Healer Variety or rather lack there of

General Discussion
1

I wanna talk a little bit about Healer Variety.

Here’s the current list of healers based on the new class chart released a while back (please link if you can, I apparently STILL can’t use URLS =( )

  1. Alex
  2. Ana
  3. Auriel
  4. Brightwing
  5. Deckard
  6. Khara
  7. Li Li
  8. Malf
  9. Morales
  10. Lucio
  11. Rehgar
  12. Stukov
  13. Tyrande
  14. Uther
  15. Whitemane

That puts us at 15 of 85 or around 17.5% of the population. While this is a healthy number out of the 6-8ish classifications (if we include Mages and Ambushers in that group) that certainly makes it look good on paper where we’re at.

The problem is, however, many of the Healers don’t feel viable in the current meta.

Raise your hand if you see Li Li in virtually every game being played right now.

The problem isn’t so much that we need more healers; it’s that many of the healers don’t feel regularly viable and barely fit a niche use case. Many of these suffering from reworks and/or over nerfs to the point that the healer population doesn’t feel healthy.

Let’s go to ye ole Hotslogs for the “best” public information:

Pulling from Silver, Gold and Platinum (which hits around 80% of all players) on Team/Hero League, here’s what our pick rates look like:

07 - Li Li
12 - Brightwing
18 - Ana
21 - Lucio
24 - Stukov
26 - Morales
29 - Alex
37 - Whitemane
40 - Uther
44 - Malf
45 - Deckard
46 - Tyrande
48 - Rehgar
54 - Auriel
61 - Khara

The top 8 heroes in the game are seen roughly AT LEAST every two games minimum. Heroes below 15th place are seen about every five games. Heroes below 25 are seen roughly every 20 games.

If you think to yourself terms of popularity, this is probably pretty accurate. Li Li, Brightwing, Ana and Lucio are probably the ones you see MOST OFTEN with Stukov, Morales and Alex being good contenders. Everyone below Alex, however, appears to be fairly getting minimal play.

Whitemane at #37 has just a 10.7% pick rate.

I’m really forced to ask what the heck Blizzard is doing with all these changes to the healers a year later. They aren’t making them more playable, more fun or more accepted in the community.

  • Morales’s changes leave her energy starved a lot.
  • Whitemane’s changes make her less impactful overall. The next mana nerf will hurt even more.
  • Rehgar’s changes left him unable to stay in fights well.
  • Uther’s changes left him missing the mark with no good followup to clean him up (Seriously, Uther is so close to be in a good spot).
  • Tyrande’s changes split the community on her entirely and left her with virtually no play.
  • Deckard’s changes were over nerfs and there’s never been followup to unnerf him a bit.
  • Auriel was left behind pretty quickly because she needed additional refinement (note REFINEMENT, not rework).
  • Khara has had some of his most critical talents pushed too high into talents and there’s never been compensation. Seriously, his rework SUCKED.

When we look at pure tanks from the chart, it’s absolutely true there are about 5 less tanks compared to healers but nearly every one of those tanks sees consistent play. Heck, even most of the Bruisers do. It’s probably fair to say ALL of the Ranged Assassins (except Probius and Gul) see very regular play too.

Healers though? The nerfs and changes to them over the last year have scaled down the use of non-niche healers to just 6 — worse yet, one of the most popular of those Healers is about to get a massive rework that may or may not maintain her current #3 position.

This isn’t just the situation of the 2017 non-stop assassin release catching up to make healers feel incredibly boring and stale now — this is a case of over reworks that has dragged down the role so bad that many of the healers now are nearly unusable in most games.

8 Likes
2

Totally not. I got no idea how is it possible you people have problems with her energy.

Fingers crossed they do something about her E.

Im not even sure I understand this sentence. He got omega-mana-refund and selfAH. What else you people want?

He is fine if you dont consider him a (main) healer. Otherwise yeah, a lot of wasted potential.

Because community is whiny garbage. She had Genji pickrate in tournaments and was the most important, meta defining healer for a reason. She is hands down the best one (not talking here about any “fun”)
EDIT - I guess I should say “support”.

Are you trolling right now?

4 Likes
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Is it really an issue of having healers not be different from each other enough or a matter of healers not being attractive to players to main and that people gravitate towards easier to pick up healers when they are forced to heal?

6 Likes
4

Easy to play > hard to play; especially if the easy to play heroes get the same if not more as the hard to play ones even when played well.

I would be happy if they erased that one, put it on a stick and into a showcase with a badge that reads “How not to do reworks”.

It works quite nice actually, you just need a team wehere the damage concentrates on one target which is ok as she clearly is a single target healer.

