I don’t remember exactly when (EDIT: Found it), but some time ago, to give ultimates some standards, Blizzard categorized every ultimate ability as Casting, Channeling, and Transformation.
Casting ultimates could only be interrupted if you stunned the user before their casting animation finishes. Some of them have very fast casting times, but in theory they all can be cancelled. Ultimates like Dragonstrike, Nanoboost, Earthshatter, Blizzard, Sound Barrier, etc.
Channeling ultimates are the ones that are continually cast until the duration expires, or someone stun them. Those are the easier to detect. Basically, if it start spewing things and you can’t end it earlier, that’s a channel ult. Things like Whole Hog, Coalescence, Death Blossom, Transcendence, Barrage, etc.
Transforming Ultimates add some new mechanic on top of the character kit. They can’t be cancelled through stuns, and will not prevent the character from using anything else from their kits, unless it’s explicitly told so that this part is changed on the ultimate. Things like Primal Rage, Tactical Visor, Valkyrie or Dragonblade.
So the coding already exists. If it’s listed under “transformation ult”, I would make it not break shield protection.
Make healers percent base and define which healers are for tanks and which are for squishies. Simple. Avoids the problem that any healer who can heal a tank can also heal up a squishy.
The issue with this is it doesn’t do much to make sustain more viable vs burst, it just is a buff to Sig, Sym, Zarya & Zen.
There’s WAY more armor in game, there’s a multitude of reasons that burst is advantageous, and even if implemented it only requires 1 extra shot from a burst source, as opposed to armor which literally halves multiple characters damage.
Generally burst damage is supposed to be slower. If the damage is equal or exceeds the kill potential over time of sustain then it’s kind of obvious that burst is better and that is factoring completely without outside influences.
While true it also has the potential to pave the way for more defensive abilities for supports to grant their allies or other heroes to have anti burst abilities/passives.
Take the old Symmetra 25 HP shield buff she used to give people. It’s worthless. But with this protective ability, that ability will be strong vs burst and more worthwhile than it originally was.
Just flip it so Armor reduces burst and Shield reduces sustain. There is a lot more burst/semi burst characters then sustain ones anyway. Plus it makes tanks more tanky against burst damage as well.
Someone suggested this for shields. Basically it would operate as a cap for damage. Any time you break the shields the source of damage wouldn’t continue onto heath. So a sym with 100 shields and 100 HP hit by a junkrat primary would be left at 100 hp.
This opens up a lot of space for something like a hero that gives each team mate 25 shields, basically useless against sustained damage but very effective against burst damage comps.
Nerfing healing doesn’t really solve the problem because even in a world with worse healing, burst damage still outperforms sustained damage because it still has a lower time to kill and sustained damage is still more susceptible to whatever healing and tanking there is than burst damage.
The other issue with this is that every role should be impactful . Supports should be able to influence the outcome of the game and outplay the enemy by saving their team. Healing shouldn’t be oppressive, but nerfing healing to the point where you can’t possibly make clutch plays for your team and save them at key moments then you’re making the whole support role insignificant. The result of that is that no one will want to play support anymore and queue times go up. Not to mention it undermines the whole point of the game that every role has a role to play, and all of them contribute to winning a game. Overwatch shouldn’t be tanks and supports just existing to make DPS players feel good about themselves, each role should be as important and impactful as the others. Not sure how drastically nerfing healing would solve the problems and not risk causing much bigger problems in the process.
Not necessarily. Soldier’s damage output is terrific but he struggles because of heals and tanks, not because burst damage is plain better. Or if we put it in another way - burst damage is plain better because of heals and tanks