Overwatch Tips: How to Play Symmetra

Symmetra in Overwatch

At first glance, Symmetra’s abilities might seem a little underwhelming. But if you familiarize yourself with her skill set and play her right, you’ll find that she can be a very valuable support asset to your team. Symmetra is equipped with a Photon Projector that can fire either a beam or an orb. The trick to using the Projector beam is holding down the fire button while attacking. Much like Mercy’s Caduceus Staff, the Projector beam will automatically latch on to any enemy within your range, and then drain the HP. The longer the beam stays connected, the more damage you’ll deal over time. Of course, you’ll have to reload the Projector, but if you’re quick enough, you can keep the damage up.

The Projector orbs, on the other hand, can be charged up before releasing. You can also release the orbs before they’re fully charged. Unlike the beam, the orbs have to be manually aimed. However, the orbs have a piercing effect, meaning they can pass through shields and damage your foes.

Symmetra also has Sentry Turrets, and she can deploy up to six of them at a time. Deploying a new one will deactivate the oldest turret you have. However, these Turrets only have 1 HP each, so they can be easily destroyed by enemies. You’ll want to set these up in areas and corners where the enemy won’t think to look. I advise spacing them out in an area so that they won’t all be destroyed by splash damage. These Turrets also have the ability to slow down the enemy’s movement speed, which is great if you’re trying to keep them away from a control point.

If you want to give your teammates additional support, Symmetra can also deploy Photon Shields for each of her allies. These will give allies an additional 25 HP each, and the shields will persist until your allies die. This means that even if Symmetra falls, the Photon Shields will still be active as long as your allies are still up. Also, the Shields have very high regen speed, so make sure all of your allies are covered with Photon Shields at all times.

Symmetra’s ultimate ability allows her to set up a Teleporter in the spawn room. This is a great ability that lets your teammates instantly warp from the spawn room to wherever you choose to place the Teleporter, meaning they can get back to the fight a lot quicker. The Teleporter will despawn after six allies have passed through, or if the enemy team shoots it down. As such, don’t place the Teleporter right in the middle of battle. Place it a little ways away from the firefight where the enemies won’t think to go, and your allies will have a chance to catch them off-guard.

Abilities

Photon Projector

The Projector can either fire off a beam or orbs to damage your enemies. The orbs are a good source of damage because of their piercing ability.

Sentry Turret

These Turrets may not be very durable, but they can prove to be a great hindrance to the enemy team. The cooldown period for the Turrets isn’t that bad either, so once all Turrets are down, remember to deploy more.

Photon Shield

The Photon Shield will be very useful for characters with low HP. By giving them a HP regen shield, you’re essentially improving their survivability and allowing them to last longer in a fight.

Teleporter

While your allies won’t be able to use the Teleporter to get back to the spawn room, this will let them get back to the fight almost instantaneously.

Backstory

Here’s Symmetra’s official backstory in Overwatch, straight from Blizzard:

• Real Name: Satya Vaswani, Age: 28
• Occupation: Architech
• Base of Operations: Utopaea, India
• Affiliation: Vishkar Corporation

Symmetra literally bends reality. By manipulating hard-light constructs, she crafts the world as she wishes it to be, in hopes of engineering a perfect society.

Following the Omnic Crisis, the Vishkar Corporation of southern India began the laborious process of creating new, self-sustaining cities to house the nation’s displaced population. One such city, Utopaea, was created using radical hard-light technology that enabled its architechs to shape the city’s streets, utilities, and living spaces in the blink of an eye.

After she was identified as one of the few capable of becoming a light-bending architech, young Satya Vaswani was plucked from extreme poverty and placed in the care of Vishkar’s architech academy, never to return home. Isolated and lonely in her new life, Satya immersed herself in her education and training. She quickly grasped the applications of the technology and was one of the top students in her class. Satya approached hard-light manipulation differently than her peers, with their more procedural, mechanical constructions, instead weaving her constructs in the motions of the traditional dance of her homeland.

Though she was one of Utopaea’s top architechs, the Vishkar Corporation saw far greater potential in Satya’s abilities. Giving her the moniker “Symmetra,” Vishkar sent her on clandestine missions around the world to uphold its corporate interests and expand its influence into other countries.

Symmetra believes her actions serve the greater good in society. But there are times when she wonders whether the control and order she desires are truly best for humanity.