That was a pretty cheap talent that deserved some cutdown, played E most of the time anyways. She should be all about mana management but W/Q build always felt like a cheap cop out.

Except for multiple buffs over the last 2-3 patches ?!

She lacks any sort of big CC, so i guess if they could give her anti-CC (I go by the maxime that the amount of CC and CC-removal/prevention should be inverse unless others factors come in strong).

5

What is the current meta and why are your feelings the determining factor about the viability of support heroes?

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  • Morales don’t have big energy issues and since you don’t have mana, you can’t run out of it and you can stay without backing.
  • Whitemane’s new nerf is not a big deal (from someone who likes W build the most). She’s still super strong.
  • Rehgar’s playstyle was always meant to be hit and run thanks to his insta- and “unstoppable” mount.
  • Uther is hard to use as a solosupport, but not impossible and he’s a pseudo tank next to that.
  • Tyrande is among the best but hard to use thanks to the AA cdr.
  • Deckard got nerfs, but after that huge buffs. He’s my most played healer, he’s insane. I play him even after the nerfs with great success in diamond+ HL.
  • Auriel is good just needs a consistent battery but her batteries are currently not in the spotlight of the meta (Valla, Gul’dan).
  • Khara is niche.

I think the reason why not every healer is played that much is:

  • Most ppl don’t like to play supports, so they know 0-2 to play and that’s it.
  • Most of the healers are hard to play.
  • Bans are not focused that heavily on healers anymore so they can play their “mained” ones. They don’t need to change.
  • Healers unlike Warriors (Tanks/Bruisers) and Assassins (ranged/melee) used alone in teams. 10 Hero/match but only 2 are Healers, the other 8 are Warriors and Assassins. Ofc the Warrior-Assassin roster is more played overall.

But there’s nothing bad with the Healers diversity and powerlvl. I see a comp/matchup for every healer when they’re the best, so I think they’re all doing fine.

6 Likes
7

sure. here you go:
Hero Role Rework






seems likely, but this is because of a preference toward AA that has resurfaced and not necessarily because she is “OP”.

look back at the top 10 win% heroes at hotslogs in general not just for a specific ranking and see how many are very AA based.

  • Anub’arak <==
  • Probius
  • Rexxar <==
  • Artanis <==
  • Fenix <==
  • Kerrigan <==
  • Arthas <==
  • Lucio <==
  • Raynor <==
  • Sylvanas

…and if you keep going it continues like that. there is no wonder both LiLi and Johanna are Top 5 in their roles. since they have a dependable blind.

lets see…
i would say that out of all of them i would find 11 viable out of 15. which is more than half. thats the ones i would personally play or do personally play.

  • Alexstrasza
  • Morales
  • Ana (will have to re-evaluate after rework this one, i like her currently)
  • Lucio
  • Rehgar
  • Stukov
  • Deckard
  • Tyrande
  • Uther
  • LiLi
  • Whitemane

my personal opinion toward these are…

  • Malfurion - i hate him and wont play, he is niche and harder to use than other healers. …but i have seen him be very successful in some cases.
  • Kharazim - niche. very melee dive based healer that takes a special kind of team to employ. he can be successful to… with the right circumstances.
  • Auriel - niche. she is extremely slow and requires a lot of coordination from your team and yourself. i dont think there is a harder healer besides ana and for auriel its not because of skill shots its because of absurd amounts of team dependency. its like she is murky with healing… super frail but extreme healing.
  • Brightwing - i hate all BW because its pretty much like playing with no heals unlike Lucio who can zip around and so on. BW is the worst. :angry: all of them.
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Lesser Lightning Bond…

Honestly, I would revert the self-AH in a heartbeat if I could have Lesser Lightning Bond back.

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The most attractive healer for now is Stukov for me, design and gameplay wise.
Can do some dps thus easily secure kills, can deny areas and combo, can peel himself, you don’t have all the time to focus on healing, because your q is spreading automatically. Has badass Nietzsche quote in polish dub.

Other than that i like Alex, Whitemane, i liked also Tyrande but she don’t fit that much current meta?

10

LILI is a low skill healer, she is great for bad players or facing bad players.

Since your study is based on lower skill cap play you are going to see alot of LILI.

She literally provides NO CC, unless you get slow on blinds or waterdragon. She isn’t good at securing kills, she isnt good with follow up. She does nothing vs ability dmg. Her ults are so easy to counter, start with water dragon, provide a cleanse to said player that got hit with it, and its gone. Cups can be interrupted. She cant aim heal, she has to position in order to aim her heals, but what if she just needs to heal the tank, and he isnt lower than the safe assassin that got away, its a brain dead hero.

