Rework Symmetra's Alt Fire, not everything else!

General Discussion
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TL:DR At the bottom if ur lazy lol

Symmetra is obviously a bit of an inbalanced hero, but her accessibility for disabled people is invaluable. However, I think that she has potential to be reworked in a way that would not make her a completely new hero. The new abilities planned should straight up be an entirely new hero, because literally not a scrap of her identity is left. Her gun, while being having no aim, is balanced by being extremely close range, so if someone dies to that, its not that they are OP, it’s that the person is an idiot for being that close anyway and STILL not managing to kill her from close range with her charge up (because lets face it, even a mercy can kill her quickly before she can charge up). Mei is a hero that is similar to Symmetra, she has a lenient weapon that is fairly short range. However, the difference between Mei and Sym’s gun is that Mei’s alt fire is a high skill projectile, while Symmetra’s is a slow Spam projectile. If Symmetra was given a ranged alt fire (Preferably one that can headshot), her skill cap would increase exponentially, and it would balance her kit as she would be able to do more damage without suiciding into the enemy team, like the current design.

Her Turrets aren’t that far off, I would keep their numbers as is, because 3 doesnt lock an area as well. Keep the turret HP Increase (or maybe even make it more, like 60 HP) so at least its a little harder for winston, and let them Pass through Armor. I am not looking forward for all the Armor thats about to be in this meta so I’m just adding this randomly lol.

Her Ultimates are actually fairly balanced, but increasing the range of both turret and tele placement would do worlds of difference for protection.

Photon Barrier is a good way to protect, but it’s on a 10 second cooldown. Lowering it to 7 or 8 would do worlds of difference in a fast paced game like overwatch.

These changes are obviously not going to make Symmetra viable in all comps, there are heros designed to be niche like Mei and Reaper and if they were in every game it would be extremely unfun to play (Ahem ~ Junkrat?) and I think thats fine. However, whats not fine is if she were to be completely ineffective for every other area except her niche, Which I think these changes can do

Keep the planned changes for something else though! It looks really fun, but it doesn’t fit Symmetra really. Make it an entirely new hero, like perhaps another Vishkar agent (Sanjay). But changing everything about Symmetra is simply creating an entirely new hero and destroying all the work you did, and in the end (with all the new animations and textures) the only work you saved was a model (actually probably not because her new gun would need to be updated)

TL:DR - Change her alt fire to something that isnt mindless spam, that way she can do damage without suiciding into the enemy team. Also a couple buffs here and there, and make the planned changes an entirely new hero because it sounds fun to play but is literally everything but sym.

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Again can we please wait until we’ve at least experienced Symmetra 3.0 on the PTR before typing out Bible-length comments on the forums? Just please wait and see.

You could well be absolutely 100% right, but until you can back up your statements with actual gameplay experience of Sym 3.0 I have no interest in reading what you’re saying.

4 Likes
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No because if it turns out to be a flat out mess then the devs have just wasted months of animation work for something they will have to scrap. Preventing it before it gets animated is what I’m trying to do so it doesn’t waste unnecessary time. The planned moves are good but they aren’t Symmetra I rather they make an entirely new hero rather than put a bunch of replacements on her instead.

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By the time it hit PTR, its too late.

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Too late. Do you think Blizzard just throw together some new animations like a week before it gets launched? They’ve probably been working on this rework for months now.

Let’s just all calm down and wait and see.

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Except that they haven’t otherwise they would have put it on PTR already. I literally just said that I’m trying to prevent months of animation work, so I know it doesn’t take a week. What I do know is most likely they haven’t created the animations yet, because of the time they needed to animate Hanzo’s stuff, so they aren’t going to animate stuff they havent even finalized :slight_smile:

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Wrong. Blizzard handles it’s balancing with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

They’ve said in dev videos that they usually have 1-3 new heroes in testing at any given time, for months and months on end. Symmetra’s been under the knife behind the scenes for a while, probably since before the start of the OWL. They’re not just going to plonk her onto the PTR just like that. It’s incredibly naive to think that.

And I literally just said you’re a few months too late.

Source?

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I just said the most likely reason, but I can deduce from the fact from the time Jeff announced the planned rapid fire shot, the part when he said he announced the animators now had time to do it, and the part where he showed the concept art a month ago.

So no, I am not too late. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ok, keep thinking that if it makes you feel good. I’m willing to bet this rework is all but done and ready to be shipped onto the PTR, they’re probably just waiting until S10 has been going for a little while so they don’t change things too drastically too early in the season (and too soon after the Hanzo rework).

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They’re intentionally making a new character entirely because pretty much everything sucks about her. And tbh imo the alt fire was the only thing possibly worth keeping.

2 Likes
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If you’re so bothered by these Symmetra posts don’t read them, but it’s probably gonna be finished in a couple months so I’m going to use the time I have until then. Cheers!

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I’m not bothered by these Symmetra posts, and I didn’t read yours. I said what I say to all of these knee-jerk uninformed Symmetra posts; just wait and see.

That’s more-or-less exactly what I just said.

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The Alt Fire made for mindless spam, which was a good counter for completely stationary comps, but was too slow to really account for any predictive movements, making it pure spam. The Ultimates were fine imo: shield gen paired with brigitte makes for a nasty combo, and teleporter could be game saving if not taken care of. The Primary fire would be OP with large range, so the short range balances that out, but not having any long range fire seriously prevents her from being effective towards pharahs and winstons.

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I just hope the right click still goes through barriers. It just makes perfect sense since it looks like the barriers & ball are both made of the same hard light energy. And since barriers charge her gun, it means they are compatible. Going through it just makes sense.

I know the devs said it no longer pierces enemies and explodes on contact with enemies & environment but I don’t know if a barrier is considered an environment.

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A month is a large amount of time, and they haven’t even shown concept art yet, so we don’t know yet. But you seem quite bothered if you’re going on every post about Symmetra :wink: And maybe you should read them, because it seems you’re the one who’s uninformed lmfao

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I agree, I’m just as uninformed as you are. I’ve not played Sym 3.0, neither have you.

All I’m saying is ‘wait and see’. I don’t claim any knowledge other than this rework is basically finished. They wouldn’t give us details on a moveset that hadn’t already been finalised and stringently tested.