Isn’t that irrelevant? Ideally all players would switch off to other, better suited hero when they needed to.
To suggest, with absolutely no evidence, that all Sym players are veritable angels that will always and have always put what they think the team needs to win over their own preferences, and have made these decisions so astutely that the time they spend on Sym converts into one of the highest and most consistent winrates the game has ever seen, even though according to you she’s ‘bad’, is really disingenuous.
My advice would be, don’t switch off… lets see this awful hero’s winrate tank. She’s definitely worse than McCree right, so it shouldn’t be too hard?
McCree and Hanzo are considered overpowered by many and yet their winrates are in the gutter, why? Because this game is fought on/for objectives and heroes with no sustain or consistency are not very good in those situations… the situations that matter the most.
They would not. I’m sorry but how many times have you seen a hero become the 3rd best dps and get a 20% net nerf on every single part of their kit within 2 weeks. It wasn’t a nerf hammer, she was literally nuked.
I dunno why people are claiming that Sym should’ve been really good against double barriers, as if it’s a fact. You gotta break through the shields for it to matter, just like every other DPS. 2 shields to soak your turrets when pushed is not good for Sym, the turrets are the most effective part of her kit. Acting like just because you don’t spend ammo to burn shields that standing infront of 2 shields for 15s before a 3s window to kill something means she should’ve been good. I played her during that period… the shields would go down and the supports/tanks would pop their CDs. All of a sudden you’re doing 70 dps to the Orisa and she’s being healed for 200hps.
Despite her elevated pickrate her winrate was still above avg, and way above avg for DPS heroes during double shield. Not to mention you had loads of novices playing her… I had no idea what I should’ve been doing with my tp.
She is a walking cheesecake factory, that’s her niche. Like I said, either you have to accept Sym as the nichest DPS, or you have to remove all her cheese topping and identity and make her a brand new hero.
Then you go and convince all the Sym 1 tricks to agree to another massive rework, which might make her an entirely brand new hero, and unshackle the dev team to do what they want for Sym.
This needs to literally be pinned to the top of the forums and required reading before you can contribute posts or respond. This understanding revealed here shows why 2-2-2 was adapted in part, why all characters should be viable. Niche means meta reinforcing/enabling, everyone should desire all characters to be equally effective.
You didn’t finish reading every thing from the devs, they tried to make them a bit more flexible, so their 1 tricks can play them on attacking phase, but they are still niche heroes. Where half of their damage still comes from auto aim and stationary turrets, (not forgetting cheese tele strat) they themselves as a hero will always be bad comparing to the rest of DPS.
The devs tried to alleviate their niches, not eliminate them.
They want less niche. The additional thought here is the fact they acknowledge one-tricking and are slowly trying to reduce “niche”. I mean you could argue McCree is “niche” in that he must play around his team, can only get the most value creeping behind a shield at medium range too…
When Mcree wants to play with his team, and his team wants him to be with them, like 99 percent of the time, it’s not a niche anymore.
On the hind sight, most players have distaste for cheese, in which Sym, Torb and Bastion specialize. That’s why it’s hard to find a team who are willing to work with them, making them even more niche.
Symmetra main issue is not about balance, it’s about flow and rhythm. Her kit is contradictory with itself, and have no thematic cohesion.
Sym 2.0 may had some issues, but at least her kit had cohesion: It was focused in marking a certain area “yours” and preventing enemy incursion within it. She being a support also meant that she didn’t had to mark certain checkboxes like a DPS need, like, eg, reliable damage output.
Sym 3.0 started with a more aggressive kit, but there is little difference choosing to go with beam or orb at close range (ramp-up time means the damage difference per fight is minimal), turrets and TP requires too much setup time to be used offensively against non-distracted teams, and not enough benefits to be used defensively, and the great wall of vishkar is complicated to use given most map geometry.
Blizzard need to decide if they want Symmetra to be a proper DPS (like they did with Torb) or a support in DPS clothes (like Sombra), and then ramp up her damage consistency, or her utility, respectively.
That’s what we mean when we say Sym kit is “clunky” and need fixing.
If they want Symmetra to be a niche hero, they could at least have the decency to revert her back to 2.0. Shield generator is greatly missed, and a lot of veteran Symmetra players prefer her old kit.
Shield generator allowed Symmetra to actually be a melee hero when she had 275 health. Her old photon barrier gave her space to push up (could also block ultimates. HUGE). New TP can’t do that because it has a 10 year cast time and gets destroyed so quickly.
Well thought out and written, and most importantly, correct. In contrast, each element of Echo’s kit is for specific purposes, Sym’s is a mish-mash but I can accept that as a “builder”. However… there is no reason for her kit elements to be on such huge c/d’s and slow deployments. If we take the “we must balance around the top 5% harumph harumph” line of reasoning, then by gosh there is literally no reason not to speed up her deployments and reduce the c/d’s.
I mean she doesn’t need a rework to be more generalist. what’s making her “niche” and “team dependent” are really the lack of a good mix of sustain, effective range and mobility, alongside with the stubbornness of people to think her only weapon fire is primary which then leads to a passive sym2.0 playstyle.
legit give her:
old 3.0 tp or something equivalent —> mobility option to get in and out of effective range more often
make her orbs actually midranged i.e. 30~35m/s orbs (back down to around 120 damage of course)
and she’d already be a lot more generalised. if she really needs more sustain after that then either give her 1 of either:
a passive that triggers her shield hp regen when she interacts with her tp
or make her switch weapon throw out her old photon barrier but puts turret ability on cd. simultaneously remove oldest active turret. and only requirement to be able to cast is having turret ability off cd.
nerf turret dps by another 10dps for these if necessary (but highly doubt it will be given we had an unnerfed sym for over a year before double shield meta and she was still underpowered then, but far more flexible than now).