Introduction
TL;DR at bottomSymmetra has often been considered a niche choice and was only two things; the reason your team lost and the reason the enemy won. With the 3.0 redesign and change from support to damage hero, a lot of her problems were alleviated, people understood that she is intended to damage and her minimal supporting potential was not enough to replace a healer. Now, why am I bringing up Symmetra 2.0? Well, because she never had a well-defined place in the game during that time and that is still her issue; She is designed to be an anti-barrier hero and many other heroes are better than her at it. Bastion and Junkrat are better at shield break, Doomfist can bypass barriers, Tracer and Sombra can reach the backline and force the enemy to move their barriers or take damage.
So at this point, you probably think I just want one of my favourite heroes to get buffed, and well, obviously I want Symm to be better but not to be overpowered or even meta, just viable without people basing judgement off of a hero pick. So in this thread, I’ve suggested modifications to each of Symmetra’s abilities, some buffs, some nerfs and I don’t expect ALL of them to be considered by everyone that reads this, but I hope you can see why I have suggested each of them from the comments with each. These are based on the change from 195 to 180 DPS primary fire and beam width from 0.3 to 0.15 and none of these changes are to revert those.
Primary Fire
- Primary Fire damage increased against barriers by 1%, 2%, 3% of the barriers max health at the corresponding beam charge level
Comments: This changes the damage against each barrier differently to establish her as an anti-barrier hero, but not in a way that eliminates the utility of a smaller barrier, like Winston’s. The following table is a comparison of the damage at level 3 and the corresponding time to destroy the barrier.
| Hero | Barrier Health | DPS | Time to Break | New DPS | New Time to Break |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winston | 600 | 180 | 3.33 seconds | 198 | 3.03 seconds |
| Orisa | 900 | 180 | 5 seconds | 207 | 4.35 seconds |
| Sigma | 1500 | 180 | 8.33 seconds | 225 | 6.67 seconds |
| Reinhardt | 2000 | 180 | 11.11 seconds | 240 | 8.33 seconds |
| Symmetra | 5000 | 180 | 27.78 seconds | 330 | 15.15 seconds |
| Brigitte | 200 | 180 | 1.11 seconds | 186 | 1.08 seconds | Zarya | 200 | 180 | 1.11 seconds | 186 | 1.08 seconds |
Secondary Fire
- Can now pierce barriers
- Projectile damage halved when travelling through a barrier
- Projectile damage becomes entirely direct hit damage instead of 50% splash damage
Comments: The barrier piercing functionally of Symmetra 2.0 was a very useful utility and bringing that aspect back to her kit would further establish her as an anti-barrier hero. Reducing the raw damage of the projectile when passing a barrier means that her shield piercing damage is not overly dangerous but punishes static playstyles and the removal of splash damage means single-target healing abilities are not tedious, e.g. Ana’s biotic rifle.
Sentry Turrets
- Cooldown reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds
- Damage increased from 50 to 60 per second
- Damage reduced by 12.5% for every other turret targeting the same enemy
| Amount of Turrets | DPS | New DPS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 50 | 60 |
| 2 | 100 | 105 |
| 3 | 150 | 135 |
Comments: Reducing the cooldown of Symmetra’s turrets makes the destruction of all three turrets less punishing and the high damage potential of Symmetra’s turrets made ‘turret bombing’ a deadly ability for some heroes and the changes to damage calculation make triple turrets less deadly to characters that cannot burst all three turrets rapidly.
- Sentry turrets spawn with 70 temporary shields that decay at 14 per second after 2 seconds
- Temporary shields are removed from turrets when travelling through the teleporter
- 0.25 Second activation time when already active turrets travel through the teleporter
Comments: The low health of Symmetra’s turrets made some heroes excel at removing the threat with splash damage or before they can even activate. The temporary shield health that lasts a maximum of 7 seconds allows the turrets to better survive while travelling and landing. The removal of shield health when teleporting maintains the high-risk nature of the turret bomb combo and the slight delay in activation when teleporting gives opposing players more counterplay.
Teleporter
- When placed on ledges, the teleporter is moved 0.2 metres away from the ledge
- If the ledge is too thin for this, it is placed halfway between the ledges
- Teleporter deployment time reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds
- Teleporter can now be targeted by hack
Comments: The 0.2 metre placement changes are to avoid accidental falls or environmental deaths when placed near ledges and the shorter opening time is due to the teleporter being Symmetra’s only mobility tool and pre-preparing the teleporter instead of waiting two seconds to escape is not always achievable due to the fast-paced nature of the game. This deployment change is also the reason for the turret activation delay when teleporting.
- Cooldown of 12 seconds starts when placed
- Once cooldown has decreased to half of its maximum, it will remain there and not decrease further, while the teleporter is active
- Once destroyed, cooldown continues to decrease as normal
- Cooldown entirely refunded if teleporter destroyed by terrain before it can deploy
- Teleporters no longer have independent health, but instead, share 50 health and 300 shield health
- Visual indicator for teleporter health added to UI
Comments: These changes maintain the minimum 12 second cooldown between new teleporter placements, but allowing half of the cooldown to happen on placement gives Symmetra more adjustability of the teleporter between or during fights. These changes will still leave her vulnerable for 6 seconds when her teleporter is broken. Sometimes the teleporter is placed in locations that can allow players to travel through solid terrain and to avoid this, the teleporter self-destructs. Refunding the cooldown in these specific cases means Symmetra is no longer punished with a 12 second cooldown when nothing was gained. The health changes to the teleporter are to simplify the UI and make it more achievable to know when the teleporter will be destroyed by the enemy, having a new UI element with the health gives much more information than currently, where the player would have to be able to see both teleporters and establish if it is going to be killed at either end.
Photon Barrier
- Default placement direction setting added to the controls menu
- Can now choose between Perpendicular and Parallel placement direction
Comments: Often the default placement of Symmetra’s barrier could be misplaced by the slightest adjustment in view angle and so the second placement method that is through the player is more reliable for quick positioning. Giving players the option to use this as the default can make this a more reactionary ability to counter ultimates like Pharah’s Barrage. This does make blocking other abilities like Reinhardt’s Earth Shatter more difficult which is why this is a customisable setting.
TL;DR
Symmetra is intended to be an anti-barrier hero, but other heroes are better than her at it. So I’ve suggested changes to each ability.
- Primary Fire damage increased specifically against barriers, more so against larger ones
- Secondary Fire can pierce barriers but has reduced damage when doing so
- Turrets deal less damage when targeting the same enemy and have temporary shield health
- Teleporter cooldown changed to half on placement and half after its destruction
- Teleporter health combined into one health bar and UI element added
- Teleporter deployment time decreased
- Photon Barrier added custom setting for default orientation when placing
