This thread will contain a detailed analysis on Symmetra and her 3 iterations. It will mainly focus on 2.0 and 3.0
This thread will be splitted into 3 different parts, each being completely unrelated to another.
Weâre going to talk about the following topics:
Firstly, I am going to discuss the previous Symmetra and everything wrong with her design. I will discuss and differentiate her weaknesses and problems.
Next, I am going to give my OPINION and answer whether Symmetra is better, worse, or sidegraded for better good.
Lastly, I will go over how I would personally rework her, on both 2.0 and 3.0 iterations.
Letâs get started.
The moment the game was released, Symmetra was considered to be the worst hero in the entire game. She had lowest pick rate out of all characters, and a very inflated win rate. It wasnât here without a reason. After playing her for a long time, this is what I found flawed in her design. (The problems will be from biggest to smallest, click to enlarge):
1. Inconsistency.
Old Symmetra had tools in her kit that only really worked semi decent for specific situations, but never really provided a guaranteed advantage. And that can be applied to every single one of her abilities.
Her primary had range of roughly 7 meters and took 2 seconds to start doing some serious damage.7 meters means itâs a melee weapon.
You gave her a melee weapon. Melee weapon, on a character with low health pool, lacking defense mechanics, and no mobility. In a game where everyone and their mother has a long range gun, huge mobility, or bigger sustain. And you expect it to work.
Clap clap
Symmetra simply could not guarantee standing this long within 2 seconds of loud microwaving noise. The problem was even more exaggerated as her secondary fire was even more situational. A slow moving orb that passed through barriers proved to be only good at getting ult charge at chokepoints, and, once again, at melee range, to one shot Tracer. But even in these circumstance it felt like opening lootbox. It was too random.
So what about other situations? You know? The ones that are happening for like 70% of the game time? What was Symmetra supposed to do here? She lacked respectable range option. She could either decide to spam orbs or try to flank/wait for her enemies to use left click. But none of these solutions were optimal, stable, and guaranteed to work.Her turrets also were absurdly inconsistent. In an unorganized team, they absolutely demolished, but all it took is a simple premeditation and preparation to deny any of the value they brought. And they were on 10 seconds cooldown, 60 seconds if full nest was destroyed. It was not that difficult, as they had 1 hp. These guys could have no cooldown, and they would still be unreliable source of slow, damage, or area denial.
With her first rework Symmetra obtained a 1000 HP personal barrier. Which sounds nice. ButâŚ.
The problem is, it was useful, but only for as long as it didnât pass enemy. And depending on the distance the usefulness could last from quarter a second to up to well, infinity. Even Reaperâs edgiest shotguns have lesser spread than this. Itâs like giving inconsistency on top of inconsistency.
Some people found this skill to be the best part of her kit. And I agree.
If her best skill was inconsistent shield, arguably the worst one in the game, then we all can agree Symmetra had some problems.Then we have her ultimates.
Her 6 charge teleporter was just a poor manâs resurrection. It literally only brought any serious value on first point of defense. It was very weak on capture map, and also very disappointing on defense point B, not only because of distance between point and spawn, but also because of gradually increasing respawn time (see KarQâs video), something that normal res does not care about.
It was also absolutely trash on payload maps. There were some times when even the perfectly placed teleporter could become as effective as walking out of spawn because of payload movement.Blizzard tried their best to adress this issue by giving her shield generator. In my opinion it was definitely step in a right direction. 75 shields to everyone on your team was definitely useful in more situations than teleporter. However, the shields barely changed time to kill someone by most damages, and prevented only two one-shots in the game: Hanzo and Doomfist, while letting others run freely. It was helpful, but to help in every situation it would require something more than that.
And donât ever get me started on how easy it was to destroy her ult when using a brain. Symmetra always had problems defending her ult. She had zero mobility and had to commit a lot of resources, like turrets or positioning, just to make sure she has a chance defending her ult against flankers. Not to mention 90% of the time she had to protect it alone. Your teammates never really bothered to acknowledge its existence, but honestly, why would they? It was supposed to be hidden, and was not shown for them. There was no point in wasting time searching for it properly. Her ult value could be destroyed so fast and easily that sometimes it was just better to not place it at allâŚ
With all mentioned above, it is easy to see why Symmetra did not really work. Why bother playing Symmetra if you can pick someone else who is not a walking gamble? Do not get me wrong, there is nothing awkward with having situational abilities. But when all your abilities are situational and not necessary covering each other weaknesses, then do not expect it to work.
2. Niche.
Symmera 2.0 was considered to be only usable on first point of defense. There surely are reasons why, for example, the fact that she could potentially get her ult within 20 seconds of the match thanks to her turrets and orbs. Combining with teleporter bringing good value on point A, it is easy to see why people considered her to be usable only during such circumstances.
I personally think itâs false. There were many times when I felt more useful on attack than defense. Developers literally gave her tools to make her viable at more situations, but I am assuming that her stationary turrets caused bad community perception of her character.
3. Weak kit.
Did you know that during early development of overwatch teleporter had 10 charges instead of 6, and you could charge your ult even when it was still alive? She also had a (100)75 shield buff on a 6 seconds cooldown. Yes. In place of photon barrier she had an indestructible shield generator at the start of the match that could be used in conjuction with teleporter. This was, however, nerfed into oblivion, to 25 shields pre rework, along with teleporter changes.
