Symmetra: Overwatch's FIRST Identity Crisis
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- Опубликовано: 18 май 2024
- So I've already talked about how Sombra is Overwatch's Identity Crisis, but there's actually another: Symmetra. Swapping from Support to DPS, she's certainly had a strange journey through Overwatch's history, so let's dive in.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:16 Symmetra's History
6:40 Game Design talk
(Also thank you all for the support on the Sombra video it's actually insane)
Footage credits
Sym OW1 Second Rework (YourOverwatch) - • Overwatch NEW Symmetra...
Sym OW1 Second Rework Gameplay (YourOverwatch) - • Overwatch: NEW Symmetr...
Sym OW1 First Rework (IGN) - • Overwatch: New Symmetr...
OG Sym Gameplay (Abzu) - • Overwatch 2016 Symmetr...
Ice-Bombing (Akshon Esports) - • Symmetra - The Telepor...
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TP has 6 uses. This video has been out nearly a week. I get it. You can stop telling me. I'm really sorry about how I didn't find it since where I was looking it was giving me "12 uses or 6 uses" from when she was in beta. I'll make sure I don't do it again
you WILL be banned if you make a mistake again mark my words
I love the use of the voiceline "let's discuss your failures", because it is the perfect voiceline for the into skit.
It’s also her VA’s favorite line
@@MysteriousGirlol
Outside of game mechanics there's one fun fact about Symmetra:
She currently holds the game wide record for going the longest without a legendary skin.
Nearly 3 years.
Doesn't the new Junker skin count?
@@SugarSundust the mermaid skin that released was the first legendary she got after nearly 3 years.
So this has already passed
Absolutely not true. She got 3 legendary skins in Overwatch 2 so far: Art Deco (December 2022), S-900 Sentry (August 2023), and Junker (April 2024)
@@MegaFreeman AS PER MY PREVIOUS COMMENT:
The mermaid skin was the first one she got after nearly 3 years.
That said, this transpired BEFORE Overwatch 2.
@@MegaFreeman that was all before OW2
The biggest slap on the face for OG Sym players is how they refused to adapt her as a Support, then they turn and make Illari. Like bruh, the experimental card where they made her a support again was so fun. With some adjustments and better AI on the turrets it would have totally worked.
yup a totally no range character wouldve totally worked when illari who got ONE healing turret and hitscan range literally is, already struggling herself to remain REMEMBERED by the playerbase
yeah totally not a healer bias opinion!!
edit: i have no idea wtf the people under this comment understood but basically, support sym already didnt work due to her lack of range and damage. adding "healing" and nerfing her damage wont make her any better. just actually play the game so you can notice that. a better option would be just.... buffing her damage so she can work again like she did for most of ow2s lifespan? 💀
💀 how would healer symm even deal with the global healer nerf thats the dps passive?
those clowns dont even play the game yet declare sym has been f tier or something for the entirety of ow2, when thats not true.
@@polar6066hypocrite
@@polar6066 Wowie. Yeah(Reinhardt), you totally got me(Zarya), we absolutely have no heroes(Winston) that are mostly(Reaper), if not pure short-range(Tracer). Yup.(Brigitte) None at all...
@@oKiterrrrelaborate
@@J6llyJ9holy shit these heroes are nothing like symmetra!!! good job!!!
I find it funny this dropped around the same time as Overwatch released their Symmetra/Lifeweaver short story. Looks like Satya is having who she is questioned bit in game and in lore.
What short story?
@@Hotkidkrisit’s on the ow page in media it got uploaded a few hours ago
I really liked the short story, but it's a shame that it can't go anywhere. By the nature of her existing in the game and being the representative of Vishkar, she can never leave the organisation.
@@ByronAndOnAndOn Judging from the short stories she is attempting to rehabilitate Vishkar for the better. Or rather guide it back to the vision the founder originally intended for Vishkar.
Read the short stories! She goes to Shambali monastery for Vishkar and basically has a whole identity crisis while there because of Zen and her connecting with Aurora. You can see the shift in her character in her basic skin designs with her Ow1 skin being neat, pristine, perfect, symmetrical. While Ow2 skin is asymmetrical, loose and she has hair IN HER FACE which is something pointed out in the short story with Niran that irritates her especially if someone else can see it. She definitely is the character with an identity crisis and I thought he was going to actually talk about that. 😂
It's a pretty big failure that both sym AND sombra started as unique support heroes then had to just be shoved into the already overfilled dps roster. blizzard still has a responsibility to redesign them back into being utility supports and evening out the roster sizes.
theres only healers in the support category, why would you (not) want them to heal lol
@@polar6066 what?
Fortunately or unfortunately, Blizzard is really only good at making DPS.
@@polar6066symmetra was a support hero. Who couldnt heal mind you.
@@noahboddie3482 supports that cannot heal had consistently shown in the past that they cannot fill a slot in the support role, something that would apply even today
yeah im aware of that too
Blizzard: "Sorry, supports have to have healing abilities!"
Sombra, Symmetra and Mei: "aight imma head out"
Soldier 76: "We're all support heroes now."
