How to make symmetra competitively viable, yet still fun

General Discussion
1

symmetra has been one of my mains since the very beginning, ever since i started playing OW1 i’ve fallen in love with her sassy personality, her lore, her hero design, overall just her. seeing how terribly handled shes been in the hands of both geoff and alec is depressing, because they don’t understand what makes her so powerful yet so frustratingly weak.

ever since OW2 released, i’ve gradually stopped playing her. her identity has been changed so much to the point i dont understand what their trying to do with her, so with my purposed balance changes for her, im intending this list of changes to make her more competitively viable while making her less frustrating to play against both in lower ranks and against in general. i want to make a total powershift around her kit while giving her quality of life changes to improve the fluidity of her gameplay.

without further ado, here are my purposed changes;

Photon Projector (Primary Fire)

  • Beam levels are no longer multiplicative, and instead store their damage values in a variable. This allows less restrictive stat changing for the beam levels.
  • Damage per beam level redistributed from 60/120/180 to 75/140/180
  • Maximum beam range increased from 12 to 15 meters (edited in)

Comment: Photon Projector should be her main form of damage, not her secondary, but I still want to keep her secondary reliable in terms of damage. This isn’t a huge change for her primary, but it instead opens up more ways of damage stat changes so certain beam levels can be changed instead of all of them. Her level 1 beam damage anyway is way too weak, and it should’ve been increased to 75 for a long time.

Photon Projector (Secondary Fire)

  • Direct damage increased from 50 to 60
  • Splash damage increased from 50 to 60 (edited in)
  • Projectile size decreased from 0.115-0.575 to 0.1-0.5 meters (edited in)
  • Maximum charge time decreased from 1 to 0.8 seconds
  • Can now hold the orb for 5 seconds before forcefully launching out

Comment: Her alt-fire has needed some changing desperately, and I think it needs an update for the fast-pace nature of OW2. Reducing her charge time should allow a more faster time launching her orbs, but the less planet sized orbs should force the player to better predict where they should fire the orb and predict the enemy movement. I think both those changes allows for more damage capabilities, so I increased the direct & splash damage it deals to now total 120 instead of 100. I also added a small QoL change to allow the player to hold the orb for a bit, this way you dont just waste ammo from pre-firing your orb.

Sentry Turret

  • Damage per second increased from 30 to 45
  • Cooldown decreased from 10 to 8 seconds
  • Aura reading linger duration increased from 1 to 3 seconds (edited in)
  • No longer places a -15% movement speed penalty on enemies
  • Activation time after landed decreased from 1 to 0.8 seconds (edited in)
  • Projectile speed increased from 20 to 25mp/s (edited in)

Comment: *Sentry Turrets are frustrating for both casual and lower rank players due to the combination of damage and speed penalty, so I believe returning the previous damage it had in favor of removing the speed penalty it places on enemies opens for a power redistribution to make her turrets feel updated with OW2’s fast gameplay nature. Increasing the utility on her turrets via her aura reading is something i wanted to add, since i removed the team teleport aspect of teleporter and in general with how low the duration actually is, the aura reading is barely noticeable.

Teleporter

  • No longer can transport allies (can still transport non-player entities)
  • Cast time decreased from 1 to 0.5 seconds
  • TP now heals, once per cooldown, 50 shield HP (that becomes overhealth when overcapping her maximum health). (edited in)

Comment: Teleporter as a team transport ability hinders Symmetra’s power capability just like Resurrect does to Mercy. Changing the fundamentals of Teleporter into a mobility tool for Symmetra and sort of a flanking option for her, should allow for an easier power redistribution to happen in her kit along with increasing her solo carry potential. This changes how her team can play around her, and this should be objectively healthier for her current design in Season 13.

if symmetra were to be heavily changed via tweaking, or a Season 13 sombra type rework, i would want it to be like this. I believe she should be less reliant on her teams use of teleporter and be allowed a higher solo carry potential, as teleporter currently hinders those capabilities from happening.

i accept feedback and criticism, and i would love to hear what anybody says, whether you believe its trash, mediocre, doesn’t achieve anything, or good. :heart:

7 Likes
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Without the ability to tp her team or slow down enemies with turrets, she loses all, like literally all, utility for her team.

Your buffs you handed her to compensate are not enough, this version of Sym is borderline useless and would see no play imo.

Nice effort. This Sym has no identity tho imo.

9 Likes
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her utility would lie in her aura reading for her turrets, and thank you for your feedback. ill add a few more changes to try and tackle that.

2 Likes
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I’m not reading all that. All they have to do is give her a 4th turret

2 Likes
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then dont leave a comment? do you need subway surfers gameplay on the side so you can actually read it?

7 Likes
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you ignored the second sentence. She just needs a 4th turret.

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no she doesn’t.

