🌐 My 4.0 Supportmetra Concept, we need more Supports!

General Discussion
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Lately, the debate about the discrepancy in numbers between Supports, Tanks and DPS is more heated than usual, which is only exaggerated by the fact that our newest support-looking champion is, in fact, another damage dealer. Looking through forums at the time I’ve seen a lot requests about instantly reworking Echo into a healer to create a more even number of choices among the queues, and so as to not overwhelm DPS queue times even more.

However what did catch my interest is that, people who accepted that we will get “another dps hero” quickly forwarded suggestions or even literal concepts of reworking specific heros from the dps roster into other categories, such as Mei and Bastion to tank, or Sym and Sombra to support. If your community is that desperate to suggest such actions, then maybe uneven champion amount is quite the problem.

It does seem like a reasonable suggestion from a balance-to-cost standpoint, since most character reworks can create a new healer/tank without introducing many new assets, and thus being more time and cost efficient than creating a new tank/support. It does double its value in creating even number of heroes in roles, since you do remove hero from the most crowded one in addition to gaining one in role that needs it.

Which is why I spent some time to revive my old Supportmetra concept from when Sym 3.0 released, in which I took some time to rethink her place in the game and rebalance her accordingly so as to not make her feel overpowered. What’s so appealing about this design concept from developer’s perspective, is that I am going to use all of the assets that existed up to this point among all iterations of Symmetra, so the only animation tweaking would be transitions between certain animations, which is still work, but not as much as creating new animations from scratch.

Let’s go straight to it, starting with this Sym’s place in the game.

General:

  • Moved back to Support category;

When it comes to this Sym’s place in the game, I, obviously, moved her to Support role, because it has the least amount of champions to choose from, and Sym’s visual design is very fitting to this category. I refused to move her to Tanks due to her hitbox size. Tanks must be immune to non-ult oneshot potential in this game, and giving 350+ HP to someone of size of Symmetra, is in my eyes, absolutely flawed from start.

This Symmetra intends to fill the “off-healer” role, where you give small sustain in exchange of raw utility instead of big heals the main healer role provides. But going beyond the slot role, each hero needs to fill specific unexplored niche or gameplay mechanic, and so does this Symmetra. She fills the often requested “Shield-based Support” role that noone else really does in the game right, and with Echo not delivering it, maybe it’s time to give this field time to shine.

As for why would you even want this Sym in your composition, she is specifically designed to counter one-shot mechanics, especially ones coming from Flankers and Snipers. One-shots are commonly hated among the community, and part of me believes that is because we don’t really have very reliable, consistent counter to it. This gives Sym opportunity to actually be liked in your team comp and shine instead of being just another problematic turret character.

Let’s go over her abilities, starting with most important one, her passive.

Passive: Shield Amplification

  • Allies within 15m of Symmetra have half of their maximum normal Health converted into Shields;

  • Being EMPed simply converts these Shields back to Health;

This passive is one of 2 reasons why Symmetra is belonging to this hero role. It provides strong out of combat healing that not only would relieve pressure from your main healer, but also would prevent teammates from the need of finding a health pack. 2.5 seconds of not taking damage will start restoring 30/shields per second, allowing Sym to feel like a healer without actually healing someone. This would be especially powerful with Barrier Tanks, such as Reinhardt, who can keep his shield up until this passive will restore half of his health.

Photon Projector:

Primary

  • Range reduced 12 → 10m;

  • Ramp up time decreased 1.33 → 1s;

  • Damage changed: 60 to 120 to 180 → 75 to 90 to 105;

  • Beam width increased 0.2 → 0.35m

  • No longer refills ammo on damaging barriers;

  • Has old beam visuals and can pick up items from the ground again;

Primary fire is intended to be very strong tool in a 1v1 situation. Symmetra needs such a tool due to her Ultimate Ability, which we will talk about in a second. This is why I nerfed both range and max ramp up damage - so that it is rather decent at dueling and no longer snowballs into hexakills. If you notice the damage at starting level is way, way higher than Sym 2.0 was, but instead it ramps way weaker. The time to kill a squishy from level 0 is actually only slightly longer than Sym 3.0 and much faster than 2.0, it’s just that with reduced ammo count and last level damage she isn’t going to melt entire enemy team, because that is not intentional design of this rework.

