They could’ve tried:
- Current Turrets, Orbs and Primary Fire.
- Old TP/SG/PB.
- Teleporter charges recharge every 20 seconds.
- Symmetra can simultaneously have one TP and one SG (built separately).
These are some really good ideas! What is the most frustrating is that the devs never tried anything like this or really looked to the community for stuff like this. They just reworked her. I get that you can try things just between the devs and before release but the best way to try things, to me, is to just put it out there (like with the experimental mode).
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i’d say sym3.0 before infinite tp was salvaging sym2.0.
But if by “sym2.0” you’re referring to a kit heavily centered around the notion of “wait for enemies to come to you” then yes, it was unsalvagable. Because OW is a fast paced game in which “going to enemies” gets you much more meaningful actions per unit of time which means more value over time. Unlike waiting for the enemy to arrive.
Like for example, as a dps sniper in def in ow,
- do you stubbornly stare and camp at the point despite knowing that the enemy is defs multiple corners and/or walls away from your los, or
- do you move up to a position that’s only like 1 corner away from los on enemies to engage them sooner?
Obvs the latter so you can do more. the same logic applies to about every other hero in terms of their respective jobs. Being able to independently go to your target to do your job simply is a lot more efficient compared to needing to wait for them to come to you.
I have two idea to Symmetra rework, either applying 1 of them would be a big improvement to Symmetra, below is the main point:
1a. Remove current primary fire and move current orb to primary fire (move left click to right click).
1b. Secondary fire become stationary orbs, Symmetra propels an floating orb to a target location of her choosing (like sigma). Total of 6 stationary orbs could be stay in the battlefield. Enemy will get 60 damage if they touch the stationary orbs.
- Remove secondary fire and change secondary fire to shield battery, which can build a shield battery to recover 30 shield per second to any shield hero until it’s energy use up. Symmetra can only build 3 shield battery in the battlefield.
Symmetra 2.0 is still not working at this moment, please rework Symmetra.
Not really, no. She had the same issues, more or less.
As a former Symmetra main, with today’s knowledge, I’d say it’s muddy. Really, really muddy.
As a whole, the concept of non-healing support have its potential. You can even argue that characters like Sombra can fit that as well, but regardless, it’s a design space that Blizzard ignored completely after they released Sombra.
At the time of the rework, I think a lot could be done to move some of Sym 2.0 power budget away from her ultimate (which was absurdly strong) and into her base kit. There are plenty of suggestions around, and every single Symmetra main I knew had their own list (here is mine).
What changed the situation as a whole was the introduction of role queue. Right now, because of how role queue works, you can’t have a non-healing support anymore, so all utility heroes are ditched in the common pit of “Damage”.
If you want to keep Role Lock around, Symmetra can’t go back to support without some kind of healing. It don’t need to be that much healing, Zenyatta don’t heal like a truck, and is a viable support for the majority of the playerbase. But nonetheless, giving her healing means she had to ditch one of her abilities. Turrets are too linked to her identity, but “turret healing” by its immobile nature would not work with the pacing of Overwatch. It would need to be something else.
She was an anti-flanker character.
You can argue for a lifetime in the forums if she did that job well or not, but that was her whole concept. She was focused in warding areas to halt the enemy push, and if you was good with your turret placements, you would make the life of enemy flankers very hard.
Overwatch community is usually very against any anti-flanker measures in the game because they think those hypermobile heroes need to be countered with "skill (ie, aim)", but hypermobility makes aiming harder by design, and the way to counter that is relying on abilities that do not rely on aiming. Ergo, turrets, traps, and attacks with a broad attack arc.
I believe the whole 3.0 rework started from the devs removing her autolock beam, and the orb was changed to give it purpose in a world where a scary beam was supposed to be used more, and then everything else changed in sequence to cover for each design space closed from there.
If she wasn’t an antiflanker hero, probably people would be ok with she being relegated to her niche status, like people are ok with Orisa and Bastion sitting down there unusable for low ranks, and barely usable in very specific situations at high ranks. But they couldn’t stand a support hero being able to shush flankers away.
