⭐ 11 Changes that Will Make Symmetra a Beauty and a Beast

General Discussion
30

Not gonna even bother with the other points, but on the topic of this: Blizzard has just officially ruined your argument on this case with Brigitte.

33

i admire your dedication to symmetra

36

Personally i think her turrets are good, the low health of the turrets is the worst part, i think turrets should be out for a limited time 20 secs and be invulnerable as well as having instant placement. They should also be hackable by sombra.

37

Duddy, I can get behind this change since it removes the weakness of the Turrets but we have to to acknowledge that it also has huge weaknesses in itself.

Turrets that last forever, allow you to do other things while they are up. A big part of Symmetra’s game is using Alt fire and Primary Fire. So if you are constantly having to put up Turrets, you won’t get to use your gun as much.

If you constantly have to put up turrets, it can feel like a chore. Turrets don’t offer much in terms of immediate gameplay, so putting them up frequently can feel like a drag.

Turrets that are invincible, means that enemies should never shoot them. ANd if enemies are never shooting them, then this removes the built in “stun” element they have, where enemies have to turn around and shoot them down. This “stun” element or “distract” element can be very important iwhen the enemy is already engaged with your team and is being fired at by the turrets.

So it’s not as straightforward as making turrets invincible and on a 20s duration.

Idsurge, you have no understanding of Symmetra.

Yellowninja, I think Symmetra just needs a little bit of love to be more viable for more people.

I don’t think she will need any new abilities.

PrimeCypher, how does Brigitte being the second Melee Support hero invalidate Symmetra being the first?

Thank you Exstingwish.

1 Like
38

I guessed you were in the elite tier of Overwatch players as soon as I saw you calling for a buff to one of the most OP characters in the game. Looked at your profile and bam, about master rank. Sym is a nightmare at lower ranks and can literally go 6v1 reliably. I wish this community would stop crying for characters to be buffed just because at the top 2% of the community they’re not seen as god tier characters.

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41

Caution, Symmetra isn’t that much better at lower ranks either. Otherwise she would have a much higher pickrate down there.

It is higher but not enough to indicate an imbalance.

Hopefully the changes I have outlined don’t put her out of balance in lower ranks, as that is a legitimate concern when dealing with any hero.

No.

Mantra, “Symmetra” and “Healing” are mutually exclusive. That is one of her defining characteristics.

She supports with Teleporter, Shielding and Turrets.

No. It’s a 7m melee attack. It used to be 5m. If it is ever becomes an issue, which currently it is not, then it should be lowered back to 5m.

I think it is important to maintain Sym’s melee beam as that is one of her defining characteristics.

Symmetra is a Melee support hero who supports with Teleporter, Shielding and Turrets.

Let’s also put a cooldown on how long Rein can use his death hammer and a cooldown on Hanzo’s death arrows.

No. Just no.

No.

Finally you said something which could work with Sym’s character and kit and not break it.

I would make this an ability though rather than an Ult. Since it doesn’t seem any more useful than a Mei wall, which also has other benefits.

45

Not true at all, character pick rates are based on people’s preference and not a whole lot of people enjoy sym. Secondly looking at pick rate to say a character is in need of buffs is wrong. You need to look at win rate and across all platforms at all ranks Sym has the highest win rate. Sometimes as high as 5% more than second best.

1 Like
46

All they will say is ‘thats because people switch off’ but they will not admit that thats not how win rates work in this game.

2 Likes
47

These are some really good idea’s and I agree with almost everything.

This I can’t agree with. Makee it so Sym can see who it is and no one else. Because of the changes you propose and the fast lock on by the turrets I believe this to be a bit too much.

I’d like to propose a change 12 and 13

  1. Lock on beam charges up 10% faster but does 5% (or maybe even 10%) less damage when fully charged.

  2. Charging up her damage orbs is 10% faster

48

I dont know why you would want her sentries to NOT slow down targets, that is one of her biggest strengths. Those sentries sometimes make the difference between a kill and letting the enemy get away.

49

Well said, I’m tired of those people too

50

After the introduction of Moira’s ball, they should just make the Turrets instant cast and give them a range that works like Reaper’s teleport. Moira’s ball locks on to all nearby targets, is instant cast, can harass from really far away, can only be stopped by D.Va, and has the same cooldown as one Symmetra turret. I fail to see how a stationary 1hp destroyable object would make Symmetra overpowered if she could place it at greater distances and with a faster cast speed. I think the OP is FAR too tame in their buff suggestion for Symmetra’s turrets.

