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NEWS

SYMMETRA IS GETTING TWO ULTS & QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS IN OVERWATCH SOON

11/23/16

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.