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

[JangBahadur-1968]

@CMF-1511

I would like to remove the shield generation from her kit, and move it to her normal function.

What I like about Shield Gen is that it provides a powerful 75 shields bonus and does do over 50m range, and thus provides utility that is comparable to Tele in situations where Tele wouldn’t be as useful.

So First Point Attack/Payload and Last Point on Defense, Tele is likely to contribute less so you can use Shield Gen.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to remove that powerful Ult combo.

I especially don’t think that a 50M range Shield gen is worth trading for a short range and less powerful shield aura.

@CMF-1511

This would provide “active support” so she acts like a “healer” of sorts.

@CMF-1511

It could possibly function similar to briggete and moira, in terms of giving shields and switching between damage/healing beams.

Symmetra is not that type of hero who focuses on constantly putting shields on allies like Mercy beam or Moire beam.

That’s not what Symmetra does.

Symmetra is a damage dealing support.

Symmetra is not an “Active Support” like Mercy/Moira and Definitely not a “Healer of sorts”.

She doesn’t do any of that, and does not need to do any of that in order to be good.

Having Passive support through Turrets and Ults allows her Symmetra to focus on dealing damage, protecting the backline and using her Photon Barrier, more on that later.

@CMF-1511

Another off the way idea is if she could create a proximity field with her turrets which would give everyone in the area extra shields. As the turrets break the field geometry would get smaller until there are less than 3 points of contact.

This would remove their function as CC/damage sources though.

You are trying to make Symmetra into something that she isn’t.

If I take all your abilities and implemented them in a hero, I’d have a brand new hero.

I don’t think your ideas are bad in themselves, I think they are bad when applied to Symmetra because they don’t fit her.

Her Turret utility is already in a good place.

Sentries work as an anti-Lucio speed boost. And they distract enemies to focus the Turrets down, instead of focusing on your allies.

The amount of damage they can do and the amount of slow and distraction they can create is in a good place.

Turrets are Active-Passive hybrid ways that Symmetra supports her team.

She creates a Defensive Grid, a Spider web, around your allies that enemies keep getting stuck in and keep having to tear down.

So giving Symmetra better tools for accomplishing that, ie reduced placement time, reduced cooldown on Sentries, allows her to better support her allies through this webbing that she creates around them.

Symmetra is a SPIDER, she is always creating webs.

So she is actively always creating webs to trap enemies, and when she’s not doing that she is actively supporting via her Photon Barrierand using her gun to damage and zone enemies.

With Photon Barrier, Symmetra is capable of preventing all damage on her whole team with a single E.

And not only that, she can use it for herself and be super aggressive with it and deal more damage.

Symmetra is a damage-dealing support, so removing her Turret damage and slow and removing Photon Barrier for another ability is not a good change for her, and makes her into something that she isn’t.

See my thread on the strengths of thePhoton Barrier -

@JangBahadur-1968

I am making this thread to discuss Photon Barrier and how good it really is, because many people underestimate its power.

I am also going to talk about where it can be weak, and suggest ways to improve it, in case the Devs decide to buff Symmetra’s power level.

@Brakes-11113

So do beam weapons since Moira and (lesser extent) Zarya are also incapable of dealing damage outside of their range. Sym’s is a beam weapon, and thus fits into this later category

Moira and Zarya can hit up to 20 and 16 m away respectively. They are mid-range and close-range heroes respectively.

Saying that they also have beam aesthetics like Symmetra to prove that Symmetra’s 7m attack isn’t Melee, is laughable.

Aesthetically, Symmetra is wielding a gun and is shooting a beam but she ultimately is a Melee hero, and should be balanced as a Melee hero.

Her weapon is a Welder, a Melee range heating tool.

Similarly Brigitte’s Whip attack that knocks back even though has aesthetics of a Melee attack, is actually a Ranged Attack.

Symmetra’s Primary has aesthetics of a ranged attack but it actually a Melee attack. Brigitte’s Whip attack has aesthetics of a melee but is actually a Ranged attack.

Don’t get hung up on aesthetics of it.

Try to understand the mechanics of the attacks.

Symmetra being a Melee mechanically, fits well with her Zoning Orbs, Turret Webs, Photon Barrier and Teleporter/Shield Gen.

She is a Spider! Who traps her foes in her Turret webbing and fries them.

She has a Barrier to help her because she is often in Melee range and being a Melee hero is vulnerable to long-range Snipers.

Barrier is great for shutting down Sniper site lines.

She has Tele and Shield gen, both of which allow her to play aggressively, inaddition to the Barrier.

Symmetra is quite well designed as a hero and until you fully grasp her kit and the potential of what it offers, you cannot appreciate the beauty of her design.

I find a lot of suggestions, to her kit, misguided and completely missing the mark.

@Brakes-11113

She feels not quite protective enough to be a tank (and plus lacks the health for it; all tanks can effectively body-block due to 400+ health).

That’s because Symmetra is not a Pure Tank, rather a Tank-Dps-Support Hybrid, which means she has abilities from all roles.

