At lost on what to do as support and looking for advice

So with the latest patch, I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to do as support.

I’m trying to keep my teammates alive, but even just pumping heals into them constantly, trying to use my abilities to save them in a pinch, it just doesn’t work.

So trying something else…if I try to do damage, well the teammates just immediately fall over, I can’t seem to even fire a shot because of that healing time lost. Ultimately, my attention is just on a lot of healing because I can’t do anything else.

So really, what am I supposed to do now?

26 Likes

Honestly, the only person I ever blame for anything is myself. And I’m just wondering what I can do here.

12 Likes

I think this patch is just revealing the teammates who don’t understand the importance of strafing behind cover to mitigate incoming damage and lessen the burden on their supports. Over the next couple months, these players will gradually learn their new limits and adapt, or they’ll fall in elo. Until then, all you can do is eat your gyoza and try to be patient.

18 Likes

play another game until they revert the changes

and the more people that do this the quicker it will happen

14 Likes

Swap to DPS and carry yourself.

4 Likes

DPS… thats all they want you to do now

5 Likes

It’s an fps ain’t it? You supports had it too good for too long.

1 Like

Im not a support player… so…

2 Likes

It’s rough for supports. I think you’re basically supposed to do the same thing (mix healing and damage), but with probably more emphasis on healing now. You won’t have the same results, though. People will die a lot more, and there’s nothing you can do about it now. It’s up to the other players to play smart, and if they don’t, it’s on them, not on you.
Just please, don’t fall into the “I’ll only dps now, since healing is useless” category.

6 Likes

Lock Zen every game and focus on damage.
He doesn’t need to pay much attention to teammates for his healing orb

13 Likes

Uhh yes, strafing while still getting hit by a million soldier bullets or literally taking a hanzo arrow to the head when you’re not even on his screen.

5 Likes

I’m lost too. There is also no more teamwork. Everything feels awful.

8 Likes

Your best bet is to use cover more than ever, due to the new DPS passive. Though the issue is, you’ll eventually have to fend for yourself if you get caught in a duel with a Genji or DPS. Which, will vary from hero to hero. Either that, or your DPS needs to be slaughtering the enemy, or your team just has to peel for you. Aside from that, all you can do is play in cover around your team, and try to get better at dueling. But not everything’s in your control, especially now.

9 Likes

Because it is? What do you mean

or everything else, since hitboxes are gigantic

@ Dorohedoro Practice ability and ult management and tracking, improve your gamesense, understand how the enemy plays and how your team play and try counteract it

The game became for more reliant on CDs and ults. The better you get at it, the more impact you can have.
It’s a messy situation atm

2 Likes

Paradoxically, I’d say “heal less”. One of the core goals of these changes was to take a major bite out of in-combat healing. Mercy aside, I’d recommend that supports look to contribute in other ways. Damage is the obvious one for some, but buffs and debuffs and control effects are also not a bad idea.

Put it this way: Overwatch’s initial design was very MMO. Tanks shield, Offence/Defence heroes hide behind them, Supports work from the back line. Since the Overwatch “2” launch (and really, for quite a while before), the Tank role was slowly shifted over towards a Brawler role. That is to say, the Tank doesn’t protect his team by shielding them, but rather by fighting the enemy and being a threat. Essentially, a Tank is a short-range, fat DPS.

I don’t have direct evidence of this, but I strongly suspect that Supports are going the same route. That is to say, a Support player can’t be a healer first. They would need to be a combatant first, healer second, as available. To an extent, the rest of the players on the team need to look after themselves to at least some extent. That seems to be the intent, anyway.

6 Likes

I think we’re supposed to uninstall the game. That’s the message I got.

10 Likes

I imagine this is in response to me saying : “Just please, don’t fall into the “I’ll only dps now, since healing is useless” category” ?
If so, here’s my answer : healing is not useless. It has just become a lot less powerful. Therefore, the responsibility of staying alive now is more on the teammates than on the supports. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t heal, and it doesn’t mean healing does nothing.
To make a comparison, we have just gone from retail WoW to Vanilla WoW in terms of healing : in retail WoW, healers have unlimited resources and can pretty much heal non stop. Therefore, people expect them to keep them alive despite their mistakes. In Vanilla, healers had very limited resources, and couldn’t keep healing for long before running out of mana. Therefore it was expected from the team to avoid as much damage as possible. It’s the same in OW2 now.

1 Like

Just give it time. People will learn they can’t just run around and play like they used to. Apparently the modus operandi in season 9 is “duck and cover”

Eventually people will adapt to the new play style and we may find that people won’t require as much healing…or blizzard will make some significant changes.

2 Likes

This is overwatch though that’s not gonna happen, and honestly not one even asked for any of these changes blizzard just continuously makes the game worse because they don’t listen and are out of touch with the game. And the players

1 Like