Yes, of course that version of Symmetra was only really working at point A of defense, but at least she was extremely powerful, almost unstoppable, something that you would expect from niche pick.
This is something I donât understand. Whatâs the point of very situational character if it doesnât perform better during these situations than a character who does great everywhere?
Even her 2.0 skills were simply weak.
Her turrets were arguably the worst skill in the entire game. Her barrier was literally worst shield in the game, and considered to be the best ability in her kit. That really tells you something about her power.
She was niche, inconsistent, and on top of all that, underpoweredâŚ
4. The highest amount of hard counters in the game.
Symmetra had so many counters, that I simply cannot describe them all there, for it would take to much time and space.
Always keep in mind that when Symmetra was countered, she was countered HARD! To the point where she could be 50% of what was she supposed to be. Winston, D.va etc. They all could deny her turrets with ease. I still shiver when thinking about times when Moira could destroy her 1 HP turrets with orbs.
And worst part is, she barely countered anything. And definitely was not a hard counter to anyone. One may argue that she countered mobile characters, but nothing countered Symmetra more than using a brain.
5. Long preparation time.
Symmetra was probably the slowest character when it came to gain any value.
Old turrets were incredibly slow and short range, which means she had to take a walk everytime she wanted to set her defenses.She also experienced this problem after getting her ult. It sometimes took her very long time to properly hide her abomination. I personally have found a decent spot for her ult, that took her 40 seconds to get here from SPAWN!
And that is without accounting time to walk away from the point!
I really think that such concept, while creative and fun, simply did not work on a immobile character. A shield generator on someone like Genji, Tracer or Lucio could simply be billion times better of a ult than it is on Symmetra. Itâs funny to see having her shield generator gone after the rework despite giving her a free Reaperâs teleportâŚ.
6. Problems with fitting team composition
Problems with Symmetra already began the moment you saw hero select screen. She was classified as support, so that means you could take her into healer slot, right? No, you could not. Being in support category only meant that she needed her team to do her job properly. To replace a healer, Symmetra would have to replace the power of healing as well. And healing isnât something she was able to replace. Why?
Well, to answer that I need to explain something about healing.
Healing is splitted in two ways of usage.The first usage is to reactively increase targetâs healthpool as he takes damage. Technically speaking, if Mercy starts healing Widow who is dived by Winston, and the fight continues for 10 seconds, then itâs the same as if Widow was not healed but had 500 more hp instead.
Another usage for healing is to get your teammates back into fight faster. Your Reinhardt is barely alive but managed to escape. Now he has to find the nearest healthpack. The health pack did not heal him to full health so he had to wait for another one. This precious time heâs currently wasting gives enemy team time to cap the point. Healing means he doesnât even have to move away from the point, and Mercy on your team will heal him to full health within seconds, while gaining ult charge.
Both of these ways of use are detrimental and have value impossible to ignore.
As you probably already noticed, Symmetraâs kit barely has any of that.
You could argue that teleport could be a mean of âgetting back into fight fasterâ, but honestly, all it did was encouraging dying, and by the time they used teleporter the fight could already be over. The self regenerations on shield generator could be described as such as well, however, considering that 75 hp was not even half of health for most heroes, they would have to find healthpack anyway.She also struggled with âincrease healthpoolâ part. Shield generator gave 75 shields, which technically is increase in health, but when you compare it, for example, to Mercy heal, it took mercy 2 seconds of constant healing to already outperform the shields. The shields did increase some time to kill to breakpoints, but those situations were very limited.
So does that mean she needed to go into damage slot? Well, technically it was the safest bet. However Symmetra struggled with constant damaging, something that every other dps have.
That truly put Symmetra in an awkward spot that confused newbies and pros alike. Maybe if this game had 7th hero slot this Symmetra would find a good place to be, but that is not going to happen.
That would be all of the problems. Bear in mind these are not, or at least should not be, her weaknesses. Weaknesses are here to balance character, not to disrupt someoneâs gameplay. While we are at it, Letâs point of some of Symmetraâs weaknesses, a. k. a. something that should not be touched:
Symmetra's weaknesses:
- Fragile with lack of escape mechanics
- Cannot heal despite being support
- High damage only available at close quarters
Those things should be literally only one of the fews that should balance out Symmetra.
This is why I always despised people saying that Symmetra should be given heal, get a good escape/mobility or have her left click range increased. If you start to remove weaknesses, then character quickly becomes unstoppable. Look at what happened to Mercy and Hanzo. But letâs not talk about them, as that should be a discussion for another thread.
Now that we have talked about old Symmetra, letâs take a look at her second rework.
I will firstly go over every single ability.
Primary fire:
Unfortunately I will start with her primary fire. You might already heard dozens of complains and rants saying that it is a walking garbage, but never really heard any solid explanation. So allow me to do it for you.
But before I do that, let me give my own humble opinion on the new primary fire concept.
I freaking hate it, because I hate freaking beam weapons. Beam weapons are, for me, very unpleasant to use in any game. They have limited range that you canât tell where it ends, have barely any visuals and sounds effect telling that you hit the enemy, have atrocious sound effects and cover a lot of my screen that I can barely see the enemy. And on top of all that, they are, FOR ME, the most aim intensive weapons of all.
