🤔 What is Symmetra's Core Identity and How to Buff her Accordingly

General Discussion
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1. Who is Symmetra?

What is her core identity?

Symmetra’s defining characteristics are -

  • She is a Melee hero with a Ranged penetrating fireball
  • She is a hybrid of Tank-Defense-Support, she is jack of all trades, master of none
  • She has close-range Turrets that act like Spider webs, by holding enemies down, damaging them and attracting their firepower towards themselves (Defense)
  • She has a Barrier that can be used to protect not just herself but also her Ults and Allies… she can protect the front line from the backline (Tank)
  • She has Ultimates that either make the team Tankier or bring them back to the Primary Point of Contention, they can stay up indefinitely, thus this makes them Secondary Point of Contention which creates unique gameplay (Support)

So Symmetra is a Melee Tank-Defense-Support Hybrid, who uses 6 Turrets, 1 Barrier and 1 Tp/SG to perform 1 of each role.

Any buff to Symmetra must preserve her core identity and should seek to buff the flaws of her kit itself before anything else.

2. Misunderstanding of Symmetra’s Value and her Ults

Now many people think that Symmetra’s value is locked behind her Ult.

So they feel that her Ult must be unlocked and that value should trickle down to her kit in some way, in the form of a passive, or an ability.

We’ve all seen or suggested things that take her Ult and make it into an ability of some sort.

Make Shield Gen into passive, make Tele into an ability, etc etc.

Right now Symmetra’s value largely comes from her Ult.

That’s true.

But the answer to this is not to pick apart her Ults.

Her Ults are in a good place, but her abilities are in a poor place.

And this is where she needs love.

It’s her Sentries and Photon Barrier that need a good buffing.

After you buff her Sentries and Photon Barrier, she can start to provide more value outside of her Ults.

3. Sym Ults are Good!

75 extra HP on your whole team (on squishies), all the time, is actually broken as an ability. It used to be like that early in Symmetra’s design and it was broken.

That’s why it is an Ultimate now.

Teleporter feels like a solid Ultimate as well.

Now there are somethings you can do with Symmetra Ult to make them better.

4. Destructible Ults

Some people have suggested to allow Symmetra to destroy her own constructs.

Perhaps she can Press Q next to her Ult and channel a “Ult Destroy” process that takes 3s and refunds the remaining Ult charge.

Her Ult can feel a bit inflexible on Payload type maps.

And Her Tele can put you in a bad spot with only 1 charge on it.

So allowing Sym to destroy her Ultimate, is a good buff and good QoL change to her.

Buffing her Ult further like increasing Shield regeneration or increasing Tele charges, or taking one of her Ults and making it into a Passive or an Ability, are not good design decisions, and feel like band-aid fixes.

Why do that when there are so many other things that can be changed instead?!

5. Symmetra’s Gun is Good too

Before I go on, I also want to say that like her Ults, her gun is in a good spot as well.

Her Primary Beam defines her identity as a Melee hero. (Sorry Brigitte, Sym was the first Melee Support)

Her Secondary fire is her Ranged fireball that passes through everything and gets stronger with each new Barrier that the game adds.

I have heard suggestions like making her Primary longer range and making it more like Moira beam. This is not a good idea, since it changes the core of Symemtra’s identity as a Melee hero.

I have heard weirdass suggestions like making Secondary orb explode into 75 Shields on allies… No. just no.

Her gun should be left alone.

It is her Sentries and Barrier that need to be changed.

And by changed I mean buffed so that they perform their role more effectively.

6. Sentries are Very Clunky

Symmetra’s Turrets can feel slow, and very clunky due to their cast-time, the movement speed reduction, the range at which you can place them, and their long cooldown.

Imagine if they lowered the cast time and removed the movement speed reduction, increased the range at which you can place Turrets and cut their cooldown by half.

For one, now you don’t need to jump around like a rabbit to place them.

In addition, you can set-up quickly and efficiently, and be able to move your entire Web of 6 Turrets to another location, quickly and efficiently, if you need to, due to their low cooldown.

