Now hear me out. I’ve historically supported Blizzard’s statements that Symmetra could be a support hero without providing direct heals. And I’m not going to lose any sleep whether Symm stays a support or becomes a defense.
- All three of the supports added since launch (Ana, Moira, and Brigitte) have direct heal abilities. All three of them also capitalize on combining their attacks with healing their allies.
- Kaplan has said that Symmetra’s coming rework will require more major changes and artwork in order to complete. That means new visuals for new abilities instead of tweaks to her existing kit.
- Symmetra has the lowest pick rate in OWL competitive play.
In the past, folks have argued that Symmetra’s existing gameplay makes her more of a defense hero than a support, between the area denial of her turrets and the accelerated return to action that her teleporter offers. Symm’s lethality in short range is also similar to Mei’s, especially following the improvements to Symm’s lock-on beam.
Meanwhile, it’s significant that no other non-healer support has been added. It demonstrates that out of all the hero concepts Blizzard has to choose from and champion, none of them have gotten to a playable state since Ana, Moira and Brigitte (and Lucio, who was added post-announcement but pre-release) were completed and released first. While I appreciate Blizzard’s defense of a non-healer support, their hero additions kinda give up the game that another non-healer support isn’t in the cards.
Further, consider the content of Symmetra’s rework: the projected barrier was added to give her an ability to join in offensive pushes. Brigitte’s shield performs that job better to a vast extent, especially considering Brigitte’s level to sustain her allies during that push. Brigitte’s shield, to an extent, eliminates the niche that Symmetra was able to ostensibly occupy as a support outside of turtling strats.
Symmetra getting edged out of the support category by heroes released after her isn’t really a bad thing, but to keep her there, Blizzard either needs to empower her shielding ability further to compete with direct healing or give her a direct healing ability of some kind. Removing her from the support category feels like it restricts the design space for future supports, but again, seven supports in and half of them being healer-types makes me think Blizzard isn’t actually going to use the design space that Symmetra’s there to protect.
3 Likes
I think that with Brigitte they’re trying to slowly broaden what a support character can be. Her heals aren’t great, but she brings armor and cc so can work against dive. Right now I think that we’ve gotten into this mindset that support=healer when it should be support=utility or support=anything that can facilitate/set up a team.
If Sym only had turrets and the teleporter then I’d say, yeah, she’s a defense character, but the shields do bring something else to the team even if it’s defense focused.
6 Likes
Brigitte’s direct healing isn’t great when you’re not in a fight, but when she’s in a fight and swinging it can be pretty good if she stays up.
Sym’s shields are helpful from a pre-fight mitigation standpoint, but it requires her to have already charged up an ult and chosen the shield generator over the teleporter. The shield regeneration is unique and useful from a disengagement standpoint, but I don’t think this game has enough situations where that disengagement is viable.
It’s a complex problem and I’m interested to see how Blizzard solves it. But that’s why I posted this, because I’m interested in the discussion of it too.
Totally. I think as the game goes on we’re just going to see more heroes that don’t cleanly fit into a specific category or have more specific tools that facilitate unique strategies.
I do think that Symmetra will be moved more towards a Defense role than continue in the Support role as part of her rework.
I feel like Symmetra used to be a Support prior to her rework in late 2016. Yes, the ability to grant shields to allies by clicking on them was kind of lame for the Symmetra player, but it did give players an immediate and useful benefit from having a Symmetra on their team. Part of the reason why people get so salty about Symmetra being on their team is because, following the rework, her strength lies in her ultimate, and an early death can lead to the pick being largely useless.
I do not think you can justify a Support slot for a non-healer whose sole supportive capabilities lie in an ultimate, especially when there are now 6 actual healers in the game. Heck, she is less of a Support than Torbjorn, who is actually a Defense character.
From what I have read on the forums, Symmetra mains also do not seem to want her to become a healer, which would help solidify a Support slot were she to get healing capabilities. If they want Symmetra to retain her defensive specialization and not heal, then Defense makes the most sense for her to land.
Unpopular opinion: If Symmetra after the rework can’t heal/doesn’t have the utility to make up for the secondary healer slot, she’s still going to be seen as a glorified defense hero. I’m sorry, but we live in a 2/2/2 meta. Supports rely on each other to sustain the other, Ana especially. If Symmetra can’t do that, she’s probably not going to get picked. She’ll just be another niche pick to be run alongside two “real” supports.
I know they don’t want her to heal, but I was really hoping we would have some kind of temporary shielding ability so she could at least be run as a pseudo-healer alongside a main healer with self-sustain (Mercy/maybe Moira). Now that Brigitte kind of already kind of has that in her E I’m not sure how they’re going to make up for her lack of healing. I’m excited to see what they do because I really do want to love Symmetra, but I’d rather they play it safe and just make her some kind of off-healer than for her to be F-tier again with no place in the meta. Also would like to see her viable on offense…