Which is why for me, Blizzard did not make any sense. I am confident that there were a lot of people that used her weapon because they could not aim. They literally handicapped these people. This step between old literal no aim and new pinpoint aim is just insane.
Not only that, but because of the charge up levels this weapon punishes bad aim more than any other weapon in the game. Think about that for a second. Players who never had to aim were given weapon that is pinpoint accurate and punishes bad aiming the most.
For comparison, when Soldier attacks for 10 seconds straight and has 25% accuracy, he simply does 25% of the damage he would do with perfect aim. The only thing Symmetra with 25% accuracy within those 10 seconds would do is struggle with leveling up her beam to lvl 3.
Itâs like giving your favourite Genji 75% smaller shuriken hitbox and making them deal 75% more damage. In theory, you could say that it is a buff, but in reality, no one would be able to keep old damage values, let alone bypass it. Why Blizzard did not try to reduce the lockon first and see what happens?
Okay, end of my opinion, Back to explaining. So, to answer, why is it bad?
Well, when Blizzard first introduced it it was actually good, even a little too good.When I first tried it on pts, I was astonished by its damage and that it wasnât really that difficult to aim. I was telling myself that she is a dmg hero now, and she is squisher now, so making such powerful melee would make sense. In reality, what I experienced was a bug. Allow me to explain.
Initially this beam weapon when snatched to enemy dealt 4 ticks of damage per second. Each successful tick increased the charge to next damage level by 12,5%. What that meant in theory was that, once you touched enemy, you had 0.25 second where it did not matter whether you properly tracked enemy or not, and you would only be penalized by how much of a delay you made before snatching the enemy again. That meant that not only this weapon was slightly more forgiving in aim, but also meant that you had almost guaranteed level up in damage after 2 seconds.
Unfortunately Blizzard forgot to give some sort of next delay damage lock out on this weapon. What does that mean? It means that snaping to a target and then off the target reset the damage snaping and you could damage person again within the 0.25 frame window. You could do this by quickly tapping the primary, or shaking the camera to quickly snap on and off target.
If you managed to do this 8 times within second, you not only dealt 8 ticks to character, dealing double the damage, but also charged your weapon 50% faster, which is something than most people did not notice.
It was obvious that Blizzard would fix that eventually. But they fixed it in a freaking newbie programming student kind of way. Instead of preventing target to be damaged by the beam within the window frame again, they simply increased tick rate, apparently to 1/20 of a second, so that no matter how fast you click or shake camera, it will not be effective nor resulting in bigger damage. And that alone caused huge problems.
Firstly, this made this weapon more aim intensive, which might not be that kind of a deal for some people. But it is, since you need to have 67% accuracy to deal the same damage as before. Thatâs a Seagull level of accuracy. However this also made the charge level up rate depending on your aim!
What is the problem?
According to data sites, average primary fire accuracy on sym is 35%.
So letâs say I am just above average. Letâs say, i have 50% accuracy.Suddenly the 4 seconds to deal maximum damage become 8 seconds. 8 seconds. In a melee range. I already mentioned before that 3 seconds was problematic for her, let alone 8. And Symmetra is EVEN MORE squishy, she no longer has her personal barrier nor 75 shields from shield generator.
Double Clap Clap
It feels as if Blizzard thought that the only problem with this weapon was that it had lock on, so removing that would somehow magically sweep all its problems away.
Lock-on wasnât the problem of this weapon at all. Yes, it was unpleasant to play against, and if they kept her old beam visuals I wouldnât even mind seeing it gone. In fact, lock-on was the reason why charge up gimmick somewhat worked.
The real problem with this weapon was the fact that you had to charge it up on a squishy immobile character, leading to inconsistency. The time and difference between levels was already overwhelming. So what Blizzard decided to do? They increased the time and difference between levels by huge margin, and gave it aim requirement on top of itâŚ
There is one more problem. The tick rate increase means that Symmetra deals now half of the damage to armor, compared to simply 20 damage less per second before the fix. This makes her underperform against tanks, as well as against Torb and Briggite. This is a problem, since people considered her to be a tank buster when they announced that she can now refill ammo from shields, which is probably only good thing about this weapon. In fact it takes her longer to kill D.Va with 100% accuracy on this beam than with the previous lock on one.
Blizzard increased the range of her beam lately, but in my opinion, it literally fixes nothing. It doesnât touch the core problems of this weapon. It could have infinite range and it would be broken, but not in overpowered kind of way. It would be inconsistent.
I would love to see the range reduced to even 8 meters and boom the damage or delete/reduce charge up time instead. It feels weird having short range and long range options, but long range option is better at damage⌠or everything really.
Because why bother? Why bother using this aim intensive, hard to see beam that deals tickle damage when you can deal 120 damage per second with much easier to hit orbs? There is not a single situation where her beam should be used as long as she has secondary fire.
Secondary fire:
I personally think her secondary fire is alright. I dislike the direction they took it tho, I miss slow moving orbs and shield piercing. It still feels slightly random at longer distance, I dare to say its effective range is just slightly longer than primary fire, quite ironically. The small orbs are still garbage, which is disheartening. If they ramped their damage and size, Symmetra would have a long range option to accompany her other options, beam for short range, big orbs for mid, and small for long. But perhaps it is too much to desire.
Overall, a sidegrade update I dislike, but hopefully for greater good.