It makes Symmetra’s Turret Web more flexible since you can constantly replace the disposable 1hp Turrets.

That is a big buff that preserves Symmetra’s playstyle and enhances it.

The changes make the Turrets more flexible and less immobile. Their low cooldown time, and fast cast mechanics makes Symmetra into a formidable Spider.

#spidermetra

7. Long Range Turret Sniper?

If you wanted to make her Turrets even more flexible then you can even play with their placement range a bit more and give Symmetra long-range Turret placement.

Like being able to stand at Hanamura choke behind your Rein and place Turrets across the choke into the room to the right.

Or go even further and give Symmetra the ability to stand at one side of the Lijang control center and be able to place Turrets across the room to the wall on the other side!

That’s probably too far lol!

But playing with the Turret placement range makes her Turrets stronger without making them oppressive.

Think about all the possibilities and stealthy Turret placement strats.

8. Barrier is Situational

Symmetra Photon Barrier can have limited coverage, limited protection time and can feel situational.

If you enlarge it and have it curve around a bit like how they modified Orisa shield to buff Orisa, then that greatly improves the design of the Photon Barrier and increases its effectiveness.

People suggest that it should give allies extra shields. That’s a band-aid fix only. The Barrier should be good enough to provide a solid protected space behind it, that is protected from off-angle firing. There should be no need for additional shields.

Then if you reduce the cooldown on it or give Symmetra a mechanic whereby she can (through some form of player skill), reduce the cooldown of the Barrier, then this reduced cooldown would allow Symmetra to cast it more often and this alleviates the situational feeling of the ability.

Let’s say you can cast it more often depending on how much damage you do. This takes a situational skill, which would only shield you once every 10s, and makes it more versatile. Allowing you to cast Barrier multiple times in succession as you rack up damage on enemies, is very powerful for Symmetra.

Damage dealing is just one example though. You could lower Barrier cooldown based on Damage taken. You could lower Barrier cooldown to 6-8s. You could even give it a second charge.

9. Personal Shield

You could even add a mechanic to Photon Barrier that allows Symmetra to temporarily pull the Barrier back towards herself before it fires off, thereby increasing the effective protection of the Barrier for Symmetra and those behind her charging into a choke.

This mechanic takes away her ability to use her Gun to damage, since she uses it to pull the barrier towards her, but allows her to get 2 seconds of additional protection, before the Barrier becomes unwieldy and starts moving forward again.

10. Conclusion

Instead of buffing her Ultimate, or moving her Ultimates to her ability/passive, or giving her extra abilities, or putting bandages on her abilities, Symmetra’s effectiveness should be buffed by simply buffing the effectiveness of her weak and easily counterable abilities - her Sentries and Photon Barrier.

Thank you for reading

Also check out my other thread for a more in-depth analysis of her Base Abilities -

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Yeah 10 yards is not melle just so you know and she is not a tank hybrid besides the sense of that she can create a barrier shield. Brigitte is melle but is slightly farther then melle (6 yards).

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Reinhardt is 5m. Brigitte is 6m, and Symmetra is 7m.

They are all melee.

Where are you getting 10m from?

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Symmetra’s is 7 then expands to 10 at max charge.

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Max range after lock is 9m.
But since it requires 7m for lock, it is melee.

It used to be 5m at one point.

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I don’t feel like she is actually a ‘melee’ champ, just close range. Melee is only really used in description and feel, because it single targets while being close quarters. But then we get into the realms of problems because what is reaper weapons then? It does not really do anything for discussion except lose credibility by the fact it acts like a beam gun, looks like a beam gun, and sounds like a beam gun; like all other beam weapons. I suggest losing the descriptor cause peeps will concern themselves more with semantics, which detracts from the actual issues. Close range does not, just like you can describe any close range champ. Lose it or you’re going to get bogged down, trust me.

If I had to describe her weapon, it is most definable as ow version of a close range flame thrower; it engulfs the enemy doing lower damage at first until it is an all consuming conflagration. I do not think anything needs to change here either. You nailed it on the head with fireballs, because she literally and functionally burns people to death. I think that is what they were going for, single target was solely for balance reasons.

