This is the most mind-boggling part to me.
They reworked Sym and changed her category to be a dps. She was always a close range character because throwing slow orbs down sightlines isn’t exactly reliable dps output (though the old ability of the orbs to pierce shields was something I miss greatly). You have to get in and do that beam damage. Which means, you have to be in the middle of the brawl, up close and personal with enemies.
Rein can swing three times and kill her. Even though she’s supposed to be melting barriers. But why would I ever come close to him if he can take two steps forward and beat me to death? I need extreme pocketing to duel ONE other enemy, which is where the frustration with Sym comes from. It comes from the fact that she needs to be pocketed and when pocketed, every character is annoying. Like, Pharah is weak to everything in the game currently, but everybody still hates Pharmercy because pocketing is the problem, not Pharah.
Anyway, comparing Sym to other “up close and personal” dps, we can immediately see the differences. Who else is a brawler that needs some time to get a kill while participating in the brawl? Doomfist, Reaper and Mei. There’s even a healer in this category (Brigitte).
All of these characters have the following:
- 250 HP
- Abilities to restore or gain health while in combat without needing to disengage (Doomfist’s shields, Reaper’s self heal, Mei’s iceblock and wall, Brigitte’s self heal)
- Abilities to defend themselves and/or escape (Doomfist’s shields, mobility and ultimate, Reaper’s wraith form and, now buffed, shadowstep, Mei’s iceblock and wall, Brigitte’s self heal and shield and two forms of CC (stun and pushing with flail)).
These things are crucial to keeping a brawler in the brawl. Symmetra has none of them. 200 HP, teleporter is too slow to deploy and enter before you’re killed, teleporter has also been changed to serve as a knock-off version of her old ult, slow charge beam that gives nothing in return for attacking the enemy (neither health, no protection, nor CC: literally her old lock-on beam was better due to slowing down targets and ofc let’s not forget her photon barrier. F in chat). Some people say she has shields that regenerate, but they regenerate out of combat. I don’t need them out of combat, I need something to survive the brawl without my whole team pocketing me to kill one enemy.
Curiously, one character was upgraded to receive 250 HP and it’s… Torbjorn. A character with two long range options, one of which is a turret, who doesn’t have to fight anyone face to face and who also already had an ability to temporarily buff his own health, movement and attack.
I am completely baffled by this and I will maintain the statement that it’s a 100% undeniable fact that nobody on the dev team plays Symmetra and hasn’t played her since release until these literal basic problems are somehow addressed and until there’s acknowledging that her reworks were done without a single suggestion or input from people who play her (some of them play her for a living).
I simply do not understand what they want Symmetra to be and, evidently, neither do they. And obviously, listening to (professional and otherwise) Symmetra players is just too much of an enigma.