Symmetra - The Character That Will Never Work

General Discussion
1

As I write this in May 2020, Symmetra is currently in her 4th rework (or so I believe) where her current ultimate is the giant Photon Barrier. This post will be discussing the problems with Symmetra and why she will most likely never be appreciated in the community as much as other characters.

Let’s start off with the fact that Symmetra has changed dramatically since 2016. She originally started out as one of the weaker heroes, which is why she was reworked to have more capabilities as a support character since she could not heal.

She was reworked to have a new shield, the Photon Barrier, on a cooldown, and have a Shield Generator, which would give all teammates in a large area a 75 shield increase stacking on top of health.

This lasted for awhile with several buffs and nerfs coming her way. But in her most recent rework, she’s been changed almost entirely from her 2016 debut. Her Photon Barrier is now a massive 4000 health shield that spans the whole map in a certain direction. Her weapon no longer locks on to targets and acts more like Zarya’s beam. And her Teleporter became an ability instead of an ultimate, reminiscent of Mercy’s rez.

This was met with mixed reviews. Symmetra’s skill ceiling had gone up significantly, and she wasn’t exactly the best character in lower ranks of Competitive play.

On all sides of the spectrum, from Quick Play, to Competitive, to even the League, there are still a large group of players who don’t like this version of Symmetra. And this isn’t a problem with Symmetra, it’s a problem with reworks.

When you rework a character, you start to alienate the percentage of the playerbase that plays that character. With all the changes that Symmetra has gone through, she isn’t very well liked among the playerbase, even with her enormous potential. This trend can also be seen with Mercy, with people still wanting to see a revert of her ultimate back to the mass Rez.

So it’s not Symmetra’s fault that inspires the toxicity that people deal with when playing or maiming the character, it’s mostly Blizzard’s. Even with Symmetra being at her best since launch, she isn’t liked that much. I like Symmetra, personally, but I don’t like how she plays, whether she’s on my team or not.

This is not a call to rework her again, it is just a discussion. How do you feel about Symmetra? Do you miss her old reworks or do you like her more now? Why do you think she is hated?

Sincerely,
Onyx

2 Likes
2

All sym needs is her tp reverted , and her beam charges power levels to be adjusted a lil

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3

I want Old Symmetra back, except the slow piercing orbs, I prefer the new ones.

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4

I’m fine with current Sym. TP could be better, but otherwise she is strong in some situations and less in others. I can get good value with her in mid ranks and she sees use on certain maps even in OWL. She’s not a go-to pick for every situation, but being niche isn’t inherently a problem.

5

My issues with Symmetra stem from something I call ‘ability cohesion’ which i’ll try my best to explain

Symmetra has too much gimmicks with too little cohesion. She can assist in team movement with a teleporter, she’s a turret character with multiple small ones, a beam hero, has a charge attack with her secondary, has a buildup mechanic with her primary, she makes a barrier but only with her ultimate, her turrets also slow enemies on contact, etc. etc. etc.

She’s not a very focused character, she’s a little all over the place and it makes playing her feel weird. There are examples of good ability cohesion- most of the other roster.

Junkrat is primarily an explosive high damage dealer. One of his abilities is another explosive with a wider radius that doubles as a mobility too, the other is a trap and the trap lets him more easily kill enemies due to his hard to hit primary fire. Finally, his ultimate is just a high-damage mobile explosive device with a wide detonation radius.

Reaper is a flanking tankbuster that works well at short range- his teleport lets him sneak into the enemy backline, his wraith lets him get out of there after the job is done, his life steal makes his tankbusting job make sense, and his ultimate is mostly reliant upon his existing lifesteal to keep him alive while he’s using it.

This is still true even outside DPS category- Zarya’s bubbles for for herself and her team, her beam has a charge mechanic and damage towards bubbles=more beam damage, and her bubbles invulnerability let her focus that beam easier by removing the risk until the bubble’s gone.

Most other hero abilities play into eachother and work because of their primary playstyle or attack. The closest thing we have to ability cohesion with Symmetra is the fact that she can put turrets through her teleporter. Which is still cool mind you, there’s just not much else that she has that works together.

