Symmetra is currently the only hero to receive a redesign. Not rework, redesign. They changed everything that I loved about the hero, and I’m not the only one who thinks this.
The majority of Symmetra players agree that her first rework was the most successful version of her, and that showed with her insane winrate at the time. She had the highest overall winrate in the 2.0 era. While some did want her to be reworked again, the majority in fact didn’t.
Why was Symmetra 2.0 so successful in my eyes? Because it was a rework that actually worked. She was still the same hero as her original iteration, but she received a lot of things that made her really fun to play, plus it increased her skill ceiling. Her “difficulty” didn’t lie in aiming, it lied in knowing the range on Shield Generator, knowing and remembering spots on every single map, knowing whether to use TP or Shield Generator, etc. It was about being creative. It was about making up for being a non-healer Support.
But here we are with her unwarranted second rework. She has become a contrasting version of her former self. She now embodies a bland and braindead DPS hero with a non-offensive ultimate who is just as niche as she was prior.
TL;DR: Symmetra is the only hero in the game who was changed entirely from what was originally advertised; people put many, many hours into learning the hero to the core and it was basically deleted.
Sym 2.0 had a gameplan and could actually survive at close ranges. She wasnt a mobile hyperspammy hero, but she was really strong at her general defensive job and unlike general opinion, she was usable on some offense maps. While she was basically a defense dps with support aspects, her utility was either simple enough to be hard to not use or completly on Sym’s hands, but above all it affected HER in positive ways, improved the way she dealt damage (TP allowed for riskier plays because fast way back, Shield Gen gave +75 hp, Photon barrier was a multiuse barrier, etc).
Sym 3.0 spreads itself into so many directions that there are people who played her in so many ways that there is no reconciliation. Some people even try to play her as a bootleg Tracer. Her entire power budget is monopolized by the unbalanceable team TP, to the point that first point team TP cheese remains the only unnerfed thing about her. Sym 3.0 is, at its core, a hero that cant work on anything that isnt GM/OWL - her entire kit is poorly designed around team TP and the rest is filler. She depends 100% on a team that follows through and pockets her so she isnt a dead weight after fulfilling her team TP role.
At this point, while I could love a revert + flying deploy sentries, just paying attention to the good paradigms that Sym 2.0 rework made about Sym’s overall kit could do wonders.
As much as I hated Sym 2.0 and thought that beam was unfair as all heck, I do sympathize and feel bad for you guys.
I just wanted that beam to not be such an “I WIN” button in low ranks. But I didn’t want her gutted. Would’ve personally been fine with them just changing the beam to what it is now and keeping everything else as it was, even her old E.
But I am honestly sorry your all’s hero got ruined. I really do hate that happened to y’all; it sucks.
That’s why we don’t need another redesign/rework for her. We don’t need her to be a new hero…again. Sym 3.0 gave Sym mains more tools for her to scale with in good hands.
Everyone is being scammed right now in ranked no-reset, no-placement, lootbox-role, cheater/smurf infested, no-dev-interaction Overwatch.
Except lock-on was never a pubstomper, there is data and her pickrate was just as small in bronze/silver, mainly because Sym herself was the frailest short range hero in the game - she gets massively outranged by basically every hero, and half the roster can escape her beam either with mobility or walking. On top of being weak to every bronze/silver staple hero like Reaper and Junkrat.
It could be insane to ask a close range hero to have high aiming requirements, much less one so vulnerable, it could make them unusable without massively upping her survivability to excuse the utter removal of reliable damage… which is literally what 3.0 did and why her primary is a complete meme.
You need to rethink the ‘‘lock-on=no skill’’ because lock-on on a 200hp hero with 12m range and no mobility or hard defensives, it doesnt feel like ‘‘OP’’ it feels like consolation prize for being the frailest close range hero.
Sym didnt magically teleport behind you with 1000hp and a fully charged beam.
I’m not one of the people who say that. I think Moira is fine. I think Winston is fine. I think Mercy takes skill, etc. But playing against Sym 2.0 just felt insanely unfair in my elo.
And playing AS her was just the same. I 1v3’d people quite frequently. It was pretty bad. Yes, if a team had proper awareness she was hard to get value out of, but the level of advantage she had against other 200 HP heroes who had to aim, especially when having to get within her range (taking a point, etc.) was just insane.