I reverted ramp up time to old value, because weapon that needs aim already has its ramp up time increased automatically, and also reverted the 3.0 beam size nerf, because it will create more straight “aim-to-damage” ratio on this ramp up weapon. Not only that, Supports in this game usually have easier to land weapons, due to the fact that they still need to not feel entirely defenseless despite their lower maximum damage output, and Supportmetra is following this rule as well.

This is a personal flavour, but I would love if old Sym visuals would came back with the ability to pick-up stuff from the ground. It was a fun, non-balance related gimmick that suited her personality very well, and I wouldn’t mind having it back even on version 3.0 of Symmetra (but aim requirement should stay as it is).

Secondary

  • Shoot Photon Orbs that pierce enemies;

  • The longer orbs are held, the bigger they are and the slower they travel;

  • Now only pierce barriers if fully charged;

  • Charge time increased 1 → 1.5s;

  • Damage ramp: 20 → 120 (~75 DPS);

  • Projectile speed ramp: 40 → 10 m/s;

  • Smallest orb size increased by 60%;

  • Biggest orb size increased by 15%

I’ll be honest, I am kind of an addict when it comes to piercing projectiles, my most mains in games usually have projectiles with those properties, because it’s fun. Which is why I was severely disappointed with the fact that sym 3.0 received bootleg Pharah Rockets. It’s time to get her old weapon back. Obviously, I see how flawed her 2.0 orbs were, where you wouldn’t be able to hit a thing past 5 meters, which is why I came up with something that eats the cake and keeps it as well.

Basically, if you want your 2.0 orbs back, you charge her secondary fire fully, because that’s usually how you used her old secondary fire. The charge time is slightly faster for it too. But now small orbs get to have a purpose they never had, turning them into half-automatic pistol that pierces enemies but not shields and have way faster projectile speed to complement Symmetra at range. I always felt that a character that has her Ultimate Ability gimmick and mechanics needed a long range option so that she can consistently and actively take part in a fight while being in the backline with her ult, and I think those changes to orb size and projectile speed help it not being entirely random unlike 2.0 orbs.

Her orbs of 3.0 version have 0.2 min charge time and 0.063s delay between shots and it is not changing with this concept, and after doing some calculation it ends up in roughly 75 DPS on all charge levels, which is, quite fittingly, her lvl 1 beam damage, so there’s still incentive to get into melee range when spotting the opportunity.

A good QoL change to the Projectile speed ramp up is to make sure it has 40m/s speed for up to ~0.5s hold time, so as to not make her speed fall off too quickly if you didn’t manage to release orbs at earliest time perfectly due to human error so as to not mess up your prediction ability.

First Ability: Photon Barrier

  • Elliptical shield that moves forward at Symmetra’s run speed;

  • Cooldown reduced 10 → 6s;

  • Barrier HP reduced 1000 → 350;

As she is intended to be the Shield-based support, she is getting her amazing 2.0 Photon Barrier back with some tweaking I am explaining right now. This shield was a great ability but it was often criticized on how brief of an impact it had during the match. Sometimes it could stop whole bastion barrage for 7 seconds or even entire pharah ult, but other times it only lasted of quarter of a second where it mattered before shattering on a wall. These tweaks are meant to address that, and give this ability more consistent value. Yes, it will break almost every time you cast it, but you will get it more often, so the value is not only consistent, but also always good for its cooldown value.

This ability would synergize absurdly well with the rest of the kit, and I am going to talk about those interactions in a moment. But most importantly, it gives her additional tool to outplay enemy and thus win her 1v1s more, and also can be used to save an ally if all other tools were not enough.

I would also mention that it would use her current Photon Barrier deploy animation instead of her old one, and that’s because, as I said, I want to preserve asset creating, as the old cast animation is moving to her next ability.

