Symmetra being reworked into a support

General Discussion
22

I disagree a bit with this statement, it has some “holes”
A good Symms old teleporter literally wins entire last seconds match points, it was challeging to use, the alternative ultimate (shield generator), was very challeging/creative to use, it makes a mind game (hide n seek) on the enemy team (especially flankers) it was fun to use and interactive.

The new ultimate its just… wham! A giant barrier, and… thats it
It annoys the enemy team by 10-12 second… with (almost) no creative use to play, extremely situational, no mind games
Nothing…

Also,the only use it has is to put the teleport at a specific point on 2cp maps to make quick pushes in a short time.

I have never heard anyone “the team has a double barrier, we need a Symmetra!”
:man_shrugging:

23

Symmetras current kit is more powerful? Even after you nerfed her whole kit by 20% or more except secondary? You got to be kidding me. Symmetra 2.0 was significantly superior to her reworked version except for that two weeks her primary actually worked correctly after your incompetent dev team finally fixed it after almost what two years? Then two weeks later start nerfing her whole kit in the ground.

2 Likes
24

she was a support on release who gave extra shield health as an ability

25

Non-healing support could totally work, they’d just actually have to make her effective and make her kit support itself instead of being made of random bits that don’t work that well together. A big problem with old support Symmetra was that her skills that did support allies weren’t terrible, but she had maybe 2 skills total that actually helped allies in any given version of Symmetra and those skills didn’t work that well with the other skills. A possible example of how this is done in other games, applied to Sym is below. I’m trying to avoid numbers because any rework is going to require some fine tuning in the numbers department anyway.

First note: this imaginary version of Sym uses decaying shields, and an ally cannot have more than a certain amount of decaying shields from Sym, so she can’t just stack them forever. The way this would work is that you give allies decaying shields and supports allies in other ways.

Instead of healing someone, Symmetra’s ‘e’ ability (or whatever key ability) is to give someone a decaying shield every few seconds, and this shield can take a fair amount of punishment, but only lasts like 3 seconds. So it would be a great counter to burst damage, but you couldn’t just spam it.

Rework turrets to only slow enemies (maybe have a small amount of damage so an enemy can actually find them), but give allies a small amount of decaying shield and/or other beneficial effect while in range.

Allow her primary fire to be used on an ally for beneficial effects similar to a Mercy beam, reduce it’s damage a little bit (not a ton) because she’s not a DPS anymore. Maybe she restores their ammo, maybe they get damage resistance, maybe it restores shields (not barriers, actual shields), etc.

Secondary fire deals less damage, but can be held indefinitely. Fully charged secondary fire gives a small amount of shields to allies, but deals extra damage to barriers.

Ulitmate could still be the barrier or something else entirely, I honestly think it works pretty well if you use it correctly.

This is just an example, I know it has it’s own problems, but this is a general idea in the vaguest form.

26

Easy, instead of firing an orb on her off attack she fires a ‘repair’ beam that pierce heals targets in a line. Buff her Teleporter and build the main kit around team mobility. Allow her to choose between healing and damaging turrets. Literally keep her ultimate as is.
When they reworked her into a DPS they made her a better support, they don’t have to change much to put her back.

27

I hope they have a dps version of her and maybe a support and tank version of heroes. Depending on her guns and armor.

28

Sym was in support, she gor reworked cuz she was bad and is still bad lol

29

I like Overwatch’s previous notion of having supports be heroes that can give an edge in the fight rather than just encompassing them as being healers that also do other things. Old Symmetra was great in the fact that she holds flanks and chokes with her turrets and close range beam. Her shields were very useful and her teleporter can get back anyone back in the fight faster almost as if you revive them.

Unfortunately, her play-style was considered niche and since heroes such as Ana and Moira came out, people started considering why Symmetra doesn’t heal. The apparently tested with her turrets to heal instead of damage but I think that was a horrible experiment and instead they reworked her into a damage hero.

I still like the idea of supports having other abilities such as buffs and de-buffs that give your teammates the edge in the battle since they SUPPORT rather than just HEAL, brings a whole new light and play-style to the support role.

1 Like
30

When did I say that?

