Can you really say she’s niche if she’s not even good at her niche? In my opinion, most of the dps hero’s can perform her niche on the same level as her or do it better.
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Wow wow wow I didn’t realize you spoke for everyone. So cool and almighty 
Exactly this.
What is supposed to be Sym’s DPS role? She sucks at every range, has a losing match-up against every single dps, and half the tanks and supports. She cant survive at close ranges, and has no mid-long range alternative at all.
If anyone says Taxibot Sym is fine as a hero for 99.9% of the playerbase I will bonk them in the head with a fat no.
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its pretty clear that the majority of people think sym is trash and needs buffs so
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People see Sym being used as a taxibot once in pro-play and then pretend that Sym is fine.
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Are you saying she needs another rework?
These especially. The turret set-up time would make it a good dueling tool and the 15m beam will increase her survivability. It’s all she needs.
Finite TP? I don’t care I’m fine with what we have. Maneuvering around with a bad kit is still a bad kit but making that kit GOOD. I’d love it.
Rein Zarya meta: Sym isn’t picked much. This is brawl/rush where she should be at least GOOD.
Then as for maps she particularly excels on? Lijiang. The pros use her nowhere else except out of spawn. And she’s just so good on Lijiang, they often swap off her anyway or straight up don’t pick her. Y’know if your niche is that small I’d at least expect she’s the best at it.
Obviously Pro play isn’t completely Gm, so let’s check in on her pickrate? Pathetic. Her winrate? Fluctuating between 40-55% Lower than usual.
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If she was good in her niche she would be picked, like other niche heroes such as Junkrat. She isn’t, because she isn’t good. She’s outclassed by the so called “generalist” dps even in her niche.
Either she’s ok and they need nerfs or they’re ok and she needs buffs.
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I don’t think having a niche hero is a bad thing. The concept behind what Symmetra is, or at least was at the time this game was released was niche. She was a defensive Support that was a builder. She didn’t provide healing, but provided valuable defensive tools to her team through the use of shields, turrets, and a teleporter/shield generator. The only other hero that filled a similar role to her was Torb.
I don’t think niche is a codeword for weak. Obviously yes, I think this iteration of sym is absolutely weak and as I said before, I think the rework was a failure, however, niche heroes can be extremely strong if they are played under the right circumstances, the playerbase just needs to understand what those circumstances are and not try and fit her into every map and composition.
I honestly believe that the problem with Sym was that she was a little too niche. Generally she only worked well on defense and on maps where she was able to build nests to protect her teleporter/shield generator.
In trying to move her out of that niche category into a more generalized DPS, they stripped away a lot of what her identity was. I think the current iteration of Sym is basically supposed to be played similar to reaper, where she should be up close and personal melting shields, but her only escape tool is teleporter and it just feels clunky. I feel like they are trying to move her into a different direction while holding onto parts of her old kit so that she doesn’t lose what’s left of her identity and she’s being pulled into too many directions so her kit is overloaded but doesn’t work fluidly.
I fully believe that in order to make Sym actually be a viable pick, they either need to embrace her role as a niche hero and make her a defensive builder or completely scrap her kit and start over. Other heroes simply do what Sym is supposed to do not only better, but much more easily. Reaper can get in and melt tanks and barriers and fade out, Junkrat can melt barriers from a distance or up close and concussion mine himself away, and Torbs turret is a much better defensive “built item” than Symmetras turrets.
I’m sure this will never happen, at least not with Overwatch 1, but I would LOVE to see Symmetra moved back into the support category and be played as a shielding/buffing support rather than a traditional healer. The very first iteration of Symmetra applied shields to teammates that lasted until they died and could then be reapplied. Maybe she could have a similar ability that provides a bigger shield, has a CD, and only lasts for a few seconds or breaks after a certain amount of damage is taken. So rather than healing the team, she could negate burst damage to counter spam damage from Hanzo, Pharah, Junkrat, etc. And so that she doesn’t lose that “defensive builder” identity, maybe she could build something that provides an aura that slows the enemy team or increases healing done by other healers like Ana’s grenade.