Support 76: Hold my healing field
When I first played Overwatch, I played as a support the most. And yet, I would play Mei, Symmetra, and Sombra a semi-substantial amount. Knowing that they had a design philosophy of being supportive makes me realise why I liked them so much, despite being “Damage”.
@@babyghast4379 I tried a couple different heroes when I was new to OW, I started with Genji and didn't felt well with him, later I tried Mercy and stick to her for a long time, after my Villain Arc started with Moira, now I am playing each role (mainly DPS and Sup still, but tank works fine for me) and I'm trying my best to try and learn every hero still
Yet Sombra got my first golden weapon haha
And yes, I can see the supportive aspect, they really are till some degree, Mei with the walls, Sombra with the hacks and abiliy deny, Symm with TP and.. Well now also the wallhacks, there are so many more really
It's a interestinc concept all in all, I just wish Symm would be in a better state :/
Call me a shitty player, but I miss lock-on, Photon Barrier, Shield Gen, Support Sym. She was so fun to play imo, and I think that having a support that doesn't heal *now* , when we have more healers to pick, fits better.
Yes that was her best era imo. It was also so fun having people yell at me in rank for picking her and I'd end up being the one with most kills 😂
Who’s the sup who doesn’t heal?
Her fun levels peaked back then! Setting up her car wash and then blocking a few ults with her photon barrier was such a high
No im the same way 😭. I wish they at least kept the lock-on gun.
I loved the lock on. I'd get that thing ripping on tanks then delete the squishys in seconds. People would rage that I was throwing but it made getting POTG so satisfying
Symmetra has been such a mess for quite some time, Blizzard never knew what to do with her. Honestly her as a support based around turrets, teleporters and shields would had been really interesting, but they really missed the mark when they first tried. I like current Symm's kit (although she's a bit weak tbh) but it could work either way.
The issue with original symm was really how they implemented her overhealth. Just like in mobas if you give enough overhealth it CAN substitute for healing. But symms old E both lasted forever, and was on too long of a cooldown to be used tactically to block key abilities like a fire strike or widow headshot or soldier rockets(as you would can do in Mobas which have non healbot supports). Her ult also being situational was less than great but could have been justified if her base kit made up for it (it didnt). I think if we mad a modern symm support with modern tp, tactical overhealth distribution (think old brig shield pack but without healing and the extra health only lasts for a second at most.) Combined with old noodle beam and turrets (which used to he the only reliable anti-dive tools for supports until brig) reinforcing the backline. We could have had something really unique. As opposed to Zarya's dps rework which we have now. Alas ive grown to accept that Illari is the basically the support symmetra we got teased in that experimental card in Ow1. Healing turret and laser beam in tact. After so long... having symm back in support in that experimental card patch... all i could think... the mission the nightmares it's finally over.
I still hold out hope symm will return to the support roster one day. But im getting older now...
@@emeraldmoth3977 Shield generator could have definitely worked with further balance. If I remember correctly, it was even nerfed at first because of shield stacking with other symmetra and Torbjorn, making it basically dis functional as a mean of healing and just unremarkable as an over health thing. The cool-down and health given used to be enough to kinda allow her to heal.
While I definitely miss some aspect of her old kit, like the auto-aim on primary fire, secondary fire piercing (even if the old speed was definitely awful) and her shield generator, I am still very happy that the new rework brought us the TP ability, improved turrets and Ultimate, making her have more of a purpose, stronger, more dynamic and imo truer to her original concept as a light architect.
I personally would be open to her being brought back into the support category but she'd need something else than healing turrets to be viable.
I think a big problem with Symmetra as a support is that she wants too many abilities to be really viable. She needs her TP without which she has no identity, so that's one, with her TP she wants her turrets to set up TP bombs and help her defend herself, but if she is a support she also needs shield generator or any way of healing. At one point you are left with only primary fire which is not enough to make her strong. For her to work as a support she would need all of her buttons to serve multiple purpose, like turret should both heal and do damage, optimistically share the button with her TP, and her primary fire should have some means of healing too. Problem with giving her all she wants is that it would make her kit even more confusing to use, probably very clunky and very feast or famine.
They should've just made her overwatches engineer.
"I can only work if people are idiots" funnily enough fits Symmetra's personality pretty well given how condescending she is
Pfp (Profile picture) and / or Banner Sauce (Source [Artist])? 🗿
@@SimoneBellomonteno
The teleporter could be used 6 times before it would break meaning the best case scenario would be that you would use it once per death and your whole team could then use it. Looking back, it makes sense why they thought 2CP could be balanced now as you could have a sym with a TP and get your recontest immediately after respawning.
Also fun fact about Sym (IIRC) was that before we had the change to Tank/Dps/Support Sym was actually moved very briefly to defense before that entire system was scrapped and she was then in DPS. I sadly can't find any information on this but I remember a few discussions about it and how silly it was to have a change that lasted like a day or two.
I dont' think she was ever properly moved into defense iirc
@@kingofallcasuals698Not properly but yeah, she was moved into Defense.
i love how he was like i cant find ho many uses it had and you can see in the footage the 6 next to the ult after its placed down 7:33
officially, the sym rework and the offence/defence merge happened in the same patch. but we knew about a month prior that she was gonna be changed - and the devs themselves labelled her a defence hero in interviews and on the forums! so that might be what you're remembering?
