In the flex slot you put hybrids.
That slot is expected to smooth out any diffs.
With 121+1flex, you avoid unhealthy comps (stacking too much cheese or not enough of xyz). And it controls this without ruining the hero kits themselves (hurts muscle memory alienates rpg/main). The slot is like soft-bans and helps them control representation and metas.
So mei or brig for offtank or a sym or zen (say) for offsup. They can toggle heroes in/out the flex pool with major patch or season. Who is in the flex lineup can help literally define the season, giving it a certain flavour.
That way you get a dedicated tank player, a 2 dedicated dps carries, a fulltime support main, and an off-role flex that pivots to solve various diffs.
The flex slot would have it’s own role passive. So a DPS mei would get dps passive but if they moved her into flex slot for half the season she would get flex slot passive. Which would probably be support-like more than tank-like. The flex role is about utility/enablement that isn’t raw healing, damage, or absorb. It’s a fundamentally different axis which I think a lot of off-roles already play into.
Well in OW2 they would be the most self efficient role, with some of the most impactful utilities. that provide you and your team a whole host of alternative playstyles.
Like ana with good positioning can shut down the enemy team with a nade, while now two shoting a squishy.
Lucio has some of the best and consistent mobility in the game, that in turn can allow your team to cycle around the enemy. All the while having a built in kill combo that is now more potent.
Brig is now a mobile melee damage hero, with her shield bash being basically a grounded genji dash. That just so happens to be able to heal. While making the rest of her team more tanky. While she her self has an extra health bar to fall back on.
Like supports have dramatically unique playstyles from their dps counterparts, now in 5v5 they can have duel potential to frag out when the opportunities arise.
That and in 5v5 fights are more spread are going to be more spread out in general (read more here:How 5v5 will improve tanking)
Meaning that you their is only maybe one or two target you will be responsible for at a given time.
I don’t get why people are surprised that healing may need lowering in a 5v5 setting?
You’re taking 2 tanks out of the match. And tanks can deal a serious ton of damage. I’ve had plenty of games where tanks have got gold/silver damage and that can range from 10k+ to 20+ sometimes. That’s a serious amount of damage that’s no longer on the field. On both sides.
Supports now have less people to look after. And can even better focus their healing on 1 tank - if they need it. Healing in this game can be a hell of a lot at times. So maybe with all that healing being focused on less people, maybe the devs thought there was just too much healing being thrown around.
I know nobody likes hearing something being “nerfed”. But maybe, just maybe, this is needed. I know people like to bring up the 25% in-combat healing reduction we saw, but we know that isn’t going through…at least in that regard anyway. And after the playtest maybe the devs have seen that 25% is just too much of a reduction? We don’t know. Because frustratingly, they haven’t said anything.
We’ll just have to wait and see what they’re trying out since then.
I don’t think every support mains are complaining about nerfs to healing though. Some support probably are, but I’m not and I totally understand why it needs to be tuned down for 5v5. Same with an increase in cool down on ana’s sleep dart, which I also understand why that had to be done.
Mathematical necessity is at odds with fun. I can heal you for, what’s it going to be?..45dps? Or I can whip out my pew pew and shoot the enemy for 100dps. Which is going to be more satisfying? And at that point, why play the role at all?
The mathematical necessity of nerfing supports is not going to make the role more enticing. It will make it even harder to have impact in a role that is already suffering for lack of impact.
They’re also removing CC from the support role, reserving it for tanks. They’re even, reportedly, contemplating removing the iconic resurrection ability. And the replacement is, apparently, to take one of Mercy’s abilities, GA, and hand it to other players so THEY can make the plays instead of her. EVEN LESS AGENCY.
Yeah, that’s totally going to increase support participation from 33% to 40%.
Mathematically necessary? Maybe. More fun to play the role? Absolutely not.
They would totally be better off going to 1-3-1, and will probably have to do so.
NGL I’m actually a bit concerned about some support heroes like baptiste becoming less enjoyable role to play especially with one less tank in the team. Particularly with supports like baptiste, his strength is in his AOE healing ability, most of which tends to go towards 2 tanks.
But with only one tank in the team, I’m going to have to spend more time trying to heal my DPS with smaller hitboxes instead of my 2 tanks. And I’m a bit worried that’s going to make baptiste a low value main support due to his unreliable healing and make him only viable in brawl comps. So while I am concerned, I haven’t really formed any strong opinions until I actually get to play the game and experience supports in 5v5.
Besides worst case scenario, I’ll just switch to maining DPS anyway which is what I always wanted to do in the first place lol.
We knew from comments made awhile ago that if the game went 1-3-2 then the queue time problem largely goes away (even accounting for some tanks swapping roles). This means that the game has enough Supports to support 1-2-2 without any major delays.
Now Support will likely become the instant queue role but it is unlikely that it is anywhere near the bottleneck that tank is given the information we were already given.
My bottom line: to increase uptake of the role to go from 33% to 40%, they have to increase the appeal of the role. The steps they are taking for 5v5, out of mathematical necessity, will decrease the appeal of the role.
It is already an instant queue role, which is why I doubt the information you mention.
Why do people look at this in a vacuum? Is it because it supports a narrative you want to believe?
Launch mercy also has MASS REZ, the most powerful ability to ever exist in the game. Her healing was low because she was capable of unparalleled burst healing in the form of bringing your entire team from 0-100% HP at the drop of a hat. It’s bizzare that people ignore the most potent part of her kit to harp on the blah blah heal bad thing.
The entire tradeoff of Mercy was that she provided absolutely zero utility in favor of raw healing output. Now you have several healers who completely and utterly outdo her healing and have utility.
You can doubt it but considering that was straight from the developers (who have the actual numbers in question) I would say their word carries more credibility than your doubts especially when running such a simulation is trivial when you have the actual numbers in front of you.
And let’s not forget that the other heroes didn’t work as they do now. Reverting the support category to a level of power it had at launch but keeping tanks and dps the same is absolutely ludicrous.
It’s not even necessarily the damage heroes deal (though there are plenty of tanks and dps that do far more damage than they used to, such as Winston and Zarya having their ‘bug’ fixed so that their damage ticks constantly, DVa being given rockets and lower booster cd for additional firepower, as well as a bunch of DPS feeling less clunky to play like Mei and Reaper getting their survival abilities enhanced AND reloading at the same time, etc).
But will support still be a popular role when Ana’s sleep will be on a 20-second cooldown when Mercy’s rez will be removed, when DPS will be able to run faster than support can, when support will get their healing potential nerfed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they removed Bap’s immortality field too.
I’ve been a Mercy one trick in the past, but there is no way I’ll ever play support when OW2 will be released.
1-3-2 was better for that because it didn’t involve nerfing support to the ground.
I doubt we’ll have that many support players after they show us how much they butchered our supports.
I don’t touch support because the queue times are about the same as dps.
It’s the easiest role, if all I cared about was sr i’d play support ngl.
Bapt, Ana, Mercy do need nerfs there’s way too much sustain in this game. Ana’s sleep is fine though it takes skill to land, nano is busted though. I lose so many team fights because of nano where i’d full hold teams.