Quick run over of Sym's ability design and what's wrong there

General Discussion
1

Symmetra has a slightly problematic kit in terms of how it’s worked out, but that does not mean that her kit is poorly designed.
If you ask me it’s in a pretty good position. She has an Ult with a big “oof” factor, her abilities can potentially be really good and her gun has just as much potential to eat other players alive. But for some reason, it’s not working really well. Her pick rate is abysmal, you get always a lot, pretty harsh comments thrown at you if you pick her and she is very easily outplayed by simply walking away from her.
So… What is wrong there?

Let me go over her abilities step by step and i explain the overarching issue with her kit, with some possible solutions to fix it.

Her weapon, the Photon Projector, first.

This gun is actually a pretty hefty beast. The damage ramp up is very effective agaisnt Tanks and just melts the 200-250 HP heroes on lv. 3 with 195 DPs. Same goes for her secondary fire. Fully charged hit- 120 HP damage, not to forget the splash damage of 60 HP. This is a lot of potential damage… but it takes a ton of time to even get there. It takes almost 3s of permanently dealing damage just to reach lv. 3 on the main beam and the secondary needs 1s to be fully charged, on top comes the slow travel time. In a game, which is as fast as Overwatch with so many heroes which can combo you to death in less than a second or one shot you immediately, Symmetra’s main gun is just way too slow to keep up with that. And while many try to push that issue on the fact that it is no longer a lock on weapon, i can tell you that she would just be the same in terms of viability as now… only more annoying to play against, which should not be the goal here.

To sum it up, her weapon is just way too slow by design, yet the damage potential is insane.

Next, Symmetras Sentry Turret’s and her Teleporter.

Both abilities have, again, a lot of potential to cause tons of trouble for the enemy team. Her Teleporter is a really good tool to get players around and move resources, like Turret’s, efficiently over the map. It’s a good way to get in and out of the fight fairly fast and helps less mobile heroes to reach places they normally could not get to. Then you have her Sentry Turret’s which potentially can disrupted the enemies back line and close up ways to the objective. They can also give you a helping hand on 1v1 fights… If your opponent would do vacation before fighting you. It’s a returning issue from her main weapon. Everything just takes way too much time to be setted up. The moment you get there, you are probably already half dead or your stuff is already destroyed.

So we have, yet again a lot of potential, but not enough time to really use that on both abilities.

The last thing in her kit is her Ult, Photon Barrier, which is basically the only ability which has no issue with being too slow. It has all what a good Ult needs, from the “oof” effect to a very good amount of power if well used. So i wont go into that one more. If you agree with me or not, it’s currently the best worked out part of her kit.

At this point you may already see where the issue is. All of her abilities just take way to much time to be ready or to reach max efficiency. On top comes that 2 abilities make her very vulnerable too (Sentry Turret’s/Teleporter). Still, all have a ton of potential to be very effective.

The question now is, how do we reach her potential, without rewoking everything again? We make her survivability better. Why? well…

If you make the main beam too strong or do something wrong in it’s overall architecture, you can just start to melt other players, no matter what they play. Same goes for her alternative fire, it’s already her best dmg ability as far as i know. Would that go through barriers or so, it would become a big issue. Again, no one want’s her to become an annoyance to paly against.

This means we can’t really work on her Dmg output… It’s overall just too good already.

With that knowledge we can establish that Symmetras main issue is nothing more than her survivability. Which means, we need to work on the parts which are too stiff and unreliable. So here are a few ways i think in which Sym could be change to the better.

The first thing would be to give her the ability to throw out turrets, without disrupting her main gun. That would already bring better dmg to the table and it makes her kit more fluid. A good QOL change. The turrets don’t need real buff’s, they can already be a serious threat. Anyway, the only buff which could be considered is making them place the second you click, so hitscan. Non of that mid way destruction nonsense.

Next is her TP… Again something which just need’s a QOL change and not even a special one… basically the same as for her turrets even. Building the TP without the need to stop using the main gun would be an immense advantage. But in my opinion, it needs something small on top of that. My idea would be to make it a shield gen too. But not with a lot of SP. 50 in a small AOE would be more than okay, make it work for her team too and she has a very good reason to be picked in Death Ball like comps. The 50 SP would go away with the TP again so not too much HP added into the mix. Not to forget that it would add even more needed survivability to her. A good, synergy causing effect would be the outcome.

