People tend to suggest other heros a lot, but the issue goes further than one aspect of the kit.
What makes Sym different is that she is more methodically played, and her entire kit doesn’t revolve around aim or fast reflexes. For many of us with physical disabilities with our muscles and nerves, this is very appealing in a character, and makes her less painful to play.
As for all the heros everyone usually recommends to replace her, they don’t quite mesh up, as most of them are only superficially accessible. While they all require minimal aiming for their primary fire (or Torb’d turret), most of the remainder of their kit relies on fast reflexes and reliable muscle movement in order to use them even somewhat effectively.* Having them act as a replacement for Sym, isn’t the same.
*For those thinking, “Just don’t use those portions of their kits then.”: That’s like telling someone to play the game while under a perpetual Sombra Hack. Not exactly a fun prospect, is it?
As a disabled player, yes she is that accessible. As a diamond player, you can totally play her above silver, and there are Syms all through the higher ranks.
There is many kinds of disabilities, and some heroes are more accessible to some than others. I’ve discussed this matter so much since game launch from all players that advocate to remove Symmetra autolock, and despite I’m not being disabled myself, I know most of the arguments on this.
Mercy: Guardian Angel requires some hard turns to be properly used, and some kinds of disabilities make those movements hard to execute. Plus, Angelic Descent requires holding an extra button while moving in the air, and some disabilities prevent you pushing so many buttons at once.
Reinhardt: Random muscle spasms can make you turn your shield in unintended directions in the heat of a fight, leaving your team wide open when you don’t want to. Firestrike is also an ability that for optimal Reinhardt gameplay need to be used constantly, and that require aim (even if loose).
Torbjörn: Requires aim. His turret is too weak for him to rely solely on Turret and armor packs. Torb needs to deal damage with his gun to be effective, and use turret as complementary DPS. So, any disability that prevents precise hand motions will not make Torb viable.
Winston: His tesla cannon don’t require aim, but his leaps do. And making effective use of Primal Range also involves a lot of quick movements and frantic leaps. Both are out of range for certain disabilities.
Moira: The problem is Fade. Same reason as Winston. Other than Fade, she is accessible, but I bet you will not want a Moira in your team that never Fade to escape hectic situations.
Setting up turrets takes up valuable time. You can’t just instantly place all of them down, with how fast pace OW is this is definitely one of her faults. Especially outside of her niche picks.
Her gun locking on extremely limits her potential and with her being Support she is outclassed by every other Support when it comes to aiding them. And because she is Support she doesn’t do damage like a DPS can do. Meaning she’s fairly outclassed by a lot of DPS as well.
She’s extremely difficult to make use of on KotH maps unless your team won early and caps the point. And of course Attack maps for her have also been a struggle. (Which is why they are making something as handy and versatile as her two way teleporter.)
I’m not saying you can’t make her work because you can, I play her on every map. I’m just saying nearly every hero would be a better choice in almost any situation.
Mercy, requires quick switches between heal and damage, and any delay can see someone killed. Her guardian angel requires fast targeting to aim fly and disengage at a moment’s notice or risk a teammate or herself getting killed. And then there is her blaster, that I feel requires no explanation.
While that seems easy peasy for able-bodied folks, for those of us with issues that impact our nerves and muscles, it is HORRIBLE.
Well that point was cleared up by one of the earlier suggestions regarding placement time.
As for the rest, it’s a playstyle issue that causes that. You need to adjust the playstyle to what the rest of your team selects. If they want to run her as a dps, you adapt that aggressive style. If they want her as support of defense, you play more reserved.
Just because she’s difficult to play, or does see OWL playtime, doesn’t mean an entire community should lose the accessible aspect of the game.
People like to suggest that it’s somehow symmetra’s kit that keeps her bad or that symmetra is non-viable in the high ranks when that simply is not the case with the multitude of players simply playing symmetra in high ranks and doing well.
Multiple aspects of her kit could have easily been made far more strategic and useful for her team, such teammates being able to see her ultimate and turret locations, lessening the cooldown and placement slowdown of her turrets, lessening the cd of her photon barrier and making her right click either charge up or move faster.