She is not a Tank, she is not focused on the Tank role.

She has a has an ability that she uses to protect her allies that is classified as a Tanking ability due to its nature.

Ultimately how a hero is classified, has no bearing on how balanced they are.

If Symemtra is imbalanced, then she is imbalanced due to the weaknesses of Sentries and Photon Barrier, not because we classified her as a Tank-DPs-Support hybrid due to the nature of her abilities.

But since Symmetra is a Tank-Dps-Support Hybrid like Torb and Zarya, it makes her unique as a character.

And it’s a bad idea to take that uniqueness away.

@Brakes-11113

Ok, I take the blame for not clarifying this. You keep making the pedantic (and ineffectual) argument that Symmetra is melee, so I demonstrated another example of pedanticness (in this case, what sort of role her Photon Barrier fulfils).

I am arguing that just like 5m Hammer and 6m Flail, a 7m beam is a Melee attack so that people understand that a Melee hero should not be given more range as buff.

That’s just a bad way of buffing Melee heroes.

So back to you, what is your pedanticness trying to accomplish here?

@Brakes-11113

I was focusing on the supporting perspective. Even then, this isn’t that much (Junkrat’s Trap also distracts foes and slows them down, yet it is unlikely to be called a “supporting” ability). While the constant replacement could work, it could also be helpful to buff their health enough so a FLASH-BANG doesn’t wipe out all your turrets.

Trap is a CC Ability.

Turrets are a Supporting Ability, with some CC. This is because there are enough of the Turrets at any given time to draw enemy fire away from your Team.

If a Flashbang is wiping all your Turrets, then it has successfully punished you for bad Turret placement.

However since Turrets are there to draw enemy fire away from your Team,they can be given slightly more health like perhaps 25 shields, so that they are more resilient to random bullets across the map.

So I am with you when it comes to buffing their HP.

But it is not a necessary buff.

It is not a necessary buff because reducing the Turret cooldown and reducing their cast time, effectively accomplishes the same goal but also makes Turrets a lot more flexible and a lot more mobile.

@Brakes-11113

Also deals damage. In addition, it doesn’t change the fact that it is clumsy (while helpful for zoning, it is practically too slow to fire and not big enough explosive range to make it helpful for anything other than busting up slow comps, of which there are barely any).

Once, again it is only clumsy if you misunderstand it’s purpose as a zoning tool and think that it there is for destroying all types of comps.

It is really good in chokes points which there are plenty of, and really good at catching people off-guard in chaotic team fights, which there are plenty of.

@Brakes-11113

Um, aren’t you forgetting somethings called SHIELD GENERATOR and TELEPORTER? Those are also pretty defensive.

Her Shield Generator and Teleporter are stronger on Attack overall.

Teleporter is more effective on Attack due to how far attacking Spawn is. And Shield gen tends to last longer on Attack.

Shield gen has great range and can shield up to 50m away.

So even though they are stationary themselves, the effects they provide are more Offensive in nature.

Unlike Shield Gen, Turrets cannot effect enemies up to 50m away so they are more Defensive.

And that is fine, Turrets should be defensive.

But currently they can feel too inflexible.

When you increase their cast time and decrease their cooldown, you make them more flexible and more mobile and more offensive (as offensive as they can be).

And the reason why we want Turrets be more flexible is 1. to up Symemtra’s power level and 2. allow her webbing to be more flexible, which will help her better in Payload type maps on both Attack and defense.

@Brakes-11113

However, she should have her own niche (i.e. defence-focused)

I disagree with you, where you say she should be a Defense-only hero.

She is already good on Attack, as well as Defense.

Your changes push her backwards in to Defense-only. I can’t agree with that.

@HotRamen-11929

all i want is her to have to aim. change whatever else you want.

That;s like saying - All I want is for Reinhardt to aim. - or - All I want is for Brigitte to aim.

5m , 6m , 7m.

@Deoxys-11110

People mainly complain that she doesn’t do enough supporting to the team outside of her Shield gen.

They don’t know what they are talking about.

@Belemy-1477

what if they completely reworked her and instead gave her some kinda jumpad thing

I think her kit is quite good already. Jump pad sound like a great ability for a new hero though. Doesn’t fit Symmetra’s theme.

@Brakes-11113

This is similar to my idea of giving her a ramp. It would certainly help with low-mobility Heroes (Reinhardt, Zarya, Ana, etc.).

Ramp is more fitting for Symmetra’s theme but is not that powerful an ability to replace any of the ones she has, and it’s not an ability she really needs, given her current weaknesses.

Adding a stationary barrier to the Ramp, while makes it a powerful ability, pushes Symmetra back to an FPD bot. so It’s not a good change.

And while Photon Barrier is not perfect, it is miles ahead of these types of changes, and it is exactly the ability she needs.

That said, the only place I can see Ramp being implemented is on the mouse wheel, in addition to Photon Barrier.

Where switching her weapon allows her to construct a Ramp base on two points, and when close enough, these Ramp constructs will manifest a hard-light terrain that you and allies can walk on.