A lot of my support placements had teammates going for shield-break poke strats rather than some kind of dive, disrupt or quick-rotate/contest.
I understand supporting the shield-break can be done in many ways, like mercy right clicking shieldbreaker type dmg. I also get Baptiste - you can exoboot above shields, break them with square, or pressure with lamp. Moira is usually insta locked (orb passthrough).
So i’m looking for straight up shield-breaking potential (not metagaming the shields). i.e. contributing to breaking the shield + shield + wall or whatever, as a support character.
It seems like support shield damage just doesn’t cut it. I’ve ‘solved’ other win conditions on support, knowing who to swap to to support against pharahs, bastions, divers, etc. but when it comes to straight up ‘solving’ a back to back to back to back shield problem, which support should I go with?
Tldr; Same stale 2shield meta.
Any numbers? Zen shield dmg vs. baptiste shield dmg?
Use luico to zoom past them with your team, that’s probably the best course of action. Shield poke just doesn’t work against orisa and sigma.
It might actually be Mercy to damage boost your shieldbreaker DPS.
Lucio to speed past it
Moira to heal around it
Mercy and Brig can work too
Baptiste, Ana, and Zen aren’t worth it unless you have the hours in them because of Doomfist
The reason Moira/mercy are meta are the shields and how these 2 can ignore them and still be effective.
But there isn’t a support hero that specializes in breaking shields (yet)
Also, breaking shields isn’t how you counter double shield, it more comes down to shield dancing and how you position based on shields.
Unless your team has a Bastion, you should be focusing on displacing enemies away from their shields or getting in their faces
I get there are many strats a team can pull off to play around the shields. But often times (in lower ranks) the simplest and most direct thing is to help with their shield breaking ‘intuition’. We all know its sub-optimal, but sometimes you have to ‘support’ the most direct, oblivious, game plan and not just be a heal bot.
I suspect this, but it does require right-click-worthy tanks/dps. The best support shield break that augments the team’s obsession with breaking shields seems to be Baptiste for his ult+lamp to sit there and toe-to-toe break the shields. Otherwise, Zen damage I guess? Is Zen dps better than baptiste on shields?
The time-to-break (TTB) shields seems just too low to really feel impactful across the support lineup. Seems like kind of a design oversight. The support lineup has enough tools to almost solo-solve most conditions (like pharahs, reapers, etc), but shield-breaking dosen’t seem to be in any support’s kit. A big yikes.
If you want to break barriers then I’d say Lucio or Zen.
Both can deal okayish damage from range. Zen also has his volley that can do burst damage to the barrier.
Most likely Ana hitting 70 per shot, with a capacity of 14 shots. 980 damage to a shield over the course of her hitting it. Baptiste is also a good shield break firing through his amp matrix, guy can burst out like 150 per shot if his bullets hit the shield where the enemy’s head is. Moira can just stay at a large distance and hold her right click on it, doing a steady 50 dps that won’t break off while she moves around dodging. All Supports can one way or another really hurt barriers, but only two or so have the actual ability to damage them the most.
Unless you have a Bastion on your team, it’s better to use your pistol for shield breaking when you play Mercy.
Baptiste or Zennyatta if there is a single shield. In double shield you are better off damage boosting(Nerfcy) , or tresspassing the shields all together(Lucio and Moira).
In terms of dps
Baptiste is in first place with ~133 dps vs barriers
Zenyatta is in second place with 120 dps vs barriers
Mercy is in third place with 100 dps vs barriers
All the other supports deal less than 100 dps
Mercy takes first place with 135 dps if she’s damage boosting a Bastion
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This is what I was looking for, thanks. As suspected, its bap/zen when you have to ‘support’ the team’s direction to play for rather poor shieldbreak.
If you’re goal is only breaking the shields and noting more I would probably go with Zenyatta or Mercy.
Zen has a very high damage output and Mercy can damage boost others.
Other supports than that either needs their ultimate in order to be effective against shields or do damage behind the shield and not to the shield itself.