@@teeteenine2222its prob laziness. He already wrote the script and then found footages but was too lazy to go back and edit a few words
Mentioning Mei as a utility dps at 20:10
When she was introduced to Heroes of the Storm, she was released as a tank not as a DPS
Blizzard, her overwatch ultimate, became a basic ability in Heroes of the Storm
And then she got a wall and a snowball as an ultimate instead
Generally her kit in HotS was a lot more interesting than in OW2 where she just right clicks on peoples heads
I still think she should've been the one to be tank instead of doom
HOTS Mei is superior to OW Mei. Cryo-Freeze isn't invincible and instead gives her a big health shield and lots of health regeneration, Blizzard and Ice Wall are still area denial tools with their power levels swapped around, she has a ranged attack where she throws a snowball that deals a bit of area damage and slows targets hit, and she has a short range dash that displaces, damages, and slows enemies hit (and is cancelable.)
Mei not being converted into a Tank in OW2 is a crime.
HotS D.Va was actually one of my favorite characters, since you can decide between being a tank or DPS depending on what your team needed
@@soulreaver6546100% definitely, RIP Doom.
They should've move Mei to tank and Sym to support. The dps roster is still disgustingly bloated. after so many tank/supp added
Loved the video! It's great to see someone talk about a hero that the Overwatch community generally disregards and forgets about, unless it's to complain about a Sym buff lol.
But as a Sym main since 2016, I'd like to give my two cents on her design as someone that has far too many hours on her, as it feels like you're talking just from the perspective of someone that hasn't spent much time on the hero.
Sym 2.0 (Shield Generator version) was a non-healing support, this is how every high-elo Sym player saw her kit. Just Stevo on RUclips has a Bronze to Grandmaster Sym only run on his channel from 2017 where he mentions this several times. He's always been Top 500 on the hero (until Overwatch 2, where many Sym content creators have abandoned the hero)
Shield Generator was seriously underrated, permanently increasing your team's collective health pool by 450. This broke many break points, such as Junkrat's one shot combo and Reinhardt's pin on higher healthpool heroes.
Her photon barrier was her way of blocking ultimates, damage, and giving her team space to push through choke points. Blocking a hook that would have otherwise got an ally killed was her way of peeling. They probably would've survived with the extra 75hp from Shield Generator anyway.
You addressed the issue of 2-2-2 meaning only one healer, but Sym's shield generator gave the solo healer breathing space to catch up on the heals. Mercy and Symmetra had great support synergy because of Mercy's consistent healing and her OG 5 man resurrect when her 60hps wasn't enough.
Symmetra was also good in Grandmaster, not just low elo. In Season 5, there was a Sym one trick called "Nut!" who got to Top 10 on the leaderboard playing Symmetra during dive meta, where she would've struggled even more than usual. www.reddit.com/r/SymmetraMains/comments/73v11s/the_time_is_now_a_symmetra_one_trick_sits_in_top/
As for Overwatch 2 Symmetra... 🤡
Sym mains have been begging for another rework that either makes her a better damage hero, or a support. Because this weird inbetween makes her extremely hard to balance (hence the constant buff reverts) but still somehow feeling underwhelming to play. Venture just adds to this feeling. A hero who is also brawly, has a high health pool, high mobility, and high burst damage. It makes me laugh that Symmetra is even in the same role as them. Symmetra's kit has become outdated and really needs an update.
If you got this far, thanks for reading my essay on my favourite video game character :)
Went to make a comment and saw you said basically everything I was to say but worded much better, I miss shield generator a lot
wow, i would've thought the Sym community would've been sick of reworks like i am. didn't know the prevailing sentiment was calling for one again
I just finished watching the Sombra video and swore this video was out first. And poor Sym, I remember back in ye olden days where she had 2 ults with either a permanent teleporter and shield generator with her ability to give temporary shields and the big sigma shield
Sigma only in name. 🗿
I miss shield generator so much you have no idea xD
@@desubysnusnuI find it weird how Junker Queen, Kiriko and Sojourn have voicelines like “They have a shield generator. Get it!” Makes me wonder if they thought about giving it back, or maybe those 3 were planned forever ago before Overwatch 2
@@tonythunder6048 Sojourn & JQ had voicelines in OW1 so i think they already recorded everything in advance.
Kiriko was probably the same but as a surprise character
I miss that one experimental card from OW1 where her turrets healed allies. It was wonky and buggy, but it was pretty fun to play since you could fully dedicate the tp for your team/dps. I often wonder if Illari was once meant to be a reworked support Sym given that Illari also has a turret and a beam based weapon..
oh so she doesnt use her tp for her allies now you say?
@@polar6066Lol
@@polar6066yeah i mean not really, she mostly uses it for herself to take off angles and tp into the enemy backline. you only really use tp for your team if you’re in vc coordinating and even then it’s quite map dependent
That was so fun, along with Mercy’s rework with valk and rez swapping positions
and if they dont take the teleporter now, what would make them take it if symmetra was turned into a healer and got her damage nerfed as well?
lol how does healing solve this.
