Can we get a dev to talk about support?

General Discussion
21

it has two params: (x,t)
x = amount of base healing debuff (%)
t = time out-of-combat (s, ooc)

u can fiddle with which effects this applies to, and what ooc actually means
(and if it has distance params like far from team etc.)

but there are almost surely values above zero for which (x,t) is FINE
if not entirely good for the game

crank them up too much and u basically have a bifurcation in gameflow.
the bifurcation is a kind of min/max where u would rather just group up more and basically always have the debuff up but essentially leverage the value-added group proximity (2 healers, exposure to more effects), (MAX). the other edge case is it could promote almost never grouping up, and basically always living off the land, taking and winning (losing) duels, (MIN).

personally i’d like to see values of (x,t) that promote solo/duo play, where u aren’t punished for taking duels away from the heard, can fall back and get patched up relatively quickly (enough to maintain flank pressure), and aren’t expected to reset/regroup for all-in scripts.

they should be experimenting with lower (x,t) a lot more.
but non-zero values.
certainly try other values before scrapping the idea
just because some pros, who’s entire life will be turned upside down by even the smallest changes, didn’t like the concept.

22

Ok so compensate us in some way. Nerfing healing across the board feels really bad.

If you want to bring us closer to a “regular” DPS we need buffs in our damage.

Give Ana the ability to headshot, make mercy weapon swap instant with a hitscan.

The design philosophy can’t just be that team fights are taking too long because you reduced tanks because you couldn’t make them fun so you just eliminated one of them.

Supports will be the next on the chopping block because if they are anything close to what we saw in that pvp footage, you’re going to lose most of your support players and none of your new players are going to want to play it either.

10 Likes
23

As long as ana can still 2 shot with a nade and kill a 200 hp target ill be fine

24

suppose it were “nerfed across the board”.

would u rather it be biased to grouped-up formations? like sustained vs. burst top ups when you’re all clumped up?

or would u rather it be biased to spread-out flanker/duelist formations? whether that’s sustained or burst.

that’s the first gate.

the second is how much skill that should take, and biasing the single target vs. aoe vs. sustain vs. burst (prob a hero select thing).

25

Most tank players don’t have a strategic bone in their body. All they want to do is hold W and plow through the entire enemy team uncontested.

27

I don’t think one little comment is enough to address this though. I am concerned enough about the direction of supports, and it seems like a lot of other people are too, that I think having a dev talk about what their overall plan for supports is would be a good idea. It feels like there’s no theoretical way to impact the fight as a support with their current build. They are nerfing healing, which would be more ok if they buffed utility, but they aren’t buffing utility. In fact, they are doing the opposite. Brig’s stun is gone and Ana’s sleep dart CD was increased. I have also seen a lot of concern about flankers not being kept in check since support utility is being removed. This is also something I would like them to address. What’s the plan for keeping mobile heroes from wrecking the backline with no CC and no peel from a second tank?

18 Likes
28

Here’s the obvious problem with previewing anything, especially after waiting too long for updates… they probably haven’t fleshed it all out and aren’t ready to give updates on that subject.

1 Like
29

Then why would people play OW instead of any number of other fps games? While I’m not opposed to turning supports into dps so they can duel and wreck people(which is the only logical answer if you’ve removed their agency as healers), I have to wonder why we would continue playing this game when plenty of others do the same thing.

Nobody is going to play a support that isn’t worth healing with in combat, they’re going to play a dps. If everyone is a dps, why did we bother with RQ, and why are we playing this game instead of any number of others? It feels like they’re looking at this as a game to emphasize frags and dps, but that’s not really what makes OW an interesting game. Could just go play Quake for that.

20 Likes
30

Would get more vocal about the fact but new apartment and less coworkers at work has really been exhausting.