Or it felt that way to me. I don’t claim things are OP’d unless I struggle against it AND have success with it. So it has to feel strong both ways, and that beam definitely did.
Data may show differently, and obviously people’s experiences may vary. I’m just saying that, in my opinion, that felt like the most BS thing to ever hit this game save for Brig 1.0.
Edit: Just found the screenshot of one of the first games playing her after someone said I should play her if I thought she was that overpowered… lol
Pretending that Sym 3.0 is somehow the apex of overwatch hero design is downright insanity, the only point where Sym was even near usable beyond team tp cheese was when she had an entire meta feeding her easy primary charge, and she was still only 4th most used hero.
Sym 3.0 lacks self survivability, doesnt have enough of anything, is spread massively on different dps sub-roles to the point some people play her as a mediocre Tracer, design-wise too much of her power goes into team TP and not enough into making her a workable dps hero without massive pocketing.
Yeah but we cant base balance decisions on anectodal data - flanker/hitscan player feelies is exactly how and why Sym got nerfworked into a taxibot unable to fulfill her basic dps role.
Thats the thing… she doesnt. Not only other close range heroes hit her pretty hard, her range always made it very easy to limit her with range. An inmobile hero having a very small power zone is no issue at all - and probably what the game needs right now is people who slow the game so burst isnt so prevalent.
I really think you have colored your experience to only remember your successes with and defeats against Sym, and dont remember the other way around.
Eh, it’s possible. I only played her for 6 hours in QP, so /shrug. Did have a 60% win rate with a 2.91 KDR though, so that’s pretty decent. Only other hero with that high of a win percentage that I played more than 5 hours was Brig at 70% WR, 3.12 KDR.
It’s also possible I could’ve just been good with Sym and Brig relative to some other heroes, I guess. But considering I had pretty good success and felt they were unfair to fight against … yeah, it’s anecdotal, but still, I’m sticking to it. XD
I really do wish they hadn’t trashed the hero, though. Don’t really blame the Sym mains who quit because of it.
I’m more concerned with the fact that Symmetra was viable for ONE WEEK before she was nerfed into the ground where Blizzard apparently thinks she belongs, while Genji, every 12-year-old’s and weeb’s favorite hero, gets so many buffs at once that he catapults into absolute insanity, but he gets to remain untouched for, what, two months?
It would have been better if the skills sym 2.0 used were on other hero’s. But so many things I had been optimizing just became obsolete with the rework.
This caused me to fall from gm to masters. And later to diamond with the infinite tp. Which really sucked because my favorite part of this game was the really nice community at the gm level
Symmetra mains are very decent people
never met Sym main that not unique
there is many Gengi and Tracer and Widows most of them are terrible.
but Sym players are something else. this hero need more than buff
Would love to see actual evidence that supports all these claims.
Wrong. The fact that a hero has had a high win rate throughout their life has absolutely zero connection with whether said hero is actually liked amongst people of a specific community and especially not amongst the entire player base.
High win rates are actually inversely proportional most of the times to even a hero’s pick rates due to heroes who are situational by design, such as Symmetra 2.0, naturally having a low pick rate and high win rate.
And even if this flawed logic of yours is true, it still makes no sense because you’re comparing one of, if not the most balanced situational heroes in this Ham’s history (2.0) to a blatantly numerically underpowered hero such as 3.0…
And 3.0 still defeated 2.0’s stats when she was the closest to numerically balanced during the Double Shield META.
Yeah, if we exclude the terrible “low skill = high reward” nature of 2.0, how utterly frustrating she was to play against and her blatantly situational nature, along with all other fundamental design problems that led to her rightful rework years ago, I guess the 2.0 rework did ““work””…
It wasn’t even close to ““unwarranted””, but anyways…
Just the same old misinformation thrown around once again… I won’t even bother…
No one was scammed. It is written in the official Terms and Conditions that you automatically agree to when you buy the game that it may receive changes without prior notice.
You have no one but yourself to blame for not reading the Terms and not finally getting over 2.0… 2 entire years after she was reworked…
All of the surveys/polls provided are not even close to being classified as evidence in the first place, due to the extremely low number of responses and the fact that they have been created in platforms which in no way represent the actual player base, as they’re either filled with Support mains or outright with former Symmetra 2.0 mains.
