Making her higher skill at the cost of a better ult, better utility and better turrets?
Yep don’t forget to mention that 2.0 had no additional balance changes to help her. 3.0 came out without a single thing changing on 2.0.
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before sym was moira on steroids that couldnt heal but for some reason was in the support category
Sym2 also won a map in Contenders before they removed her for Sym3.
So, we should as well delete Ashe and revamp her whole kit from scratch, because she has also seen 0 play from OWL thus far.
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This is not true. Thus where we see other reworks and changes to many heroes including widowmaker and DVA
They fixed the core issue of these heroes, to make them less niche, and more universally applicable. Not that they were “unhealthy”
Symm could have stayed at 1.0 and just been buffed until similarly niche but strong, but the point was to eliminate the niche. Not her overall power.
health of the game or her or her players, was irrelevant.
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That was a decent mid tier team trolling the second worst team in NA tendies after they were already up 2 on the last match of the regular season, and Mangachu is known to be the type of guy to go around collecting Torb hammer kills in high profile matches for the lulz. It’d be nice if it was a remotely serious use of Sym but it wasn’t.
Not only that, but Tracer at the same time received a Pulse Bomb nerf to 300 damage, so she would no longer be able to ignore your highly-turreted room with blink-bomb-recall combo to destroy your shield generator. That nerf alone would make it much harder for the enemy team to simply send a lone Tracer to deal with your ult, which would increase Symmetra’s viability.
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There is another one too, on South America contenders, a few months earlier. Starts at 8:00
I’m not saying she was good for pro play. That was explicitly one of her biggest weakness, that her viability would decrease if the enemy team was more coordinated.
I’m just pointing out you showing up her Sym3 2-3 appearances in OWL as proof that she is better isn’t much because she was also used before as well.
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I’m a big fan of Sym 3.0. She used to be brutal on a handful of maps, now she is much less brutal but can win on a much wider variety of maps. I’d rate her as the highest IQ requirement of any of the DPS category… everything about her kit requires proper anticipation of the enemy’s play.
If you are a FPS purist, who likes to win games with your mad mechanical skills, Symmetra is going to feel like a slow, dumb chore. Let’s go ahead and stipulate that, her kit doesn’t permit for FPS mechanics to shine. But for a lot of us that don’t have the twitch skillz to play other dps, and have to focus more of our attention on positioning and area denial, she’s a star.
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Oh I brought up that OWL clip as evidence that her current ult is really strong and severely underrated. It’s easily the strongest part of her kit now and definitely better than anything she had in 2.0.
Aside, I forgot how hype the Brazilian cast was.
I agree Infinity Wall is severely underestimated. I still wish it had some adverse effect on enemies crossing it. Or making it permanent until destroyed/replaced, so that the enemy can’t just “wait it out”, and need to take it down. Roadhog and Sombra would be good counters, with them being able to trade an ult for instant wall removal.
Myself, I sit in a weird spot even within Sym mains, because I consider Sym3 a really strong hero, and a nerf at the same time.
In my eyes, Sym2 was stupidly OP, and I never understood why so many people think she was weak. Her main weakness, as I outlined above, was team coordination, which made her kit unfit for pro play. But outside of pro, she had a loaded kit. And the more chaotic the match was, every single part of her kit was made much stronger.
IMO, the main reason why so many people think we just want autolock back is because they only noticed Sym2 was doing something when she was getting PotG by chaining targets. But Sym2 had so many subtle and invisible ways to improve the chances for her team, that unless we specifically pointed them out loud, most of those would go unnoticed.
Stuff like:
- The enemy team having to send one or two people to seek out Shield Gen, allowing us to sacrifice it in exchange for fighting 6v5;
- The enemy flankers hesitating jumping in the backline because they didn’t knew where all six turrets were placed, if you used them to ward instead of piling them all on the choke
- Shield Gen giving everyone more time for the healers to reach them, and pretty much making chip damage have zero effect on your team.
- Shield Gen also make all 120 damage sources requires an extra hit to finish a squishy (Pharah rockets, Dragonblade, Widow bodyshot, etc), and allowed certain heroes to not be surprise killed by Hanzo (everyone) or Widow (250 HP heroes).
- The autolock was more bark than bite, but it also made certain heroes (Genji) hesitate engaging a Zen you are protecting.
- Orb spam was slow as molasses, but it was unstoppable. More often than not, Orisa or Reinhardt trusted they were being healed, didn’t dodged the orb, and the squishies behind them would take full orb damage because they only see it once it cross their main tank body. This would get surpise picks, or make them seek cover while already behind a shield, which gives your team an edge on shield wars.
- Her old ult charged stupidly fast. It was an easy ult to sacrifice because often you would get it destroyed, and recover it before the next fight. Too many people complained “they are breaking your ult”, and I had to scream “dont go back for it, push 6v5”.
