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.