NEWS
Jeff Kaplan's latest Overwatch developer
update announces major changes to Symmetra to make her a more viable pick—she
was viewed as far too situational: as soon as you lost the first point, and the
teleporter was destroyed, you might as well switch off. Hopefully, not anymore.
Overwatch is a team-based multiplayer
first-person shooter video game developed and published by Blizzard
Entertainment. It was released in May 2016 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation
4, and Xbox One.
Symmetra will have two ults available.
Besides the teleporter, Symmetra's secondary ult will be a shield generator.
She'll surreptitiously place the generator and all players withing range will
be granted a powerful shield (and it ignores line of sight).
The teleporter will have more health, and
some portion of that health will be shield health—so it will regenerate.
The shields are being taken out of the
game, and are being replaced with Photon Barrier. It's a barrier that's
"projected on a track of movement... it moves along a trajectory."
Turrets will see some minor tweaks: you'll
be able to instantly place all 6 of her turrets, instead of waiting for a
cooldown to place the remaining 3. And the cooldown is being reduced from 12
seconds to 10.
Symmetra's primary attack is also getting a
slight adjustment, a range increase. It's not too much, just enough to make it
feel better.
All of the changes will be available on the
PTR soon.
Kaplan also announced that the new map
Oasis, mentioned at BlizzCon, will be on the PTR "very soon," after
Symmetra's release. Oasis is scheduled to go live sometime early in 2017.
One more thing: in a future PTR iteration
players will find a new button at the end of a match that will let them stay
with a team they've just played with. That's a much needed option. I've played
some great games, but then I lose my teammates forever, and I'm stuck waiting for
the right combination of players.