She is a support/defense hybrid only. Barriers conflate the identity issue since most barriers are tank related, but no where in the game does it suggest that barriers are tank only. Mei has a barrier as well, her wall functions like one (hence why Moira’s balls went through it or consumed it as a bug, it is a specially coded barrier for no pass through). No one considers her a tank as well, even though they block about the same damage; barriers are a defense/tank thing.

The ult should be changed, it literally is badly designed and has problems. It does need to be changed, not buffed. It is literally too good or useless, dedicates more of her kit or time, (which is better elsewhere) and punishes you for using it correctly (no additional charge). This deconstruction idea is bad as well, since it pulls more of her time away, and states that you are losing immediate value in favor of later value. Passive power is her main issue (even though she has a lot of it), they need to shift her into having more active power. Its precisely that reason I think they need to be shifted into her e and giving her a new ult. Her ult is either too powerful, or useless; hanzos scatter arrow, is a current example of that issue. The devs decided to take that away, and buff the hell out of him (I’m just using this example, not to discuss it). You can just buff her, but this issue is still bad design in this game; the devs do not want this, neither do I. That means we can expect it to go or just shifted elsewhere.

The reason her abilities are weak is precisely because of the ult value. It takes too much of her power budget, and should straight up go elsewhere. Otherwise she continues to be a defense powerhouse alone for most, and we get toxicity for knowing her value outside that. This is why her win rate and pick rate is out of wack, it isn’t just because of some partial wins bs, its because only mains and niche users play her. Mains know more situations to get value out of her kit (working harder), and niche users get power out of her (her obvious power); therefore her win rate is high. She needs to get out of that niche pick status, so that others can see more effective situations for her; otherwise her pick rate is going to continue to suffer, and we will as well. I want others to pick her up, and the niche issue be addressed.

All her turrets need is less time sink and to reveal; as that seems to be the way they are designed. More like a tripwire, less like turrets. Range should be an afterthought, deployment time is the main issue. I agree turrets need to be buffed, but buffing them alone will not help her outside what she already does; it just makes her better at it.

Buffing the CD on her barrier is a bad idea, as all it would do is make her a barrier spam bot; that just makes it harder for the enemy to breach. Steveoo agrees, I’m inclined to agree as well. Think about being on the other end, and tell me that is not problematic. She should feel rewarded for her good e use, her team should as well, her CD allows it. Maybe get rid of it entirely, but buffing its CD is not the way to go; again all it does is improve on what she does already.

I think she needs a rework, this is just straight buffing her kit alone. It would just make her a must pick on defense, and niche users winning harder. I want those guys to main her, and train on her; not niche her alone. Increasing her pick rate, means shifting her kit to being visibly able to be used outside defense alone, without working too hard on it; then getting more rewards for maining her. We get to be rewarded for maining her still, and pick rates go up. Mains also artificially boost that win rate, because we know how to work her kit in more situations. This ‘just buff her’ doesn’t solve that, that is why she is getting a rework. All this would do is increase her win rate AND pick rate.

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Reinhardt range is 5m. Brigitte is 6m, and Symmetra is 7m. She’s melee as far as her range is concerned.

Her range actually used to be 5m at one point.

Why do I keep stressing that Symmetra is a melee hero?

It’s because I see a lot of suggestions of people asking for buffs to her Primary range and making it like a Moira beam.

That’s not Symmetra. Her beam should be melee range only.

There’s another reason why I keep stressing that she is melee.

If she ever gets buffed to be like Super OP, then the way to nerf her would be to bring her range back down to 5m.

Symmetra is a melee hero. If you keep this in mind, then you will not suggest/implement buffs to increase her primary range, and you can nerf her by bringing her range back to 5m, which is what it used to be.

Actually Melee is not single target. Both Rein and Brig can hit multiple people. Symmetra is unique in that her Melee is single target, and a damage over time effect.

