I cared. Until I realize posting something like this won’t make a difference.
Oh boy! Haven’t seen this argument made in a long time! Time to bust out the classic Sym 2.0 winrate fallacy response.
The reason Sym 2.0 had such a massively high winrate was because the majority of players would switch off of her after losing the first point on Defense. This means either they held the first point with Sym and she would get the win, increasing her winrate, or they’d lose the first point and change to another character, leaving her winrate unaffected by any potential losses.
You don’t argue with data. You can analyze data, but numbers are numbers, regardless.
The fact is that before the rework, Sym was usually floating around 60% winrate across all ranks (and that value was stable across all ranks as well), and after the rework, it fell to around 55% (with a higher winrate concentration at higher ranks).
Statistically, she’s worse. By around 5%. For reference, that’s the same winrate drop of Doomfist after this week’s patch.
It’s a valid question if the new heroes would make old Sym also drop in winrate the same way, but it’s speculation. If we had an increase in pickrate, we could say that more people playing her brought her winrate closer to 50%, but that’s also not the case. It’s stable around 0.8%, just like before the rework.
The only thing weird about this argument is that it was absurdly common as well people complaining that Symmetra players never ever switched, even when they were being countered.
So, you have people arguing that Sym switched after losing first point, and people arguing that Sym never switched. Thus, making the claim moot.
I’m not arguing that the data is incorrect, I’m saying it’s incomplete.
It’s all speculation anyway, which is why i say it’s debatable that she’s worse or better. Impossible to know one way or the other.
Symmetra MAINS rarely switched. Just about everyone else did. You rarely saw people stay on Sym past the first point, but when they did they became an instant liability because of how mediocre she was outside of her niche, hence the disproportionate amount of complaints. Do you honestly think Sym had a 60+% winrate cause she was a sleeper pick?
That’s why I also ask for Blizzard since launch to release an API for Overwatch.
But in the meantime, that’s the data we have.
Considering that I had a 60% winrate on her myself, yes. As she was the most anti-FPS hero in the game (the only character with absolute zero aiming required), most FPS players had no interest in properly learning how her kit works, maybe tried to use her a few times, fall flat on the face, and cross her off as a viable pick.
I honestly thought Sym2 was slightly OP, but she did her stuff in the background, with passive benefits, thus, went unnoticed most of the time. The rework killed a lot of those passive benefits, and that’s what is showing in the winrate drop.
Notice that I’m not saying Sym3 is a bad hero, she’s still at the top of winrates (just no longer uncontested queen), which screams for her viability. My argument is just that she is a different hero.
And no offense, but the vast majority of people had positive winrates on Sym because they swapped off her when they started losing. Don’t get me wrong, I played a fair bit of Sym and enjoyed having her on my team, but she was easily countered, ult-dependent, and not at all flexible in her role. The versatility that allows people to play Sym 3.0 outside of the first point and even on attack is what normalized her winrate to be much more accurate, which is what we see now… Though it’s still very high because Sym is usually only played by her small dedicated fan-base of mains.
Also, in regards to your last point it makes sense to see an exaggerated amount of complaints about people staying on Sym if you come to the forums. This is where people come to complain. You could have 30 matches where the Sym either wins the first point hold or swaps after losing it, but the one time you get a Sym main (or one-trick, I saw a lot of complaints about them) that refuses to swap you’ll probably get tilted and… Complain in the forums. It’s just the nature of the game.
That also fits the “try a little of the hero, swap when they fall flat in the face”. I have a very large positive winrate on certain heroes I barely touched in certain seasons because the moment I picked them, they turned the time of that match.
Symmetra was exceptionally good at warding chokepoints, and if that’s all you know how to do with her, it makes sense you eventually win a few matches because people can’t bypass the choke.
For instance, my own 90% winrate on Mei this season. And I don’t consider myself a good Mei player, but she was clutch in certain moments where I had to stall for time.
When I say I had 60% winrate on Sym, she was by far my most played hero, and I rarely felt the need to swap because on my understanding of the match, I could simply swap strategies on the fly and keep playing her. And most of the time, it was more than enough to keep winning.
There was also the issue regarding Shield Gen and MMR, which probably set a lot of Sym players below their actual MMR, which led to better winrates in general (because we constantly fought matches below our true rank).
See? This is the kind of double thinking that goes when we start talking about Symmetra winrates, and one that always baffle me. She is a walking paradoxal hero. So, most of the people who play her are the small sect of mains, but there is still enough non-mains around to switch when they lose first point to keep her winrate higher than average.
Sometimes I think people just don’t want to believe a hero like Symmetra and Torb could be stronger than they think they are. So, they have to rationalize a reason for their winrate to be so high, and they still stay as trash heroes.
