Nine days.
August 13 2019 - Beam bugfix goes live
August 22 2019 - Nerfs on PTR
In that time, Sym became 4th picked DPS in GM, tied with McCree, Hanzo, and Widowmaker. She was under Reaper, Mei, and Doomfist.
Realistically, she was at the spot where pre-buff Genji was at. She was nowhere near his power level now, and she was addressed within 9 blazing days.
Can anyone tell me with a straight face that there’s no bias and that certain heroes aren’t purposely kept from being strong picks? Please try.
Did she need toning down from the beam fix? YES.
Was she overnerfed? YES.
If she needed that, what the hell does Genji need now? And why so slow to address it?
OWL Genji plays make crowd go “oooooooo.” Crowd go “oooooooo” make money go pocket.
259 Likes
Nobody wants Sym to be meta. She has a niche and thats fine
20 Likes
But we atleast want her to not be trash
119 Likes
There is no niche that she excels in that a generalist doesn’t do better.
Niche is codeword for bad. And yes, NOBODY wants Sym to be meta, we want her to not be garbage.
98 Likes
PTR is not live.
Sym was nerfed 5 weeks after her buffs and those changes went live on 9/17/2019.
The was a faster than normal turnaround for Blizzard from previous eras, but then again they probably had the changes ready to go just in case the “minor” buff they gave Sym was as major as literally everyone else was saying it was.
1 Like
Not this again.
They decided to nerf her within 9 days. This was the days before experimental existed. The length its on the PTR doesn’t matter. The fact is they gathered less than 9 days of data before moving forward with nerfing.
79 Likes
She does on many control maps. Many OWL teams choose her on those since shes stronger than the meta
It absolutely does matter. The fact that they knew they had to get it out quickly because it had to be on PTR a month is sort of relevant. I am sure they have decided to nerf Genji, but it will not need a month on PTR for those nerfs to happen.
Unless you know the exact point in time at which they sat in a meeting and decided to nerf Sym, your argument is fundamentally flawed and the only fair metric is WHEN the nerfs went live which was 5 weeks after she was buffed.
5 weeks was very fast back then, but we are still within a 5 week window of getting Genji nerfed so the imaginary victim complex makes no sense.
1 Like
Barriers were nerfed shortly after. Not saying Sym doesn’t need buffs (I think she does)…but there’s a lot more to it than just “Symmetra was nerfed therefore Blizz is biased”. The game has undergone some huge balance changes since 2-2-2 was added. Heck, we’re still in the middle of major balance changes. Give Blizz time, balance isn’t easy. Overwatch is constantly changing.
3 Likes
Bastion and sym will always be the heroes that’ll be ignored
5 Likes
Pretty sure it was because they didn’t intend to make her stronger with that bug fix, they had an intended time to kill with her primary and the bug fix shortened it significantly. With Genji they actually intended to make him stronger; I imagine he’ll be nerfed but they want to wait to make sure his power actually sticks, and doesn’t go back to normal levels as people get used to the buffs.
4 Likes
Are you not acknowledging that her beam was too strong after the bug fix? That’s clearly why it was nerfed, Zarya got a piece of that nerf too and in the same fashion. They both ate beam width nerfs and damage nerfs. I’d wager it had nothing to do with her ranking on the stats because the nerfs were tailored towards counteracting the big damage spikes from the heroes that benefited from the beam fix. I think you’re only making that ranking connection so you can reference Genji and make your case about bias, which is a little underhanded imo.
1 Like
Speak for yourself.
I look forward to the day we have a Junkrat + Symmetra DPS meta with a Hog + D.Va tanking lineup, and Baptiste + Zenyatta for support.
Why? Because none of those heroes see much play.
I want to see different things.
I want to see high-skill Junkrat play, which is something you cannot see in OWL. Not because they don’t pick him, but because the only pro who actually knows Junkrat’s grenade launcher from a hole in the ground was Jake, and he’s an announcer now. The rest of them just play him like he’s a ground Pharah and wouldn’t know proper trap placement and usage if you slapped them with an instruction manual.
They don’t practice with him enough to know any of his flanking routes.
They don’t know any of his tricks.
Pros?
Put any of them up against Chro or PvP and they would get rocked, not because they’re worse players but simply because they don’t have any idea whatsoever what the hero is capable of because Junkrat isn’t allowed to be “meta” and, therefore, they don’t care.
…and he’s not meta because of a decision that was made. Not because of a mistake, or an accident. It was decided that heroes like Junkrat and Sym should not be good enough picks for OWL.
43 Likes
No one is saying there is no bias in heroes viability, but you also need to know only fews want to play with/against Sym, her design is very selective and does not appeal to majority. If one day Sym were taken away from the hero selection most wouldn’t even notice.
1 Like
I read. Did you read mine?
Her nerfs consisted of the exact same nerfs to Zarya, they were addressing the beam bugfix. It had nothing to do with Sym’s place in the rankings or some hate against Sym. Unless you’re suggesting there is just as much bias against Zarya.
Her “niche” is being a decent pick on Lijiang:Night Gardens.
Nobody’s asking for her to be meta, we just don’t want her to be trash and a throw pick
7 Likes
It doesn’t matter how long the PTR lasted. What the main takeaway from OP’s whole point is it took them 9 days to issue a PTR with Symmetra nerfs. It only took them 9 days to address Symmetra being powerful.
How long has it taken them to address Genji, who is currently leading the DPS pack by a large margin, with a record breaking pickrate for a DPS hero while also maintaining a near 60% win rate?
(Spoiler alert: he was buffed on June 16th, and they haven’t done or said anything to address him yet)
24 Likes
