I would rather see Symmetra stay in the support class than become a defense hero, but I think she needs to become an actual support.
Supporting is more than healing. Supporting also includes CC, shielding, and debuffs, and Symmetra really doesn’t do that for her team, either. Virtually all of the support in her kit comes from her ultimate, and without it, she’s basically a DPS.
Symmetra needs a tool to actively support an ally in a fight, something that allows her to give them an HP advantage on the fly. Before her first rework, I was sure this was the direction the devs were going to take her. Let her point and click and give an ally a large amount of temporary shield HP, like a mini-Sound Barrier on a single target.
CC could also be an area Symmetra could support her team. Her turrets already slow enemies, but its hardly noticeable. Increasing their slow or having it stack additively (instead of multiplicatively, as it does now), would allow Symmetra to set up kills for her allies with her turrets, especially if they were a bit tankier. Her primary fire could also slow enemies, scaling with the level of her beam. All of these improvements would be at the cost of damage. She should still be threatening, but not face-melting.
She doesn’t need healing to be a support. She just needs to actively give her team an advantage in a fight. Having it be a burst of HP rather than healing would give Symmetra a unique niche: blocking burst damage. If the shield was large enough, Symmetra could protect allies from damage that no healer would be able to accomplish, like Widowmaker headshots or Junkrat spam. I think there’s a large frontier of non-healing support that could be explored for Symmetra before moving her to defense.
No, right now, she’s an undertuned DPS with a support ult. Her lack of healing isn’t what makes her useless, it’s her lack of any active support tools whatsoever.
If she could point and click to give an ally a burst of 100 extra shields for three seconds, she could actively save somebody from dying, like a real support can, no healing required.
I’d actually be totally down to see Symmetra as a shot caller type support. Like “Here, kill this guy first”.
Maybe something like:
reduce turret damage heavily, but increase their health and slow
Symmetra primary fire slows target based on charge
Primary fire dps reduced to 10/15/20 per charge level
Primary fire gives Symmetra over shields (up to 400 or something) based on 3x the damage she’s dealing. This would make her really tanky, but she’s doing hardly anything in terms of damage output.
In this case, Symmetra can survive being in the thick of the fight due to shield generation, AND prevent single targets from escaping due to primary fire slow, but is going to be largely a non-factor in terms of damage dealt. You’d basically have scenarios where the team should be trying to kill whoever Symmetra is locked onto because that enemy is far more vulnerable. It basically leaves it up to Symmetra to make good decisions on who to target with her slow so that her team can pick off the right high priority targets.
This would make her a pretty unique support since it’s about creating the right picks at the right time, in the right order, RATHER than keeping her own team alive.
I disagree. Adding additional hit points is a valid form of support that is in many other games. We just don’t have it in Overwatch, yet.
If you have an ally at 25 HP, it would take Mercy over 1.5 seconds to get them out of danger of being bodyshot by Widowmaker. If Symmetra could give them a burst of extra shields, she could get them out of danger instantaneously. Mercy can never save an ally from a Hanzo headshot, but Symmetra could with extra shields.
Overhealing works really well in a lot of other games. I’m not sure you can make it work well in overwatch.
What I mean by that, is that while I think you can make over healing well, it isn’t a good idea. The game is pretty fast paced, it would be difficult to make that overhealing feel appreciated. Want to stop that widow headshot? You are somehow going to have to miraculously time your ability just before she shoots and make sure it is on the right target.
Want to give your tracer the edge? Now we’ve come into a similar problem old sym had where she made certain characters too good.
Want to rescue an ally caught out of position? Both Brigitte and Zarya already fill that role, which doesn’t give me much of a reason to use Sym instead.
Overhealing has to be done carefully, or it runs the risk of being meaningless or overly oppressive.
It’s this. It doesn’t matter how much supportive options she has it will never hold a candle to missing out the amount of healing a Mercy/Moira puts out.
Even Zen/Lucio have healing in addition to their utility and you’d have to make something pretty broken if the utility was that good that it’s better than Zen’s healing and having discord.
If she’s not getting healing she needs to be moved to defense.
Just because there are other heroes that do something similar doesn’t mean Symmetra can’t. Giving allies additional hit points has always been a part of Symmetra’s kit from day 1.
Brigitte only “overheals” if the ally is at or near full health. If they are low, she just heals them, and any subsequent healing brings them up to their normal health cap. Additional shields could allow allies to keep the “overheal” even if they get healed under the shield.
Zarya’s bubble is on a long cooldown. Symmetra’s ability wouldn’t have to be, since she’s not a tank and doesn’t gain damage from the proper use of the shield.
There are other things that could make it unique from other forms of additional HP. Maybe it could be an AoE pulse, applying shields to all allies in the area. Maybe it could buff allies as long as they have the shield, giving them more movement speed, damage, or damage resist. Maybe it could last longer than these other overheals. There are lots of possibilities.
Was just making it clear that objectively, you are wrong when you say
As for the various issues with the idea, see my prior post for a list of just a few examples why I think it is a bad idea.
I’ll note, in beta they tried this idea. They gave her the ability to put 75 shields on her team that wasn’t limited to her ult. It felt oppressive and was changed to 25 (and eventually changed into the shield gen).
Sadly no, supporting IS healing, at least in overwatch
However there are many ways of meeting that requirement so whether sym stays a support or not will be decided by her having a healing mechanic or something like healing that functions almost identically, if that’s not the case, she’s a defense hero, just like torb and mei
Exactly. Damage isn’t the point. It’s token damage, but as a support with those skills she’s not supposed to be contributing largely to the damage, she’s supposed to be tanky + slowing people so they can’t escape her teams mates / reposition in fights / are easier to aim at.
It was oppressive in the beta because of how non-interactive it was. Symmetra just had to see Tracer once, and Tracer got an extra 75 regenerating HP that only fell off once Tracer died. Symmetra could give her the shield and forget about it, and Tracer could run around with 225 HP for the entire game.
What I’m talking about is different. The shields would be temporary, but strong, so buffing a Tracer going in would require Symmetra to be present as well. It would be similar to Zarya’s bubble, but more frequent. It would be similar to Brigitte’s armor packs, but would synergize better with other sources of healing. I believe it could be done. Look at Tassadar from HotS. His whole kit is designed around shielding allies and controlling space. Symmetra could fill a similar niche and still be a support.
I like this idea too. Her real “support” skills are too tied to her ult (healing is essentially increasing “ally around objective uptime”. It means your ally can stay on the objective after taking more than max health damage. The teleporter is very similar in reducing run-back time, it’s increasing the amount of time an ally spends in position to contribute in combat)
Giving her some real abilities to that can be used on shorter cooldowns that are also supportive would be a great change.
Taking her barrier and converting it to a large shield would be cool. Like a single target sound barrier with 150 health or something.