Symmetra Rework: Defense or Support?

So one thing my friend group is wondering is what is the turrets current slow and damage amounts and what are they being changed to currently. (a few of my friends don’t have the greatest aim and are worried they’ll just die by the time they hit the single turret xD) also is there any cool-down/recharge times between turret launches. Furthermore what is the current slow parameter for multiple turrets in one location vs the new planed turrets and is there a multiplier on slow speed for multiple turrets and by how much.

As much as the ability to give shields is unique to her, I’m literally tired of having Junkrat telling me over and over and over AND OVER again that the enemy has a Shield Generator.

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Because her beam can’t lock around corners if it doesn’t lock at all

My interpretation is that it’ll be like any shield, EMP would would only effect the shields origin. Meaning that if placed at the players spawn, the EMP would have no effect whatsoever.

Earlier he said it was something like 2 turrets rolled into one in terms of damage/slow I think.

For those unwilling to read all the posts themselves:

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The lack for self sustain bothers me, no more personal shield. and i dont think the tp will be effective escape mechanism unless she has it set up beforehand. Meaning she will be a sitting duck still…

Only now widows will laugh at us with the removal of the shield barrier and headshot us all.

Don’t like the reduction in turret number. That lowers the skillcap plain and simple. I have a PhD in game design (seriously :(), and in AAA 2018 we measure skillcap in terms of combinatorial complexity. Its pretty ez it see that 3 << 6 and that makes things a bit simpler and more trivial. As a diamond Symmetra main who played alpha/beta (and didn’t get listend to), with over 200 hrs+ played on Symm, I really dont like where this rework is going. She doesn’t need less things to do, she needs more things to do. She should be an APM (actions-per-minute) character offering a different approach in a game where aiming seems to prevail.

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Her uses shine brighter on defense because she’s a defense hero? Technically defense characters are supposed to be better on defense (which we know isn’t really true for Hanzo, Widow and Junk who know function more like offense characters after their buffs/reworks).

Have to say I love the way you presented that summery.

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Thank you so much! :heart:


Took me almost 2 painstaking hours of pure boredom… Keeps the brain active I guess!

Here is a way you could keep shield generator in the game. Make it Symmetra’s passive ability. It really fits well with her “defensive” playstyle. Here it goes:
All allies that fall below 50% of their max HP pool will gain passive shield regeneration up to 75 shield hitpoints. The shields cannot surpass 50% of the affected character’s base health pool. Shields stay until the character is healed past 50% of their max hp. Shields would regen after taking damage at 16 HP per second. Allies must be within a 10 meter radius of Symmetra. If affected ally leaves the radius shields will slowly disappear similar to Doomfist’s barriers.
E.G.
Sombra falls to 25 hp she will gain shields bringing her up to 100 hp. if she falls to 50 hp then the most she regen is 50 shields bringing her too 100 hp again.

Hope you guys use this it would be pretty balanced and cool to see in game!!!

Many of the announced changes sound good. Remote turret placement sounds great (kinda sad you about no more 6-turrets car-wash), portal sounds fun, new ult sounds weird but why not… My only problem is it feels like Blizzard still has no idea what Symmetra should be about.

She still has no internal synergies.

Her kit feels like a collection of various cool abilities that dont really flow into each other.
All other OW heroes have a ‘catch’. They either have a more or less obvious combo (Mei freeze into HS, Mc Cree flashbang, Junkrat trap & mine, Winston’s leap+melee burst, all of Doomfist’s kit…), abilities that reinforce a central playstyle (pharah flight makes her rockets efficient, Widow and Hanzo can reach sniping spots, Reaper and Tracer can mitigate the risk of close range, Zarya is rewarded for absorbing damage, Orisa is a turret+shield setup on her own…), or they just have a general consistency of rythm, positionning, range or even theme (like how Zen feels good in that backline position overseeing everything, or how Moira has her left/right click duality).

I’m still not seeing that with Sym and the announced rework. I mean there’s some small stuff. Like how current photon barrier helps you get in close range and I guess the new portal will do the same in a different way. Or how on some maps you can taunt the enemy by spamming orbs through your deathtrap-laser-room. But it’s so anecdotal and inefficient that it never really clicks as ‘this is what this hero is all about’ (at least for me)
Like, I still don’t get why they want her turrets to slow and deal decent damage. Her turrets and primary weapon are two parts of her kit that exist in isolation and you’re not encouraged to mix in interesting ways. What if you put the damage only on one and the slow only on the other, maybe give her a weapon that’s more efficient against slow targets so she needs to trap people into her slowing turrets ?
Or there’s the fact that I still really really want to try a version of Sym where she can charge her right-click while firing her left-click. Greeting an enemy with an orb to their face is already a lot of fun so I don’t see why it couldn’t be made into her core combat loop. Just give her some better synergy between her left and right click (have one boost the other in some way, have her damage ramp-up mechanic also apply to her orbs, and her turrets !). Right now the orbs are just this slow, inefficient thing that you spam to avoid getting bored…

In short, I’d love to see Symmetra’s design be a bit more… focused.

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Seriously don’t like the orb changes, just speed 'em up. I’ll trade the 5 damage, faster charge time, and primary ammo return for that alone.

Also 4 turrets, one for each corner of a room; 3 feels off to me.

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In takes up the entire map, you could use it in spawn in the Arcade on Hanamura, and it would split the first point in half.

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you can do that when her ultimate activated,so the barrier can give shield health to all your teammates?

what’s the cooldown on this wall. do we have to break it for it to go away or there is a timer of some sort

No, defense heroes are supposed to be better at zoning people out. This is a skill useful both on attack and defense.

Since launch I ask Blizzard to rename Defense and Tank categories to stop people from confounding their roles (“Defense means they should be used on defense stage” and “tank works like MMO tank”). I usually suggest Defense to become Zoning, and Tank to become Bruiser.

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While I do like that her teleporter is allowing more than just heroes pass through, and that her turrets can be thrown and such…

Why more shields? We have enough shields in the game. I don’t have a problem blasting through them, but it’s such an easy concept to give to anyone. I’ve never really considered Symmetra being a shielder. Even with her very first kit, her shields had a cool down and you could only throw one at a time. It sucked.

Her second kit, rarely did I have a random Symmetra player use the shield generator. Because you know, defending a point, I don’t need more protection. But even when I did have a Symmetra throw her shield generator, it was okay to have if only there’s a Torb on my team.

I don’t know, I just feel that another shield is just annoying to have. An idea I had was give that abandoned Bastion ult a chance and have one of her turrets be controlled. A small, walking turret that you would control, and it can blast lasers to opponents, distracting them. That would be cool to see instead of this 5000 HP infinite static barrier.

This part really sounds clunky. It would be much better to manually build both Teleporter pads exactly where you wanted them.

Having it this way forces Sym to stand in locations that might not be that beneficial because at least 1 Teleporter pad is going to be in the open, depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Then it kinda makes that ability pointless because one will be super easy to destroy.

Also, the Teleporter should last until its destroyed.

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