I’ve always liked the idea of this but I’m not personally sure how they’d do it!
Any actual ideas of how this could fully work? Thanks!
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I don’t think there is any way to work her into the support lineup without giving her the ability to heal allies. The only way I can see that being done in a way that would feel like Symettra would be through her giving out shields in a similar fashion to how Brigitte gives out armor. The big issue then becomes how powerful health stacking can be on heroes balanced to be squishy like tracer.
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Unless she can heal or provide more shield than what she had previously, its best she just stay in DPS instead of taking up a slot that could be for a valuable healer. Brigs pretty much rendered her previous support utility useless anyways.
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Symmetra used to be among the Support class, with a heavier emphasis on providing Shield HP to her allies. Her kit is not really meant for healing and the old kit was design for a certain level of reconnaissance which with the limited map space of most maps in Overwatch doesn’t really provide as much value in comparison to “enabler” abilities like that of Discord Orb, Caduceus Staff amplification, etc. Her current tool kit is a lot more powerful and effective though are more challenging to use in comparison to her old one.
I myself like the current state of Symmetra to break extremely tough choke holds (Volskaya Point A choke is a common one of mine) and she serves as a powerful counter against double-shield.
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agreed! just wanted to bring it up as I’ve heard a lot of people saying it and it got me thinking about it!
I actually do like symm right now and I mained her like last year!
You know good well if that was to happen Genji mains would be crying. However the developers wouldn’t know what to do because it’s a non healing support. This would be a good time to experiment on Symmetra’s support skills to perfect shielding and etc. Then they can finally explore outside of healing support heroes.
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She was a Support, until they made her DPS.
She use to until they nerfed the heck out of her 
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She’s more viable against double shield than anything else. Not as good as you’d expect 
but the community has determined that Sym is not allowed to be good.
Sym 2.0 is actually more effective against double barrier than Sym 3.0. Her old weapon pierced through barriers and did 120 damage to every player behind them.
And her current kit isnt more powerful; It’s just more balanced. She can now be used on more maps and with a variety of team comps. But at the cost of being balanced, she no longer exceeds in any particular job. She’s “ok” at shield destroying. She’s “ok” at fighting squishies. She’s “ok” at flanking. Nothing’s special about her. This is why alot of people still don’t like her.
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This is my idea of how to make Sym a support hero again. With a design like this, she could even have the potential to be the solo support hero for the team.
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Although I doubt symmetra will be a support again, I think blizzard lacked disposition or creativity, because RIGHT NOW, her current kit could receive Experimental Card-level of modifications to make her a viable healer. And by “experimental card-level” I mean modifications that are small like when they gave Zarya multi-bubbles and Hog a healing field.
Those simple modifications could be:
M1: triggers shield regeneration on Symmetra.
M2: Heals allies upon impact and damage Enemies, similar to Ana’s darts.
Turrets or Teleporter could provide small shield hp in a radius like they become a shield generator, like perhaps 25-50 shield. Remember her old SG provided a walloping 75 in a HUGE radius, if we make it smaller it can be balanced out.
Ultimate: unchanged. Its a perfect defensive ultimate, can be effectively used against Deadeye, Wholehog, tactical visor, Self-destruct, Configuration Tank and so on, with the exception of those like Gravitic, Dragonstrike, Dragonblade and such, but basicaly that makes Photon Barrier a solid defense against burst damage from afar and even cancel a push of an enemy team relying on range-based heroes.
EDIT: thinking back to this text… someone could put all these traits in a friggin’ WORKSHOP code and test it for themselves!
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Why not just make her turrets give temp shields to allies near them? Instead of targeting enemies with slow/damage, I mean. It would mean that Sym could help out by providing constant slowly regenerating shields around chokes and points. In addition to that, you could probably change one of her primary/secondary to be less effective against players but actually pierce barriers again (probably her secondary). If you really wanted, you could make TP an additional shield generator.
Shields would probably cap around 50, and would decay when away from the teleporter/turrets.
Ult’s fine.
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Come to think of it, Shields are a viable way to keep a target alive. Imagine you took a shot and lost 100 hp. A Baptiste nade would give you 50 hp back, but you could also make due if suddenly uou get 50 shield, you could survive longer for the other healer to fill you up with actual health or find a repair pack. They could give Sym’s shields to just overheal 25hp, but overall she provides, like, 75 shield HP, but only BELOW full health. Just like shooting with Baptiste’s grenades won’t make your HP go further than it’s original 100%
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I do miss Sym and Old Torb, underdog heroes.
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She used to be a Support.
But every players at the time just used her as a pseudo DPS.
As in setup a turret car wash gate and then spam M2.
Her “supportive” abilites at the time were a teleporter (Which is just a worse Mass Res), and a E that gives… 25 blue shields.
Sym 1.0 was pathetically bad, that everyone agrees.
Now when she is reworked to Sym 2.0, her play style is pretty much the same, but instead of spamming choke with M2 and car wash turret, now she has a personal Rein shield that never stopped moving so that she can WM1 anyone she pleases.
Sure, the “hold WM1 with a Rein’s shield” thing is something that can only work in some certain scenarios (like contesting at staircases or you are going for an Ana flanking trip). But again, is that what a Support do? When your supportive abilities are your ultimates, your standard abilities are all defensive and area denial focus and most of the time you will be dealing damage.
Even at Sym 2.0, you are playing a Pseudo defensive DPS with Support as a “mark”. Hell, I have played as Sym 2.0 in comp before (2CP exclusive because she was stupidly cheesy on those maps: teleport at 1st point and shield gen at 2nd). And most of the time I will be holding WM1 and spamming M2 at choke.
Not healing my teammates
Not boosting their damages
So Blizzard decided to make her a full DPS, which I have found to be a lot more fun than she was in her other 2 versions. Sure there are Sym players who basically made a church of Sym 2.0 and will fight to the tooth and nail to bash down anyone who said that Sym 3.0 was better. Hell, I would say they are the loudest bunch of drama queens in this forum since Mass Res Mercy.
Wait… why am I hearing loud marching noises?
OH CRAP!
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No. Health stacking with brig would be a massive problem, even if they have to stay near the turrets it’ll still be an issue.
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Ok I’m gonna be the parade of symm mains here:
It was because she had a cool concept is why people who liked her as a support liked her as a support.
A utility-focused support who solely buffs allies And debuffs enemies is cool.
Blizzard really didn’t excecute it right, though. They made all her support stuff secondary and passive.
Shield gen, tp, tele, and turret slow was all set it and forget it. And her barrier (which was cool, but not really a team-oriented support ability) was made for her personally rather than making it a zarya bubble, or a healing drone thingy.
Symmetra mains like me like her for what she coulda been, not really what she was or what she became. Symm 2.0 was just a step in the right direction towards being an actual support and not Brigitte:the prequel
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I think people are also forgetting how much she was flamed, yelled at to switch, was considered a throw pick forever, and how the auto lock aim lead to a lot of toxicity
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She was a support hero before, I don’t think they’ll put her back in that role without removing most of her damage in favour of healing.