Teleporter:
Now letâs talk about her first ability. Her teleporter. This thing is a mess. It had so many bugs that I feel like my opinion was settled very deeply in a really negative way.
But letâs just say all of the bugs related to this thing were fixed. What would I think of it then?
Well, I, for once, were very excited when they announced teleporter changes. Moving your entire team across the map within seconds felt like it offered limitless possibilities. I thought that this ability would be so powerful, that it will have resurrect kind of cooldown.
How surprised i was to realize that internal cooldown of it was 3 seconds.
I quickly understood why tho. It cannot be used as an escape tool. It takes as much time to deploy as reaper teleport, and people can easily spot the entrance and exit, making your escape much more predictable. It is also destroyable, which means that you canât really use it effectively against coordinated teamplay.So it is mostly out of fight mobility option. Which would be fine for me, I already mentioned that Symmetra had problem with having to spend too much time outside the fight, however, this created some problems. Firstly, it took place of her photon barrier, and in my opinion Symmetra needs this thing more than anytime before. Secondly, it feels like Blizzard decided to reduce damage power of Symmetra because of this utility, which really limits her down. Thirdly, it made her even more team reliant than before, and seriously, it is fine on a support, but on dps? We already have utility dps, all of them rolling on the f tier floor. Mei literally had team vertical mobility before, and it never really made her meta, or worth picking.
Letâs now talk about interaction that should not exist. That would be teleporting turrets. I will be honest here. It sucks the living fun out of enemies, is not fun to use either, requires no skill and a lot of luck to not get destroyed in 1 second. It takes a lot of preparation, both timing and setting up, as if we ever really needed to take a step back when it comes to Symmetraâs preparation time.
I already found some people saying that teleporter bombs are the best/the only good thing about Sym. Which is a problematic thing to hear, as this thing takes 30 sec of cooldowns and may literally not work at all. That is a Mercy res cooldown, but with longer cast time. Just please for the love of god, remove this interaction, and buff Symmetra in other waysâŚ
Overall, teleporter is a fun gimmick, but it should be treated as that, a gimmick, a bonus, and not, as it is currently, the core of her kit.
Turrets:
Letâs move to her turrets. And oh man, that is a mixed bag for me⌠I will tell you that, you can now throw the turrets, and it may not be the best animation ever made by blizzard, but placing turrets is now fast, and smooth as butter. Cast time was reduced as well, making those turrets viable on attack side without overpowering Symmetra on defense. It is nice to know you can keep your highground with your team while setting up your defences. This really should have been here from the start.
Technically speaking, their cooldown also got cut in half, which is more than welcomed.Another positive thing is their hp increase. But it is only slightly positive. The HP increase barely changed anything. Yes, total HP of all turrets is 90, but the damage breakpoints and time to kill each single turret barely changed. This change basically prevented turrets from getting destroyed by tracer sniping from miles away, and do not get me wrong, I freaking love that, but those situations rarely happened, so to anyone saying that turrets are more durable, no, they are really not.
But that is all the positives. Letâs talk about the bad things. Only 3 turrets. This is bad. You have much smaller and less specific area you can cover. From my experience, this results in them getting destroyed really fast, with 6 of these it at least took some time to properly locate all of them. They have 30 hp which prevents them from getting killed from random damage, but when damage is actually focused they barely exist long enough, literally twice as fast for chars like McCree or Hanzo. You also cannot really use 1 single turret to scout flank routes, because itâs â of your sentries, not â . You do not want to waste their value just on that.
For me, that is actually a really big downside, and unfortunately, even with their increased range the covered area is just not as good as before.
Next thing is their damage nerf. They have cut turret amount by half, and doubled the slow. But for some reason they decided to not double their damage, as it went from 30 to 50. So now when you deploy all of your turrets they only deal damage equal to 5 old turrets. I donât really understand this change. She is damage now, so she is meant to do more damage, not the other way around. Maybe they thought that teleporting a 180 DPS stack might end up too overwhelming? This interaction already sucks as it is, so I would love to remove it and make her turrets do 60 damage each.There is another downside that is surprisingly not mentioned by Symmetra mains nor new Sym player at all. That would be precision. Has everyone really not realize this?
Making those turrets throwable really hurted positioning of the turrets. Old placement allowed me to find all the sophisticated spots. I could place them in the smallest corners of the first point of Hanamura, hide them under the buses of route 66, etc. This is another reason why it feels as though those turrets keep dying faster. What ends up happening now is I quickly spray them all over the place. The animation feels weird to use so you never really know where those buddies end up being. There were many times when I flicked my wrist a little higher than usual and suddenly those turrets were placed too high for them to shot.
And donât even get me started on how many times I accidentally sticked those to poles, doors and floors. They have really huge stick hitbox and I am afraid that reducing it would only cause them to get stuck inside walls more often than they do now. But itâs not like we cannot help it. What would really help is that Symmetra could start shoting them the moment you click the ability, and not after a slight delay like they do now. That would let you actually properly aim these.
Another thing they could do is a visual representation of some sort that shows you turretâs travel path. Like a transparent cone representing turret stick hitbox, or maybe simply highlighting where it would actually stick. Making those turrets destroyable at will with interaction key would work great as well.
In conclusion, turrets are one kind of a mess, however a few tweaks would finally make them a good ability in Symmetraâs arsenal.