2 Likes
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oh okay, thanks for your input. (She does tho)

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of course, any time. (she still doesn’t)

1 Like
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Beams are generally easier to aim than typical precision or automatic weapons. So the level one damage of Symmetra’s primary lines-up with the typical 35% accuracy of most heroes, like Soldier, for example, whose 35% accuracy is 60. Likewise, Symmetra’s damage is also supplemented by her Sentries, just like Soldier’s damage is supplemented by his Helix Rocket.

Can’t increase the damage while decreasing the charge time. It’s also not necessary to decrease the speed of the projectile.

Casting three Sentry turrets takes the same amount of deploying time as Torbjorn takes to deploy his one turret.

The reveal time is already about 2 seconds.

Likewise the detection coverage of Symmetra’s web can be over 30 meters when the Sentries are properly spaced out.

Not that you’re ever going to find maps with that much width consistently anyway.

Revive does not hinder Mercy. Nor does Teleporter hinder Symmetra.

It already does this.

As a damage-role hero with the rare utility, it may not necessarily be required for her to even have utility anymore.

1 Like
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yes you can, and its happened plenty of times.

cool, didnt know that. i reduced the cast/recovery time of throwing them out so it wont match torb anymore if thats the case.

the detection range of a turret is still 10 meters, but if you wanna consider all 3 turrets, then the detection range is increased from 30 to 36.

also the reveal linger is 1 second, not 2.

yes it does, and yes it does.

its main use and utility is to just transport teammates which, again, is a hinderence to her power level.

2 Likes
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Love these changes :heart:

I was never a Sym Main like you are, but I love having her on my team because she plays differently Compared to the typical hitscan.

So im for every change that increases her viability and playtime.

Keep slaying Sym :heart:

(Ya, Mercy needs changes, too, cant play her no more :sob:)

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Losing team tp, those buffs are NOT enough.

I’d say primary fire damage - 65/130/195

Orbs either buffed to 120 damage total or exactly as you stated without the projectile speed nerf

Altogether with your buffs, this should be enough to make her viable. But honestly I feel 45 dps on turrets will become necessary.

She will lose her niche as a team teleporter, and her joke niche as an “area lockdown hero” is pathetically weak. You’ll have to give her substantial buffs + personal buffs for her to be able to successfully fill that role. And she WILL have to successfully fill that roll since it would be the only one she has.

1 Like
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Ew. Gross. Overwatch is supposed to be a team game. I like it when we have abilitiees designed for such interactions.

This. This is terrible.

1 Like
15

I have a better fix.

Thinner beam thats 14 m long

Orbs fully charge at 0.8 secs and do 85 damage. Hitting a second orb within 2 seconds of landing a first orb on the same target causes the orb to deal double damage.

Orb size reduced to 0.35 from 0.5

Ammo and hp regen upon shooting a shield removed

Hp adjusted to 250

Easy

Optional: Remove turret reveal for 10 more dps.

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Fun fact, they are not. Thats why they have been buffed to numbers that arent multiples of 60 before.

Should be higher. We are talking about a charged shot. It should do at least 120 damage.

The slow is essential for Sym to be able to kite Rein long enough to threaten him.

The truth is, they can have both. Sym has never been a noobstomper. Bronze and Silver players die to sentries once and become aware of them.

You are heavily low balling the sheer amount of compensation and nerf revert that Symmetra needs to make up for removing team TP.

Overall, you removed the biggest reason to pick her with barely any real buff to her performance as a DPS, specially zero survivability buffs.

Your changes are insufficient and your ideas lacking.

2 Likes
17

Or alternatively, we can return to 6v6, and she feels better automatically!

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No, its not terrible. Team TP is a cancer on Symmetra and it needs to be removed.

First, no one uses TP in the real game. I could play 6 hours and see my TP being used by someone that isnt me once. No one wants to use TP, Sym should not have to depend on a gimmick out of her agency to have value, and its not the duty of her players to instruct people into taking it.

Second, team TP is broken. It gives mobility to heroes that should not be zapping across the meta. It breaks entire maps. And Sym is the one that pays for it every single time.

1 Like
19

Tbh if they returned her to season 5 and tuned up her numbers to around the same ttk

(195 dps beam, 110 damage orbs and 50 dps sentries) with no 275 hp and no fat on her kit like regen off shields she would be Gucci

She is just a dps that does no damage

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Calling regen on shields ‘‘fat on her kit’’ is some weird take specially when what she is lacking the most is survivability. If anything is extraneous on her kit, its the stupid and useless wallhack mechanic on sentries.

Regen on shields should stop being regen on shields and be expanded to regen on anything.

It doesnt matter if she does more damage that she needs a whole team to pocket her to survive during it.

Lessening or outright removing the delay of her damage would work better than just upping the damage while giving her no real way to live to see it.

1 Like