I once heard someone say Mercy/Lucio is not a good comp and I don’t understand why at all. Not enough burst healing? What are the best support combinations so I know who to play to match my random qp healer buddy?
Yup
On OW1 ladder in disorganzied play, one of your healers should always be Moira, Ana or Bap for a main/tank healer.
One of your healers should also always be Bap, Zen or Lucio for a defensive ult (or lamp in Baps case).
Follow these 2 rules and you shall climb.
It kind of depends on your tanks.
If you have something like Zenyatta or Lucio, you might need to play a support with high amounts of healing.
You can play Brigitte if you have an Ana on your team, but I’d only recommend it if she’s being flanked.
Moira + Lucio can work, but the team should be close thogether for maximum value and healing output, so it’s better to not play this combination with dive. You can switch Moira with Baptiste if you will.
Unless when flankers are on the enemy team, you generally can’t go wrong with Ana.
There is zero synergy there. Lucio excels in brawl/rush comps where you need to be tanky and fast. Mercy excels in dive comps, where you need to stay mobile and assassinate fast.
These are all of the solid support comps you will see in your average matches:
Ana/Lucio
Ana/Mercy
Ana/Brig
Moira/Lucio
Bap/Lucio
Bap/Zen
Bap/Brig
Bap/Mercy
If you’re feeling cheeky, Mercy/Zen is a very strong DPS enabling comp but you are sacrificing HPS so your tanks won’t like you.
But with that being said, I think every support comp can work well in certain situations. Apart from Mercy/Lucio. If you win with that support comp, you are probably playing against a team that is impossible to lose to.
1 Like
There are honestly quite a lot of good combinations, but much of it depends upon the map, team comp, SR rank, and enemy counters.
Usually, you can never go wrong with double strong healing (any unit that hits like 50-70 hps for its primary healing). Double strong healing is actually incredibly hard for an enemy team to crack because nothing dies, and you need either godlike burst kills, team coordination to focus a target, or strategic methods to ever out play this. The amount of ability needed to just heal is far less than that is needed to get around it. You can’t really go wrong with Bap/Ana/Mercy/Moira for any combination.
Brigitte + Bap/Moira/Mercy/Ana is pretty good. Brig is meant to cover anti-dive support for her main healer. Can give CC support to a static front line or assist a dive comp. When Brig is on kart with her own healing and payload healing she’s sort of hard to take down. She still has long range healing 20m or 30m meaning she can support dive characters. Preferably Brig/Ana in dive.
Lucio + Bap/Moira/Ana is pretty decent. Mercy/Lucio isn’t dreadful, but simply that the units Lucio helps, Bap/Moira/Ana do better.
Bap/Mercy I think does very well on Gibraltar or Dorado while Mercy does pretty poorly on Lijang Control Center.
it’s weak to flanker comps and also you have no true burst healing and the only main tank that you can play in this comp is Ball because Orisa has no synergy with Lucio and Mercy doesn’t have synergy with the other 2.
You can run a 2x offtank comp with Mercy Lucio but then you are playing a “scuffed comp” and it’s considered offmeta.
Support has a few “rules” for building comps and it’s fine if you don’t wanna abide by these rules because it can get boring but the more you follow then, the better in theory your success rate:
- you always need 1 support that does “the bulk” of the healing. These are one of: Ana, Bapt, Moira,
- it helps to have a support focusing more on utility than raw healing, which is why there is the idea of “main support + flex support” combinations. Flex support that provide utility generally enable your team to secure kills more easily, sometimes they enable DPS (e.g. Mercy or Zen), sometimes they enable tanks (Lucio).
- another rule is that “securing the backline” can be important sometimes. Common scenarios are when they have 2+ dive heroes and, let’s say, Ball + Tracer are diving 1 support simultaneously. In this case, since DPS are often pressured in shooting something else and can’t babysit supports (at least not always), it is your duty, sometimes to self-peel. In this case of going vs dive, a decent choice of support lineup would be Bapt + Brig or Ana + Brig
- there is also something I call “overhealing” and it’s a noob comp that you often see in diamond. It shouldn’t rly work but it often does and it’s Ana + Bapt. Main reason it’s a thing is because Bapt is so overtuned and both supports can self peel with sleepdart, anti-nade, regen burst, lamp… it’s very hard to break this backline especially in low elo. Ana + Bapt is a thing, it shouldn’t work according to the “classic rules of OW” but it often does.