Ultimate: Photon Barrier
And now we have her ultimate. Oh boi, you expect me to go harsh on this, donât ya? I will say it this way. While others hated this ultimate the moment they announced it, I was one of the limited few who liked it. I instantly started to think about the possibilities it can offer. The first idea that came to my mind was to use it to protect the most valuable, important and useful members on my team. That would be my turrets. Those turrets are squishy, but not when they have a 5000 hp barrier protecting them. This truly gave me great results⌠for like 1 month. And then people got used to it and learned that it can be countered.
I have seen people who first hated on this ability saying that they like it now. But for me, it is the opposite.
Experiencing with this wall was fun. For like 5 minutes. Now it feels like a chore, you place it and forget about its existence. Thereâs only so much you can do with it. Itâs boring and barely interactive. I know that sounds like a description of old ultimate, but in my opinion at least there was some thinking put into its placement. I had so much fun finding all the spots for these. Every new map meant a new adventure of finding neww great places to hide my baby. Sometimes I spent looong hours just to find new interesting spot I wanted to share. Some of examples are in the link below:
When Busan map released, I instantly tried to find spots, but the moment I launched I realized itâs no longer needed. That did make me feel kinda empty.
It is an ability that is ultimate worthy, a quick charging one, but honestly? It feels bland and out of place on a dps character. Perhaps it would make a great tank ult, or maybe a support one. But dps should have ults that help them set up some kills. And no, shielding your turrets barely counts. They still can be often destroyed by Reinhardt or Brigitte, and if dive strikes back into meta - with Winston as well.
So what do I think about new Symmetra?
I expected nothing, and I am still disappointed. They killed playstyle I enjoyed.
The moment they announced they are moving her from support to damage category I knew they gonna destroy everything I liked about her design. I miss clutch saves with photon barrier. I miss seeing fear in peopleâs eyes when they realized they got too close to this so called trash support that canât heal. I miss spending hours on finding the most surprising spots for her ultimate. I miss creating another objective for enemies to take, or make defenders play like attackers. I miss watching as tracer ignores everything around her and blindly goes towards my shield generator, willing to pulse bomb it just to destroy it. I miss random double kills with my right click, and finding tiniest bits of hidden places for my turrets. I miss the weirdness her playstyle allowed.
This new Symmetra, I do not like. If i wanted to play spam character, I would play Junkrat, Pharah or powerful reworked Hanzo. She is really dead to me.
This all sounds negative, but you may ask: âDid it at least help her?â
Well letâs all agree she is underperforming, okay? But did this rework fix her problems, and only a simple number tweaks will be enough to fix her spot in the game? Letâs look at her problems again.
1. Inconsistency
It is still there. Orbs are still kinda random, especially at longer distance. You donât use left click and turrets are dying too fast on too long cooldown to be her consistent source of damage. Teleporting is not something that brings consistent value to team, it only is meant to be used during specific situations. Her bugs are not helping her either. Consistency IS better than previously, thanks to her orbs, but this problem is still far from fixed.
Edit: On the new PTR build Symmetra has obtained a buff that makes her primary fire charge up 20% faster. Does that help her with the inconsistency? Well, while I hate to answer questions before trying it out live, I dare to say ânoâ. Donât get me wrong, any kind of buff to this weapon is welcome. But itâs inconsistency is based on the big damage differences between certain levels, that was made even bigger in this rework.
That being said, getting faster to max charge does affect inconsistency positively. But from what I have seen from comparision videos, the time it takes her to kill anything got reduced by⌠~0.25 sec.
Sym is also currently too squishy to get full of its value. With the removal of Photon Barrier and Shield gen, she is the one needed peeling. A character like this will always struggle with pulling out melee weapon consistently.
2. Niche
She is no longer considered to be only usable on first point of defense. Noone screams when I pick symmetra on attack. However what happened is that she is a teleport bot now. So people scream when teleporter is useless. This is going from one niche to another. They really need to give her some love outside the teleporter, so that people will accept her as a damage dealer, not a teleporting machine. I say it is an improvement. Once again though, far from done. But who knows, maybe Sym will be picked during esports, on map where teleporter brings new great flanking routes?
3. Weak kit
It is still weak. She needs slight buffs here and there. But it is fixable. Apparently she deals 25% more damage than before, according to data sites. At first I thought it is an improvement, but then I quickly realized what kind of damage it is. She is a spam type of damage, and those have highest damage values in the game! But Sym is literally like the third lowest in terms of damage! It is more obvious when you look at her kills. She has lowest amount of kills out of all damages, and apparently even tanks! I would love to see a comparison between her 2.0 and 3.0 kills. My guess is that they have similar amount of kills. She just feeds support ult charge, while all she charges is a mediocre ult.
4. Lots of counters
She now has smaller amount of counters, and is less countered by certain heroes than before. I still think she has highest amount of counters in the game, but perhaps now she can at least teleport the hell away. Sometimes. Oh yeah, and she now counters someone, our newest addition is countered decently by her. But then, old Sym probably would counter Hammond as well.
5. Long preparation time
This is disgusting to say, but for as long as teleporter bomb is here, this problem will continue to persist. They definitely improved her in this aspect with throwable turrets and ult that does not need to be hidden, but they need to remove this interaction.
6. Fitting the team comp
She is a damage dealer now, and everyone knows where to put her in team comp. This problem is fixed, maybe in not the way I wanted, but it is.