I’m talking from personal experience, unfortunately. Every time I was on Sym, when we lost any team fight, the first reaction usually was “Sym, pls switch”. When I picked her on attack, people would tilt themselves before the doors even opened. When we win the match, they pat themselves in the back for “carrying a dead weight”, and when we lost, it was obviously because I was playing Sym.
That kind of toxicity also was a major reason why so few people were stubborn enough to keep playing her long enough to learn how she works. If you didn’t had any attachment to the hero, it would be much simpler to never pick her again and stop the blame game.
Denying symm is a completely new hero is just useless. She is. Only the turrets remained mostly an inproved versions of their firmer selves that I prefer.
I like bith symms, but can we just not pretend. The old symm was a defensive area denial utility dps. The new symmetra is a generalist utility dps. They have different effective rsnges,survicability,utility and ways of doing damage. Old symm thrived on being a pre- fight setup hero that pays off the set up. Before synnetra with shiled gen was one if the best 1v1 close range heroes, and now she is decent in mid range. Symmetra now does much more chipoing consistent damage while the old focused on close range killing. Symmetra has completely new damage windows, as before her prinsry was a most of her mid tesnfight damage tool,and now symm does nore damage in the poking phase. Her utility ha shifted from presurring shields from a far and providing a moving barrier into teleporting over gaps.
Outside of aesthetics and names, symmetra is fuvtionally a new hero now.
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Yeah, that’s exactly what Sym was before Sym 3.0 for the majority of people. For those people she was a character you played on the first point hoping for a Teleporter as quickly as possible for the full-hold, but switched off as soon as that didn’t work. That’s why she had such an overinflated winrate.
Well I’m talking about Sym 3.0 there. Her winrate was incredibly high before then because of the reason listed above combined with the fact that only hardcore Sym players played her outside of her niche. Now with 3.0 her winrate dropped from being incredibly high to just normally high because while she stopped being played only on first point by non-Sym mains, a large number of her playerbase are still dedicated Sym players. There were two big factors contributing to her high winrate before 3.0, now there’s just one.
Sym and Torb are fine when played by dedicated players (I’d much rather see one of them than a Genji or Widow on my team…), but comparatively they aren’t as strong as their winrates make them out to be. If their pickrates were higher, their winrates would balance out a lot more. The pro scene is a good indicator of this too, though Sym did finally get to see some play the other day.
Yeah, toxicity toward Sym was really bad before the rework… It still is pretty bad with the rework. I think she’ll be getting some good attention with the tickrate changes but I really would like to see some functionality buffs to her TP so people feel more inclined to give her a shot.
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They should make her have a sister and re-release Sym 1.0. (or 1.5).
I think shes a good hero… very attractive.
These kinds of threads are funny.
Not in the fact that your passion is unwarranted, but in the fact that we’re three reworks into Symmetra now, and she’s still un-viable as a whole, because her niche is so small.
There is also another part of that stats that I think reflect better the “pick Sym and hope for a full hold”, and it is her absurdly high draw rate.
Which means, a lot of people picked her to force a draw when they were forced to perform a full hold. Having a higher than average held more weight on that “first point” argument than the winrate. And before the rework she had some crazy numbers there, like almost 5%, while the average is closer to 2%.
IMO, that’s where the non-mains played Symmetra. Because those were the only situations I ever seen people actively asking someone to pick Sym, Torb and/or Bastion.
Plus, I’m completely OK with Sym having a kit that had no value for pro play. She was a gateway character for non-FPS players. LoL have over 150 champions, and only around 30 are played/banned in pro tournaments. It’s not the end of the world if a specific hero isn’t played in the pro level.
People should be more careful with what they say, I understand Op is upset, but there are better and less embarrassing ways to vent that frustration then attacking everyone around you and yelling “NO ONE CAARREEESS”
Sometimes people need a firm voice to make them see sense. I’m also not going to take being talked down to on a subject that’s been done to death, lightly.
Mercy mains with these topics I swear to god. 
they ruined symmetra, destroyed a hero that was fun and very unique.
I seriously don’t get the point of troll picks, any hero can be a troll pick.
if a troll picks a random character is that character a troll pick?
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ummmm new symmetra is even more obnoxious than old symmetra and her ult is so annoying when it’s popped at the right time… she’s perfectly fine =/
i see plenty of players play her on ladder and they do just fine
the hero was adjusted because it was too easy to get to high ranks with and troll people on their team because they couldn’t play anything else.
they changed symm bcz symm was unbalanceable, and she was hated
Stop bringing that up please, I shed a tear every time someone mentions Sym 2.0.
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I wouldnt stress too much about it bud, no one seemed to care when they did that too Dva, or Hanzo and pretty much any other hero they nerf or rework.
The fact is while people are complaining about heros being OP or UP or just simply not playing those particular hero’s Blizz OW team will continue to make changes they see fit and listern to the pro players which might be good at the game arent the majority.