Like when she came out she felt like a psuedo-sniper until blizzard realized what a stupid niche that was to have in the game so they rightfully hard nerfed the weapon. Don’t get me wrong she can still get kills and even duel, but it’s no longer the defining feature.
Now something about her kit just feels empty. It almost feels like she should have another ability not because she needs it power-wise but just because it feels like I should be pressing another button when I’m playing her. Like I actually enjoy playing her more on maps where she’s worse because it’s a lot more interesting when you have to constantly juggle the pylon around to stop enemies from finding it
Illari is basically the supp equivalent of JQ, you just have to commit or die because theres no escape for you. But I do agree her kit is lackluster, she should have another 15 feet in distance added to her outburst ability IMO.
Worst support design by far. Even LW is more fun to play. There’s no “play” to be made with this hero. You either can aim well and contribute or be useless. Zen is somewhat the same but his orbs are good utilities and his weapons are much more satisfying to use. I dislike the charging mechanics of her gun.
For a beam that looks like a cartoon depiction of what happens when you hold a magnifying glass up to the sun, I was disappointed that Illari’s secondary fire doesn’t deal burning damage to enemies.
I modded it to do so in the workshop, and it felt like a keystone slotting into place. Having a solar-powered flamethrower makes brawls on the objective hella fun, and it opened up a whole new world for how I approached every fight!
There’s not much else they can do. She needs to be focused on spot healing and keeping her team healthy. When she’s not doing that, she serves as artillery, ala Ashe, in poking and putting pressure on the enemy team.
Eh, there are better supports.
Because she doesn’t hit very hard and they capped her critical hit modifier, she’s always going to be on the lower rung of effectiveness. Captive Sun is a great equalizer, but too hard to get use out of effectively on uncoordinated teams or even coordinated ones.
Most higher level pros don’t really need to rely on the damage she produces or outputs, being a support. Most of them rely on their supports to enable their Damage-role heroes who are much more competent and more capable (when enabled) to do the job. Ashe will fill her damage-pressure niche, and so Illari’s only work she needs to do is heal her team and keep them alive, and there better supports capable of doing that and providing utility.
I think the problem is that they overreacted to the initial complaints about Illari and left her in a semi-ineffective state. She needed tuning and got sledgehammered.
I think she’s fun. I have a lot of success playing her as a poke DPS who refills the tank’s health in between lasering squishies. The problem is her cooldowns aren’t really interactive. I put pylon in a decent place and forget about healing squishies unless they happen to be low and standing still right in front of me. Outburst I have to save for dives.
So if you don’t like the cadence of going pew pew with her charged laser and occasionally refilling the tank’s health with her secondary, she doesn’t really have much going on. I doubt she will be meta without some major changes, but I can output some crazy numbers on her, both in terms of damage and healing.
I always felt like she should have WAY lower healing from her turret but make it a bit harder to kill. That way the sneaky placements make a difference in sustained healing. Usually it can just be 1 or two shot so its barely a distraction. That change would be to balance out having a strong right click beam. I’d make it behave like chain lightning in wow. Have it jump from the main target to 2 more allies doing less healing with each jump. 100% power for target, 80% for first jump and 60% for second jump. Gives her aoe heals basically which i feel like you need these days with all the multi target damage. You can just balance the numbers so it’s not oppressive. Fits with sunbeam aesthetic too
Illari developed for poke compositions and also playable on brawl ones. So she doesn’t need far range heal for that tasks
Illari was quite balanced before S9 or even after until devs nerfed her primary fire damage.
Most people just doesn’t know how play on her. She is more active version of Ashe, she always should move making herself harder to hit, taking corners and heals with beam sometimes. Literally play as Ashe not good for her. You also can able combinate melee and primary fire with latest “buff”, cause now primary charging no longer stops when you use melee
Her pickrate started to drop in S9 and after august 75 → 70 damage nerf.
I think, devs should return back 75 damage, remove heal divider for Illari from pylone or give her some utility like hitscan with beam properties, like: Can penetrate Sigma’s shift, D.va matrix, genji’s deflect, Orisa’s javelin spin and etc. Also would be interesting see how she feel after enabling enemy shiled penetration for heal beam
I do love her turret (if its me playing illari because if she’s on the other team NO ONE EVER touches her turret and she gets 10k+ heal just thanks to that) mechanic. Her push away/jump thingy is also a nice thing…
But the rest of her kit is nothing for me. The healbeam? not my type of way to heal. It’s too limited.
Shooting? With her? You have to have almost perfect aim, which I by far not have.
The ult? Sure if you have an enemy team that less braincells than a chicken and they cuddle up when you fly high it will be a banger, but else the ult is useless and unfit in a support hero.
If I play support, I want to SUPPORT the team, not try to get the most kills. Give me buffs I slam on my team or debuffs I can slam on the enemies…
That’s okay if we have one exception for every role. She is (was?) best choice if your teammates ignore flyers.
In other case turn Mei to tank role also if you don’t like “DPS” Illari to make game more “correct”
cause other Supports are just better at what she does now - in the vast majority of situations.