31

No she was reworked because people wanted heals from every support. I played her day one. People did not like the idea of a non-heal support. Healing away mistakes is the ultimate type of support.

32

But they won’t make these changes to Symmetra. Unlike Torbjorn, Symmetra is quite easy to play because of her turrets having a stacking slow, and her weapon being both easier to aim and much simpler to use.

Honestly, it just feels like they prefer Torbjorn over Symmetra entirely. Take a look at the reworks they both received to make them damage dealers:

What did Torb get?

-Better damage
-Adjustments to turret functionality, buffs and nerfs
-Burst damage
-Extra health (Granted this came later)
-A survivability tool
-A brand new ultimate

What did Symmetra get?

-Better damage
-Adjustments to turrets, buffs and nerfs
-No reliable burst
-No additional health
-Extra range
-Had her survivability tools removed
-Got a new mobility tool
-Her old E as an ultimate

So then, what happened next? Because they fixed a bug the same time Sigma Orisa was the go-to comp, she finally became a strong pick in 4 years of being a hero. Zarya got the same fix though, so why wasn’t she touched? She can maintain her charge better than Symmetra, and both her damage and survivability is better than hers.

The biggest mistake with the rework was giving Symmetra rechargeable ammo on barriers. It’s just too good of a concept, even on a hero like Symmetra. It’s why she could charge off them before, but still consumed ammo. And Symmetra’s ease of use compared to other dps heroes makes her an issue if she’s ever good, because she becomes good on both ends of the spectrum. If Widowmaker’s meta, she’s not ever gonna be hit as hard as most players can’t get value out of her kit. But that’s not the case with Symmetra. She was meta for a week and got the Valkyrie treatment, but instead of it happening over a few months, it happened in back to back patches that came out so quick you’d be amazed to learn it was the same company’s balance team.

And after that fiasco, they’re not going to buff Symmetra. They’ve even said before they like the changes they made to her Teleporter, labeling it as a buff, even though this was not only a huge nerf but a massive step backwards. They wanted to remove the passive, time management playstlye Symmetra used to have with her old permanent constructs, so they give her a permanent construct as a cooldown that doesn’t start until its destroyed. To make it worse, they didn’t adjust the cooldown depending on whether it was destroyed by an enemy or destroyed by Symmetra. So if it’s up as a taxi, if you don’t hang back and defend it, you’re punished, but if you destroy it to flank with it you’re punished as well.

Symmetra needs to be reworked again, and put back on the support role. That’s the only experimental change I want to see for her. Otherwise, they’ll just be band-aid fixes that Blizzard think means a damn, and I shudder to think of what they’ll do next to her. Turret cooldowns don’t start until the respective turret is destroyed? More nerfs to her wall?

Give me a break…

(Edit: I used Torb as a comparison cuade they’re both turret users. I know it wasn’t anything to do with your original reply, but I just wanted to make a point)

2 Likes
33

How about making her a hard light tank? Give her an actual hard light armor. Remove turrets. Give her a bubble ability that goes around enemies and stops their damage. Give her an ability that creates one-way portals that absorb projectiles. TP stays the same. Ult too. Voila

34

As long as they dont return infinite sheild generator im fine meaning if they had a timer on it like immortality field has. The only reason why I hated sym 2.0 was for that reason alone since her turrets were actually manageable at the time. Now I just hate her m2 spam and the turrets since it seems no one else actually tries to deal with them.

35

I’ve hited GM and Top 500 mutiple times with Sym 2.0 and 3.0 and i’ve stopped the game during a year now i’m back and she feel so BAAAAAAAAAD wtf they have done to her ? Only her orbs are “fine” her beam is doing nothing exept if u have the tracking of jesus her turrets combine deal less dammage than Sym 2.0 when she was a support lmao

Blizzard you guys are racist af i’m saying it genji and hot badass hero can be meta for YEARS but sym a black indian women has to stay garbage , yep i’m saying it you guys are racist.

1 Like
36

Umm and who are you…?

37

You replied to me with this

38

No, I didn’t…

39

You literally did, scroll up

40

This is the third time now you’ve failed to properly read, two including warnings that you made a mistake. Are you illiterate?

41

Are you in a bad mood? What made you so rude?