Healing is too strong [LONG POST]

General Discussion
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Another kick at another hornet’s nest.

This post is in part a response to the following post about healing…

…and in part something I have been debating for a long time.

I personally think the main problem right now is that healing in Overwatch is, in short, overpowered.

Note: I want healing nerfed but not supports nerfed, so I would appreciate if the angry support mains actually read the post first.

Let’s look at 2 cases: TF2 and Overwatch in earlier seasons.

TF2, as mentioned by the OP in the linked post, encouraged falling back because it was quicker than dying and respawning. For those of you who didn’t read the post, it was found that a flat healing rate often couldn’t keep up with damage input, and people found it quicker to just kill themselves and respawn than wait for the healing. As a compensation, TF2 implemented a mechanic to heal more the longer the target has not received damage.

In Overwatch in earlier seasons, even though it didn’t have the TF2 healing mechanism, people DID back up for heals. Why? Well, due to the team size of Overwatch compared to TF2, a death would make a much larger impact. In TF2, a 10/11 vs 12 fight could very much be won, while a 4/5 vs 6 fight, under most circumstances, would be considered lost.

Back when Mercy, Lucio and Zen were the only available healers, people HAD to back up because the raw healing amount couldn’t keep up with the damage. Even if you stacked Mercy with Zen, you would only get 80 hps, which isn’t a lot at all.

So basically, some general similarities:

  1. Flat healing rates cannot keep up with damage
  2. Due to damage input>Healing input, players have to manage their health
  3. The importance of health management (healing & falling back) is relevant to the impact of a teammate’s death (i.e. the decision of Suiciding and respawn vs Falling back for healing)

So what’s the problem?

Personally, the problem started with Ana.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Ana’s design, I love her lore. But her healing scale was, in short and in comparison, OFF the charts completely.
Ana (currently) heals for 75 health over 0.825 seconds, 1.25 times every second. That translates as a 93.75 base healing per second–almost TWICE that of Mercy then (and now), and around 3 times the healing of Zenyatta. This is not counting the 100 splash burst heal and the bonus it gives to her base heal–from 93.75 hps to 140.6 hps.

Then we got Moira next, and by golly she stacked heals.
Once again, I love Moira. My closest Overwatch friend is a Moira main, and she coordinates very well with Reaper
However, the facts are that Moira’s base heal is 80 hps, combined with a remainder effect for 50 hp over 3 seconds, so approximately 16 hps.
In addition, Moira’s biotic orb heals for 75 hps.
In short, just by tossing an orb and pressing leftclick, Moira heals for 171hps.
In other words, Moira outheals Mercy by over 300%, and Zenyatta isn’t even comparable

If these numbers themselves don’t raise any alarms, remember, Overwatch usually has 2 (recently 3) healers. And who are the most popular healers for the average player (e.g. Gold)? Moira and Ana.
Not exactly a surprise. The average player is where people like excessiveness–excessive shields (Reinhardt Orisa comps), excessive damage (Reaper Junkrat), and of course excessive healing.

And once these two healers go together, we get a maximum of 140.6 + 171 x 1.5 hps= 396 hps.
FYI Transcendence heals for 300 hps
For comparison (even if we ignore shields, defense matrix, and other damage-mitigating effects or abilities in Overwatch), a perfectly accurate Soldier 76 does 19x9= 171 dps.
2 Soldier 76s who are perfectly accurate would only damage for 342 dps–Moira and Ana still outheal by a very respectable margin.

“Meh, you’re just stacking the biggest main healers, that never happens”
Yup. That’s why I took a look at Lucio Ana, who are currently the most favoured healers in GM.
48.3 (amped healing) x1.5 (biotic grenade) + 140.6= 213 hps
Yup. Still outheals a PERFECTLY accurate 76 by 40 hps

In short, in Overwatch, we have the complete opposite situation–Even if we do not account for burst healing, flat healing rates ALREADY EXCEED damage input

No wonder bursty heroes like Hanzo and Widowmaker once had a meta all to their own, and tank comps are so favoured.

