Since Lucio and Sym have lore ties to Viskar, it would make sense that Sym would have the capacity to swap between two abilities. Ideally swapping between healing and damage turrets.
It could even be done with her Teleporter to give Shield Generator a place to exist.
Pretty sure they already tested healing turrets. Sounds great in theory, but quite unwieldly in practice.
I had that idea as well I suggested it back when she still had the shield generator. Cause lots of people were complaining about her not being a healing support. It’s the only way I see shields being a viable alternative to healing.
Yes. With her old placement style. Not with throwable turrets.
Even throwable heal turrets could probably make bunker comps way too strong. I’d still vote against them, push comes to shove.
So we have people saying healing turrets wouldn’t work and others saying they would be OP. Gotcha.
as someone that has mained ying in paladins for a long time, here’s my wisdom on healing turrets in how this isn’t going to work:
in no way will turrets will be able to keep up with her team to heal them on demand
a very major issue ying had was that she couldn’t really target her heal to have good target prioritisation which obvs WILL happen here (critical hp isn’t always the most important target)
being destructible in 1 hit whilst having that 10s fixed cd is simply adding more to the problem of inability to keep up turrets and also making sym’s heal too inconsistent.
even if trying to argue dps capability to compensate for all those flaws in her heal method, she can’t dps reasonably like that with lower effective range, lower sustain, lower mobility and low access to her burst combo for the same reasons as now because those issues aren’t being fixed.
If they were in their original state (non-throwable) they’d be hard to implement effectively and borderline useless out of select strategies.
If they were in their current state (throwable), they’d have slightly greater effectiveness, while still being pretty non-versatile and very focused on one strategy that it would greatly empower.
Characters like Moira, or Lucio and Brig are very self-sufficient at the cost of utility and healing output, respectively. Mercy is very dependent but receives great mobility, utility and swing potential to compensate. Zen, Ana and Baptiste create massive value but have high skill floors and can only effectively track some targets.
Each healer has their strength or weakness, and comps that they’re strong and weak with. But fundamentally, they can all create at least some value, even in non-optimal comps. A heal-turret Symmetra could only really play effectively with one comp (at least following 2-2-2 rulebook) because a Support whose only healing output is a slow move, slow deploy destructible is going to put a lot of strain on their other Support- unless all allies are grouped together and receiving one source of healing- most commonly a Moira or Baptiste, plus Bastion behind a double-layer Sigmarisa shield wall.
It would make bunker way too strong, and Symmetra generally ineffective elsewhere.
So make her a walking shield gen to cover a percentage of health.
As in, generate shields as a Passive? Brigitte hardly gets to do that for her Ultimate.
That’ll be because Brig generates armour.
It could be something like players within 6 m of Sym generate shields at 5 shields per second for 5 seconds. If they leave Sym they lose the shields.
The shields could completely fill empty health until another support or turrets heals them up. This would lose all but 25 hp of shields.
Folk really need to think outside the box.
Turrets for her healing is a really, really poor idea. Heck, devs tried it and didn’t like it.
Furthermore, it removes her agency to heal the right person at the right time and her healing can be taken away with a simple melee attack or brief fire.
Her photon barrier is barely useful as an ult, especially for a support meant to assist their team.
The damage suggestion makes her incredibly weak at the start.
100-75% health = 25hps
74-25% health = 50 hps
25-1% health = 75% hps
Primary Fire: damage 70/ 105 / 140 can now pierce enemies and gain charge off each enemy pierced.
Alt-Fire max damage reduced to 125
Turrets: Changed to Photon Matrix
Ammo Count 3
Cool down 10s begins at destruction
Is placed on a targeted ally. Applies 50 shield health which can replenish if still active. Buffs ally damage by 10%. Once the shield health is depleted Photon Matrix goes into cool down.
Photon Barrier: places 75 shield health on all team mates and Symmetra when activated within the AoE. This Shield health will regenerate during combat at 15 shield health per second.
Teleporter: remains the same.
Now Symmetra can work as a support, offers utility, and can work with multiple comp types and isn’t map dependent which cause her to be extremely niche.
not with her throwable turrets
Basics functionality is still the same. There is no guaranty that the player will always get a turret to heal the exact target that requires healing in that moment.
Sure, if the ally is isolated and the Sym has a position from which to toss a turret that can target her ally and also avoid being hit for a full second, then…maybe it will be useful.
Healing turrets in this manner is an incredibly clunky application of support.
She will lag behind in healing done per match making her a poor choice for healing. It relies on her current play style which is so incredibly niche already.
The suggestions I gave open up more possibilities for her in team composition. While also relying on utility with co Peter I’ve healing potential with smart play.
Please, the issue is not how Sym places the turret. Old or new placement method don’t change the issues I and others reported on this thread about reliability and range.
Answer those first. How to you envision her turrets healing her teammates when they inevitably simply move outside of the small area she surrounded with turrets? What about when the team need healing right now but she need to throw the turret at a wall and wait for it to setup before it provides healing? How to guide the turrets to heal a specific ally instead of jumping from one to another, or sticking with an ally at mid health while someone else die?
She can TP bomb as is. Surely she can teleport an Ambulance as well.
Still forces the problem of Symm over-empowering bunker comp, and overall puts Tanks into nigh-unkillable zones. Passive health buffs seem to be best when very limited- only Brig can generate Armor for others, Lucio’s Sound Barrier is temporary, Overload and Primal Rage grants high tankiness on a low timeframe and only for personal use. Permanent shield gen closer to Symm only further limits her usefulness to a completely static, incredibly hard to break, and probably awfully boring strategy.
As much as I loved shield gen, it absolutely had to go with the intro of Brigitte. Even without Torb’s armor pack stack, adding 75 (or even 25) recoverable health on top of 100 damage resistant health points makes things way too hard to kill.