So you may wonder why exactly it matters that much to me that she is a damage dealer now, other than the fact I love playing supports. Well, hereâs the thing. You have this weird, unpopular and underperforming character that people hated since launch and only a minimalistic group of people are enjoying. And suddenly you tell this character that she has to compete for the damage slot with 15 different, cool and liked characters.
She has no chance to shine. I know, even as a support this character was usually take into the damage slot, but just imagine what her pickrate would look like if she was an actual off-support and would do her job well. The only few she would have to fight the off-support slot are Zen, Lucio, and Briggitte. Imagine what her pickrate would look like if support players would have another tool to play with.
Not only would her pickrate become higher and more stable, but it would be one of healthiest decisions for the game. In a game where thereâs more damage dealers than support and tanks combined, I am still looking in shock at this class switching decision. I could understand moving damage dealers to tanks and support, but the other way around? That just doesnât make any sense to me.
Overall, it just looks like a missed opportunity to me.
As you can see, current rework fixed Symmetraâs problems that were of the lowest importance, while only slightly touching her main ones. Yes, they were reduced, or moved from one extreme to another, but these need to be removed, not altered. There is definitely more work to be done. But perhaps number tweaks is what will make her no longer F tier.
Apparently current Symmetra has had both her winrate and pick rate dropped, which already tells you something. I guess people who never played symmetra did not find her all that useful, and most of the old sym mains simply did not enjoy moving from second objective placing character to another spam damage dealer. I am sure there are some people who absolutely love this character. But it is even smaller minority than before.
That being said, I am afraid that Blizzard is done with Symmetra for a long time. They already spent a lot of their resources trying their best to fix Symmetra. Maybe we should really just accept it and move on?
However, if Blizzard really would look at Symmetra once again and keep her as damage dealer, I suggest them taking look at her primary fire, like removing charging up or at least make the damage difference between levels smaller.
Now that we have talked about the Symmetraâs rework, letâs theorycraft a little. If you are not interested in my rework ideas you can simply stop reading now.
How would I fix Sym 3.0 (The Simple):
Primary fire:
- Reduce tickrate to 4/sec, fix the bug properly.
- Address the inconsistency issues by either:
- (the best) Removing the level up mechanic entirely. Let it deal 150 DPS; This would make it as consistent as it can be.
- (great) Reduce the differences between levels significantly. Let it deal 140 - 150 - 160 DPS.
This is here to keep her charge up mechanics, as they are somewhat iconic to her character.- (acceptable) Make it deal 120 - 150 - 180 DPS.
This will at least give this weapon incentive to use over orbs.- (meh) Make it charge 1 level per 0.8 for 60 - 90 - 120 - 150 - 180 DPS.
This doesnât adress inconsistency issue completedly, but at least it makes it a little more worthwhile at start.
Secondary Fire:
- Increase the travel speed to 30m/s
This would make it slightly more effective at longer ranges.
- Make small orbs do 25 dmg
- In addition, consider making smaller orbs bigger and move faster than the biggest orbs.
This would net her about 95 DPS when spammed constantly. Itâs weaker than charging it up, but thanks to the spammability it can be used for extreme ranges.
Sentry Turret:
- Turn half of the HP into armor;
- In addition, give them 5 more HP, armor or not.
It would reduce countermeasures against Symmetraâs turret when facing fast-hitting weapons. Additional 5 HP would make melee attacks and Brigitte take 2 hits to destroy turrets, helping with them getting more consistent value and lessening Symmetraâs counters.
- Make them fly faster, up to twice as fast;
That would help these turrets on attacking side, because currently they only work decently on attack in conjuction with teleporter.
Teleporter:
- Increase its range by 10m;
- Increase its interaction range by 33%;
Teleporter is a great idea, but itâs relatively weak in what it is supposed to do. Itâs too unreliable. So instead of buffing things this teleporter isnât supposed to do, buff things teleporter was supposed to be good at.
- Make it place easier on railings, make it be pushed by payload instead of destroyed, etc.
This thing still requires a lot of QoL changes to make it more consistent and reliable. Currently it might feel a little bit too random.
Ultimate:
- Reduce ult cost;
Itâs a support ult on a DPS. Therefore I honestly have no idea how to make it work. Power-wise, itâs definitely ult worthy, although arguably one of the weaker ults from support ults in the game. The only thing I can think of is to make it be used more often. But perhaps Symmetra could use something that is more agressive, offensive, that will let her score more kills.
What in my opinion should NOT be changed:
Primary:
- Increased range.
This alone doesnât help with inconsistency, it only would cause more confusion about when to use her primary, and when her secondary fire.
Turrets:
- More damage;
- Smaller cooldown;
We need to make Symmetraâs own damage output higher, so that she is less reliable on turrets. Especially with teleporter bomb existing, more damage would only make more outcry about this cheesy tactic.
Teleporter:
- Make it faster/instant
Get-out-of-jail free card was never intended for this character. We need to keep her weaknesses, and fix her problems instead. Teleporter was supposed to be a set-up and between fights mobility tool, not a reliable escape. As I said, removing weaknesses is what makes a certain character overpowered, looking at you Mercy and Hanzo.
Others:
- Significantly increase Symmetraâs HP;
Before you throw your collective pitchforks, let me explain this. She is a high risk character, and low reward melee glass cannon. Which is why I prefer her be high risk high reward instead of low risk low reward. Increased HP wonât hurt as much compared to the other changes listed here, but in my opinion, is absolutely not needed if her damage is justified accordingly.