The raw healing input of some heroes, and some combination of heroes, is so overwhelming that consistent dps are useless. That leads to burst dps such as snipers, which then leads to the use of heroes that are resistant to burst damage and have high enough healthpools to soak up th excessive amount of healing–tanks.

So what do I wish to see?

Nerfs to healing.
As long as healing remains so overwhelmingly high, tanks will always be the meta. DPS who deal consistent damage will always have no place.

I am no expert on balancing, so these are only some ideas I have
1) Much like TF2, healing stacking should be limited.
For instance, when a target receives more than one source of healing, the healing is reduced by (say for example) 20%. This would encourage target priorization for healing and cooperation between healers instead of “Hey, he seems low on hp, let’s pile every single bit of healing on him and essentially make him impervious to damage!”

2) Healing should be reduced
The healing output of some heroes should, simply put, be reduced. Specifically, Moira and Ana, the two most noticeable outliers, should be tuned down.

3) Supports should provide utility, not just healing
Considering healing is overall nerfed, and some specific heroes as well, these heroes should be buffed in other aspects to provide compensation utility. For instance, Moira can be given a passive that does low, consistent damage in an AOE area (say, 20dps) to counter other AOE healing, or reduce healing by 10% in an AOE radius around her.

inb4s:
“You just want supports nerfed”
Literally did you even read my post? I want HEALING nerfed, not supports.

“DPS mains just looking for new things to whine about”
Sorry for having an opinion. Not sure what being a dps main has anything to do with it, but I’m sure it completely discredits and invalidates my entire post

“Lol wall of text, didn’t even bother to read”
Why are you even here again?

Edit: Extra inb4:
“You want to nerf Mercy”
No.
In case I haven’t made it clear enough, I do not think all main healers need a nerf. I do not think all healers need a nerf. As far as I’m concerned, Mercy and Zenyatta are in fine spots, if not underpowered for Mercy.
I think healing overall needs a nerf, particularly in terms of heal-stacking and the amount of heals that Ana and Moira can provide.
Is it a universal nerf to all healers? Yes.
Does it mean all supports are nerfed? Not if they are compensated in utility.

Appreciate constructive comments.

Edit: I made an error in my calculations, but I thought it might be better to add this here than change the numbers above and have everyone wondering what the comments about it were talking about.

The remainder effect of Moira’s biotic grasp does not proc when she is healing a target, meaning the maximum heal she can get is 75 from ball and 80 from grasph =155hps, not 171hps

That means the maximum heal she and Ana can provide is 373hps instead of 396hps

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As a support main, I do kinda agree with you.
Right now, Mercy would be in a better spot, if her competition (aka Ana) did less healing.
But on the other hand, if you nerf Moiras healing, she would be pointless to run. Her puprose is … ALL THE HEALS. she has no utility beside dmg and heals. if you buff her damage, people will complain, if you don’t buff anything in return for the healing nerf she has no purpose.
Similar to Mercy. If you nerf her healing rate ANY more, she is completly pointless. She already can only do one thing at the time, if you nerf her healing … why bother playing her.
And then, if you nerf all the main healers, the off supports will take over completly as the healing difference wont be as big anymore, and they provide way more utility.

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Burst damage is OP in this game. If healing got an overall nerf, you might as well not bother with it at all because it’d be impossible to keep anyone alive.

The solution in my opinion would be to nerf both damage and healing, or simply increase health pools by 30-50% (which means a longer TTK, but also a reduction in effectiveness of burst healing that requires cooldowns). Never gonna happen though. DPS players would cry that they can’t get the drop on someone and instantly take them out of the fight anymore and it’s less flashy for esports.

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If we were to nerf Ana specifically, she’d need a compensation. She literally only worked with tanks so far. You take that away from her, and she’ll disappear from the game again. Moira probably too.

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I understand your concern. I think Mercy is in a good spot as of now, in terms of healing output.

