Update on symmetra?

General Discussion
42

Hero 27 :thinking:, interesting.

Good luck to the overwatch team for the rework of Symetra. It will not be easy.

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43

Jeez I’m really hyped af right now lol

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44

Put her teleporter on E on a 30 seconds cooldown and make her fly as her ultimate ability. It works, trust me. Will be a “success”.

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45

Give her a portal gun. Just do it! dont let your dreams be dreams!

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46

Gone are the days of autolock beams and annoying bunny hops! WITNESS MEEEEEE

47

Jeff, please, while we are it, can I ask you if you are planning some minor QoL buffs/adjustments to Bastion?
I personally feel he doesn’t need a rework, just some small tweaks to its kit .
With that in mind, would you consider trying one or more of the following changes proposed here on the forums?

  • Remove/reduce the 0,5 delay while activating self-heal
  • Remove self damage from its ultimate and/or reduce its activation time
  • Recon magazine clip from 25 rounds to 30
  • Base health pool changed from 200hp/100arm to 150hp/150arm

Thanks for your great work!

48

Thank you for actually changing your original statement and re-evaluating your position about her needing proper rework/buff. Take as much time as you need to get Sym to be viable and toactually be useful Overwatch character across all tiers (I don’t believe she is completely useless, I just think that she is incredibly high risk character for the value she brings to the team, Symmetra is my most played hero). I absolutely love Symmetra, her kit is incredibly cool and she is by far my favorite character. Please give her some love, take the time and tweak her properly. Thank you!

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49

So who is the Hero 27??? (Real name, Alias, Age, Occupation)

50

Everytime Jeff responds to something I get super excited. Is this normal? Lol. Great news and I’m excited for Hero 27.

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51

I have this ability idea based on her comic story. It’s called Bridge a support ability to help the team without making her a killing machine.

Bridge would basically be the ability to connect two points of the map with a limit of 10-15m long pathway starting at Symmetra’s feet, obligatory needing a ledge to conect and with an angle limit to not make a wall:

Like the turret it would be a cast ability where the player would previously see where it can connect

Like, she could make a path over the Illios well to prevent allies from falling, she could create a ramp to make characters like Orisa and Reinhardt reach high grounds they coudn’t or make the team reach a high ground faster. She could create high grounds that doesn’t exist.

  • only the allies would be able to walk on their bridge
  • enemy team would be able to destroy it and make the enemies fall (longer the bridge, easier to hit and destroy) maybe 300-500HP for the bridge.
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52

As someone who had 60-70 hours on Mercy and Symmetra when you started reworking Mercy (now, I’m at 71 hours on Mercy and 80 on Symmetra):

Please don’t rework Symmetra.

  • tweak her turret numbers. Reduce the delay on placing turrets or give them some chance of surviving random spray/aoe damage.
  • make her shield work like DM rather than like Rein’s shield.
  • allow her to build ult after her ult is place and then use that accumulation to relocate her ult if she sees it being attacked
  • move her out of support and into defense so the absolute newbs don’t yell at you for not healing them. (Luckily that whining usually dries up around level 300.)

I don’t think I could stand you “reworking” yet another of my favorite characters. You’ve already turned Mercy into a boring and brainless healbot, you’ve changed DVA from a tank into a fat flying Tracer.

I don’t want another character that I love ruined.

Symm needs to be reclassified and tweaked. Not reworked.

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53

As much as i love sym (also have my 2nd most hours on her) ive stopped playing symmetra completly after diamond

I for myself hope they change things (not just numbers) i‘d personally also would love to see if they get rid of autolock
Just my opinions

54

Suggestion: Change her floating shield to an aggressive Zarya bubble.

It applies a barrier that completely surrounds an enemy for 2-5 seconds, meaning that they can take damage from your team but can’t shoot out of it, the barrier can also be broken by their own team.

This would make her counter Phara’s ult, allow her to have plays against things like Graviton or High Noon, whilst heroes like Roadhog or Soldier might almost instantly break out of the shield by putting out so much damage in a rapid succession.