51

I only occasionally play Symmetra so forgive me for adding some of my thoughts for her: How would you feel if her gun was reworked to be more viable for attack? So Symmetra has a powerful short range beam as her primary that I think is perfect (well, excluding the bend-around-the-corner-to-fry-you beam lol but I can live with that. Well, actually die with that I suppose lol).

But what if Symmetra basically had two different ammos; one for her orbs, one for her beam (use 1 and 2 or scroll wheel to switch). That way for her orb shots by default she would shoot small, very fast moving orbs that dealt 2-5 damage each (I’m not set on numbers due to me uncertain on how OP they could be) and consumed 2 or 5 ammo each (depending on what damage we choose for the small orbs). Their speed could be just a tad slower than Mercy’s pistol shots. And then if you held left click you could charge her balls up how now it is for slower orbs with more power.

Now the reason I would like to see this implemented (I’ve toyed with this idea since befire her rework) was to help make her a more viable choice against comps with shields. Currently her orbs can be easily side stepped or just shrugged off to to their slow speed. Before Bastion’s rework I would occasionally go attack Symmetra and harrass him out of place because he could not heal while being damaged by me.

Now if Symmetra had this she could force shielded characters to move else they’d get severly hurt. This would also help her gain ult charge faster.

Anyways, that’s just my idea. If you think it’s stupid or bad for Symmetra don’t feel shy to tell me why!

52

Definitely not enough. Symm’s a melee hero with no mobility and one of those things need to change so she’s not an easy target even for support class standards.

57

Yes you are right Caution, pickrates are not the whole story.
As for Winrates, Symmetra’s Win rate is distorted, which I explain below.

Idsurge, I assume you are referring to Sym’s abnormally high winrate. In tis case, it is due to a combination of full holds on first point and people switching off after first point.

So when they full hold, the game counts this as a perfect 100% win. But when people don’t hold first point then people switch off, in which case they either lose which is a 100% loss for the player but a partial loss for the Symmetra hero or a partial win if they win.

The game counts 100% wins, partial losses and partial wins. This tilts Symmetra’s winrate to a higher number.

Now the winrate for the people who only play Sym through each round is much more accurate.

Jamie you can just kill the turret. You cannot kill a Hanzosonic arrow nor a Widow mine, but a Sym turret you can kill thereby removing the reveal effect.

It’s actually well balanced when it comes to Sym.

I think her weapon is perfect and should be left untouched.

Magnolia, where did I say her Sentries should not slow?

Ranter, people don’t understand how this hero works. They don’t know what makes Symmetra, Symmetra.

Sparklepuss, I’m interested in hearing why you think they should have unlimited range. Your reasoning for increasing the range so much.

Keep in mind these 2 things -

  1. That Symmetra turret can slow and stack and deal unlimited damage till destroyed.

  2. The current 10m range matches the range of the turrets, so that new players aren’t putting them in places where they do nothing.

Surda, her gun already is quite viable for attack.

Contrary to popular belief it does not bend around corners. The beam actually disconnects when the enemy leaves Symmetra’s sight but because the beam leaves a Damage over Time effect on the player, they still take damage for a split second after the beam disconnects.

This Damage over time is shown by the beam being attached. But the beam is not actually attached.

The same happens when players leave the 10 m max range of the beam. The beam has disconnects once you are out of range but the visuals persist to indicate Damage over time.

This would be fine change faster small orbs vs slower powerful orbs however it isn’t a necessary change since her weapon is in a good place already.

I do this all the time. Yes people can move out of the way. But they don’t get to do that as much as you would think. This strat still works up to Masters and I have seen it work in Gm and Top500 as well.

RicardOC, you don’t need mobility on a melee hero to make them viable especially if they have other tools up their sleeve.

Symmetra has Turrets and Photon Barrier to aid her so if they were improved, then she would be fine. At that point, adding mobility would be bloating her kit.

58

Great to see so much effort put into what would appear to be a well-made post/suggestion.

I don’t really have much to say/add as I don’t agree with all the points, but I think the press Z to reveal the ULT location is very cool :slight_smile:

59

This is all correct, but that does nothing to change the fact that her win rate, as a situational hero, is the highest in the game.

60

The only thing is that a Sonic arrow reveals enemies in one place and Venom Mine only reveals the enemy for Widow herself.