Reaper is close-quarters because he can hit people in mid range. Even though that’s not his effective range, it is still a range at which he candeal damage. Unlike Rein, Brig and Sym.

So don’t get confused here. Reaper is Close Range not Melee.

It’s nowhere near a flamethrower because it is melee range and single target ability.

Rather it is a Welder weapon. Symmetra being an architect wields a welder to put her constructs together.

In Overwatch all Barriers are tanking abilities.

Symmetra’s Photon Barrier is a Tanking ability.

Mei’s Wall is a Tanking ability also. Now her wall is also an Area Denial ability and a Peeling ability. It’s a hybrid of all of those.

Mei is a Defense-Tank. Everyone who plays her and understands her job, knows why she is a Tank.

I am interested in hearing what your reasoning is for thinking this, because I think it is a compeltely wrong and misguided notion

What does that even mean? How does using my Tp correctly and bringing people back to the point to contest it, punish me?
How does using Shield Gen and making my whole team Tanky, punish me?

What?

I don’t know if you have played Symmetra or not, but if you have then you’ve probably realized what a terrible situation you end up in when you only have 1 charge on TP and the enemy is going to make a push.

There is noting you can do about this. You are stuck with that 1 charge. You are not able to charge a new Tele. And this puts you and your team at a disadvantage.

What Deconstruction allows you to do is get rid of the TP and allows you to charge a brand new one.

Please explain to me why that is a bad idea.

Change my mind.

Ok let’s do simply math.

Primary Fire - Active
Secondary Fire - Active
Sentries - Passive
Photon Barrier - Active
Ultimate - Passive

Looks to me like she has plenty of active power.

But you just said her Ult is bad and punishes her. So how do you reconcile this with what you are saying now?

I think her Ult isn’t that powerful. It is a good Ult becuase it s gives you let’s say a Medium level of power for a long time, and allows you to choose between Two Types of Power - Tp and Shield Gen.

That is a very powerful ULt to have on your team but it’s not powerful in the sense that “now Symmetra has to be weak everywhere else to make up for it”.

In fact, Symmetra has a lot of power outside of her Ult.

I think she is a really good hero. But if she is to be buffed, then she should be buffed in appropriate ways.

It already is good outside of Defense.

Photon Barrier is a good pushing tool.

Teleporter is straight up stronger on Attack then it is on Defense.

Shield Gen is the same in terms of its power but it lasts longer on Attack than it does on Defense.

Her Secondary Fire is really good at countering cheese and static defense comps. It is really good when the enemy is clustered up into a bunker, which is what people do on Defense.

Symmetra is already good outside of her perceived niche.

And increasing her pickrate should not be the goal becuase high pickrate does not mean that a character is balanced.

High pickrate does not mean that a character is fun.

And changing a character just so they have a higher pickrate without any regard for what that character’s identity is, is NOT cool.

I don’t think you know how winrate works in this game. Symmetra when played only in First Point Defense will have a higher winrate simply due to the fact that the game does not count losses. It only counts her Wins.

Anyone who mains Sym and plays her outside of FPD, and plays her everywhere, they have a more accurate winrate, and that winrate will be lower than those who only play her on FPD.

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Too bad Blizz are slow in deciding.

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Hey Jang Baguhdur

You sound like a Top 500 Sym. I’m top 500 attack and defensive sym and I love where your mind is on Sym. Where are you ranked at. You sound like someone who would love talking strategy with Sym…

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I’m honestly fine with her turrets. I think the speed reduction removal, and letting her relocate undestroyed turrets (rather than depleting her charges) would fix her turrets.

Photon barrier, I disagree with. I think it’s a failure of an ability. You let her control it, and she’ll feel too much like Orisa. She also still won’t be ran in the place of an offhealer because brigitte will be more reliable if they needed an offsupport with a personal barrier. I wish they would just overhaul it and replace it with an actual good supportive utility that contests with healing. However, if they do that, they run the risk of alienating Symmetra players.