Moira is definitely in a tougher spot. I get that her niche is all the heals, but as we know, higher tiers min/max, not rely on excessiveness. This niche itself puts Moira in a position where she cannot be viable in higher tiers.

Is it truly impossible to give Moira some form of utility, such as countering AOE healing, or more damage?

Optimally the main healers should still offer a larger amount of healing and trade for lesser amount of utility, but both should be viable options for either healing OR utility

I feel like this is the main issue, although it is ironic that the TTK currently is what is limiting Overwatch to Overwatch players–everyone else would be looking at flashing pixels and wondering what is happening

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Everytime someone says this I always try to point out the same thing.

If it was healing and healing alone that was too strong then the meta would allow for triple DPS and triple healer.

Healing on it’s own is not actually that strong, the vast majority of damage mitigation comes from tanks.

In your example you are comparing the healing output of multiple healers to the damage output of a single DPS. For this to be consistently a problem then not only would your hypothetical 76 player have to be constantly in a 1v2 but also he must receive no additional damage support from his team AND his team must be somehow unable to fight a 5v4 during a time where the healers of the enemy team are extremely occupied. You also ignore 76’s helix rockets but do include the use of two cooldowns for the supports. Their cooldowns only provide that healing for a limited window of time however 76 only has a downtime of 1.5 seconds on his primary fire.

The real reason that healing feels like such a problem is because tanks enable the healing significantly, they block critical damage and buy enough time for the healers to address wounded teammates and they are almost immune to being oneshot.

Healing alone does not exceed damage output, healing plus barriers plus DM out sustains most traditional dps configurations.

The real problem is to take a team comp that provides sufficient damage to barriers to break through them and then kill the people behind those barriers is so vulnerable to a single DPS swap for the defending team that it’s better to just mirror the enemy.

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Some feedback, I agree healing especially aoe is super powerful, and while some math is off a bit here and there your right healing as it is now is too strong, however what needs to be done is fine tuned scalpel change to healing because messing up can potentially cause a whole class of heroes to become worthless, one problem you didn’t think about it seems is how

would interact with aoe healing, from what I understand of what you mean by this only 1 person is having that decrease, if it affects both this problem is only amplified and makes aoe healers throw picks, so for now I’m going to assume only 1 person, how would it select which one gets decreased, if its whichever one is first, we go back to the problem of if it affects both and makes aoe healers throw picks, it would be best if it only reduced the lower healing of the 2 to reduce

also
You just want supports nerfed
DPS mains just looking for new things to whine about
Lol wall of text, didn’t even bother to read

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I disagree. The reason why triple healer triple DPS is not viable is because DPS need team space to effectively do their jobs. In addition, DPS’s low hp cap means they will get bursted down by something like Sniper shots, and no amount of healing will compensate for that. Which, as a matter of fact, is precisely why triple tank is the meta comp–these are heroes that can take burst damage and survive long enough for the overwhelming amounts of heal to perform its function.

I do agree that the tank-support coordination is perhaps too good and in both ways–tank comps are enabled by the overflow of healing, and healing is enabled by the overflow of tanks. But I believe taking one aspect out of the equation, i.e. healing overflow, would ALSO reduce the viability of heavy tank comps.

BTW I know the numbers are rough, but they are just a measure of comparison. You have also neglected that this is essentially a Soldier with tactical visor, when the average accuracy according to overbuff is around 36%–Just Moira alone would be perfectly adequate to surpass the 61.6 dps

Thanks for the comment though :slight_smile:

In response to what you said, i think BOTH sources of healing for ONE person should be reduced by whatever balanced percentage. Basically a net heal-reduction for all sources of healing on a target that is receiving more than one source

Understandably it reduces AOE healing to a much smaller effect, but first of all, I believe healing is arguably overpowered, and second, compensation can be provided in terms of utility

OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT…!!!

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You voiced a concern that i was too afraid too. I hope you live to see an outcome

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As I always do. Last time I made a “Brig is OP” post and responded to around 6 Brig supporters on a mobile phone.

