Symmetra and Zenyatta are victims of powercreep

General Discussion
2

hasn’t it been this way since the game released, though?
she’s always been one of the troll picks

to be fair, zenyatta started dropping off a while before the genji buffs

he’s been really strong and in a decent spot for a while, i’m not saying i’m glad he’s getting pushed out, but it’s not surprising that some heroes will get rotated out of the higher pickrates

i don’t think either of these are really “power creep”

“power creep” is what happened to genji when he started getting to be absolutely worthless to use

zenyatta isn’t abysmally bad because other options got stronger

and symmetra is just… symmetra

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3

Discord isn’t that useful when the doublebarriers block it 90% of the match.

But if Discord could go through barriers. Zen pickrate would spike right back up.

4

so that’s a double barrier problem
like all of the other characters struggling because of it
not really zenyatta-specific

give a hero something to stop double barrier from being too strong (lolliterallysymmetrabeforetheykeptnerfingherwhenshestartedgettingpicked), and other tanks can be used, and if other tanks are used, zenyatta can be used, if that’s the case

obviously a lot of other problems here

like double barrier being required because of other heroes existences

but i mean

this is why the patch updates are too slow, and not meaningful enough when they happen

5

The trick is messing with DoubleBarrier without messing with SingleBarrier.

And making it so BarrierTanks are vulnerable at close range is a way to do that.

Where as just making Sym better at melting DoubleBarrier, would just melt through SingleBarrier like butter.

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6

accurate

though, if they’re comfortable where some of the heroes are being so literal “swap off or lose”, dunno why barriers/symmetra has to be any different

just give us more non-barrier tank heroes
(coughs in mei)
and suddenly there’s more options to switch to

7

Discord going through barriers would just make life miserable for single barrier tanks, and doesn’t affect double barrier at all. If anything, it encourages double barrier, because you’ll definitely want a second main/barrier tank to protect whoever is discorded with a giant blue rectangle that doesn’t take 30% more damage.

8

Why? Most Reins are dropping barriers every 5 seconds.

Sigma is recalling it.

And Orisa barrier would be relatively flimsy.

Discords can get past that easily.

9

It’s harder for the MT to deal with because they can’t rely on the shield to block line of sight for it. Like, they did this buff on PTR a long time ago and it was shot down because it made playing Rein and Orisa terrible.

Of course, that was before people had double barrier and Moira/Ana/Baptiste support lines, so.

10

No. They did it in 2017, and it was shot down because it was a big buff to Dive, during the peak of Dive meta.

However if you were deliberately trying to cause a Dive meta after 2 years of no Dive meta. It would be a good fit.

11

They tested this already and it didn’t make it off PTR for obvious reasons.

12

Hahaha yeah I’m still mad about it too.

13

Because it was tested during the peak of Dive meta in 2017.

Last I checked, Dive hasn’t been meta for 2 years.

So “This doesn’t work, because Dive is already really strong”, isn’t really the current situation.

14

zenyatta is a victim of power creep. Symm has never been good. The only time she was slightly good she was nerfed into the ground. It’s not that she got power crept, it’s that she was never good at all.

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15

Too many mobile heroes. Zen’s lack of mobility and huge boxy hitbox along with releases like Echo, Hammond, Genji and Tracer buffs, etc has left him behind. They attempted to buff Zen with a discord revert but they instead need to fix his hitbox so that he isn’t so easy to kill.

16

get a junkrat and watch those barriers go. though a good junk would probably take an angle to lob nades past the barriers.
but barriers are pathetically weak now, some focus fire and they are gone (which tbh is why 2 are practically mandatory if you want any level of protection).

17

Symmetra absolutely is not a victim of power creep. She’s a victim of the elitist mob
mentality. She was a viable counter to double shield but received a nerf to literally every part of her kit.

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18

but muh skill!!1!

down here on gold symm can destroy with a little of strategy.
I’ve won many hanamura games easily with the teleport to point strategy.
in one occasion I was ana and has an easy time sniping from the choke while the enemy team tried to touch the point to no avail and another time I was junkrat, those poor souls never had a chance receiving nades to the face and symm deathray + turrets if they dared come to the point.

19

that’s why there’s plenty of suggestions from sym mains to improve the rest of her kit that actually is used most of the time (i.e. a better tp and making orbs actually mid-ranged) rather than her primary that’s just a team resource black hole without reworking her into zarya.

20

I don’t have to say anything. the video title says it for me:

21

I don’t think it’s really just powercreep leaving sym in the dust. Here’s Geoff’s comments about the sym3.0 rework regarding her primary:

back then, sym charge time went from 1s per level (old <=2.0 sym) to 2s per level and beam was 10m length i.e. they totally expected sym to somehow reasonably stay alive in reaching 10m of the enemy, then stay alive for >4s when she had little to no sustain in a game where average ttk is like 1~2s.

obviously it’s a bit different now, but emphasis on bit. i.e. instead of 10m it’s 12m and instead of 4s to charge it’s like ~2.6s. and now her mobility is pretty much like old 2.0 most of the time making her play very much like old sym too (i.e. not able to do much else aside from wait for w+m1 a lot of the time)… the very thing that the rework was supposed to move away from (esp with barrier nerfs to tanks)…

powercreep is part of it, but there’s a clear double standard going on with sym’s balance vs others from the beginning.