Second ability: Photon Shield

  • Channel Shield Health on ally, similarly to Zarya’s Bubble or Brigitte’s Repair Pack;

  • 25 meters range;

  • No longers gives 25 permanent Shields;

  • Now gives 75 Temporary Shields decaying at rate of 25/s;

  • Each time Shields decay, the ally is healed for 50% of the decayed amount;

  • Cooldown increased 1 → 3s;

This is the fundamental ability of this rework, and 2nd reason why she is in Support category. As it currently stands, it is intended to be the best ability in her arsenal.

Do you remember the old times where Symmetra had boring, passive ability that could grant a small portion of maximum shields to her chosen ally? This is its reactive, engaging buffed-up cousin that servers Supportmetra’s “anti-one-shot” design.

To briefly describe this ability, you place 75 Shields on an ally, just like Lucio does with his ult, but single target, and after 1s these shields drop by 25 to 50, then to 25, and down to 0, The cooldown starts the moment you place this ability, so you can then shield them again right after, resulting in 25 shields/sec, which is on levels of Zarya’s Bubble, but more consistent.

In addition, any leftover shields don’t go to waste entirely and instead are converted to health in ratio of 1 to 0.5, rounded down. So if your target takes no damage, he will be healed for 12/sec for 3 seconds. But if shield is damaged, for example, there’s only 10 shields left, the target will only receive 5 points of healing upon its decay.

This is the reactive part of the healing that she would otherwise lack with her passive ability. An extremely well timed shield will prevent death from things such as Hanzo’s Headshot or Doomfist Punch, and even Widow headshot if Symmetra’s Ult is up. Which elegantly slideshows us to her next ability, her Ultimate.

Ultimate: Shield Generator

  • Deploy powerful construction that grants your team 75 permanent shields;

  • HP increased 50 Health, 350 Shields → 500 Health, 150 Shields;

  • Buff range increased 50 → 60m;

    • Now has a visual indicator;

  • Can be deployed at up to 20m away from Symmetra;

  • Restores Architech’s Gauntlets’ ammo to enable setting Turrets right after placing Teleporters (about that in a minute);

Her ultimate is simply her old Shield Generator, because it was interesting game mechanics very unique to Sym, and it works with her job design very well, with a lot of tweaks added that will make it less clunky to use.

The increase in range is a small boost that helps on certain maps, such as Volskaya point A attack, where 2.0 SG simply couldn’t reach point no matter where you placed the construct. Placing it at range will give you precious seconds off going to backline and covering specific gaps.

The HP change is designed specifically in mind to make your first Ult defence way, way more successful than if you were to defend it consecutive times to make it more consistent in its duration value. Suddenly giving her needed 1v1 tools makes a lot of sense.

Last but not least, it finally gets so much needed QoL changes. Seeing its range and making it visible through walls for your allies is something so obviously needed in a cooperation based video game than I still am wondering how in the world those weren’t a thing back in the 2.0 days.

That would be all of the changes, and that would be where her kit could ended. Except.

I am aware many of you would complain, myself included, that Symmetra without her turrets and Teleporter is not Symmetra, because those abilities are iconic to her design. Which is why I have been thinking about the possibilities of introducing them to her kit. This, obviously, will end up with her kit being extremely bloated, so this has to be handled smartly so as to not make her another Briggitte.

A good way to do it is to make them extremely linear 1-purpose abilities that are not working as a general use tools. I was inspired here by Mercy and her Blaster. Her blaster is just another ability she has, but because it’s only used to self defense when noone is near her, or to scare Widowmaker with Valkyrie, it doesn’t bloat her kit. Mercy, in fact, has the same number of abilities this Supportmetra would have, but because some of her tools are extremely situational, it works in a rather balanced state.

Fortunately this Supportmetra could use some tools that would help her in 1 specific situation, and that is helping her place/defend her ult. Which is why both Turrets and Teleporter are designed just for that, and will be terrible in every single other situation. Yes, I said it, they are meant to be way weaker than what we used to see in any of her iterations, but that’s because she will technically have 4 abilities instead of 2. That’s how balancing things works most of the time.

