Onslaught of Overwatch 2 bugs & secret nerfs leave Symmetra “broken” in Season 3
BlizzardOverwatch 2’s Season 3 update has caused Symmetra to yield an onslaught of bugs, including some that outright ruin the hero. Adding to the concern, players have also uncovered secret nerfs for the hero too.
Overwatch 2’s newest season has just started, with a new map, skins, and a battle pass, things are looking pretty good for players jumping back in.
Alongside the various forms of new content players received, there were several hero balancing changes made, with a rework to Mercy’s kit and huge buffs to Wrecking Ball. Blizzard also made small tweaks to several heroes’ ultimate cost, as they believed some were casting their ult too much or too little.
One of these heroes was Symmetra, whose ultimate cost went up by 10%. However, it appears that Blizzard changed a lot more than just her ultimate cost. Players have since discovered that Symmetra has been plagued with bugs since the release of Season 3, and Blizzard seems to have silently nerfed parts of her kit as well.
Players have found that Symmetra’s ultimate, Photon Barrier, now deploys far slower than it used to. YouTuber ‘Not Muda’ was able to calculate that it now deploys exactly 866 milliseconds slower than it did previously.
This fundamentally changes how Symmetra’s ultimate is used, as skilled players can no longer counter ultimates like Reinhardt’s Earthshatter, as demonstrated by Muda.
Alongside this, the barrier disappears earlier and faster than before. Now, the Symmetra player can still have a timer displaying that their barrier is still deployed, but the barrier doesn’t actually exist.
These were not listed within the patch notes for Season 3 of Overwatch and therefore have left Symmetra players scratching their heads.
BlizzardNot only was Symmetra’s barrier stealth nerfed, but her turrets have run into an awful bug as well.
Symmetra’s turrets are placeable objects that she can throw out onto the terrain. These turrets track any enemy nearby and help establish her as a fearsome defensive hero. Generally speaking, when a turret collides with another object, that being a door, the payload, or a moving platform, the turret would be destroyed.
However, in Season 3 of Overwatch 2, the turrets aren’t destroyed, instead, they just disappear. This originally seems fine, as the turrets would just act like they were destroyed, however, this isn’t the case. Turrets that magically disappear means that they cannot be placed down again, which means that Symmetra cannot place down any more turrets if they were to disappear.
This is a huge problem for Symmetra, as she relies on her turrets for her DPS. Players cannot solve this bug by dying either, and can only fix the error by swapping off and on the hero. This can be impactful to a match’s results, as swapping off of a hero will result in ultimate charge being lost.
Players have expressed their disappointment on Reddit, especially highlighting that the only thing Blizzard said they changed was her ultimate cost.
Blizzard has yet to comment on whether or not these changes were intended to come with Season 3 of Overwatch, but Symmetra fans are definitely not too happy with the current state of their hero.