Thatâs all, really.
Add on top of that all of those QoL changes I mentioned in the analysis and she will be perfectly fine damage dealer. I still wouldnât be playing her, as I hate this playstyle, but at least she would be viable.
How would I fix Sym 2.0 (The Nostalgic):
It would require more work. But it is possible.
While thinking about these changes, I have decided to stick to 3 things:
- Paying attention to problems described in the previous parts.
There is no point in reworking symmetra again if it does not solve problems she struggles with since beginning of her release.- Keeping her original playstyle.
Her play style was unique and very refreshing, something very rare in a shooter, or any game for that matter. This was a precious gem I loved and adored, now symmetra feels just empty.- Reusing assets, limiting new assets to minimum.
I used to 3d model as a hobby, and i studied programming for a while, and as a result I am aware how difficult and time consuming both of these activities are. It means that I will try to think of things that are easy to programme or are already in the game. The same applies to 3d and 2d visuals.You might already saw this idea on the forums, but I never really explained why I made certain decisions. So hereâs my chance to do so.
Without further ado, letâs get started.
"From order springs harmony."General:
Moved back to support;
Teammates can see Symmetraâs deployables through walls;
Can no longer place her turrets nor use her orbs before the match starts;
- Ult charge adjusted to compensate;
Comment: This rework intends Symmetra to fill the off-healer slot. Making her deployables visible like a hacked healthpack would allow players to get more of her supportive value. I also made her not be able to use turrets and orbs at start of the match, similar to how Sombra cannot hack healthpacks, so that she cannot gain almost instant ultimate on point A defense, reducing this misconception on her usability.
"The true enemy of humanity is disorder ."
Photon Projector:
Primary
- Now shares Moiraâs aim characteristics;
- Ammo pool increased 70 â 100;
- Range reduced 12 â 9 meters;
- Ramp up time decreased 1.33 â1 second;
- Damage changed: 65 to 130 to 195 â 70 to 85 to 100;
- Ramps up on barriers, no longer refills ammo on damaging barriers
- Can pick up items again;
Comment: Moiraâs primary would be the perfect compromise between old players who used her aim assist and people who want to be rewarded for higher mechanical skill. It would also help charge up her beam more consistently.
Suggested hitbox size by Djdoo123:
I personally suggest 2/3 of the shown size.
To fix inconsistency issues altogether, Iâve reduced the difference in damage, so that it is good at start, better than 2.0 and 3.0, but starts snowballing slower than 2.0. Giving her more ammo in place of recharging ammo on shield will make it less situational.
"I will shape order from chaos."
Secondary
- 2.0 Symmetraâs orbs that pierce enemies and shields;
- Smallest orb release time reduced to match the 3.0 iteration;
- This translates to 0.2 second earliest release time and 0.063 second delay between shoots;
- Smallest orb size increased by 50%;
- Smallest orb damage increased 12.5 â 22.5;
- This results in 85 damage per second when continuously using minimally charged orbs;
- If orb is released at less than 25% charge, it moves at 50 meters per second but no longer pierces.
Comment: Basically old orbs, because this idea wasnât all that stupid, it just that a character who has to babysit ult needs a long range option to contribute to the fight. This version of the gun turns the useless small orbs into a respectable semi-automatic pistol, giving Symmetra an actual long range option and helping her get consistent value.
"Turret available for deployment.""There's a gap in my defense matrix."
Weapon Switch:
Architechâs Gauntlet
- Switch time of 0.5 second;
- 6 ammo;
- Has no reload;
- Gains 1 ammo every 5 seconds, similarly to Doomfist;
- Uses idle animation of 2.0âs turret placement stance
Comment: In order to free up skill slots from her situational skills, I created a second weapon which will now be related to her deployables. Symmetra would gain 1 ammo in a similar fashion to Doomfist, without reload, preventing spammability of this weapon.
"From light into being.""Aligning defense system."
Primary (Turret)
- Deployed as destroyable projectile that snaps to surface;
- Health increased 30 HP â 15 HP + 20 Armor;
- Damage per second reduced 50 â 10;
- Has no cooldown, costs 1 ammo instead;
- Turret deploy amount increased 3 â 6 turrets;
- Turrets slow effectiveness increased 20% â 25%;
- This slow effect is now capped at 50%;
- Enemies are now revealed to team by the turrets for up to 1 second after taking damage;
Comment: This version of turrets is intended to be purely supportive. They no longer are here to make deadly kill gates, instead they set up kills for your allies, like real supports do. They deal less damage, but can significantly slow multiple targets at a time. More turrets mean more coverage, including flank routes that is complimented by the reveal effect. The armor HP helps them surviving those multihitting characters without overpowering these for slow hitters, reducing countermeasures against Symmetra.
"Teleporter online, I have opened the path...""Teleporter online, we move swiftly."