It still frustrates me so much that Symm 2.0 didnt get a single balance change. Instead the 3.0 rework which was very drasric was shoved on everyone. To this day the overwatch team still has no idea how to balance her.
i wouldnt take a paladins opinion too seriously tbh + you complained every single time even when she was actually good. you didnt even bother asking other symm players how to get better at her back then, you kept going at it at your closed circle hivemind on your streams
@polar6066 none of this changes the fact that Overwatch didn't even attempt to give the second rework a chance?
Like, holy ad hominin attack, Batman!
The first Symmetra weapon is literally just the TF2 short circuit
Funnily enough the current TF2 Short circuit came out after Symmetra.
So because of Symmetra we got an actually useful and fun to use Short Circuit, kinda a shame Valve has decided to just not update further
i really liked sym after their first rework, she was my most played hero at the time. i always viewed her as a dps regardless, especially since she was pretty much the best i could do with a dps. i would always melt back lines and it was so fun.
8:54 “Let us win so we can go to the third map” lol
As a symmetra connoisseur the teleported had 6 uses in symm 1.0 ... it was a wild ride ... I've been her main since 2016 😂
remember when there were voice lines of her possibly having 10 tp charges
that and the one volskaya spot for the sheild gen
Also yes my life is pain... I just love her as a character and her game loop it's like playing 3d chess
@@noxythegreat yes the good old days of silly fun 🤣
These design breakdowns are super interesting and entertaining, great job dude!
Please make more!! ❤
I remember in 2016 OW1 symmetra would often be a popular pick if you have a zen or tracer on your team as symmetras 25 shields was what those characters needed to not get 1shot by a sniper
7:55 nah I was acc enjoying the vid but seeing how slow that elevator went up acc knocked me out 😭💀💀 I don't remember it being that slow bruh
You’re killing it with these vids. Incredibly charming quality that discusses topics in ways that don’t feel like they go in circles.
After the wall hack change to syms turrets, I want a ward based builder hero for support. Take the wall hacks off sym, make a new hero based on the concept.
Same
Yeah, the idea of having a placable support building that can give you intel about flanks and let your teammates know where the enemy is before they peek would be really interesting. Even better if the hero can create their own cover that's just tall enough for most non-tanks to crouch behind, like a longer lasting, mini mei-wall.
i honestly do sincerely miss when symmetra was a utility based hero now that shes more dps (turret doesnt slow tp doesnt last etc) she has lost a lot of her charm. like i have been playing since season one when she had pitiful sheilds and i fell in love with her conjurer design but now that she lost a lot of utility she just feels like a worse reaper / venture
if i was to change id introduce utility again
give her turrets slow
tp lasts forever again
she gains shields and amo against overhealth
while these aren't damage buffs they would immensely help hetr survive and be of use to her team in more ways than just DPS
but honestly as a symm main/player since 2016 i just miss her utility / supportive aspects along with sombra
I semi agree with this, Id like her turret slow back and the throwable shield back. Would make her both more utility based and kinda a mix of all 3 main roles
I miss Symm 2.0's forward travelling Photon Barrier so much, I loved that ability.
lets go dude another banger PixelRory video !! ❤
I literally watched that video yesterday, perfect timing
Imagine my surprise seeing you in my recommended. Great video, well done man.
IDK if this was on purpose but I watched the Sombra video yesterday and thought to myself about sym. Now, seeing your video on sym, it got recommended to me so good job on the algorithm optimization, and I immediately clicked it.
These videos are so interesting!! Would love to see more :)
Give me like.. four hours from now
@@PixelRory looking forward to it!
Please continue the series! It’s amazing, as a overwatch player that has been playing since beta it’s a pleasure to hear the story of the hero and your opinions on a lot of stuff, so it would be really nice to have a series like this making like the the hero and its biggest problem like this “ road hog, the tank dps “ or something like “ doomfist the character that went from dps to tank “ you know? Just throwing out some ideas. Good luck you sure have a good skills at making videos, hoping the best for your channel
I love symmetra as a character (me and her are autistic twins) but she feels so lost as a ow2 dps hero. I’ve personally thought of my own rework (as a ow2 player only) but even still
I don’t think that would fix her place in the roster. She deserves so much more damage,utility and lore (sym cinematic when???) as a dps hero, but finding how to fit that into her kit and make her a character in top500 is hard for sym fans and probably developers
Aye, another small RUclipsr popping off with OW content. Congrats on the views coming in hot. Keep it up man
I subbed at 400 subscribers and that was like 2-3 weeks ago the fact you’ve tripled that in that amount of time is crazy dude you should be proud of the work you’re doing because I genuinely miss ow content like this it’s all just like oh here are the patch notes… or here’s a week of gameplay. Love it dude
I played Sym and Mei since day 1 (joke about my aim). Mei was an off-tank, Sym was a utility DPS (even v1), and my goal with either was to control choke points, sight lines, and movement. The main problem I had was that the "support" label came with expectations I wasn't able to meet until we got the generator, which was so strong that you were required to throw a tire at it before you could commit to a point and could be roughly equal to a Zen ult. The turrets were never about damage - Sym was an anti-flank pick, whose turrets gave vision or added to an ambush on that Genji or Tracer who wanted to get up in your business, and you didnt need to aim to beat their bunny hopping nonsense. Her utility combined with the slows, shields, and teleporter just weren't enough for people to accept that a support could be more than HP, so everyone thought you were throwing. Besides, after that, we got goats with almost 0 flanking, so they pretty much had to turn her into a shield buster or she'd never exist in any game.
