Symetra’s Long Awaited Rework Finally Hits PTR, But She’s Not Blizzard’s Biggest Reveal This Week

 

Late last night (22/11/16), Symetra’s rework has finally been uploaded to the PTR, shortly after an announcement was made by Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan on YouTube. Within the 12 minute long video, Kaplan has discussed how Symetra’s previous build was limited to very specific circumstances, and that she either completely disappeared from the game, or was not as effective as soon as such changed.

 

Symetra’s upcoming redesign, which is currently playable on PC Play Test Realm, is  in place to ensure that she’s no longer a one point character, and that she, as well as her abilities, can have a sizeable impact on the game as it progresses.  And to ensure that such is the case, a number of changes has been made to her skillset:

 

1. Symetra’s turret cooldown has been reduced from 12 to 10 seconds, to ensure that she can easily replace any damaged turrets.

 

2. Her starting number of turrets was changed from 3 to the optimal 6, as limiting Symetra to only 3 turrets at the beginning of the match, only allowed her to safely secure one location with 3 turrets, however now, she can easily trap two entry points within the preparation phase.

 

3. Her photon shields have been replaced with a destructible photon barrier, which moves forwards at Symetra’s walking speed once deployed. It can be either destroyed by the enemy team, or upon impact with a wall, or other large object.

 

4. Symetra’s most significant redesign applies to her ultimate ability, as now she’ll be able to choose from two different ultimates. First ultimate is the portal, which still has the same amount of charges, however, its life is now composed fully of regenerating shields, which means it can repair itself from any sustained damage. Second ultimate, which is the brand new addition to Symetra’s skill set, is photon shields generator. Shield generator can be placed just like the portal, however, it automatically applies 75 points of photon shields, to any teammate who is in range. And this means, that Symetra with Trobjorn can now up every teammate’s health by 150 points, which is huge, especially for characters such as Tracer.

 

 

Symetra’s redesign is huge news, as she may now finally become a viable hero. However, her reveal is not the biggest thing to come out of Blizzard, as hours prior to Symetra’s reveal it has been discovered that Blizzard is looking for new employees to join their team, in order to work on a brand new, unannounced FPS title.

Most people would say that it is too early to speculate on what the title in question is going to be, but with Overwatch‘s astronomic rise in popularity, and the recent cancellation of the Overwatch origin story comic, we can safely assume that the FPS in question is simply a narrative driven single-player/co-op Overwatch title which is going to tell the story Blizzard has initially planted within the now cancelled, and  unreleased comic.