Remembering Sym 2.0

I think they should go back to 2.0 but change left click auto-aiming to be more like moira’s, the barrier thing looks like it has so much skill ceiling with how you can time it

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all we wanted was the flying turrets and then they completely reworked her

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Yeah, she has gotten multiple nerfs and she’s still trash… What a surprise…

*to play as, not against.

With a major power shift (& soft rework that removed her problematic Teleporter ULT), moving power away from her extravagantly high - damage lock - on gun and preferably, stacked Turret CC towards more survivability & more Team support, 2.0 would had been great.

Symmetra 3.0 as well is even more fixable with simple numerical changed, but once again the devs have decided to keep her and everyone who mains her in the dust…

Sym 2.0 was her best version and I want her back so badly

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Symmetra 2.0 was the most skill-expressive hero in the game. There is a reason why /r/SymmetraMains used to be the most active individual hero subreddit. Since her kit did not relied in strict point-and-clicking, and she didn’t had a solid strict team role like Mercy or Reinhardt, it allowed everyone that liked the character to approach every fight on their own style.

When two Sym mains met and started talking with each other, you always had a new thing to learn. Turret placement, orb spam sightlines, ult hiding spots, barrier timing, etc. We were always adding new ways to use our tools in creative ways.

IMO, that openness is the mains reason why people used to complain about she being “unfun to fight against”, because the changes in gameplay forced you to adjust your strategy on the fly instead of using easy answers to counter her. Eg, “let’s pick Winston and break her turrets”, except this specific Sym spread out her turrets as flank alarms and sneaky DoTs instead of doing a deathgate, and Winston is terrible dealing with those. “let’s pick Pharah and blow her up from afar”, except she is playing from a safe spot spamming orbs at your team and you can’t land a rocket without exposing yourself to her Widow teammate. “Let’s just rush to the point and overwhelm them”, and this time she set up a death gate that will stop your Reinhardt on its tracks!

The first engagement was always a bet, but the second onwards is a matter of the Sym player having a flexible mind to adjust their strategy to the enemy team formation to lock them down.

While I understand everyone missing Shield Generator, to me, the parts of her old kit that I miss the most are the piercing orbs and the 6 turret stash. Those two were amazing for zone control, and I miss my Tracer Boxes, which is a specific turret formation that simply can’t be done with only 3 turrets in the bag.

That’s a common misconception. She was never either of those. Her winrate was around the same across all skill levels, from bronze to GM. It’s not like Junkrat or Moira, where you can visibly see them performing better at low and mid ranks.

Sure, GM players could react faster to Sym setups, but GM Syms also had the capability to adapt faster to the situation and keep winning.

Where she was underperforming was in the pro scenario, and that’s mostly because of their innate teamwork than anything wrong with her kit. I don’t think it’s necessary that every hero need to see pro play, as long as they are still being played with a decent winrate in ladder, and Symmetra 2.0 was perfect on this regard.

We can have some heroes that work better in high-coordinated environments (Eg, Sombra), we can also have some heroes that thrive in the innate chaos of ladder.

To be played in OWL. They never hid this fact. The same reason why Torb and Hazno were changed.

IMO, not a good reason, but yeah, it’s a reason.

I have a list of what I wanted back then:
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Actually no. They gave her multiple buffs and only a few small nerfs/reverts.

Buffs:

  • Beam length increased
  • Beam charges 20% faster
  • Beam charges 20% faster
  • Railings doesn’t block the teleporter anymore
  • Beam bugfix
  • Teleporter interact range increased
  • Orbs deal more damage
  • 25 shields

Nerfs:

  • Infinite tp (which was meant to be buff)
  • Beam width lowered (because of the bugfix)
  • Beam damage lowered (because of the bugfix)
  • Barrier duration reduced (didn’t change anything)
  • Barrier health reduced (didn’t change anything)
  • Turret damage reduced
  • Orbs deal less damage (which was a revert of a previous buff)

Please make this a thread of its own. I agree with everything what you said, and nobody ever described the symmetra philosophy so perfectly.

This made me feel stupidly nostalgic.

Also, can we talk about just how cool Symmetra’s old beam looked? All discussions about lock-on aside, it looked so much cooler back then. The current visuals on her beam don’t look nearly as good.

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I think I still have a POTG of Sym 2.0

But one thing I don’t want to remember about Sym 2.0 is the Junkrat’s line.

He…speaks…it…so…god…damn…much

Like, he is ALWAYS the one to spell it out to everyone :frowning:

Ik right? Like when it looked on a kept growing that looked cool, and when she was moving things it looked like a rope that came undone but still had the form

Tbh I think a huge shame of them removing her lock-on beam was kind of alienating a crowd of people with disabilities who were able to play as Symmetra because her beam didn’t require a huge amount of aiming. There was really nothing else in the game with that level of accessibility and while Moira does have somewhat larger beam cone (even if it was nerfed), it’s not quite at the same level.

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It’s more than just the beam.

Turret phantom to allow visible placement position also allowed people to place them better when you have trouble aiming, and her ult requiring zero aim at all but capitalizing on positioning also benefit disabled people.