they actually bring back her OG teleporter back during April Fool where she now places the exist anywhere on the map and your team can uses it by press F button
17:00 certified blozzard dev moment
I played a lot of Symmetra back in 2016 and 2017. I pretty much just played her and Junkrat, because I was playing on a Surface Pro 3 and they were the ones where I could do something with the awful framerate I had. I had a blast and managed to keep a low-mid silver rating in comp. I still have a lot of nostalgia for her original kit.
OW1 at launch had 4 categories for characters: Tank (mostly shields and hp sponges), Damage (Which was mobility and high burst, low sustained damage), Defense (Pure damage hp sponges but no mobility), and Support (This is where healing, CC, and anyone built to support the team in general went).
There also was no forced meta back then. Often youd have 2-3 tanks, 1-2 damage, 2 support, and then possibly 1 defense or extra support.
So having someone that gives everyone 25hp shield that refills, gave every person on the team a bit of auto healing, meaning you needed dedicated healers less. Add in torb giving armor out like candy, and you have a lot of zoning potential esp since OW1 was "fight at the choke with multiple barriers" gameplay. Speaking of, her alt fire was a godsend because the game was so heavily choke dependent. It made it impossible for defenders to turtle up, since it just passed through and did good damage. And considering tanks at the time didn't have any damage mitigation tools other than barriers, it was really strong. Her primary fire ignored deflect and defense martix, and was REALLY good against super high mobility characters like tracer and genji. The only real downfall was her turrets (one of her main forms of support through the slow CC and damage) was beyond easy to accidentally kill. Either you knew the good spots to place them, or they were dead. The coolest use was creating a 6 turret deathball and running around with it.
I don't think she was ever 'meta' because as new characters were constantly introduced, her strengths started waning. But er style of support is something desperately needed in the current game. A means of supporting the whole team through utility than healing. She was not super strong, but everything in her kit either added survivability to allies, hindered enemies, or straight up countered all tank playstyles. She was a better Sombra before there was a Sombra
That is just not correct
Firstly, it was the Offense class, not Damage. The Damage class was added because they merged Offense and Defense, due to many heroes being good in either situation.
Second, Defense characters were never about being "hp sponges." They were characters based on area denial: Widow and Hanzo locked down their sightlines, Junkrat had traps, Torb had a turret, Bastion *was* a turret, and Mei had walls (and also Blizzard ofc)
Thank you Irish Carl Grimes, very informative
that's a new one
something worth mentioning that you might not have known (coming from a LONG time sym player) is that, on her initial release in the closed beta, she was one of the best characters. her shield passive she had on her e initially gave 75 shield instead of 25, which was insane with genji/tracer. she was initially viable as a support, but too volatile to mantain ig
This is one of the best honest discussions about a characters balance in a way that doesn’t demean either the players of the devs and instead feels more like a retrospective. I would love if you did more videos like these for EVERY overwatch character. I would love to hear you gush about the good moves on the devs part to improve a character.
Fantastic video as usual 🎉
(Ps you should do one on Genji 🙂↕️)
I have mained sym since the beta of the game, I lived for her primary fire, I loved her shield piercing balls, I loved her moving shield coz it made it easy to rush people down, also her teleporter ult had 6 charges
God this brings back some MEMORIES
Ive been playing overwatch since launch, and seeing this footage just reminds me of 6 syms on kings row with turrets all around the bridge.
Also
"FOUND YA TELEPORTER"
This showed up on my homepage randomly and its wild i actually recognized your name from PUGs on the Irish Overwatch discord back in 2019
Great video btw
This video goes so hard dude
As a Sym player since 2016 with her shield gen and tp ult, I pray for the day she returns to those day. That's what made her kit so fun for me, and her character alone brought me to high grandmaster, after her rework with the giant wall shield i just stopped playing her after a year because she became really boring to me. I remember being able to sneak into the enemies backline putting up a tp and then we all rush in with ults to secure the point. I also enjoyed every game with peopke that would complain about me being a "brain dead sym one trick" just to end up having the most kills a potg. Those were the days ❤😊
I also really loved blocking every dva, cassidy, and rien ult. Also I never cared about what maps to play her on, even if they were 2cp or payload it would always work out for me in the end.
u sold so hard at the end, bro touch 😭
Proud to be your thousandth subscriber ❤️
I have been a symmetra main for 7 years, its been fun playing the same character in different fonts every few years
When my friend plays sym he doesnt use turrets, he just dives the backline with tp and it somehow works most of the time
Funny, now with Mirrorwatch, sombra support is a thing people think can work and it's healthier for the game. So the identity crisis don't stop.