It could also be applied to an exploding mech, used for clutch-protection against burst enemies or blocking outgoing abilities such as stun-grenade.

I know that you get a lot of suggestions for what to do with heroes, and that you might have already settled on something, but the community has also seen that you listen, so, well, here’s my two cents.

And thank you for every thing you guys do! You’re making Overwatch a joy to play!

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55

What about Torbjorn, Bastion, Reaper…?

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56

How to fix symmetra

Leftclick
Problem: only viable at super close range and needs a long charge up to deal 120 dps (when your already winning, your winning even more)
Solution: Make sym deal like 75-90 dps at close range but doubling her range. Beam has damage fall off and does like 30-50 dps (like moira) at like 20 yards so she actually could contribute to fights.

Rightclick
Problem: long charge up, slow travel time, hits nobody most of the time.
Solution: Orb itself does no damage but it has a turret like beam inside that does not slow but deals damage. Maybe charging 1 second = 1 turret beam, up to 3 seconds -> 3 turret beams inside the orb. So sym rightclick would actually deal damage and feel rewarding. It would be more similar to moiras damage orb, so sym would actually get value out of her range ability.

Shield
Problem: Travels to fast to actually absorb something, can only be used to avoid hooks or flashbangs if timed right.
Solution: if it is intended that way then leave the ability as is. Compare the shield to Orisa shield; they have similar cooldown and similar health but orisa absorbs like 30 000 damage in a match and symmetra like 2000. Sym is obviously not a tank so I guess the ability is fine.

Turret
Problem: you need to run into a wall and jump up to place a turret strategically. I cant tell you how many times I died because of widow or mccree or hogs hook when I placed a turret and slowed myself. You cannot replace turrets in a fight or at a choke when the enemy is near.
Solution: When you click your hotkey for the turret you can “shoot” them (like mei rightclick) with your leftclick. If it hits a wall they attach there. You don’t get slowed while doing so. This actually would make symmetra viable on offense and on KOTH in my opinion. You could throw turrets up high to even contest pharahs air space or you could shoot turrets behind enemies in a team fight to distract them. Also it would allow to replace turrets between teamfight without the risk of randomly dying because of the self slow.

Ultimate:
Problem: Mercy was changed vom 1.0 because she would hide in teamfights and come in to rezz everyone. What sym is doing right now is she is hiding with 100% ult waiting for her team to loose the 5v6 and then place a TP so the group has a chance to get back to the point and avoid capping.
Solution: Symmetra can press Q at any time and create a teleporter/generator platform which is not visable for the enemy team. When sym reaches 100% she can press Q again and choose TP or Gen like normal. Left clicking would activate your platform. This would allow symmetra to be involved in teamfights and even activate teleporter when dead or in spawn. Another problem is that your team cannot see your ultimate when placed. Make the TP visable for your team would allow teammates to see the TP before they die so they know where they appear after using a TP charge. Also the TP is a huge object emitting light and sound and gets announced to the enemy team after placing it. So essentialy there is no skill involved in knowing when the enemy sym places her ult. Make the TP small, emit no light and sound so it actually would require some skill on the enemy side to know when its up and make it harder to find it. Maybe give it 3 turret automatically attached to it so it has some potential to defend itself. Currently genji or tracer can kill a TP easily even when it is placed in a small room defended by 6 turrets and they know exactly when you placed it. I think regarding balance 6 charges and 75 shield is optimal.

Another thing is that symmetra is the hero with the most counters to her making her ineffective in almost every teamcomposition the enemy chooses. When you see a pharah or a Winston it is not like your at a slight disadvantage, no, you are just dead and cant do anything. Im not saying that every hero needs to be able to snipe pharah out of the sky and having a slight rock-paper-scissors mechanic in play is healthly. But having 80% of the heros currently hard counter symmetra makes me sad.

I don’t request or demand any change that I proposed but I think changing her rightclick to be more effective and hit enemies more reliable or changing her ult the way I described it would make it more fun to play her.

