Torbjörn has seen a major refit in the live PTR, changes to his armor pick up and hammer are currently in testing. What changes will Blizzard make to Symmetra to make her viable?
Torbjörn
There are some picks in Overwatch that cause instant anger from your teammates. If you want the chat to explode all you have to do is pick Torbjörn.
This Swedish dwarf (not actually) has an interesting arsenal that is best utilized on defence. He is one of the few characters that boasts 2 weapons, the rivet gun and the forge hammer. However, even so he is not very effective on the battlefield as of now. A very niche pick that often gets ridiculed, with good reason.
Blizzard knows that the weapons maker isn’t a very effective hero. In the current PTR they are testing changes to Torbjörn that will make the hero less of troll pick, as Jeff Kaplan said. So what are these changes?
- Scrap gets generated automatically over time
- The amount of scrap generated by a fallen enemy drops by 40%
- Forge Hammer swing speed increased by 25%
- Forge Hammer damage decreased by 27%
These are some major changes; an entire ability has been altered to completely change the way the hero is played. These changes will help the hero support his team where he belongs, from the backline. Anyone who has played Torbjörn knows that he is best played away from the front lines, helping to shore up any holes in your teams defence. But you are also responsible for helping give your team armour so that they can survive more.
The changes to the scrap generation will help counterbalance the fact that you automatically get scrap. The Forge Hammer changes effectively cancel each other out and make repairing your turret a bit easier.
Symmetra
Before this patch we were looking forward to getting a glimpse at the overhaul to Symmetra that Blizzard has hinted at; sadly we see nothing on the PTR. But Geoff Goodman (Principal Designer) put our minds to ease with a statement. He stated in the original PTR announcement that her changes ended up being more significant than they had foreseen. But they are testing her and state that she is feeling great internally and that her changes will become public sooner rather than later.
However, that does not mean we cannot speculate about what the changes will be. What the changes should be. We at GosuGamers have some suggestion for Blizzard:
The biggest strength of Symmetra is her teleporter which instantly transports people to the front lines (or wherever she puts it). The issue is that as soon as a team is pushing up she becomes unviable. So the key here is to make her slightly more viable 'on the run' and her turrets do more damage along the way.
First off they need to switch her out of the Support category. She is the only Support who cannot heal, and Blizzard isn’t going to be changing that anytime soon. Or so says Kaplan. And we shouldn’t mess with her first point viability, which is incredible; she has a stunning first point win rate. So we need to keep her shields, and the way her turrets currently work.
But we could change how quickly her turrets activate so that she can set up at other points quicker and be more effective. Or she could have two different types of turrets: one would activate quickly and do less damage. The other would take a few seconds to set up but do more damage. This would keep her effective at falling back a lot, and taking longer to set up but would help her in more chaotic moments. An interesting mechanic would be if turrets did more damage the further away they were placed from each other. This would introduce some strategy to her placement, but make her less effective in chaotic moments.
But if she is to stay in the Support category then she needs to dp more for her team. That shield simply isn’t useful enough for her to focus on giving her teammates shields. If you go with Symmetra then you need to understand that your team will usually only have one actual healer, which can be a struggle. So something needs to happen to her shields, whether applying them becomes easier, or they do more.
What do you think they should do for Symmetra?
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