Fun fact too, there was a creator's patch one time and there sym's turrets healed instead of doing damage, not a oficial rework, but they tried everything with this character.
I still remember how we used to place her turrets on the basket ball on control maps and carry it around :D
The teleporter ult had 6 charges. You can even see it in the footage at 7:43
I liked playing support sym a lot back in 2016/2017, tp was a satisfying ult and the lock on pissed people off so bad lol
worst part of sym rn is everyone straight up ignoring my well thought out teleport placement and getting rolled
og sym was so cvnty i miss her
this is youtube not tiktok you can say cunty don't worry! I encourage it even
Great overview! I do like the design discussion and would love to see you do more of these. You expressed wanting to be more positive in future videos, and I think maybe the best method would be to seed in positive examples of hero design when you're critiquing the more "mechanically troubled" heroes? It's tricky to discuss in Sym's case because I don’t really feel like OW has any real "utility DPS" success stories, but I think it's interesting to look at how later support heroes were influenced by Sym's failure as a support hero.
I was playing OW from launch, but only really played casually so I missed a lot of the toxicity around "throw Sym" and whatnot. And I was a flex main that really tried to make support Sym happen when I could. I understand the theory behind her 1.0 design: she's a support without healing, so she deploys temp HP and helps mitigate running back from spawn. But her kit was a weird one, with the only real synergy of "make a teleporter nest." I do like her 3.0 rework the best and I like the flavor of her being a "shield master" that recharges ammo when attacking shields and temp HP, but I do really wish we could've seen Sym pushed in a more supportive direction.
I would love to see a series about overwatch designs ❤
yk
the excuse of forgetting symmetra makes complete sense
Back in the beta of Overwatch 1 Sym’s original photon barrier actually gave 50 extra shields instead of the 25 it gave at OW1 launch. This combined with the way Zen’s harmony worked back then (it wouldn’t fall off an ally regardless of LoS or distance) created a hilariously good comp of 2 Tracer, 2 Zen, Sym + any other hero where the Tracers would be running around with 200HP getting permanently healed.
I think the goal of the turret rework was for them to act more like "security cams" that would signal which enemy is where and supposedly allow either you to tp in, an ally to dive or your team to retreat. It's more useful than just knowing where your turrets died because you'd get an information about who specifically broke it and where exactly is this person positioned, where previously it could have been destroyed by a random hitscan that wasn't even there and you'd have no way of knowing this. The problem with this is of course that she randomly loss turret damage and that the effect was not nearly long enough to be as useful as it could be, but I generally think that the overwatch community wrongfully consider wall-hacking effects as useless where in fact they are really useful in a lot of situations. I can't count the number of time I've heard people saying that widow's ult is one of the worst one in the game when it literally gives access to everyone's position on the entire map for 15 sec, denying flank attempts, sightline attempts and immensely buffing your own ability to reliably flank and take sightlines for the entire team.
I remember the good ol days where first point anubis there would be 6 Symmetras with 5 shield generators, IN COMP
Something i struggled with in ow1 was trying to get people to use tp on console. Some people were so oblivious that they never had interact set up to a hotkey, so they were literally unable to use my tps. My success was player dependent, i needed somewhat knowledgeable players who could actually use the off angle or could best case scenario, surprise nuke with it.
Reminiscing about auto lock beam, it was so fun to ambush mercys. If i remember correctly, sym and mercy's beams were about the same range, and if mercy was attached to someone, it was easy feed for the beam rampup, and id turn into a bloodthirsty demon. It was also super fun to use the slow, piercing orb in small, tight rooms and/or around corners. There was just interesting strategies and positioning that was unique to sym. With the new and current beam, sym is more focused on being a shield burner/ tank targeter. Its a lot harder to ramp up the beam on small, mobile targets, and sym does not have the durability to 1v1 dps without some sort of ambush or position advantage.
I know this is kind of long, and having dropped ow ever since i got lifeweaver, its nice to talk about syms history again. She was one of my top played heroes, i loved her design and creative playstyle. I wish she wasnt so situational, but its hard to keep her unique and also well-rounded. Shes not a typical ranged shooter, and thats the main focus of ow
The amount of TPs available was 6, since that would be yhe entire team, and less then a minute after you said that they wouldnt use the shield ability, the symettra on screen uses a shield on a teamate.
Great video. Symmetra absolutely needs a rework from the ground up. It’s obvious that don’t know what to do with her current kit, and frankly, I think she’ll always be stuck with either being too weak or too oppressive if they continue trying to make it work. She’s an OG hero. The devs need to show her love
Great video boss. Just chipping in, Sym Teleporter had 6 uses on release if my memory is correct!
You actually missed it, but they gave her another nerf in September 2023 actually. Sometime late in OW1's lifespan they buffed her and Zen to have 225 HP to make her better at brawl. When they buffed her secondary for 10 damage in July, they decided he's "too good at range now" so they nerfed her health back to 200 HP
YT algorithm be serving me your content, keep it coming 😋
o7 will do
Playing support Sym back in launch feels like a fever dream. Setting up the car wash was so much fun
Damn this is old footage i played when sym was support and had the same kit in the intro but one difference is the art effect of putting shields on allies the bubble effect.