It is sad that currently a hero exists in the game that when you pick it you get accused of throwing, you get reported and when you lose while a symmetra is on your team the whole team know whom to blame.

TL,DR:
Leftclick more range with damage fall off.
Rightclick has turret beams attacked to it.
Turrets can be “thrown” to walls from a distance.
Ultimate can be placed in advance and activated from a distance.

3 Likes
57

On the other hand, you have players like me that are absolutely terrible at aiming, and relies on learning great engaging time to make her useful because otherwise I would be pretty much flailing around trying to land any reliable shots.

All other “autoaim” heroes have terrible damage and provides utility via other abilities, like Winston. I enjoy playing Winston, but I like Symmetra playstyle more than Winston because it relies a lot on strategy, mind games and predictions, all areas I’m really good as a player.

Her autoaim gun empower this playstyle because I don’t have to even worry about aiming, and can focus on the rest of the game, while when I play even aim-moderate heroes like Moira, Sombra or Soldier, I use so much effort to keep my aim steady that I forget about the rest of their kits.

58

I’ve been thinking it should be more like a D.Va defense matrix that travels instead of a traveling shield. That way Symmetra makes D.Va less of a must pick and can help defend slower moving heroes like Ana and Zen from Moira orbs/firestrikes/Sym-RMB).

I love this idea, I’ve been thinking that what turrets need are different cooldown timers. Or adjustment in health/armor so that they aren’t destroyed quite so randomly but are still easily destroyed by anyone with intent to destroy them. But maybe just being allowed to not run to a wall and jump around would help.

My thought on this is that what Symm needs to be able to do is continue building her ult after she places her build. When she gets to 100%: be able to swap out the old ult-construct for a new one. This would give her a chance to react to a Tracer attacking her old ult by building one on a new location.

Agreed. But a lot of Sym’s problems is that her RMB charges and fires so slowly. It’s actually pretty easy to kill a Winston on you but you must break your LMB amp up to hit him on the other side of this shield with RMB but that also charges very slowly. Sym’s biggest problem with other characters is so many of them have aoe/cone attacks and players don’t even have to know you have turrets placed to destroy them:

Not counting ultimates, her turrets are countered by the following things, even when the hero using them is not aiming for turrets:

Ana: grenade
DVA: LMB and missiles
Doomfist: slam, rocket punch
Junkrat: LMB, mine, passive
Mei: LMB
Pharah: LMB
Reaper: LMB
Reinhardt: LMB (this one is just absolutely fair, imo)
Roadhog: LMB, RMB
Soldier: Helix Rockets
Sombra: LMB (this one she cant help, her spray is just crazy wild)
Torb: LMB
Winston: LMB, Jump pack (though usually only if turrets are on ground)
Zarya: LMB

That said, I do love making Pharah’s rage quit.

59

Glad to see the development team has only just started work on it instead of months ago when it she had the exact same problems.

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60

Personally I DO NOT want Symmetra’s actual abilities to be changed. I just want her class to be changed so idiots stop thinking “must have only two supports so a Sym means we must have only one healer”.

Symmetra is an incredibly easy fix. Make a new class called “Utility”. Put in the “Utility” class the following heroes: Sombra, Symmetra, Torbjorn. None of the three really fit in any other class but all fit the Utility theme. And maybe the “meta” screamers will realize that Sym’s shield generator can make everyone on team tankier so the team can make do with one less tank, or that Sym is a DPS in her own right so can make do with one less dps rather than forcing one less healer every time then cursing the Sym out.

To be clear here, Mr Kaplan sir, the problem isn’t Symmetra - the problem is the mindset of the community that there “must” be 2 supports no more, no less even when cases where a second healer would be more valuable than a second tank or second pure dps.

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61

might be cooler if we call it “specialists” or “technicians” instead… since that’s pretty much what they are, role-wise and lore-wise.

and yeah, man, i really don’t want to see her getting any major changes… she’s already great in her current state, bar a few major flaw that can be covered by good team comp and solid teamwork.