31

that’s an overshoot of what i’m suggesting.

ow/ow2 is a hero-shooter where u personify the hero through it’s kit.
u want heroes to have heterogenous kits, not be homogenous by role archetypes. u want them to have a degree of agency, self-expression, and personal skill-differentiation. teamwork and teamplay needs to happen, just not like it does in current 222 or goats. for that u need more micro, less all-in ult scripts and iwin hero selects aka macro. for that u need more of the map used at once, less of this fallback regroup try try again.

so ppl coming from other games should be looking at ow/ow2 if they want to outplay ppl via a combination of the above, rather than the current run-and-gun, loot-and-shoot, spray-and-prey, sneak-and-peek titles on the market.

think ow but less clump and more lanes like classic ow (less buffered than goats/222, faster ttk, more apm tempo, etc) akin to tdm/qpc where there are objectives and teamwork but you better be on your a-game in terms of micro-mechanics. no more flinging yourself away from a 1hp mcree screaming for peels. no more group up with me shielding for days spamming some ults and expecting results.

to stay on topic, supports play a role in this by attenuating mistakes in terms of burst or sustain ttk. tanks do the same by attenuating positional mistakes and sharpening zonal punish. we need support role to be less healbot.

think of current main sup being dialed back to almost offsup levels of output, and current offsup dialed back to hybrid/utility dps levels of healing output and ttk buffering. meanwhile the current dps needs to not scale with value via mindless poke behind tank with pocket heals until ult. they need to work for parts of the map and live off the land more. it’s nowhere near cod but it’s not scripted clumpwatch which is what most 222 metas gave us.

1 Like
32

The medic in TF2 has a ramping healing buff that works the same way. Anyone actively being shot receives way less healing than someone who’s been out of combat for a few seconds.

Stacking medics makes them all charge uber slower, too. Almost as if overlapping insane single target healing output on a single player should be punished somehow… :thinking:

1 Like
33

Then maybe it’s time to start looking at the other roles escape abilities that stack up ONTOP of healing. I mean their are starting to be more and more fades, leaps, blinks and other mechanics that stacked with healing extend the fight and in cases make healing irrelevant and allowing characters to work independently.

If dps and tanks had to engage with supports to survive maybe the concept of teamwork may have begun appearing. But give each character abilities to flank on their own - you don’t train and instill the need or want to work with supports. support utility the is tied heavily on how well your team performs and works together. Ana and bap break this mold but characters like mercy for instance are extremely hard to get out of bronze because you have to rely on players being able to fulfill their role requirements and you have no agency.

I mean did hanzo for instance really need a leap that no one asked for? I also takes away from the support role identity when other characters have more utility and can heal themselves. No support can build a wall and heal themselves for instance. Yet when support begins to do as much damage as dps (soldier / bap for instance) that’s not allowed.

2 Likes
34

Then don’t have insane single target healing. That can be looked at without a clumsy blanket nerf that affects even Lucio’s healing song.

35

Nope but you can get them to appear once every couple months to give vague OW2 references and pats on the back of how good of a job they are doing.

2 Likes
36

I just want to know that as a support character I’m being impactful.

If it boils down to I’m just a weaker version of what we currently have, count me out.

If I can at least reliably defend myself from DPS, maybe I’ll give it a try, but there are only a couple of supports that can currently reliably defend themselves from flankers. With abilities like shield bash losing the stun, and sleep dart being on a longer cooldown, we’re even more defenseless

1 Like
37

Uhm… not really? Like, Zarya’s bubble CD being increased by more than 2X doesn’t exactly bring confidence, you know?

CC resistance is fine, I guess, but it’s not displacements that are hard to deal with as tanks, it’s stuns.

Less ult charge is useful but has 0 impact on how powerful I feel, so not great either.

Rein’s changes don’t make me excited, Zarya’s changes make me actively squirm, and Winston’s changes look nice.

None of that outweighs having to play against faster DPS and having to cope with being the ONLY defensive bullwark for the team.

3 Likes
38

They probably haven’t even looked at supports seriously yet. There’s a reason the game was rumored for a 2023 release. There’s a lot they still need to adjust for 5v5.

Having a functional version ready for OWL next year is going to be a herculean effort. I wouldn’t be surprised if OWL starts with a few heroes grayed out as they aren’t ready for 5v5.

That being said, simply nerfing all supports for 5v5 and calling it a day won’t work. It will just create the next queue time bottleneck.