There is a reason why Reinhardt and Mercy are acessible for non-FPS player but not exactly to disabled players. Because they still requires decent reflex and hand-eye coordination to perform their jobs. Moira also have this issue with her Fade, which is a sudden burst of movement, often multidirectional.

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So you don’t care about the feelings of the 99.2% if the player base, only about the people who happened to main a specific hero.

Makes sense why the devs rightfully ignored Sym 2.0 mains back in the day and got rid of their hero completely.

Which is exactly what ironically happens, and is supposed to happen design - wise, in a game with hard counters.

Great. Jeff disagrees that how frustrating specific heroes are to play against shouldn’t be a reason for implementing a hero ban system.

That isn’t to say that he agrees that how frustrating specific heroes are to play against shouldn’t matter in a video game (and so many of their changes to the game are evidence if exactly that), but even if that’s the case, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Only buffs here whatsoever.

Bug fixes.

… But ended up deforming the hero’s entire high - ranked play style to a Taxi Bot.

You didn’t mention that these nerfs made her even worse than before the bugfix.

So 2 nerfs to her Ultimate didn’t change anything, but the Teleporter interact range increase did? Lol…

I don’t really think it was a revert, but anyways… I trust that this list is correct.

Since we’re leaving Sym 2.0 memories, here’s my POTG montage. Back when Sym was in her prime. :frowning:

RIP in peace Symm 2.0 🪦

RIP in peace Junkrat’s best voice line 🪦

Gone, but never forgotten. :rose::rose:

Symmetra 2.0 was the absolutely most passive character design of any character in Overwatch. “I just place my sentries and ultimate in specific spots and then hold my mouse button and jump around”

There’s a reason I often called her “Fischer-Prices: My First Hero

As a Sym main, I have a completely opposite opinion on this regard. I think she was the most engaging character in the game because you constantly had to micromanage so much stuff that you barely had time to breath before you have to keep moving to zone a choke or replace a turret or intercept someone going to your ult.

Her whole activity was on planning and preparation, but that’s still being active. If anything, she was the hero less capable to react to a change of plans in the enemy team, because she needed time to reset her chosen strategy.

In my book, passive characters are the ones that rely mostly on reacting to something else happening than acting on their own to turn the tables. Note that having a passive kit do not demeanor the character at all, it’s only a matter if their playstyle demands more decisions before the engagement or after the engagement. Tanks in general are proactive. Supports in general are passive.

Mercy is the most passive character in the game because everything in her kit rely on patching damage already done (healing beam, rez), or relying on something a teammate is doing (GA, damage boost). The only active part of her kit is her pistol, which is used mostly as a backup option.

The only ones that believe that was an effective way to play Sym 2.0 are the ones that never played her.

In the same vein I can also say all Widow do is playing point-and-click adventures in high speed, and that would be as false/dismissive as your statement. Every Widow can say she need to do more than click heads, and every Sym 2.0 player will tell you she needed more than place turrets always in the same place and W+M1.

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Of course you do.

Yes, putting the sentries in their spot, and then putting the ultimate in its spot.

Yes, because her kit was very passive. Not being able to react was a huge symptom of this. If she was more active, she could react.

Yes. Symmetra was a support at the time.

You do know what they say about assumptions, right?

Because there wasn’t anything more to do with Symmetra 2.0. You didn’t have to aim, you didn’t have to worry when to place your ultimate, you didn’t have to time your sentries right to be in the proper place, you just placed them asap and then when the enemy came into range after shooting your right click down the chokepoint, you simply pressed left mouse button and jumped around, because that’s all you could do, and that was all you needed to do.

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True.

There is a slightly caveat that in certain maps you could thread the needle in specific spots to cover some pretty good high traffic areas with your orb, but you had plenty of time to fine tune your aim for spam.

But yeah, aim was never something Sym had to worry about, and that was a big reason why I, a non-FPS player, enjoyed playing her.

Wrong.

While often you would simply use downtime between fights to set it down, you also had to balance it with your usual turret maintenance and repositioning yourself to go back to orb spam. Properly estimating how much of a downtime you had before the next engagement was crucial to decide where you could place your ultimate.

It’s a decision that often is overlooked by people who didn’t played Sym 2.0. I’d say it’s on the same level of how experienced Widowmaker players use their Infrasight. You time the enemy respawn so that you can get info the moment it’s more useful.

You didn’t had to time sentries, true. But you had to be flexible to their positioning. And for that you had to know how and where you can hide them in a manner they are still threatening and safe from random spam.

Again, just saying “place turrets and gg” is dismissing a lot of stuff we actually had to do. Especially when you remember it took 60s to replenish your 6 turrets, so it was in your best interest that they did not get wiped after every single fight. But if they were too protected they couldn’t threat.

If you minimize things like that, this is also how Winston and Reinhardt works. You wait until you are in distance and then hold left click.

Also, she at the time had a barrier on cooldown to use during the actual fight. So it was not “you have no other option other than beam”.

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