Weapon Switch:

Architech’s Gauntlet

  • Symmetra now has access to second weapon which holds her deployables;

  • Has switch time of 0.5 second;

  • Has maximum of 6 ammo;

  • Has no reload, instead gains 1 ammo every 10s;

  • All constructions are visible to your allies through walls;

The way I holster these 2 additional abilities is via second weapon that regains ammo every 10 seconds, just like Doomfist. This way, both Teleporter and Turrets will technically share same charges and cooldowns.

This weapon would use her 2.0 turret stance that simply switches the middle holographic image to Teleporter from Turret when she wants to deploy it, which means that I didn’t break my promise and all visual assets are already there.

Primary (Turret)

  • Deploy a Sentry Turret thrown as destroyable projectile that snaps to surface;

  • Has no cooldown and costs 1 ammo from Architech’s Gauntlet;

  • HP increased 30 Health → 5 Health + 25 Shields;

  • Cast time reduced 0.5 → 0.35 s;

  • Projectile Speed reduced 15 → 10 m/s

  • Damage per second reduced 40 → 5;

  • Turret deploy amount increased 3 → 6 turrets;

  • Turrets slow reduced 20 → 15%;

    • This slow effect is now capped at 30%;

  • Damaged enemies are now affected by teamwide reveal;

    • This effect lingers on enemy for 1 additional second;

The goal of these turrets is to simply be a security system and nothing more. They will tell you when flanker is approaching your Shield generator thanks to the reveal effect, and before it’s placed it can be used on any flank route you’re unwilling to scoute yourself. You cannot just throw it in the middle of the fight thanks to the switch time and its squishiness (unless you protect its flight with your synergistic Photon Barrier). The reveal effect might be powerful, but I personally think it would be the most fair reveal in this game.

This is a little stretch from the topic, but I always felt like Widow’s and Hanzo’s reveal are kind of unfair, one lasts eternity and you need to look at game timer to know you’re no longer in its effect, and Hanzo has fast repositioning AoE reveal that is also completely silent for some reason despite having oneshot potential. This is one is more fair: if it hits you, you’re revealed, if it doesn’t hit you, you aren’t. So you know when you are exposed.

The turrets are not meant to set free autoaim kills for you anymore, which means all the kills are done by your accuracy in the end, while the slow change is meant to encourage spreading your web in pairs of 2. Creating this “security web” is meant to be fast and effective with its 30% faster cast time.

Once again, good QoL change would be making them visible through walls, so if you are creating a safe-zone, allies would know where they should be going to escape enemies.

Secondary (Teleporter)

  • Place two-way teleporter between current position and target location;

  • Has no cooldown, costs 3 ammo instead;

  • Range reduced 30 → 20m;

  • HP reduced 50 Health, 250 Shields → 25 Health, 125 Shields;

  • Now only lasts 15s;

  • Multiple teleporters can be deployed at the same time;

  • No longer teleports turrets;

There was always this issue of Sym 2.0. where it always took her a very long time to place her Shield Generator. If only she had some kind of extremely bursty back-and-forth mobility that cannot be used to get away for free and/or during fight….

When I saw 3.0 Teleporter, I got super excited how they wanted to address her downtime for her Shield Generator. Then devs said they removed SG and I was wondering “Then what’s the point of such limited movement ability?”.

But that’s exactly what it is. With those changes, I am giving Symmetra the most bursty amount of mobility in the game. When you get your Ult ready, the idea is to place two Teleporters, place SG, place your Turret nest (or even more Teleporters to go back faster) because placing SG restored all of your Turret ammo, and then go back through the Teleporters for a total of 80m distance moved in span of couple seconds. It does exhaust all of her charges, meaning she wont be able to do it again within next 60 seconds. It can double as taxing you up to a Shield Generator that is about to be attacked.

One additional thing you can do with it is to taxi respawning ally, but that does put your resources on 60s cooldown should you want to use it on your Ultimate or Ultimate Defense.

Its long setup time, limited duration, reduced HP and range make it awful at anything else. Even if you want straight jump to the point, the reduced health means it will be destroyed before you can teleport unless you use your amazing synergy with photon barrier to protect it and delay its death, but that is still only 1 of your teleporters that will be protected by it, and 1 of your defensive abilities gone. So in the end, you can only really use it in your backline, which is what I wanted to achieve.

