Overwatch: Symmetra’s redesign coming, she’ll have two ultimates

In it, Kaplan lays out the design decisions behind the overhaul of Symmetra, one of Overwatch‘s support heroes.

He detailed the adjustments and improvements that are now being tested, along with an overview of her brand new Ultimate ability. Finally, we’re going to see some Symmetra in competitive play. The goal is to have her be a “less situational” character and one who sees “a lot more use” instead. Also, the cooldown of her turrets has decreased to ten from the previous twelve seconds cooldown.

The changes to Symettra are now available in the Public Test Server on PC.

Firstly, Symmetra V2 will have the option to toggle between two “Overwatch” ultimates.

Leaving the range of the generator will cause you to lose your shield after a short delay, somewhere between six and eight seconds from what we could tell. Her new ultimate will be a shield generator, a built object just like the teleporter, and something she can hide throughout the map. It’s been two months since Blizzard said they were looking into it, and now they’re ready to reveal the changes. Symmetra’s Photon Barrier will be an elliptical projectile and will move along a certain trajectory, allowing it to be deployed in either a defensive or offensive manner. So this is beneficial for the team if they are out of reach and is strong enough to use to protect her “nest”. With everything from a new ability to a second, yeah second!, ultimate. That being putting up a few turrets and building a teleporter to better help defend a capture point. They’ve also increased the range of her primary attack (from 5m to 7m), and buffed her turrets (shorter cooldown, more can be carried at a time). It’s coming at a very interesting time and could potentially mix up the Overwatch scene for 2017. More than that, these changes may be exactly what she needed. An update on her existing abilities is also underway.

One of the other updates hitting the PTR soon is the new control map, Oasis, that was first unveiled at BlizzCon.

The last planned feature mentioned in the video may not make it into this exact PTR patch, but it sounds terrific. Make more friends with the “Stay With Group” feature coming soon.