39

Supports are supposed to be nerfed. The concept of Overwatch 2 is to promote individual gameplay, individual value, better headshot aiming, and much faster fights. Creating more heals would contradict that very core concept, so heals are obviously nerfed. It makes sense.

Many don’t like Overwatch 2, myself included. But we are not the target-audience of that shooter game.

1 Like
40

i just don’t understand why not make the supports less heal-oriented, since the problem is that their abilities lengthen the fights?
and yes, some supports may not have heal abilities at all. you won’t convince me that it doesn’t work
Symmetra has never been a support, she didn’t do anything for the team directly, and was almost always busy doing damage
but I can demonstrate the proposed by the example of the most imo unloved supports - Zen and Lucio

Zen and Lucio seem to be the most unloved support combination among players. basically, because you can play Lucio in two ways - sit on the heal and dance behind the team, sometimes shooting shields, or be a reddit Lucio and not heal the team at all (but at the same time the damage from lucio is less than from the average dps, so he you don’t have 3 dps and at the same time you have only 1 support)
and it’s ridiculously easy to fix it imo
remove the heal from Lucio and do instead, for example, reduce the damage from the enemy team. so, all enemies who are in the range of his abilities will deal 15 percent less damage. this makes sense because lucio very rarely stands with his team, he is more likely to prefer to flank or help individual team members. and for a greater focus on personal experience, you can increase the damage depending on the speed. for example, at normal speed, the damage, as it is now, is 20, but with acceleration it increases to 25 or 30 (increase my boi’s damage, you cowards)
it always seemed so illogical to me to make the most mobile character more useful WHEN HE STANDS STILL. JUST WHY? WHAT WAS BEHIND THIS DESIGN DECISION, BLIZZARD?
and for ult, you can, for example, accelerate all team members in the range by 30 percent or so. and since it’s probably not as strong as the sound barrier, you can finally fix the cost of his ult. because the fact that solo team kill gives him only 55 percent of the ult is hilarious and humiliating at the same time

now Zen. if he is not very useful as a healer, you can buff his other abilities so that he can compare in usefulness with heal-oriented heroes. for example, add a second discord orb. and instead of healing, let the harmony sphere add damage to allies, since healing lengthens the fights too much

such a new harmony orb would be like Mercy’s increasing damage. but I personally think it’s high time this woman was given a glock, she deserved it
let there be a heal on the right click, and a blaster on the left, and she can heal and shoot at the same time. and let’s say, that she has very low damage (10, let’s say), but if she’s shooting the target that is under the fire of an ally, the damage increases (to 25 or 30, let’s say), it’s support-oriented and again, this will spice up the fight

Zen’s ult can still make him invulnerable, but instead of healing, he can increase damage, just like Orisa’s ult. and Orisa’s ult can be replaced with a shield generator, only to make it easier to find it. for example, draw lines about the outer face on which the shield runs to the generator so that it is easier to find it, but while they are going to destroy the generator, the team with the generator can cause damage, or enemies can wait until the generator disappears itself after, say, 6 seconds, how long does the Zenyatta ult lasts now. it will also help to give control over the pace of battle to tanks instead of healers or dps, as they wanted

and now imagine that we have two teams in which Ana (in her current state) and Mercy are against Lucio and Zen
yes, Ana and Mercy can heal, but at the same time, 40% of the their team (two players with discord orbs on them) receive more damage, their team deals less damage due to Lucio’s ability, while one Zen’s teammate deals more damage due to the harmony orb. Ana is likely to be more focused on healing, as her team is now taking more damage, while since Lucio’s abilities are passive, he can deal more damage. And Zen and Mercy will both be focused on dealing damage and looking for a suitable target for their ability

oh, and why don’t make 6v6, where 1 tank, 3 dps and 2 healers? it will also reduce the dps queue a little. sounds reasonable for me, but i never heard it discussed, only 5v5 with 1-2-2 or 6v6 with 2-2-2

just my thoughts tho, maybe i don’t understand some deep mechanics of the game

41

That makes the assumption that they have general ideas about the role in OW2.

My guess, they are working on Tanks, and problematic DPS. And Supports will be the focused on last.

Especially since Support players are notoriously touchy about gameplay changes.

1 Like