- if your DPS go heroes that require constant pocketing and babysitting, it is generally better to go a support to heal them from the spam. Heroes that tend to take a lot of spam when peeking and hence need pocketing are: Ashe, Cassidy, Widow, Pharah, Tracer. If you don’t play Mercy, Brig is also fairly good for pocketing DPS. DO NOT forget about enabling your DPS, a lot of diamond players hardstuck diamond refuse to play with DPS because they think “pocketing DPS is for egirls” or some weird mindset like that but DPS that aren’t put reasonable resources into cannot peek properly and be threatening.
- there are also “full comps” you should be aware of, though this is mostly a high SR thing. If your team runs 2x shield, it’s best to pick Bapstiste at least and maybe Zen/Brig/Mercy also. If your team is playing Rush, you need specifically Lucio + Bapt (in low elo you can often substitute Bapt with Ana, too, although Ana falls off hard in masters+ because she doesn’t have lamp). If your team is playing dive, I’d say you need Zen and 2nd support can be nearly anything from Brig to Ana to Mercy. Ana + Brig is also a popular Dive support lineup.
I will post more if more come to mind but these are the rules of a good, reasonable support player. Though like I said, it’s reasonable sometimes to expect others to flex for you, in theory in OWL, support is THE fill role so in OWL supports always flex to what’s needed. On ladder though, it’s OK to sometimes play your favorite support instead, but thread with care, don’t be “that Lucio guy” who forces Lucio on Junkertown vs 2x sniper and Hog Ball.
Pretty much any comp with Bap is broken:
Bap+Lucio: super stable easy to play around, great for the constant Rein Comps, powerful CDs and Ult economy, mild frag out potential. Given the ease of the comp I’d say you can force it with just about any tank lineup.
Bap+Zen: INSANE frag out potential, powerful Ult Economy, great for spam comps, great with and against Double Shield. The downside to this comp is your Bap and Zen must hard pocket each other constantly to avoid getting dove. Focus firing Discord is always hit and miss too, as players avoid coms, but it has insane frag potential.
Bap+Brig: If you want to just win without trying, this is easily the most OP support comp in the game. The heal stacking is just ridiculous when these two pair up and it will force either a mirror from enemy supports, or incredible teamwork with Anti-Nade and/or Discord from enemies. Then there’s the OP Ult economy you gain, not to mention CDs that make the duo and their team undiveable.
Just play any of these three for free wins. EZ and OP synergies.
1 Like
Baptiste + Ana is a really good general combo that does maximum heals.
Lucio + Moira is great for high paced brawls.
Brig + Zen/Brig + Ana is great for dive.
Speed & Blue beam are among the best parts of their kits, if one of them has to sacrifice using it to heal their team, you’re not getting the best out of their kit. Not to say that this pairing is awful - it can work quite well on some KOTH maps depending on how your team chooses to play.
Same sort of thing goes for Ana/Moira (or Bap) comps you see on ladder sometimes. They provide a lot of healing & damage but the utility they provide to their team is limited to their cooldowns.
Generally you want to run a main support and a flex support (or a flex supp & Zen). The definitions of what these are will differ depending on who you ask. For me a main support is someone who can provide a buff to their allies and can dictate engagements, flex supports offer large amounts of healing/damage. It’s generally agreed that Mercy, Lucio & Brig are main supports, with Ana, Bap & Moira being flex supports. Zen is a flex but has sometimes seen infrequent use in the past as a main support.
It is a good comp. Mercy handles the tanks, lucio handles anyone else around.
lol nice post. Agree with all of it. Chuckled at the “win without trying” on Bapt + Brig.
1 Like
lol I dont recommend Brig to anyone below diamond, which is who my advice was for
She has the most misunderstood role in the game and no one seems to get it in the metal ranks
Technically she can still be included under my rules when paired with Bap, though!
Ideally you want a flex and main support, main is lucio brig mercy and sometimes bap, and flex is the rest
Main supports main just is supporting the other support making up for their vulnerability weaknesses, but depending on the main support for instance lucio moira it could be more about ensuring moira can stay in the fight keeping tanks up
as long as its some combination of main and flex you’ll typically do fine
Where did you leave Mercy/Moira? I find it quite a good combo. Lot of healing and Moira getting dmg boost during her dps moments and ult is great. When I play Mercy, I always get my ult so quickly thanks to this.
No go in metal ranks as you need Bap, Lucio or Zen to counter shatter/grav
I don´t play comp xD