No, Sym 1.0 was extremely flawed and she was reworked away from being anything close to a support because of several reasons.
No, Sym 2.0 was not a support in practice.
The ‘‘support Sym’’ everyone has nostalgia for was but a defense utility dps. Running her replacing an actual support was throwing.
She was going to be moved to defense before the rework. In fact if you revert her to 2.0 right now in OW1, she could still be a defense dps hero, because ‘‘non healing damage supports’’ are ultimately just utility DPS.
And healer Sym is not only something she is not built for at all, but also all the internal AND public testings concluded that it was awful, clunky and unreliable.
So no. I fully believe that any change to Sym in OW2 later beta wont be making her a healer. Such a role change could have already been announced together with Doomfist, who is the only hero getting role swapped in OW2.
Thats not to say current Sym doesnt need changes. Her 3.0 design is simply not functional in the OW2 philosophy of individual impact.
Old TP won a lot of games for me back in the days after launch. She had her place and used correctly/well could very well offset the one less healer situation, but people didn’t want to account or adjust for it.
AND REALISTICALLY, I can understand that.
Having the 5 other members of a team adjust for one less healer because someone wants to run utility support can cause issues, ESPECIALLY if they aren’t good at it.
AND if you give further consideration to the fact that launch Sym was more easily countered than her later iterations (1 hp turrets destroyed by a breeze, short range sentry deployment, shorter range, etc) then it’s understandable why the community perception of her would skew unfavorably, but the issue is that it skewed to such an extent that even people who knew how to play her well were flamed simply for not picking a healer.
They mitigated this by moving her to DPS and while it was a little depressing because I personally don’t believe “support” SHOULD equal “healer”: I completely understood it.
On this we can agree. She’s never been a healer and I personally don’t want her to turn into one.
If they bring back shield generation in some capacity I’d probably take advantage of it when given the chance, but I’m not looking to make a healer out of a character who was never designed as one and short of ANOTHER massive rework (please not again): probably wouldn’t be a good one.
If you think that utility defines the support role, does that mean Hanzo is a support now? Mei?
Utility is something that exists in all roles. Even on old offense/defense roles.
But reliable healing is something only supports have. Its the backbone of the role and what unites them. You remove it and they are just… dps with utility.
Utility does not define the support role in Overwatch 1. But you never know, maybe after all the feedback, it might define the support role in Overwatch 2. I can only hope.
Doomfist was one feet into the dive tank role with his mobility and CC. He was always the tanky flanker and that was in fact the main reason why he wasnt allowed to be strong.
Unlike Sym, whose kit is incompatible with healing as we all saw proved several times.
Geoff Goodman literally spoke about a healer Sym rework MULTIPLE times on Reddit and the last thing he said about her a few months ago was that “Support Sym is on our internal to-do list of things to test for OW2”.
Why are you acting as if it’s impossible when it’s literally the ONLY thing they discuss about the hero publically?
It might happen, it might not, she’s probs getting a rework either way be it DPS or Support, but stop acting as if it’s never going to happen because they LITERALLY said they ARE going to test it internally.
This is a blatant lie. Geoff said she felt clunky when they tested her with healing tied to her turrets. Which is what Ml7 did on experimental. Hence why Geoff literally said that if they tested Support Sym in the future they would test her with healing NOT connected to her turrets. And then months later he said they ARE going to test her as a Support internally.
Yes and it has failed half a dozen times. Do you need another half a dozen times to understand its awful?
Because its tiring to see people have the most turgid ideas about how to make Sym a ‘‘totally viable healers NOT CLICKBAIT!’’. Healing sentries are a dead idea.
Literally every healer Sym idea I see is '‘what if 1.0 Sym… with extra healing and taxibotting…!!!"’
So you want an entire hero to be demolished and to alienate most of her playerbase (which includes the people who fall for the ‘‘support rework means Sym 2.0 comes back!!! crowd’’)?
There are more heroes who have remained almost the same from all roles than heroes who havent. Torbjorn hasnt received any real change. Or Pharah. Or Hog. Or like a dozen or so other heroes.
Also supports have been nerfed. Brig was (kinda) reworked. Just because they have gotten zero interesting new things doesnt mean they wont, specially considering Blizz admitted they are going to look into changing supports more.
That line literally was said when she killed a Moira, OP admitted it.
Whenever or not support is synonym to healer just depends from game to game.Like how Zarya is a support hero in Heroes of the Storm because of her utility.But a support who doesn’t heal doesn’t work in Overwatch’s design.
People take ‘‘supports need to have healing’’ as ‘‘support means healbot’’ and uhhhh no one is saying that. At all. Being able to heal reliably and on-demand is the hallmark of a support.