I disagree, I feel like they need an active, reliable supportive ability that contests with healing and photon barrier should otherwise be left untouched. And being a tank/defense/support is who she turned into. It wasn’t always who she was. She used to be the damage mitigation support and utility support, but due to poor oversight on her development she evolved into the character she is now. I feel like they need to go back to her roots and refine her damage mitigation support now that they’ve designed Brigitte and understand how to do that. The turrets/barrier works to block burst damage/misdirect fire, but not to a level where you’d rather have that than healing. Adding a better damage mitigation ability would probably circumvent that.

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Jesterskull,
From Devs perspective, they already made Sym awesome. They designed a cool hero with a unique set of abilities and playstyle.

But the community is partly ignorant of Sym, partly don’t like her playstyle and partly stubborn and keeps demanding a complete overhaul on a hero that is clearly at least good enough to make Top 10!

So imagine you are the developer and you made this hero that can get to Top 10, playing on all maps, all modes, etc with Sym only.

Your community keeps asking you to redesign this hero becuase they think she is terrible.

What do you do?

At first they said, they were happy with her design and that if she is niche then so be it.

But then the backlash came… people attacked them hard for saying Sym might be niche.

She isn’t actually niche as many Sym mains who main her know. Like she is clearly very good on Attack on some maps.

So what do the Devs do? They say, “Let’s go back to the drawing board and figure out what is going on with Sym and what we can do about it.”

And they’ve just said that, and that’s where we are.

Does Sym need a rework, like a complete redesign?

In my opinion, no.

Does she need buffs?

God knows.

Maybe she does , maybe she doesn’t.

I mean you can’t tell whether a hero needs buffs according to pickrate certainly. Many factors go into determining pickrate.

And Overwatch as a game is still young and it hasn’t been picked apart that much.

It was only yesterday that we all learned that Symmetra can double jump and use her Turrets like a ladder to get to hard-to- get areas.

So what do we know about balance?

What do we know about who needs and buff and who doesn’t, when we are a 2 year old kid basically, and still discovering new things about the game.

But people keep asking for buffs and they ask for things that are completely ridiculous from the perspective of Symmetra’s design and role.

Even in this thread, people are having a hard time accepting that Sym is a Melee hero and that Photon Barrier is a Tanking ability.

So I look at some the suggestions that people throw out there and see whether this would be good for her. And many of them are not. Many of them are completely misguided.

Maybe I am wrong and maybe she is completely terrible in design and needs to be reworked into a new hero.

But I don’t think that’s the case, since people are able to get to Top 500 and Top 10 with her.

If you talk to high-level Symmetra mains, they will also say that Symmetra doesn’t need that much if anything.

The Top 10 Sym main I was talking about earlier said, faster Turret placement and destructible Ults is all she needs. Just some minor QoL buffs, that’s it.

So I think the community is missing the mark when it comes to Sym changes and I hope Devs maintain a strong backbone and stick to their original design and vision for Symmetra.

Sicksym,
Thanks for the compliment but I only made it to Master. I almost made it to Gm but fell back last season.

Jsleezy,
The ability to relocate works too instead of lowering their cooldown.

What? How does controlling Photon Barrier, in the way I sugggested, feel like Orisa? lol, I am NOT suggesting that she be able to fix it in place. I think that is a misuigded suggestion.

Brigitte has no ranged capability, no lock-down and no way to protect the team the way Photon barrier can.

Brigitte does bring healing (and hard CC) to the table but how good her healing is in-game remains to be seen.

I don’t agree. I don’t think her role has changed from previous iteration.

She is still a damage mitigation and utility support. And what is better damage mitigation than Photon Barrier? Certainly not the 25 shields she threw out.

This is what Brigitte’s shtick is. I don’t think Symmetra needs a Armour Repair ability.

I think Photon Barrier having a better size and shape would solve a lot of issues with it. The way Orisa barrier was awesome, after its size and curvature was buffed to protect from more angles.

In addition, you could increase the skill ceiling of the Photon Barrier by allowing Symmetra to control it Telekinetically after it is thrown out.