This could honestly just be entirely a personal opinion, but the more cohesion a character has with their primary fire, intended playstyle, and abilities, the better designed they are de facto and the more fun they are to play.

For more examples of ability cohesion just look at the rest of the roster. You can name nearly any character and there’s a way they work with examples of cohesion. Symmetra just lacks a lot of this.

1 Like
6

So how about:

  • 15m beam, up from 12m
  • 150 shieldhealth, up from 100
  • 100hp health
7

I miss her old ultimate. Enabled so many unique plays, playstyles, and counters that are completely absent from the game now.

Sym’s barrier ult is just that, a barrier. Speaks for itself. Not too much strategy around that aside from trying to bait out an ability or block a sightline, which is a skillset many heroes already utillize.

I feel like reworks as a concept are fine, they’re just difficult to implement. Torb, Lucio, and Brig are good examples of reworks that succeed in their goal to make heroes more fair and engaging while expanding on their existing skillset. Nerfing skillsets is one thing, removing them entirely is another. Even in the case of Torb, the skillset of aiming Armor Packs was retained in his Turret trajectory, and his Molten Core to protect/repair his turret was still retained, just drastically downgraded.

Symmetra gained a lot with her 3.0 rework, but she lost a lot too. Losing access to these skillsets is the part of reworks I think people are most critical about. People spend time learning these skills, and to have their time wasted is frustrating, to put it simply.

1 Like
8

Just curious - is going all in on the support role and giving her some healing ability (I’ve seen the concept of healing turrets floating around) a solution? Her kit seems very support oriented (other than the lack of healing).

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I was fine with Sym 1.0, except the turrets were weak. They could have adjusted / reworked the turrets a bit, that’s about it.

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Il put my vote on give me back sym 2.0
while keeping some turret deployment stuff from 3.0

11

Like I said on another thread. Syms barrier ult is the most boring, uninspired thing ever. A DoT emitter similar to her shield generator from previous reworks that deals damage to enemies instead of giving shields to allies would be best.

I don’t like her TP in any of her iterations. It feels janky/clunky.

3 turrets instead of 6 is fine, I guess.

I didn’t mind her auto aim LMB from previous iterations. I’d reduce the effective damage of it and push power onto other things like her turrets.

I thought her barrier ability was actually rather good and made her a quasi-tank by proxy. They’ve given that to Sigma, but what could be cool is her having multiple smaller, less powerful projected shields.

Ultimately, Sym is the biggest failure. They don’t know what to do with her, and yet her concept is very cool. A builder, which used to be a type of hero in this game, but was scrapped. It’s a concept that could work well, but it requires more creative thinking than “a big barrier”.

12

they took a wrong turn in balancing her ever since and including infinite tp. one simply doesn’t strip away a hero’s ability to get themselves in and out of effective range like that.

I miss sym3.0 before infinite tp. I say this as someone that has played sym1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and this current mess which might as well be labelled 1.5.

sym3.0 with higher tp cast frequency was more independent, flexible, dynamic, did everything old sym did but more frequently.

started off as something people hated (cause “no aim no brain” etc.), never lost her stigma + no-one notable plays her well → everyone just treats her as a joke e.g. on reddit the highly upvoted sym plays are either jokes, sentry 6 kills, or just other people using tp, but never showing sym playing well → back to the cycle of hate and people not playing her → they add plenty of noise to feedback (see feedback on infinite tp) stopping sym from getting helpful changes → people hate her weakness → back to people not wanting to play her and not learning her → no standard to what “good sym play” is again, heck even OWL sym play isn’t showing good sym play, they just occasionally put down tp → etc.

the perpetual cycle of hate → ignorance → no valuable feedback to balance sym → weak → hate → etc.

13

I miss Symm as a support, miss her shields… I know healing in this game seems to be mandatory but I think she actually can have some healing throught her kit, just like Zennyata or Briggitte. You can give her shielding hability to give heals like repair pack, giving her passive hability when she deals damage allys get decay shields (just like Lucio ult and Doom passive) or something like that. I also want they do something to feel Symmetras beam more special, like if you could bend to a certain point the direction of your beam to chase over corners (no lock on)

She always will be an utility character, I don’t want dps abilities in her kit tho

Right know she is a worse Zarya or a tp bot at best.