All of what you said below this is true. But this I disagree with. If you don’t heal, they die for sure, then you are at a disadvantage, and have less people to heal which makes killing your next target even harder. I don’t WANT to heal stupid people, I just often will if there’s any chance they can make an impact without sacrificing myself. That suicidal player often does do something if they survive longer, and they sometimes survive if you do your job right.
You reduce stupidity by being there. I make stupid mistakes all the time. One game where I was playing Probius, I pushed too far in a solo lane and got cocky. Enemies had rotated to flank me. All of a sudden LiLi comes out of nowhere had apparently left the main group in the middle lane, cleansed me out of a CC, blinded and I was able to zip away, and then she kept body blocking the enemies to take the hits. That LiLi reduced the impact of my stupidity, and for that I got to live, which made the next objective easier to get.
A good healer is often able to anticipate where they are needed to SUPPORT and save. That is absolutely their job. A bad one will just say, well they should just die because they were stupid.
Now weaving in damage, CC, are all part of a supports kit and absolutely critical too in combat WITH your allies. However, bad players often mention killing or mercing in a solo vacuum, and that’s just so wrong for what you do as a support. I would rather heal the stupid person than merc. If I wanted to merc or duel somebody, I would play another role, because that’s not where I’m going to shine as a support.
This drives me insane when I am tanking. I will often ping my mana and start hearthing, so everyone will know I am not there and why. Too many times the healer will start filling up my health bar, for no good reason at all. If I am in voice, I will often tell them to ignore me, as I am either hearthing or using/about to use my self sustain, and they should use the mana on someone who can’t defend themselves as well as I can.
Haha, one of my more memorable times as a healer was when Artanis had trait activated at 50%, and it was like a minigame of trying to heal the Artanis as little as possible. Made you feel so alive to know that they were always on the cusp of dying.
That is too rich for my blood. 50% is one thing, but 25% is pushing it, I don’t ever check for shield surge so I don’t play around it as a healer. It seems to be the popular pick, but personally when I play Artanis I like the extra shield duration and CD reduction from battery.
Also isn’t the vaunted Rehgar supposed to be able to do things by himself?
I generally go Shield Battery if they have lots of DoTs or sustained damage, like a Gul’dan or Lunara, and Shield Surge against burst damage. Since CC/burst comps are popular right now, I mostly go Shield Surge. I also get a sadistic pleasure out of seeing an enemy go after me, assuming I am a free kill, just to turn on them and tear them to pieces, because my trait is up.
This was from before the changes to Lightning Shield and Ancestral. Poor puppy.
He thought that facetanking a Shield Surge/Blades of a Templar Artanis was a good idea, and basically ignored the rest of the team fighting over the objective.
This ties back to the point Volun was making that a healer may be able to do other things, but their primary duty is to support their team so this sort of massacre never happens. They definitely should not be wasting their time and resources attempting to solo a bruiser while the rest of their team is dying.
On the same note, sometimes as a support I have to stop myself from healing an ally that has no mana, because I know they’re probably going to fountain or back soon.
Or stop myself from healing a bruiser or whatever that has a decent self heal and has more mana than I do.
Too many people, even in the higher leagues, don’t realize that pointless brawl is pointless and that evading a spell is better than soaking it knowing that “there is a healer who will heal me afterwards”.
I hate to play healer, just because most of the people I play with refuse to evade spells or they do pointless brawl on lane, forcing me to be a heal bot and so I run out of mana very soon.
There’s this wonderful thing called hearthing. With the change to fountain CD, and objective timers, it’s quite hard to actually run out of mana when the time comes if you know how to prepare for it. You brawl, tap the fountain, and the CD will generally be up by next objective.
As a healer, I have zero problems with the middle brawl. It’s only an issue if you fail to kill somebody, AND the enemy has managed to back off and soak, AND no one responds to it, which though happens, isn’t super common.
It’s usually the person who thinks brawls are useless that runs away, where then the brawl suddenly means something because you can now get easier picks off when you outnumber the other team.
It’s also not exactly that hard to brawl for a little, see nothing is happening, and then rotate before too many of the minions die. If you hate supporting your teammates in team fights, you are just playing the wrong role lol.
I know that you can hearth.
But that means you cannot soak lane while someone goes camp or help with camp.
There is a lot of unnecessary and avoidable damage which people receive.
And yes, I don’t play healer. I play mostly bruiser or tank. But still, sometimes you are forced to play healer will fill that role.
Who cares, that’s not your job. You really think soaking that last 3 minions worth of experience is worth risking going to an objective late or you running out of mana so you lose 2 waves of experience after you lose an objective and people die?
As for damage, yes people could learn how to dodge, but at high level, I really don’t see that an issue most of the time. At lower level, it’s really an issue, but the good thing is, usually the other team will also suck at dodging. And if you’re the healer who has the tenacity to stick it out, while the other gives up, guess which side is more likely to win.
The two single most easiest macro level things to improve your support play without actually being good mechanically at support is simply, make soaking a low priority, and come to objectives with mana. You do that, you’re already better than most supports who for some reason want to put that mantle on themselves and in the end screw your team up. The problem isn’t supports, it’s the way people want to play them.
I smile when I played lucio and saved my team multiple times.
By healing? I don’t know.
By dashing into an enemy team, booping them, amp speeding then high-fiving my almost-dead stunlocked teammate, whilst being able to escape? Yep, 90% of the time thats how I saved my teammates.
Even if you don’t heal, your utility can be the bigger impact.
I had (not to brag) 100k+ healing, did that save anyone? Maybe. My utility mattered more, although, as that was the true saviour.