So she can either pull it back a bit towards her (reducing it’s speed to 0 for 1-2 seconds), thereby giving her a longer window of protection.

And she can pull it around and change its direction, which would allow Good Syms to block multiple skillshots.

So a high level Sym could throw out a barrier, fry the person behind it then turn the Barrier and go for someone else.

As long as the Barrier is within 7m range, she’d be able to manipulate it with her weapon using the E button. So she can not fire, while she is manipulating the Barrier’s course.

This alone (without touching the shape of it) makes the Barrier more versatile of an ability and allows high level Syms to get more use out of the Barrier.

It maintains the identity of the Barrier as a Moving Barrier.

In addition it brings in the telekinetic properties of her gun into her kit and allows her to manipulate the Barrier after casting it.

I mean I thought of this idea a while ago and just kind of shrugged it off, but the more I think about it the more it has grown on me.

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Loving the thread and the ideas as a fellow Sym main

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I agree with reworking photon barrier, but I think turning it more supportive is just better overall. And I don’t mean give her brigittes damage mitigation, but just implement her damage mitigation better in general. Rally looks pretty interchangeable with healing. If she doesn’t get that level of reliability I don’t think it’ll improve her perception, which is one of her biggest issues overall.

Healing is just too powerful, but rally is pretty darn close to it. Sym could totally use her shielding improved to that level. But I feel like we can agree to disagree. All I’m hoping for is that Sym 3.0 will be as viable as Lucio/Zenyatta/Brigitte.

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Give Symmetra healing turrets 2k18!

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No. :face_with_monocle:

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Le gasp! but…but ok you’re right but it sounded fun in theory.

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Baguette is an armour version of her that will be much more viable.

Would be nice to see that level of viability from Symettra as well as Torbjorn, Bastion and such.

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Well… I guess I to need to play her even more.

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Intersting points. A couple of items I would like to add:

I disagree about the identity. For one, although she is very close-range, she isn’t melee (unlike Brigitte or Reinhardt). Second, she isn’t really built to have any tanking capabilities (and was never supposed to be; Photon Barrier was their first attempt at fixing up her E ability). Third, this being a jack-of-all-trades and not being good at anything that gives her problems (however, make her too good a generalist, and we end up with the current D.Va (i.e. picked almost everywhere), so we REALLY do not want to end up there). Fourth, one of her main problems is the lack of supporting (some people suggest giving her healing abilities, but that doesn’t fit with her at all) abilities, so some more abilities that help with this (preferably with a defence focus) would probably help.

I pretty much agree with all of this. Her Ultimates are pretty decent (maybe some tweaks, but that is balancing and not reworking), and the destructible concept is handy. In addition, if they are moved to a Passive/ability, they are likely going to be crazily nerfed (I think we all remember what happens when an Ultimate is moved to an ability coughresurrectcough)

Partly disagree. Her Photon Projector is a bit on the clumsy side, and giving it some improved range and accuracy requirements would likely be not too bad (so depending on where the target is, her beam grows in strength faster/slower/loses strength). As for the secondary fire, not sure what could be done, but it is a bit awkward at the moment as well. The Photon Projector is not as bad as the Sentry Turrets or Photon Barrier, but it could use some reworking of its own (not too much, but a bit).

These are some nice ideas. I personally also like the idea of being able to place an alternate turret (Shield Turret; gives allies some protection) using right-click (left-click is still Sentry Turret; Lshift becomes the cancel button). Another place to look (instead of the shorter cooldown) is at increasing their health (probably with shields). Still have the different types, but make them sturdier at the cost of the shorter cooldowns (and maybe range).

Yeah, Photon Barrier is probably a loss. It just feels REALLY awkward. Adding in some defence/support abilities (my ideas are an auto-regenerating fixed barrier and a ramp allies can use) would help keep her within her support/defence role/niche.

Overall, these are some handy ideas for the Ultimate and Sentry Turret, but she needs another re-design to hopefully get her into the right place (some additional adjustments may be required as well).

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You said Sentry turrets climbable? How?