And then I would also add some kind of HP restoration of 30HP/s (On shields maybe even 60) if she deals damage. This and the idea with the shield gen in the TP would give her more time to get the Photon Projector to it’s max potential.

These are things which don’t need massively big reworks to be realized and boost Symmetra in a way which would fix the problem of having to less survivability and time.

Her kit is very well designed in my opinion. Throwing tons of mechanical changes on her would only cause new issue, which would lead to more issues and so on. She really just needs a bit fine tuning to get her into a way better position, which is by far a better situation when Mercy’s to be honest, but that’s an entirely different story which i don’t want to jump into now.

With that being said… Thanks for reading. I hope i didn’t do to much grammatical errors since my native language is not english, so sorry for that.

7 Likes
2

Here is my suggestion for Symmetra.

Symmetra’s Photon Projector, I feel like the gun itself is good. The only thing I will change is the fact that secondary fire orbs, I feel like it should pierce through barriers again.

Symmetra’s Turrets, with this one, I would change it in two ways.

  • Whenever the turrets is being thrown, and it pass by an enemy, it will slow and damage in mid air.

    • Either that or this.

  • Add one more turret so the capacity would increase from 3 to 4 turrets, and whenever the turrets damage an enemy, then it will charge up your primary weapon damage as well, since you are technically damaging the opponent.

    • Symmetra’s Teleporter, the only changes I will change is decrease the cast time from 0.8 second to 0.5 seconds. I may increase the AoE interaction in which you can pass through the Teleporter, but other than that… it is fine.

    Symmetra’s Photon Barrier, I feel like enemies who pass through the barrier should take DoT of static damage, either that or allies who passes through it gets shields added to his or her health pool for the duration of ultimate.

    I also feel like if none of those two works, then allow Symmetra to gain ultimate charge while her photon barrier is activated.

    1 Like
    3

    Are we really going to take feedback from someone who has barely played Symm?
    I don’t want to seem rude, but Symmetra is in an OK spot right now. She just needs minor buffs.

    4

    Symmetra is a character that is meant to be successful in a specific scenario. When she is set up and ready to fight, she is very strong. When she cant find the time to stay put in an area, she struggles.

    Symmetra works a lot like Orisa in that regard, or old Torb. She’s great at the start of an engagement, but slowly gets worse as it wears on if you don’t keep the pressure on the enemy.

    That’s how I view her anyway. Giving her more survivabilty would help playing her on offense, but with the raw power she has now it might be too much for the defense. She is intended to be played on defense anyway which is why I’m wary to suggest buffs to her sustain.

    5
    6

    It’s really not that hard to see Symmetra’s potential as an enemy and know her threat level compared to other heroes. There’s a possible chance the user owns a second account.

    7

    I don’t need to read this excerpt from Ana Karenina to tell you what’s wrong. The alleged architect of hard light technology has to wind up all of her abilities like they were a jack in the box

    8

    Sorry for the late reply. I was very busy in the last few days.
    Anyway, this is the reason why i called this thread “Quick run over”. I know that i barely played her and i also know why that’s the case. In 2016 i already realized that her play style feels too slow in comparison to the rest of the game (basically the reason why i never really wanted to play Sym).
    You don’t really need to play her to see that her speed and flow are very big issues.

    However, i do see that she has a lot of power under the hood and that’s why i didn’t suggest a major rework, but buffs to what she already has. That’s the reason why i said, her design is good, but not worked out well in terms of speed. She is almost the only hero in the game which has on every ability very long and clear telegraphing (her Ult is an exception. Very fast and immediate impact). Sure other heroes have that too like Reinhardt or Doomfist, but all of those can quickly recover from that. Symmetra can’t and that’s a big problem.

    I agree with you that she should and is better on defense than on offense, but how much does that metter if she can’t keep up with other heroes on both sides? It’s always switch or get toxicity thrown at you as soon as the set up is down. With more/effective survivabilty in her pocket she could get a good comeback and her potential could thrive in the midfight. If the survivabilty is tied to her main ability or others, you even add a higher skill ceiling to her.
    And if it is too much (which i think is not the case) it could still be toned down.

    9

    Sym is too slow and she needs to be faster

    10

    Good read. I like the ideas. Even tho they aren’t for what I was going for, i really would like to see these quality of life changes to make her more fluid, because, like you said, she has absurd amounts of potential but she is honestly just being held back terribly. Hopefully the Devs see the waves of Symmetra complaints and do something.