For reference, Moira and Brigitte suffered similar feedback: “Too hard to kill”, “no aim no brain”, “no-skill”, “unfair” and “not fun to play against”. And they both were also designed as anti-flanker supports.
torb was already getting a rework, he was a major throw pick so he wasn’t even gonna be seen with brigitte. now sym? LOL, i think they changed her due to brigitte. sym could literally get up to 500 health with shield gen, 150 armor with rally, and armor pack, armor pack gave 75 armor for 6 seconds until destroyed so 200 + 150 + 75 + 75 = 500. now with that brigitte could get up to 475 and heroes like mccree could get up to 425, and the armor and shields stayed permanently until damaged or destroyed.
Id be wiling to say she was yes
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Yes.
Instead of full 3.0 rework they could make something between.
Take turrets and orbs from 3.0, leave primary fire, teleporter and photon barrier from 2.0
(sadly shield generator would need to go because additional 75HP is too much - even Brig can’t have her 50 armor)
She wouldn’t be top pick but her identity would remain same.
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I love/have loved all versions of Symm including the current one. Shield Generator (2.0) was probably a bad idea and should never come back, it was essentially a free win on Control unless they had a Tracer. Never minding if they had a Ball which didnt exist back then.
Main thing I think Symm 2.0’s miss is that photon barrier, it was a great pushing tool and could also shut down enemy Ults really well.
Giving +75 health to the whole team is actualy quite laughable today with how Blizzard let the power creep go completely out of control and seemingly favour low-skill burst with ultimates galore that require just a Q press or two to insta-wipe most of the team…
Personaly, I think they were halfway done to make her a decent support (efficient defensive ult, teleport more accessible and viable) but went to the DPS-biased route they drive on and gave up any healing whatsoever, coming with the lame excuse they “tried healing turrets” juuuuust to say they tried. (giving up after the first of thousands approaches is not trying, Blizzard)
I didn’t need to be saved. The only crime committed was being niche. She was very good at what she did, and should have been left alone
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Can 3.0 be saved…?
Anyway yeah I think they coulda reworked her and kept her similar to 2.0, but they didn’t. They didn’t even try, at least to out knowledge.
There were some genuinely good parts to Sym 2.0’s kit. Namely her ults and shield. Would like to see those make a return, even if it’s on a different character.
Anyone else find it funny how old sym shield had more health than current tank shields lol.
this
best thing I can think of (since I feel like adding a whole other healing ability onto the character that doesn’t multi-purpose a current one makes a complicated mess) is maybe if you use primary fire and target an ally the beam turns yellow and heals them - something like 30/45/60 HPS. The healing beam wouldn’t reduce beam charge over time but you also couldn’t gain beam charge by hitting allies since that’d be the free 180 (or some reduced favorable number, i personally think 150) DPS every fight.
This sounds like a really great idea! I especially like the charging aspect of how it charges both the healing and the dps aspects. Another idea for healing could be some sort of passive that has to do with health/shield regen but that could be tricky to figure out.
Yeah I had a rework drafted up in my head a while ago
it involved that, projectile speed on orb increase, orb damage scaling with charge (because 120 + improved projectile speed might be too good), turrets being able to heal when not damaging an enemy, using teleporter cleansed + activated passive shield regen on sym/allies with shields (including rein/sig’s barrier recharge that could be fun)
Also I was thinking if you wanted to go crazy change the cadence of photon barrier to be like tracer’s pulse bomb - lower uptime and health but charges way faster so you had it every fight for a crucial fast initiation/block a big enemy damage ability like high noon or d.va bomb
This sounds really fun. Lets just hope Blizzard listens to us and maybe give sym some of these changes for Overwatch 2.
If I knew how to workshop I think I could’ve made it in there??
All I know is that the one thing I want from blizzard is for them to give the players the ability to mess with the same knobs/dials they do for patches so we can present them solid ideas
well
idk
that or experimentals every week instead of every three
though my game design brain has just been rattling really hard over the past week or so so i just really want to do that
if sym 2.0 was allowed to place her buildables from far away she would have been awesome.
And perhaps for her photon barrier to reflect back damage.
Sym’s problem is currently (and was always) her range of attack coupled with her typical squishy-fragility. Her kit being more utility based and requiring more team-coordination than most DPS/characters is also a huge issue. The most independent form of Sym was 2.0, but even then, she was still trash.
If they’re going to make her a worse Reaper/Doomfist, they’re going to need to give her tools for some proper staying power. Otherwise she’ll always be a worse Zarya. The only reason she’s still picked is because her aesthetic, voicelines, and sassiness are top tier and fun. She’s also somehow useful in PvE modes and vs noobs, so there’s that too.