Now image this. You have a widow on the roof by the point on Anubis A and you have a Sym. You can place turrets by every entry point and the Widow could see every enemy coming. Calling this information out to the team and mostlikely killing that one person.

This is just an example for Anubis but can be used on every map because every map has a flanking patch so to speak.

Now if the info was only for Sym herself then the player playing Sym needs to focus on the turrets themselfs and making it harder for flankers but not impossoble to slip by unnoticed ones in a while.

61

Thanks Predator, if you don’t agree, you can share why you don’t agree so that we may improve upon the suggestions or even how we think about the hero in the first place.

Idsurge, what it shows is that her winrate is meaningless.

Good point about Mine revealing only to Widow.

I also think that Snipers benefit greatly from wall hacks. They are able to see enemies who are about to turn the corner, and pick them off.

For Hanzo and Widow, the wall hacks give them an advantage in battle that is much greater than simply knowing that the enemy is there behind the wall. For them being able to see their silhouette behind the wall and being able to line up the shot is a huge advantage.

Whereas for a melee hero like Symmetra who cannot really damage at long range, her having wall hacks is only for the benefit of her team and she cannot directly use that wall hack to damage enemy turning the corner.

She doesn’t benefit much from it, in fact, her placing turrets in locations that would be good for wall hacks actually lowers her damage.

Sonic arrow reveals multiple enemies in one place, and doesn’t take away from Hanzo’s damage potential, only adds to it. And this wall hack persists for a duration, it cannot be removed by the enemy.

Symmetra would be able to reveal only 1 enemy in multiple places. but in order to do so -

  1. She has to physically go to that place in order to place her wall hack.
  2. A wall hack is only good at a flank route away from the point directly. So that means she has less turrets on the point.

So by placing Turrets specifically intended as wallhacks, she has to put herself at risk, but more importantly, she has cut back on her damage and CC potential of her Turrets.

Placing Turrets on flank routes cuts down Symmetra’s damage on the point.

So there is a trade off to using Turrets as wall hack. It’s not a simple buff.

Now the thing is Symemtra can already do this.

Symmetra already has wall hacks because she can see her Sentry trigger like an alarm. She can communicate that to her team via a mic.

The only thing we are adding here is that we are showing this trigger to her team. And we are improving it, so that Snipers and other Long Range heroes on her team can benefit from the wall hack.

In my opinion, adding a team wall hack on her Turrets makes it so that sometimes you want to allocate Turrets to wall hacks instead of having them all on the point, which is currently the optimal strategy.

62

Symmetra has no travel ability or escape ability, which means she has to waste a large amount of time to travel to specific places to place turrets and travelling near or behind enemy lines is a near death sentence. This severely limits her effective range in the battle, forcing her to place turrets in nearby spots only and often in clustered configurations that are easily destroyed by Winston or Moira. If the enemy knows where the turrets are, they can be avoided entirely and essentially wasted.

If Symmetra had a much larger range on her Turrets, she could easily place turrets in more tactical locations, covert and faster. She could also contribute better to team fights.

Think of the first Control Point in Numbani as an example for ranged turret defense. When setting up defenses, it is probably better for Symmetra to set up pairs of turrets to watch the hallways on the first and second floors of the building the enemy normally attacks through as well as the back alley. Because of the two floor nature of the building and how stairs are set up, it is pretty difficult for Symmetra to walk to the idea places and set turrets before time runs out and the enemy attacks. It pretty much forces her to cluster the turrets closer together and closer to the point, so her flanking warnings come much earlier than if she placed them a bit further. If Symmetra had a lot more range on her turrets, she could easily place two turrets on the second floor and bottom floor directly from the point, giving her time to run a bit down the back alley and choosing a spot from there. The extra range would also assist in allowing Symmetra to replace lost turrets without putting herself in too much danger. I cannot tell you how many times I have died from overextending on Symmetra while just trying to maintain my turret network.

Ranged turret placement could also help Symmetra contribute to team fights. Without an escape ability and because of the slow speed which Photon Barrier travels, Symmetra is forced to make risky movements that place her close to the fight in order to contribute. With ranged turret placement, however, Symmetra can shift to a ranged combat style like Zenyatta or Ana and contribute with Charge shots and tactical turret placements. Zenyatta, Ana, and Moria can all deal superior ranged damage than Symmetra, even if Symmetra can place sneaky turrets from afar, so I fail to see how ranged turret placement for offense would be overpowered in any way.