OverwatchOverwatch Symmetra Guide and Overview

Using her tech to harness the power of hard-light, Symmetra creates Photon beams, orbs, Barriers, and Teleporters. Although she has some notable weaknesses, her unique abilities to instantly reposition herself and her entire team will forever keep her as a viable hero pick.

Sym generally plays up front with her Tank, where she can get the most use out of her high damage beam. Even at longer ranges, her orbs deal a good amount of damage, so even though they are slow, watching them fly at you applies a lot of pressure. On any map where there is only one direction for the enemy team to approach you, Sentry Turrets are one of the best abilities to make sure the enemy never makes it through alive. 

TLDR

Playing As

• Against Tanks with barriers, focus their shield with your primary fire to ramp up damage and restore your ammo. Once the barrier is down, walk in and melt everyone.
• Place Turrets behind you to watch your Flank. They’ll autofire and thwart those trying to sneak up on you.
• Teleporter can be used to get your entire team past an enemy stronghold at choke points. Try to get your team to high ground or natural cover behind the enemy.

Playing Against

• Shoot the turrets. Don’t be the teammate who walks forward, gets blasted by the turrets, and ignores them. On corners, you can quickly peek and fire before they target you.
• Watch for TP. Her team might end up behind you and wipe your backline. Sym may also use TP to dive an isolated target, so always watch to see if her hands are up in the deploy animation. 
• Stay out of her effective range. Primary fire and turrets both have very limited ranges, so most heroes have the advantage against Sym at medium to long range.

Strengths

Repositioning

As the only hero with a Teleporter, Sym enables her entire team to reposition to places that would be impossible without her. Once deployed, the teleportation is instant and can be used both ways. From casual play to pro OWCS, we see game-winning plays made possible by sneaky Teleporter placement.

Area control

Sentry Turrets excel at area control because three can be deployed at a time and they inflict a slow debuff on their target. Whether she’s using Turrets to hold a choke, defend the objective area, or patrol her flank, once Sym has set up, it’s difficult to take that space back from her.

High DPS

Between a level 3 beam and 3 turrets, Sym can deal a whopping 270 damage per second! Even her orb deals 100 burst damage. When she’s able to keep holding primary fire, Sym destroys her targets.

Weaknesses

Limited range

Although Sym’s right-click has infinite range, she's much more effective within range for her beam. She's not very mobile or tanky, so getting into beam range poses a lot of danger to herself. Typically, she'll have to deal with enemy tanks first, and most of them can run her over.

Weak to poke and dive

Sym tends to fit best when both comps are running brawl or rush comps. She struggles to keep up with her own team’s mobility if they are running dive heroes. When the enemy runs dive, they have an easier time playing around her turrets and can easily collapse on Sym. Her TP makes her easy to chase for high mobility heroes as she can only go to one of two places. Additionally, poke heroes counter Sym by staying out of her range and outputting more consistent damage.

Difficult to coordinate with the team

When playing Sym, you may come up with an awesome TP strategy, but actually getting your team to coordinate positioning and timing with you ends up being quite the challenge. Your Tank may not protect you while setting up TP, some allies get left behind, and more often than not, your team has no idea what to do or where to go after taking the TP.

Primary Fire: Photon Projector

Tips for Photon Projector

• Maintain high level
• • At level three, your beam deals triple its base damage. Try to keep the level up by continuously dealing damage. Even deployables build and maintain charge, so if the enemies are out of range, you can shoot turrets, barriers, and other deployables to keep your level up.
• Barrier Tanks
• • Against enemies with barriers, use their shield to manage your ammo. Damaging a barrier with beam consumes no ammo and instead restores your supply.
  • Begin by focusing the barrier to ramp up your level, then switch to attacking the hero. You can always switch back to the barrier if your ammo gets low.
• Sym’s gun has a level indicator
• • Most players never notice this, but on Symmetra’s gun, there is a level indicator on the back. Level 1 will display a single red circle, and level three will display three red circles.

Secondary Fire: Photon Projector (charged orb)

Tips for Photon Projector (charged orb)

• Poke
• • Although the travel speed is very low, the large projectile is fairly easy to get direct hits with across longer ranges. Whenever you are outside of your primary fire range, you should be spamming fully charged orbs.
• Jiggle peek
• • Because it takes a full second to max charge an orb, you should always be behind barriers or cover when charging. Standing in the open while charging just lets the enemy attack you for free.
  • Only peek the moment before firing.
• Duel
• • When you get into 1v1 duels, orbs are really good because you can play the corners, charge up, and peek to fire. By doing so, you’ll be dealing more damage in most matchups thanks to the 100 burst damage of each orb.
  • This technique is even more effective when using Shield Battery Major Perk since you’ll also be healing while charging. 
  • Against snipers, you can corner peek and crouch spam to dodge headshots.

