Symmetra players no longer have to settle for throwing up a teleporter when it will do little to help your team.
Publisher Blizzard Entertainment announced is updating the support hero Symmetra in its team-based shooter Overwatch. The biggest change is that the character, who specializes in providing shields and a teleport to help fallen heroes get back into the fight, now has two ultimate moves to choose from. Players can now choose between using her existing teleporter or a new shield generator depending on what they need for the situation they find themselves in. The alternative ultimate provides your entire team with powerful shields until the opposing squad destroys it. Blizzard plans to launch this Symmetra update on its test servers “very soon” now that it has officially launched the Arcade mode and Sombra character it was previously experimenting with.
“Players enjoyed Symmetra, but usually they would play her in a situation where they were on defense on the first point,” Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan said. “She seems very useful when you use her on the first point, get the teleporter up undetected, and get your team back to the fight really quickly. But what we found is that if a team failed on that first point, a lot of players would switch off of her.”
And most Overwatch players have witnessed this. The first point is often a long walk for the team playing defense, and that makes the teleporter a crucial option. But it is nearly useless when a hero can die and get back into the fight in less than 15 seconds. This means you almost never saw Symmetra on either team deep into a close fight. But the shield generator should mean that Symmetra is much more helpful throughout each stage of a battle.
Now with Symmetra, when you press the ultimate button to bring up the buildable object to generate the teleporter, you can hit the ultimate button again to toggle over to the shield projector instead. Just like with the teleporter, you’ll want to hide it somewhere away from the enemy team because it ignores line of sight.
Another big shift for Symmetra is that she no longer has a shield skill. Previously, you could run around giving a weak shield to each player, but Kaplan notes that his team felt that ended up feeling like a chore. So Blizzard is replacing it with the photo barrier. This is more like Winston’s dome, except it moves forward on a set trajectory and can protect everyone behind it while still enabling them to shoot through it.
Other changes include more health and a regenerating shield for the teleporter. Symmetra can also now store up to six teleporters in her pocket instead of just three.