes around, claiming territories, moving her territory around, zoning people out and getting picks. her tp allows allies through to let them make use of the territories sym claimed. heck this is even demonstrated in her comic.
in the way OW is setup/designed, you simply don’t get much value by waiting all day for “enemies to come to you” before you can start contributing which is what you and many people imply when saying “she’s supposed to be defensive”.
e.g. a barrier like rein shield is a “defensive” ability but it’s a well known fact that if you stand in 1 place, like say the choke, and don’t move, you are playing poorly in getting low value out of it esp when it comes to attack.
the same principle applies to sym. if sym can get into her effective range (which is shorter than most heroes’) and grab opportunities to contribute, she should, otherwise sitting back spamming her slow inconsistent orbs waiting for them to go to her is getting much less value.
it’s the same principle with many other heroes too e.g. it’s the reason why ranged heroes like snipers use mobility to get high ground and angles past shields rather than waiting for the shield to break.
but right now her tp is simply not available for her to get in her low effective range to grab opportunities, while also having low sustain and low burst due to less availability of tp-orb-melee combo.
- having to wait 10s minimum before relocating or repurposing tp in a game as fast paced as OW (i.e. where good uses and spots of tp change frequently as teams move around a lot) is objectively much less versatile than a tp that doesn’t make you wait long simply because its cd ticks away AS you get value from it.
- this is especially after like 2 massive tank patches that move them, and consequently teams, to play much less static.
- e.g. like with current tp, if you put down tp for spawn tp, you have to pray that you don’t need to escape or engage or pray that your team pockets you for the entirety of the tp’s uptime + an extra 10s after you destroyed the spawn tp. whereas with old 3.0 finite tp, the cd just ticks away as it’s up and you can transition to another use case more easily and sooner. and you will need it for something else soon.Not to mention if your team is constantly dying to have such demand for a spawn tp, you might as well give up on enabling their trickle and use tp yourself to actually help the battle to actually actively and directly help win fights.
- infinite tp makes you objective have less casts and objectively have it stuck elsewhere or on cd making you spend more time effectively without tp (a second ability). i.e. more objective reason it’s less versatile
- this is seen by your spawn tp example use case: like how much time is sym playing without a tp to cast out where the battle is compared to the time it actually provides value at spawn?
- how often do you actually find yourself needing to spam it in the same static spot for the same purpose? as opposed to holding onto tp and waiting for a moment and use case where you know will likely get value soon after placement.
- “needing” rather than “wanting” to distinguish what you should be doing rather than what you want to do. e.g. back to your spawn tp example, do you really need to spam a tp at spawn even when no-one’s close to dying? or can you use it for maybe setting up turrets elsewhere or use it to duel?
- again, this is especially so given the 2 massive patches making team play less static
Because her rework was over two years ago and she’s still trash.
Yeah for a while Mei was the top pick too. Eventually characters like her and Roadhog always find their way back to the bottom though. That’s just what it means to be a fan of a pubstomper lol
20 whooping damage nerf, yes this is reality. Would have accepted this change if the orb charge times were again reduced, in favor of speed gameplay.