From a QoL standpoint, the way its placement should work is as follow: When you press Secondary Fire, turret hologram changes to teleporter hologram and placement indicator of Teleporter shows up. On button release you place the teleporter, and pressing Primary while holding Teleporter cancels placement. This is faster, more convenient way to place TP than what we have now.

That’s it for the concept idea. I would love you to share your opinions, suggestions, changes, or just flat out complain on how badly designed and balanced this Supportmetra is.

Or… just repeat yourself and say how Sym never was a support and is fine where she is, I guess that works too.

54 Likes
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I’m not really a Sym main but these sound very, and I mean very cool.
I would love to give these a try, hopefully someone can replicate this using the workshop.

20 Likes
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I like your ideas but the shield healing could never work since it doesn’t help someone who is being focused. 3 seconds is way too long to wait compared to literally any other support being able to outheal incoming dps. Putting her in the support slot and making that her main form of “healing” would make her a hard throw in every game. Especially if the shields dont actually even increase health.

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I REALLY like the turret idea tho like a WHOLE lot. Not enough heroes have peaking abilities like that and in a game where peaker’s advantage is a huge deal, having more abilities like that is rlly good. That being said, that ability still feels like a dps ability than anything else. (Place your turrets scattered at various chokes and corners and set yourself up for massive right clicks). Currently her turrets outside of tp bombing just feel like sad attempts at gaining space for a few seconds. She’d be horrible on anything but defense tho

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with concepts like these, I always ignore the numbers and focus on the main idea, since you, as a player, isn’t responsible to bring accurate balanced numbers, that’s on the developers.

I… love this idea, like so much, if there’s anything I have to complain about its probably kit/ability overloads since there’s a lot to do, but others, bravo.

thank god there isn’t healing turrets this time lol.

8 Likes
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I wish they would turn Sym and Sombra into supports…

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The problem with Damage is that it is the broad general catergory for Damage Dealers, let’s get one thing very clear.

From a standpoint of Game Terminology and Game Design, DPS = Damage Per Second meaning how much damage you can deal in a certain amount of time as oppose to Damage Over Time.

So heroes that do one burst of damage or Damage Piercing like McCree/Widow/Hanzo cannot be classed as DPS if we get really technical because they don’t deal loads of damage per second but an instant piercing burst of damage.

Anyways… I am derailing… originally the Damage Class was divided into two, Attack and Defense. Support became the state it is in because Blizzard wanted it to be exclusively healers.

No they moved Symmetra out because Symmetra was more of a Damage Hero than a support hero they reworked her and it didn’t work. In fact most of us in the Mercy megathread was talking about how to change Mercy just prior to 50HPS and even predicted the upcoming change and looking at the pattern we knew they were stealing ideas as Moira, Brigitte, Baptise and Echo each feature an element of Mercy’s feedback.

So we assumed that Echo would be a Support with independant mobility that manage to stay as it looks and feels really similar to what we have suggested for the E Valkyrie ability. In terms of support we suggested that a hero would be similar to old Sym being a Shield Generation can shield and protect heroes from CC effects and would manipulate HP and extend it.

Why did we suggest this for Echo, it’s because Blizzard made a bold claim once that they would never Revert in an effort to curb the Mercy rage. To be fair… they’ve held true to this statement, near enough all reverts in this games are not true reverts, they are soft reverts that resemble the previous version but are never identical and even if it is, they have take something else away to compensate.

Example Ana’s current Healing might look like a revert to her glory days but her healing right now functions differently from her season 3/4 version.

So Symmetra would never go back to the way she was and we knew that, that’s why we pinned our hopes on Echo but because they were hung up on Duplication, they turned her back to Support. Her original raw design looked more masculine and was more Damage feel, but they soften her in anticipation to make her a support but now it is publically known that they felt it didn’t fit and reverted her to Damage because of Duplication.