Tyrande- GREAT CC, Great FOLLOW UP, Great Blow up potential, is able to provide spell armor, cleanse on heals, owls have slows can heal WHO SHE WANTS to heal!! Yup I’d rather have this hero. Now I just need to find competent players that don’t allow LILI to be a thing. Imagine Diablo walling LILI, I can follow up with a LUNAR flare while reducing her armor, heck if she almost gets a way I can shoot an owl for kill or slow her for more follow up
IF I was lili, and not Tyrande, and diablo walls tyrande, what am I gonna do slow blind… and afk aa maybe stick a w on someone, that is LACK of skill hero, Its NOT GOOD, only on low level play. If players just grew their skill level LILI wouldn’t exist.

11

And even if they know more, there is a good reason why many dont want to play a healer.

When you are a warrior or assassin, you generaly have some influence on the damage output of your team. As healer the only thing you can do is watch your team do everything for you, which if it goes bad, makes you feel chanceless.

With that, if a healer isnt playing properly, they are very often blamed ‘because they didnt heal’. So anything difficult that doesnt have powerfull clutch heals is avoided. Ana with her difficulty still has powerfull heals, and is a lot easier to use than a deckard (because potion positioning is much harder than just straigh up aiming at your teammate).

I generaly liked supports when i started playing, i felt helpful, and they most of the time were ok.
But as i improved myself, i started to anoy myself more and more about teammates that simply were clueless and i felt like i was wasting my time by healing them. I would have been more effective as the damage dealer, even if his healing was poor. And this is the primary reason i generaly avoid healers.

During the double healer meta, even with a poor player, if you both stacked up, you could generaly compensate a lot. But as solo healer… not a chance.

1 Like
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Khara is fricking amazing as is. I love being able to solo the boss as support!

[yes, this has no direct relevance to the point… But I feel fine when I play Khara as a support. My healing starts low, and gets high later due to usualyl going mana fists, and his double heal waiting until level 16. But, overall he feels fine to me personally which is not the best metric]

13

Is this some kind of bronze league problem? Because at Diamond/Master I constantly see all healers picked (with Uther, Kharazim and Auriel rarely, but still), and honestly I think they are all viable to play up to Master (dunno about pro scene, but this is dead so no one cares).

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Li Li is not OP, she’s just the only healer with a reliable blind.

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this 10000x.

And people love to pick AA heroes even after you lock Li Li. It’s won my a solid chunk of games in HL.

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16

You can win games without healer.

If you need heal, pick abathur. He is the best healer.

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there’s a stickied topic on how trust levels work; you haven’t participated enough on the new boards.

18

Im personally melee assassin main but differ from that when i notice that the team has no support players and actually like to draft heals last for maximum potential.

So far i pick Auriel, Ana, Stukov, Alexstrasza, Uther, Morales or LiLi and all in different situations.

Most specialized would be Ana, Uther, LiLi and Kharazim probably because of the CC on Uther, Spellpower and heal reduction on Ana, Blinds on LiLi and a finisher/diver/anti AA Kharazim.

Each of the heroes have their weaknesses and strengths.

You can definitely carry as a healer if you just oick the right one for the situation and their playstyles are way different from eachother.

Im quessing you dont play healers that much?

1 Like
19

I feel like there are a lot of healers that work for the same teamcomp for different reasons which is good, and I feel like there are a lot of healers that don’t work for the same teamcomp for different reasons which is also great.

If you’re in a tankbusting team you play:

  • Stukov or Deckard (somewhat Whitemane+ her 13 root) for the lockdown
  • Kharazim for the damage (and Rehgar/Tyrande for some of both)
  • Auriel for the sustain vs. easy targets

If you’re running a sustain deathball/poke comp:

  • Auriel, Morales, Ana, Alex, Deckard, Whitemane, Stukov, all for loads of healing throughput~~~~Lucio/Malf and sometimes Tyrande also (…maybe bw?)

If you’re running it down:

  • Lucio, Rehgar, Kharazim, even Alex, for Speed/Slows/Damage/lots of healing to dump on those who run it down the hardest
  • Uther/Malf/Tyrande for the lockdown (and you know Uther’s a tanky boy who pumps out that damage)
  • (…maybe BW? poly +speed+armor you know)

If you’re living in the past and enjoy a global support-splitpush style team:

  • Abathur (haven’t tried him on PTR, maybe global support isn’t dead?)
  • BW kinda does this too though
20

I actually play/played healer a lot and agree with what you say.
I merely explained that people pick straight forward easier to pick up healers when they have to heal and can not pick their ranged assassin (when they do contemplate the idea of filling).
Then i realised tanking was even less popular than healing and still had some damage to add to the team on top of being able to cc/engage and never went back.
Until some sour dps players get tanks nerfed to inoffensive damage sponges like what i read in here that is.

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