[SHIFT]: Sentry Turret

Tips for Sentry Turret

• On defense
• • Whenever your team is already holding the objective, you should set up turrets above the main choke point so the enemy has to deal with them whenever they try to approach the objective.
  • On maps with more side paths, save a Turret to place behind you and watch your flank. The enemy won’t be able to attack you from that doorway or angle without you knowing.
• On attack
• • When approaching the enemy, you can deploy turrets above and behind the enemy team. That way if they start retreating from you’re primary fire, they’ll walk into your turrets' damage and slow debuff.
  • Target the enemy backline. You may need to find an off angle to do so but it's worth the extra time. Supports generally can’t destroy turrets as fast, and any time they take to do so means they aren’t healing their team.
• Turret bomb
• • Any turrets you place on the ground will be teleported if you place the TP on top of them.
  • Try placing all your turrets on the ground, then deploying the TP just behind the enemy to instantly attack them with all your turrets.

[E]: Teleporter

Tips for Teleporter

• Flanks and dives
• • You can use TP just for yourself to get around the team and go for backline assassinations. Then you can always TP away if their counterattack gets too intense.
• Reposition teammates
• • Particularly useful with low mobility allies, TP to get your team around is the most powerful use of the ability.
  • On the occasions where the enemy team is full holding you at the choke point, one TP can get your team past them and switch roles as you guys effectively become the new defenders.
• 1v1s
• • Anytime you get into a 1v1 duel, you should deploy a TP as soon as possible. TP to dodge their attacks, and mix up their aim. Even just standing near the TP is a mental mixup because they’ll be expecting you to TP, but be unsure of when. 
  • Mix up your timing by TPing quickly back and forth, or staying on one end longer than the other.

Ultimate: Photon Barrier

Tips for Photon Barrier

• Divide the battlefield
• • 99% of the time, you’ll want to split the objective in half, whether that be front to back or left to right, is up to you to divide in the moment.
  • This lets your whole team shield dance the enemy team, and ensures your Barrier is where the fight is happening.
• Can the enemy run away?
• • Before placing your Barrier, ask yourself if the enemy can move out of your LoS. If they can back up, and still contest the objective, or have enough time to wait your ult out, then you’ll have wasted your ult.
• Counter ult
• • Some ultimates, like Tac Visor, can be easily blocked on reaction to hearing the activation voice line. Saving your team from an enemy ult is a great use of Photon Barrier.

Minor Perks

Sentry Capacity

• Patrol and extra flank angle
• • Sentry Capacity is useful to select when the enemy has been flanking you and giving you trouble. You can place one turret on both sides of you, and still have two more to use as you normally would to attack the enemies in front of you.
• More choke pressure
• • Make a semi-circle around the main choke and watch the enemy team get blasted from every angle. Although they can still destroy them, it takes more time and they’ll have suffered more damage in the process. 

Advanced Teleportation

• Best Minor Perk
• Why you want the extra TP distance
• • Sym doesn’t have to get so close to her desired TP location, which means her deploy positioning is safer.
  • When bypassing choke points, you can get your team farther behind the enemy, which often results in a more advantageous position.
• Better escapes
• • When using TP to disengage, you create even more distance between you and your attackers which gives you a higher chance of surviving. 
• Dive deep into the backline
• • When the enemy team has a Sniper sitting way in the back who isn’t dying, TP all the way back to them and take them out.

Major Perks

Perfect Alignment

• Max range
• • At level 3 your beam will gain 3.6 extra meters of range for a total of 15.6 meters.
• Counter brawl and rush
• • Against close range and melee enemies, Perfect Alignment will help you outrange them and be able to attack while taking less damage.
  • Paired with a speed boost like Lucio or Juno’s Hyper Ring, Perfect Alignment is even stronger because you can get in close to level up your beam, then back up with the extra range.

Shield Battery

• Best for duels and flanks
• • If you find yourself spending more time flanking and 1v1ing the enemy than you do on the frontline, then Shield Battery is the better Major Perk for you.
  • Receiving constant self-healing comes in clutch to win more duels and flank more aggressively. 
  • The tether visually indicates you’re in range and receiving healing. 
  • Refer to “Tips for Teleporter”  for a breakdown of offensive strategies to employ with TP.

The best maps to play Sym on either have enclosed objective areas or funnel both teams into one main choke point. On maps with either of these qualities, Sentry Turrets put in crazy work. The enemy has no other pathing or position options but to walk in and deal with your turrets. Because of her limited primary fire range, Sym also does better on maps with shorter sight lines and worse on maps with long sight lines. The more open an area is, the more space the enemy team has to play outside of her range and away from her turrets. 

Best Maps

• Hollywood
• Ilios Lighthouse
• Lijiang Tower

Worst Maps

• Colosseo
• Circuit Royal
• New Queen Street

Coming Soon!

Coming Soon!