Keep in mind additional context. When OW1 released, the split was Tank/Offense/Defense/Support, no role restrictions, no passives (Mercy had what is now the support passive), *and* you could have any number of the same hero on your team.
So, "support" didn't have any weight to it beyond the hero select screen and a general identity of "help teammates with utility and be squishy."
1 hero limit was implemented pretty soon, role queue came some time later.
It was always clear Sym expanded the idea of what Support could be, but neither she nor the game was initially designed for these systemic changes, where now if you picked Sym the burden of healing was going to a single Zen or something.
They had to pivot and adapt her to what became the merged Offense/Defense role known as Damage, INSTEAD of reworking her into a healer, because a) she was designed specifically to provide non-healing utility and b) her identity & achievements were tied to the turrets + her unique weapon.
I've played every Sym, and i've had a fun time as all of them too. The thing is every change to her feels like they've moved her further from Order to Chaos. Exploding projectiles? Shield stripping? Where's my girl!?
But I do have some hot(?) takes/ideas:
1) New Passive 'Order From Chaos':
Shields Symmetra grants convert into healing at a rate of 5 : 20 per second.
This passive would've worked well with her original E as a quick health burst combined with a decent heal over time (at +25 over-shields initial burst it'd become 100 raw health over 5 seconds if the target takes no additional damage), since the decay means it's no-longer a one-and-done buff, but could still be used as a new core element of her kit if we;
2) Change Secondary Fire to a single-target shield-application:
There's plenty of options, but to keep work down and uniqueness up this could honestly just be removing the splash from the current orbs and having them able to hit allies to apply shields. Kind of like a slower, burstier, chunkier Ana primary. A damage/+shield of 25, with a cap of 50 sym-shields added, I honestly don't think would be as OP as it sounds since any additional healing is directly dependent on the shields not being stripped away. They could even revert to going through barriers to differentiate them even more, maybe losing 5 points as it does so if it's deemed too strong. But if we want to make the most of her passive we can also;
3) Bring the Shield Generator back as a Teleporter Altv.
You already have to click-to-place the teleporter it so it's not like bringing back the left/right option would make it more cumbersome, and throwing out a medium-AOE shield-supplier to provide a little sustain in a brawl would be a great support ability even without the above passive.
WITH the passive, though, it becomes a fantastic downtime defensive utility, bringing your team back up to full+over health ready for the next fight (so long as you time it right). It definitely needs to share the limited duration with the teleporter - it's mad they ever made it unlimited. Speaking of -
3.5) Teleporter Placement distance should increase while you're moving forward:
You know how you come out of spawn and try to place a TP but everyone runs past it? Including yourself if you keep moving forward? The TP placement distance should scale based on your current forward speed, so that even if you have Lucio and Queen pushing you forward the majority of the team be able to hop into the TP straight away. Maybe this can be limited to out-of-combat to keep it usable in high-stakes environments (I'm not fully sold on this one if just for the consistency reason)
Now Obviously this whole kit is built on taking her back to support (where I think she rightly belongs by lore alone), but it also makes her sort of offtank-like. Which, y'know what?
4) Fuck it. New role.
Utility
Take some of the old defense heroes and maybe even some of the support and weaker tank characters and stick them in a new role which is effectively built for off-tanks.
I don't have specifics, but Sym, Torb, Sombra, Brig, Mei, maybe Zarya, Bastion, and even Doomfist could all transition to this role with some tweaks. Maybe we bring back 6v6 with +1 Utility hero, or we allow 1 player of any role to swap into utility (with a buff to their or their allies stats and abilities if they were queued as Tank)
It's super dumb, but i'd love to explore the idea.
Hey, thats me 😂. Never thought my old ass upload would be used in History vids in the future,
A video on this series on Brig might be really interesting.
i honestly love the turret change because now my team can know who killed my turret and where they are coming from instead of just me knowing that someone is coming and having to remember where i placed all my turrets to determine where idk who is coming from.
I was an og sym main and i often miss her old kits. Shield gen sym was just so much fun
i hope a more shield oriented hero does come around in the future though, can allow blizz to utilize those shield gen voicelines (cuz im pretty sure they are gonna anyways cuz they recorded the voicelines for newer heroes)
also i tihnk a total shield basied support would really switch things up, though since brig lost the ability to give armor i highly doubt they'll do it, probabl yjust the shield gen cuz it's still a pretty good idea for a passive ult, though i do wish they would add in more high value passive ults but it seems blizz prefers the more active kind which is fair since it's a shooter not a prop hunt kinda game.
Sym's Shield Generator was fun in no limits because it stacked.
So on some maps you could do some goofy stuff with it since you could get up to 450 shields on top of your health pool.
You could basically run a team of 6 Symmetras that had more hp than Roadhog, and it was so funny.
Persona and Overwatch? You've earned my sub
I used to be a sym main for her first(?) rework back in ogwatch, and I had the fondest memories playing her. I did feel smart for having cleverly placed turrets or timing the photon shield just right. Completely forgot the old “shield generator” lines lol.