Secondary (Teleporter)
- Two way teleporter between Symmetra and target location;
- Interaction range increased by 33%;
- Has no cooldown, costs 3 ammo instead;
- No longer teleports turrets;
- Exit of the teleporter (the one placed farther from Symmetra) deploy time reduced 2 â 0.5 seconds;
- Entranceâs maximum spawn distance from Symmetra reduced by 50%;
Comment: 3.0 Teleporter is a fantastic support ablity that allows Symmetra to be viable on attack (along with throwable turrets). Giving it ammo requirement would make Sym players think harder about managing between stable amount of turrets and teleporting. Getting rid of its cooldown would act as though current teleporter had 2 charges, but cost all of your turrets to do so. This would greatly help Symmetra with the time it takes to deploy her ultimate.
Teleporterâs exit usable instantly would allow Symmetra to have another way of saving teammates without giving her strong escape option, rewarding her for greater positioning. On the other hand, reduction in entranceâs maximum distance would help Symmetra with more consistent teleporter placement, especially useful in situations like teleporting away from the Graviton Surge, preventing it from placing out of teamâs interaction range.
"Photon barrier deployed.""Barrier is on its way."
First Ability: Photon Barrier
- Elliptical shield that moves forward at Symmetraâs run speed;
- Cooldown reduced 10 â 6 seconds;
- Barrier HP reduced 1000 â 400;
Comment: Photon Barrier is a great ability on both attack and defense, despite being worst shield. It raises her skill cap significantly. These changes make it weaker for specific situations, but with CD reduction - more consistent to encourage it to be used to save teammates as well.
"Shield engaged.""I will shield you!"
Second ability: Photon Shield
- Channel shield health on ally, similarly to Zaryaâs bubble or Brigitteâs repair pack;
- 25 meters range;
- No longers gives 25 permament shields;
- Now gives 120 temporary shields decaying at rate of 30/sec;
- Cooldown increased 1 â 4 seconds;
Comment: This ability justifies Sym being in Support category. Its intention is to give Symmetra a consistent source of utility that simulates the reactive part of healing I mentioned earlier in the analysis.
"YahĂ param vaastavikta hai!""Reality bends to my will!"
Ultimate: Shield Generator
- Health increased 50 HP, 350 shields â 300 HP, 300 shields;
- Buff range increased 50 â 60 meters;
- Range can now be seen with a blue circle, in a similar fashion to Lucioâs aura;
- Can be deployed at up to 25 meters away from Symmetra;
- Shields reduced 75 â 60;
- Now also converts 75% health to shields;
- EMP converts these shields back to health;
- Restores your Architechâs Glove ammo after casting;
Comment: Increased radius of the Shield Generator would allow it to have slightly more places available, resulting in better consistency. Deploying it at range (along with access to TP) would help Symmetra with the time it takes to deploy it significantly, while restoring ammo allows her to instantly set up her defenses for Shield Generator and let her use teleporter to go instantly back to the fight.
Increased healthpool is there because your turret no longer will defend the ult on their own. And converting health to shields allow Sym to keep her shield giving identity while simulating the passive portion of healing I mentioned in the analysis, justifying her support slot once more.
As you can see, I managed to address every single one of Symmetraâs problems, especially focusing on the most important ones, while managing to keep her old weaknesses:
- Fragile with lack of escape mechanics
- Cannot heal despite being support
- High damage only available at close quarters
This literally took me like 1 day of thinking, after analysing her core problems. Here you have it. A proper non healing support that fits off healer slot and keeps Symmetraâs old playstyle.
And the best part? Blizzard literally has almost every asset ready. Donât believe me? Primary and Secondary wouldnât need any changing from 2.0, and the second weapon can use old turret placement idle stance. It would work with tp since the animation would be so similar. Her photon barrier can use current ult deploy animation, and her new ability could literally use her 1.0 photon shields ablity. They already have Shield generator, and current ult stance would work so well with Shield Gen as well. The only thing lacking is ult deploy (a more fierce one) if they want to keep new voiceline.
Is it overpowered? Probably, but now it would only take her simply reducing numerical values in order to keep her in balanced state.
You may argue that she has too much to offer, but honestly? Brigitte has similar amount of skills and ends up being niche. Symmetra needs space to complete her situational skills.
Now that my thread is finished, I would like to do one more thing.
I created a survey in which one must choose which version of Sym would like to see in game.
Explanation about selected poll choices
1.0, old 2.0, current 3.0
Pretty self explanatory. Basically one of these versions with no changes done to them.3.0 with numerical buffs
3.0 with anything that changes numbers: shorter cooldown, faster ult charge, faster TP, more HP etc.2.0 with changes/buffs
2.0 with the changes which are realistic, and thus doesnât alter core of her kit, such as throwable turrets, ult placeable at range, maybe even new TP as additional skill on top of everything. Also numerical buffs. Please note this means she should take DPS slot.2.0ish support
Many people, including the devs, discussed her place in being support category. Developers even thought about giving her healing turrets. Symmetra as a support would either focus on:
Healing
This does include healing turrets, but could also be such things as Health Generator, healing stations, lightbend healthpacks, etc.Shields
Focus on anything that is supposed to make healers life easier by mitigating damage. This includes barriers like Photon Barrier, increasing healthpool, or giving decaying healh like Lucioâs ult. A good representation of this idea would be my 2.0 revamp - choose this if you would want to play my rework idea.
Pick any of those two if you think Symmetra should take support slot.4.0
Pick this one if youâre dissatisfied with any of the iterations and ideas, and would love to see Symmetra as something completely different.
This is a great way to see what players would actually want.
Thank you for your time and attention. Have a wonderful day and stay moderately beautiful.