I dunno, I haven’t worked it all out in my head but I think Overwatch needs a new support that focuses on negating burst damage through shielding (kind of like Zarya bubbles but weaker with a shorter CD–or maybe stronger with with a longer CD?) and I know that she was originally a support.
If anyone plays or has played FFXIV you’ll know that there’s a Scholar and White Mage healer. The white mage has the traditional big heals while the scholar focuses less on healing and more on negating a lot of burst with shields. I think that moving Sym back to support would not only enable them to rework the nightmare that she is now, but also give us a much needed new support that could be proactive about dealing with burst damage instead of reactive.
Sorry for the lengthy post, I’m just really passionate about having a shield healer and I stopped playing Sym after they moved her out of support and reworked her because she became such a mess.
Just because she’s niche doesn’t mean she can use improvement.
I dunno about other Symmetra mains but the only thing she really needs is a reliable range option. No damage increases, passives or reverts.
Adjustments to Orb Velocity with attack drop compensations would be the best option as they’ve done with other slow projectiles in the past.
I think more people really need to understand this and stop dismissing heroes they don’t like as niche.
Symmetra is an OG hero. She’s featured second only to Tracer in the gameplay trailer. If you don’t think Symmetra deserves a real spot in this game, go play another game.
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Yes, she needs a rework that removes team TP and makes her an actual DPS hero.
The current kit as it is cant be fixed with just numerical buffs. Team TP not only sucks away all the power budget but Blizz clearly will nerf Sym just to have her taxibot gimmick balanced in pro play.
She had a 4-5% pickrate when the game launched. ‘‘Niche’’ is a product of bad balancing and nerfing heroes until they arent viable and their role is not capable of being fulfilled, or in case of Sym, when they have no role at all.
The difference is that SCH still has normal healing because having ONLY shields has always been unviable, so your comparison isnt very useful. All the healers in FFXIV are, at the end of the day, still healers.
Sym has always been way closer to a DPS than to a healer. She was always more like BRD, SMN or RDM, capable of bringing some support/healing but nowhere near meant to be a healer replacement.
Sym was misclassified as a ‘‘support’’ (read: healer) for years, and people trying to play her as one was one of the biggest reasons why she was misunderstood as a hero. She was only in that roster to pad it because it released with only 3 healers lmao
Going by the FFXIV comparisons, do you think that AST at the release of 5.0 was ‘‘niche’’ just because it wasnt picked for high end raiding a lot? Or just plain underpowered.
Niche is just codeword for underpowered and/or misdesigned.
I really like playing her but she’s so situational. To make her a viable pick in more situations:
a) Smaller cooldown for turret charges. Maybe from currently 10 seconds to 6 seconds.
b) She needs something else to increase survivability. Some people like the healing turret idea. I propose a speed boost turret.
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Photon Barrier as an alt second ability could be nice.
Honestly just remove team TP (leave personal TP, remove infinite mechanic) and buff her all around.
- 250hp
- Photon Barrier as main second ability, personal TP as alt second ability.
- ITP revert
- Higher dmg for beam lvl1
- 5s cooldown sentries.
if she’s not proportionally stronger in her niche for how narrow her niche she is then she’s not balanced and the purpose of her having a niche is completely void. and having an extremely narrow niche (which is soon to be reduced with the apparent deletion of 2CP in OW2), simply is poor game design and balancing.
if one actually understands sym, you’d completely see in depth how she’s lacking in:
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insufficient tools to let her get into her effective range (yes that includes orbs) often enough for high enough uptime like other heroes
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her time to get something done simply is way longer than her available time in effective range (no, this isn’t simply about her primary)
pointing to players like stevooo and going “she’s fine” is like pointing to bastionmain and saying “bastion’s fine” despite undeniably not being the case.
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Its really funny how they do this but if you could point at the top500 mains of X hero they think needs buffs, which chances are is on a much better state than Sym, suddenly thats an elitist statement.
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We literally have top Sym players like Stevo going on to use different heroes because she is just that bad right now…
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These posts are delusional. 2/3 of the dps roster is either F tier or on the brink of it.
As a top 500 sym main, YES! Sym is fine. The only thing that would be nice but not needed is an range increase on her beam to 14m
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