But instead we’re faced with a complete rework of a character BECAUSE people who do not even play symmetra do not like symmetra as she is currently and how she performs and going so far as to change her primary into something completely different, JUST TO APPEASE THE PLAYERBASE THAT SHE MIGHT BECOME VIABLE and then giving a giant middle finger to those who currently play and love symmetra… yea.
While taking away crucial tools that plenty symmetra players have used to high success and not giving anything back and transforming her into a glorified melee tankbuster DPS (or attempting to). Photon barrier gone, shield generator gone, teleport gone, primary weapon gone, secondary piercing gone… you basically have to learn how to survive with 200hp character in melee distance without a shield again like pre-rework but you now have to aim as well.
It is essentially a completely new character players have to learn from the ground up. But it’s not done for the symm players, it’s to appease this playerbase that wants nothing more than to see symmetra gone from their games because they perceive this character as useless. This is why most people like the rework and why symmetra players are divided. On one hand, their hero might become better and even good pick and they would face less toxicity and on the other hand… their hero is also completely unrecognizable.
This is not how you do a rework. Rework should be done for the players playing the char and making their experience better, not for the rest of the playerbase despising your character pick so they can feel better about it when you pick symmetra.
I counter your argument with my trap card the fact that she hold the highest winrate in all ranks, amongst all heroes, since launch.
If she was in a troublesome position because of the design of her kit, it would make her winrate drops like crazy. Sombra, for instance, is a hero that requires a lot of team coordination and timing to even work in the first place, and it show up: Her winrates are bottom of bronze to platinum, and steadily raise, until they are in an average tier on GM.
You don’t see this kind of problem with Symmetra. She is not a noob stomper (ie, her winrates are not wildly better in bronze or wildly worse in GM, like Junkrat), and she is not a very high skill demanding hero (ie, her winrates do not fluctuate between rank).
No available data supports the claim that Symmetra is in a bad place, except for her pick rate, which is a matter of preference for most players, more than raw power/viability.
So you’re saying use half a support hero or half a dps hero. If they want a support why not play another support. If they want a dps why not play a dps.
Symmetra is outclassed by almost everyone, yea you and me play her everywhere but thats not the point. The point is she falls behind everyone.
The problem I have with this is I’ve seen so many characters get full reworks and have seen people stop playing those characters before. You are just like every other person who doesn’t want it to happen.
There are people on both sides who want this to happen, both sides have die hard Sym mains, people who hate Sym, and disabled people who play her.
I’m going to elaborate on an elephant in the room that deserves attention, Sym’s hero perception. For a hero hailed mechanically as the most accessible, socially she is anything but. Bring a Sym main is probably the most controversial decision anyone can make in OW and leads to lots of friction with other players online because of her bad rep. So, while mechanically she is debatably made less accessible, socially she will be made more accessible. I realize that anyone currently arguing for Sym’s accessibility is interested in the mechanical aspect, but her social aspect shouldn’t be forgotten. In terms of accessibility, I see the new Sym as a redistribution of accessibility overall, not a net loss.
Look at her play rate and look at the winrate the lower the play rate the less impressive that score is. If you compare it to Sombra you have to take into account Symmetra has an extreme niche while Sombra does not. A lot of people tend to switch off of Symmetra if she gets pushed out of her niche. Being a niche pick is almost the exact opposite of being meta.
There are very few Symmetra mains in higher ranks, especially when compared to other heroes. Under this logic, heroes like Mei and Sombra shouldn’t be buffed because there are a few people who can use them.
So why do we get a complete overhaul into a dps character if it’s just to fix social accessibility issues? Surely that could have been done just by finetuning her current kit or changing one or two aspects and not making it into a 100% overhaul. It’s not like dps players WANT to suddenly play symmetra as a dps character, other players just want symmetra to be a good hero in their eyes.
It’s nothing more than pandering the playerbase who perceive symmetra as useless and report innocent people for sabotaging their games and they feel like unless they completely overhaul her, that fact is not going to change. And stepping on every symm player foot in the process.
Her general pick rate is 0.7%. Her GM pickrate is 0.67%. I’d call those numbers the same, given the database we get those numbers are not formed by the full player base, just a sample amount.
There isn’t less Symmetra picks in GM that there is amongst the general population of the game.
Using the same database, she sits at the top of winrates for all heroes. Your statement is simply false.