- Having an extra barrier for clutch defenses didn’t hurt either. The barrier had too much HP for its own good. It allowed us to safely cross through main on long corridors like Volskaya, Anubis or Numbani, while conserving our main tank barrier. I’ve only seen my barrier break on those corridors when the defense team had a Bastion shooting at it.
- Too often people would react to a good Symmetra by swapping into Winston and Pharah, two heroes that requires some knowledge to play well. That would also made the enemy team predictable. I used to play with a Reaper main, and I always played around him when the enemy swapped to a Winston, so that if he dived me, he would die in two shots.
Seriously, too many invisible benefits. She was kinda the perfect support. Too good for her own good, since people also never recognized when she was helping them. I lost count of how many times I swapped because of social pressure, and suddenly people would complain that no one was protecting our healers (because the flankers were free), or how the hell they were dying so fast with an extra healer (because shield gen gives them more time to clutch heal).
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TommySalami you already know my stance on this and you know how much I respect the people who used to love Symmetra’s previous play style and version which is now simply ton, but really nobody should be able to ignore the simple facts here.
- She is a much more skillful pick now.
- She is a much less frustrating hero to play against.
- She is a much less situational hero overall.
- Especially based on my previous point, Symmetra 3.0 now provides an excellent groundwork for future buffs, which I’m sure that are going to make her simply excellent.
Because of all of these, you simply cannot say that it was “one of the worst” reworks. It certainly was kinda mediocre, but that’s only because she came out underpowered, which fact hinders the fundamental work that they did on the hero, which was successful and fixed most problems that the previous Symmetra had.
Finally, yeah, it’s true that they could have made changes to Symmetra 2.0 before reworking her for good, but really the developers probably had something in their minds… And especially as slowly as patches are coming out, it was I believe the wisest idea to roll out the rework immediately, as it essentially was a change that had the smallest risk out of the bunch.
I really respect your opinion and even so this sentence:
And I really hope that Symmetra 2.0 get re - created in the Workshop as soon as possible, so that the people who unfortunately miss her old play style can enjoy the game again 
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She needs some sort of buffs, yes.
Because she was weak; her turrets could be destroyed within the blink of a time, she virtually had no escape ability on her own, and the only annoying thing to her kit was the auto-aim-weapon and shield generator as an ultimate. Both have been deleted.
Back then, when Sym v2 showed up, it was more like “ok, let’s pick Winston and frustrate the hell out of her until she switches”, there was not much more about her going on than that in most of the games.
If they had to fix something then they saw something unhealthy with the character and/or the impact they were having on the game. You don’t fix something that is perfectly fine.
Sym 1.0 and 2.0 were inherently flawed as the the design of her kit was to passive from the start. Nothing in her kit was healthy for her or the game.
The dev’s clearly saw this and fixed it.
In their own words they wanted to increase her viability. Which means they saw an issue with her viability. Which means her low viability was having a negative impact on the game. n unhealthy one.
Its a logical inevitability when you follow their ownnwords and actions.
Sym is fine. A few minor buffs and she would be perfect. This version is the best she has been in a really long time. OWL and her kit allowing room for improvement.
That 50% ult charg in one orb those were the good old days.
By making her more generic. Which made enough people drop her completely.
Heroes picked not because they are viable, but because certain players like them, for how unique they are.
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You omit the fact however that Symmetra used to have 69% average win-rate before rework and a significantly higher pick-rate.
Her win-rate and pick-rate have both fallen dramatically since rework indicating it’s definitely not working as intended. Particularly, when the goal of the rework was to make her more mainstream.
She is more viable on attack but is absolutely terrible on defense now. And is still countered by 90% of the roster. Sym is an absolute throw-pick above Gold.
Yeah, in some aspects Sym 3.0 is better than 2.0 but the rework is still a fail nonetheless. It didn’t do anything for her nor did it really change any perception. I mean she is not an absolute 0% pickrate at OWL anymore but by what margin? Is she really viable? The answer is an overwhelming no.
And yet she is still not viable in the context of the game. Yeah Sym 3.0 is somewhat better than 1.0 and 2.0 and still the worst hero in the game bar none.
She’s always had the highest win-rate in the game. In fact, she used to have 69-70% in some cases win-rate. This is not news, her win-rate has dropped since the 3.0 rework by a huge margin. And her pick-rate hasn’t risen which means by and large the rework is a fail.
To make an analogy - it’s like cutting bread with a fork. And then someone gives you a dull knife. Yeah, it’s probably better than a fork but it still sucks. Symmetra is a throw-pick. Anyone claiming otherwise probably doesn’t play Symmetra at all or plays Symmetra in low elo.
Sure some people can play Sym at high ranks but then again people managed to get to GM with Vanilla Sym too so that’s no indication whatsoever.
She is not viable either and that’s a fact.
Not to even mention that no other hero in the game requires so much coordination to even work in a basic capacity.
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Sounds like absolute bane for a hero. Less teamwork hero needs, lower chances are, that something won’t go according to plan.