As for the Sym idea, it’s cool but not going to happen they even binned a raw support concept of her when they did the redesign, they said it just didn’t feel right. Honestly they had a chance with Echo, they wasted it and what’s done is done… because ‘Losing a Support Mid Fight is bad’ but I’m sorry… there are times when the Support can perform better than the Tank/Damage Dealer and the idea of the ultimate is to be game changing and in desperate times, losing a support makes little to no difference since there is no point to everyone being dead except the support. If the support can hold the line/push back or buy time, then Echo transforming shouldn’t have been an issue

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yes

no

[20 characters]

8 Likes
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Interesting choices and motives :joy:

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I love it , wow I actually love it. Whenever someone normally reccomends something I’m always like meh that’s ok or I hate it but this is actually very cool.

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Might want to correct this, I was mildly surprised by the 90%+ damage reduction.

There's a second opinion for you. -Doc
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Her hack is support, her ult is support, her damage is kind of low and her trans is evasion. With a few changes she would be a perfect support. More than sym ever was.

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This wasn’t a mistake. I intentionally want 6 turrets to deal 3 damage/sec. Initially I nerfed it to 5 but what I realized is, you set up your turret nest to your shield gen in backline. Then Tracer tries to look for it and is getting constantly zapped by 6 turrets as she blinks around finding it.

Since she can’t be healed she will be crippled by all that chipp damage to a point where she will lose up to 30 health if she doesn’t find it fast enough. So when she actually 1v1s you, she will be at 75% of her health already. But you already have hp advantage since your Shield Generator is up, and you will still end up having like 15 damage dealt from turrets as well. I want to make the 1v1 for SG rather fair, and not just entirely in favour of Symm.

I know, and I specifically mentioned it that her kit has a lot going for her. But either we have: 1. bloated kit, or 2. sym that is problematic due to nature of her key abilities, or 3. sym that isn’t problematic but doesn’t have sym’s key features. I went the first path.

This is exactly the issue I had conceptualizing this. I thought that maybe this passive should also give 1s less of the recharge time but that would be broken since 30h/s is actually a lot for an AoE heal, Lucio has half of that.

That’s why I added the Photon Shield ability to help the passive. Note the healing of Photon Shield ends after 3 seconds, which means after that tiny single target healing your ally will finally get that out of combat healing as well if he didnt take any damage.

14

Well, you should increase the Teamwide reveal to at least a second or two, it should be visible for awhile so if people do look for them immediately after the callout, they would be able to catch them if the Tracer blinks out.

but I feel a whole 3 damage per second is kind of… underwhelming.

Even at 6 turrets it maxes out at 18dp/s
I mean, a 1 minute long cooldown for a whole 18dp/s with little to no utility is definitely weak.

It’s a turret nest, without the second or two reveal time it’s just a wall of REALLY forgetful eyes.

There's a second opinion for you. -Doc
1 Like
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The amount of effort, thoughts and creativity that was put into this makes me impressed. As a Sym main, i dont like this idea, I LOVE IT SO MUCH, especially the Architech Gauntlet and the Passive for Symmetra. Such new fresh ideas, such creativity, Symmetra herself would approve of this concept.

16

I love how you designed a cool shield based support with a new type of healing. An active playstyle, but you didn’t remove parts of Symmetra that make her the character she is.

Obviously she would have a lot of tools, but this game needs characters like that. That’s what Symmetra was always about. Making the correct choice in the middle of a battle.

7 Likes
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yeah because the only way to make more support heroes is to give us the heroes the dps players dont wanna play anymore. Also explains why people want sombra for support

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Seems a bit too complex, but either way solid suggestions for sure… :+1: :+1:

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I think her old photon shield ability -could- heal if it was channeled instead of set and forget tbh. Would just have to be temporary shields. If it was like 80 over shields that decayed over 1 second, but channeled, it could help “block” any sustained damage like soldier/zarya/sym etc until The offhealer/main healer were to top the health pool off.

Could also be higher skill no aim healing since you only block incoming damage.

Blizz would never add it into the game, though.

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Shields on non-tank heroes is extremely touchy. Brig runs over 3/4 of the DPS roster due to having a shield and it only has 200hp. The developers from OW2 put a tight focus on limiting shields going into the next title. I just don’t think we’ll see any other non-tank hero get a shield. We may even see Brig lose hers.