Overwatch To Give Symmetra Two Ultimates
By Jasmine Henry 23 November 2016
Overwatch is giving Symmetra two ultimate abilities. Keeping her standard teleporter, the support character will also be able to generate individual shields over a large radius.
Blizzard’s hugely popular first-person shooter, Overwatch, has received plenty of changes in the last few weeks. In addition to a new update that introduced an highly anticipated newcomer Sombra, to an update that buffed rocket-powered character Pharah, there have been more than a handful of changes for players to get to grips with. These aren’t the only updates and changes that Blizzard has up its sleeves though, as the developer has now revealed the drastic changes it’s set to make to support character, Symmetra.
After promising significant Symmetra changes, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has confirmed that the changes are set to go live on the PTR soon in the latest developer update video. The biggest of these changes is that Symmetra players will be able to choose between two ultimate abilities. The first character in the game to get the choice of two ‘ults,’ once her ultimate is charged to 100%, Symmetra will be able to set up her teleporters (which also have more health with the update) or generate individual shields for the entire team (the generated shields have a large radius and ignores line of sight).
With the new ultimate comes a change to Symmetra’s standard shield ability. Called Photon Barrier, Kaplan says that the ability is “projected on a track of movement” and is designed to be more active than its previous iteration. It has also been compared to Winston and Reinhardt’s shield abilities.
Moreover, there are changes to Symmetra’s turrets with six turrets able to be placed on a cooldown cycle (previously it was three before the cooldown) and the beam from her primary fire has a slightly extended range. But despite this increased range, Kaplan ensures that “she’s not a long range beam sniper now.”
While this update is unlikely to discourage any would-be Symmetra trolls, it could still make a significant impact on not just how the character is played but also how many people play her. As Kaplan notes, people often play Symmetra in specific situations (such as on defense, on the King’s Row map). Certainly, with her more active shield, this gives players more of a reason to play her throughout the match.
In terms of what else Blizzard is working on for the game, the same Symmetra update will also introduced the new Oasis map, which was announced at Blizzcon. The company also recently confirmed that ‘Play of the Game 2.0’ is in the works, though it’s currently unclear when the updated feature will be made available to Overwatch players.
Overwatch is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