I think I will always prefer her second rework the most but it’s mostly just out of nostalgia. Overwatch was my first fps and Sym holds a special place in my heart even though I don’t main her anymore lmao.
I would absolutely love you to go through the tanks at some point. Though that might be more drama than it's worth, they have some of the most interesting and complex design simply because no one agrees on what a "tank" should be in ow.
Another Banger. Another Banger by PixelRory from Butterfly Busters.
I think, healing passive for all heroes, added not so long ago means we do get at some point "shield only" support in near future. Especially, when we are getting heroes every second season, so...
I think you missed some other elements on why Sym is in such a bad spot right now and what was the reason they changed her.
- The change in July also increased the damage to her primary fire from 90 to 100. This shifted was intended to shift her power away from turrets and more to her other abilities. This made he have the ability to "two tap". A similar thing happened to Torb as well.
- A few patches later she had her heath reduced by 25 back to 200 like other heroes since she was more "range focused".
- Then we had the major health and sustain rework... Now everyone has 250 HP or more and Sym not only can no longer "two tap" her time to kill with her orbs are lower than ever. Also her sustain ability (HP Regen in shields) is on everyone so you can't have an attrition advantage anymore.
The support/DPS hybrid nich is fine imo and I say that as a hard Sym main. She was actually decent before the July changes.
yeah that sucked so much. they justified changes then took out the reasoning behind it like nothing
Can you talk about genji and how his mechanics and all have changed the character from the hardest hero to just another another flanker?
i kinda miss her old primary because you could stick turrets on a basketball and carry it around. It was awesome
Sym has always been such a fun dps to me and my primary main along with Torb. I’m not a super high level player but I feel a bit above average. Sometimes I think she is just more misunderstood than she is actually bad. I just think she takes a long time to get good with then you can see her skill ceiling.
The funniest strat with og Sym was to attach your sentries to a basket ball in the spawn room, then take it out to attack enemies because the primary fire could levitate objects. She really was ballin’
I mained Sym after the DPS permatele rework, all the way in until OW2. That was the most fun I'd had with her, probably because 2CP was still a thing and she was great on defense AND attack on every 2CP map.
In OW2, it's tough to apply the same frontline pressure she used to, with only one tank. I do appreciate the faster tele build time, though. Thats a deceptively huge buff and sorta turns her into a mobility hero.
great video Rory
Sym wasn't totally useless at higher ELOs. Stevo managed to stay Top 500 with Sym 2.0 consistently for years
thinking about it illari's healing pylon isn't far off the shield generator wonder if they got the idea from old balancing ideas for it
Actually syms chaotic past might be in multiple characters, old primary fire to moira, the projected shield to sigma, and the pylon/gen
I am almost sure the old teleport could only be used 6 times, I remember having to get my ultimate up several times (4?) in order to get the cute spray or the other one, back in the day, since you had to teleport 15 players (and you could just teleport yourself back and forth until done then grind for the ultimate again).
I would love to test to see if V1 and V2 Sym holds up against V3, because nothing about the current version is fun for me. Also, I think you forgot to mention that her primary fire was taken away and given to Moira, and her shields were taken away and give to sigma and Bridgette(and then the passive shield was taken away again). All the best aspects were taken for her and redistributed to her more marketable, white OW2 heroes. Interesting!
It's interesting that you say this because the only one of these that is even close to true is Sigma shield. Symmetra with the lock on and moira existed at the same time and to note, moira's is not nearly as forgiving with the lock on as symmetra's was in exchange for more range. and Brigitte giving shields to others was actually taken from old torbjorn who used to put armor on the ground and then ended up being able to give it to allies straight up, it's even easier to see that it was taken from torb because of the difference between armor and shields. I can understand not liking these three champions because of how Blizzard chose to market them, but the reason why symmetra is so less marketable is because of her lack of identity, she doesn't do anything particularly well and doesn't stand out compared to other OW2 dps champs.
@@abramiverson1370 I do find it interesting that the ow2 developers made unprecedented changes like removing all the fun utility mechanics like armor and shields and even the teleport/turret capabilities for all characters seemingly to appease the professional overwatch league demands, even the 5v5 was considered to be a balance necessity. It is disappointing to see Moira as a necessity in every game and with symmetra's powers. I don't understand why they needed to downgrade everything about sym and just leave her there
I missed when her tp back when it was permanent. It had skill and had more depth. Lots of players did just leave it at spawn if they felt like tying their shoelaces together, but when you have the permanent angles your team can take as well as all the other things you could still do, it made me feel like a genius 🤓
I've been lucky enough to play all 3 main versions of Sym, and in OW2 I started maining her along side Sombra cause ... I wanna be a one-trick but I gotta have a back-up main.
I don't know exactly what it is, maybe it's her damage total, maybe it's the number of turrets, or maybe the april fools event was onto something with the TP-ANYWHERE thing, but I feel like they're 1 rework away from Symmetra being literally perfect and viable in every situation/ map
sym passive works on more than ten. works on lucio sound barrier, and on any character that gets granted sheild by others. it comes up more often than you might think honestly.