I’m not saying she wasn’t, and honestly the beam fix nerf she got isn’t my problem.
It’s the tp change, photon barrier health and duration nerf, and the turret damage nerf that makes no sense on a hero that relies on her abilities to do most of the stuff she does. You have to remember she’s a close range hero with no fluid mobility, low health, no defences outside of her ult, and a defensive ultimate as a dps. Because the devs love their gimmicks, Symmetra still holds onto these things that were fine as a support, but severely hold her back as a dps. Hell, her last support iteration was better than her current one as she had more area denial, an 2 ultimates that were both relevant to the character’s class, and had a defensive tool in her old photon barrier. She didn’t need the extra health then as she had a shield of her own for protection and an ultimate that increased her and her teams hp with 75 recoverable sheilds. She didn’t need the mobility as she could safely engage and disengage without it. She didn’t need the high damage as she had more turrets that, in total, deal the same damage as her gun now. And she could still charge of barriers back then. And her orbs went through barriers and players then as well. Combine that with not needing to aim and the extra bulk from her disco ball, she was more of a threat to double barrier then than she is now.
Sym’s primary did a direct pharra rocket (120) d/s without needing to aim. Taking that into account, she dealt more damage on average back then too.
No matter how you look at it, Symmetra before was much more threatening than she is now. While Symmetra is still a scary hero now, especially with the unpredictability of her new teleporter, she has way too many thinga holding her back that previous iterations covered for her. But the turret nerf made her damage overall weaker, even Zen can nearly outheal a single Symmetra turret. They also still die with a single melee attack from every hero, so punching them as they fly/are teleported isn’t difficult either (Granted, this is impossible with an Ice Bomb). Her teleporter changes also were a massive nerf to her overall survivability and versatility, as it used to be: throw it down, use it for 10 seconds, it self destructs, 2 seconds left to wait, boom, new tele. Now, it’s so much clunkier than it used to be, now that it needs to be manually self destructed with no change to its cooldown whatsoever. Her wall is more of an inconvenience than anything else, and unless it’s placed incredibly well, most teams will just walk right through it, making its less hp and duration literally useless for both parties, and she still has had no changes to her health, no added defences whatsoever, and still has the gimmic that is unsuited for a damage hero (the ramp up).
I went on a bit of a rant, especially with the comparison to 2.0, so I appreciate it if you actually read this all, but long story short:
Sym’s beam fix made her incredibly strong; I don’t deny that, and a lot of other Symmetra/Zarya players will not deny that either. However, Symmetra still retains so many flaws from her previous versions (the orb spamming, being a taxi, etc.) and her live version (little hp, survivability, fluid movement and the ramp up mechanic) that even with her high dps, her limited range and all these other flaws she has doesn’t make up for it. This is Symmetra’s meta, and she’s not being used par her usual niches that everyone loves on Hanamura and Horizon, or if there’s either a Sigma or a Dva, and both these heroes are going down in popularity due to their nerfs.
Again, thanks for reading this, I appreciate this is a wall larger than Sym can even imagine to create.