But if I don’t do that, nobody will

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It should be indicative enough that people on this forum are too scared to voice certain opinions because of forum majority.

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And that’s exactly why I, the hornet-nest-kicker, is here.

BTW for everyone who is typing, thanks for the constructive comments. Unfortunately due to timezone differences, I have to go to sleep. I will make sure to respond to most of you when I wake

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Woah youre aussie? Or at least close cause im about to sleep too

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Hong Kong.

Goodnight everyone

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Sleep well!

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I actually agree with most of this post. I think Ana as a character you’d need you’d need to be careful with because in some cases (console especially) she’s still hard to get those high heals out of. I do think they should get rid of the burst heal on nanoboost, or reduce it so that it isn’t as effective on tanks.

You make a good case for nerfing healing overall, though, and especially nerfing stacked heals. This would not only prevent healers from making tanks immune to death, but it would also remove the issue that happens every now and again where the carry on the team is the one getting all the supports on him. It’s not a common thing, but it would make these types of comps where one player decides the match and his whole team rallies around him less powerful.

Moira especially enables these high health pool comps more than any other hero in the game because she can just keep up with them much better. At least reducing her HPS to 70 as a start would be a good proof of concept, but I bet you could bring her down to even 65 HPS, keeping the linger effect where it is.

I also like the idea of a Moira passive, especially as it would not always force her to have to decide if she’s going to heal more or dps to refill her resource bar- it could potentially speed up the rate it recharges as long as you’re in the firefight.

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for ana, i could see them lowering her healing per bullet, but make her friendly hitbox larger. so that she doesnt rely on having tanks in her face anymore, but also doesnt blast them full of excessive healing. would be a win win in my eyes.

i kinda agree moiras healing should also be reduced, but she would definitely need a unique passive or something. i would welcome that.

as a support main, i would love to nerf healing and buff utility for supports.

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And that’s where a big problem arises, half the support class becomes trolling throw picks with a change like that, Moira’s would almost never throw heal balls, Brigitte’s repair packs won’t be good if someone is affected by her inspire passive, and any single target healer on a team with an aoe healer instantly becomes trash, unless the reduction isn’t too major, but if it’s not good enough we’re right back to square one of healing is too powerful, we can give healers utility but now I propose this question to you, how can we buff Mercy’s utility without making her op, we can’t buff rez or we could very possibly go right on back to moth meta, so we gotta buff damage boost right! well how, if we buff the amount it boosts even by 5% it causes breakpoints Mei’s can one shot with headshots Widow could one shot Orisa and Zarya, even higher than 5% and the break points keep on breaking, so buffing either of Mercy’s utilities is out of the question, so how do we compensate her for the healing nerf?

The same can be said of ana, until recently she’s been a pretty bad pick and nerfing her healing would throw her right back down there, but how would we add more utility to a hero who’s every ability is a utility ability, buff the utility? Nade is arguably the second strongest utility in the game and already has so much going on with it, so like rez that’s a no go, so we go with sleep dart, but than we arrive at this thing has the potential to remove an enemy from the fight for 6 whole seconds, how do we buff something like that?
So the solution is her ult! Buff it! Well how? How do we buff an already balanced ult without making it op?

This is a massive change that needs to be done extremely carefully

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Mathlady.jpg

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Moira does have only a limited amount of healing, out of all the healers though she’s going to come the closest because she provides no utility.

The average accuracy is a little misleading, the in-combat accuracy of a player vs the average accuracy can be significantly different as many players use bullets to break railing, etc. I bet the average accuracy stat for Moira’s heal would shock some players.

Moira is an offball because her ability to heal doesn’t scale very well with rank, she can mostly perform the same healing output at any rank but the accuracy and coordination required to outdamage her don’t become present until much higher up in the ranks.

I think healing really only is half the story and not as responsible as DM.
On Ladder the high healing is a bit of a problem because teams lack focus but in higher level scrims recently you see a lot of Zen,Lucio and Brig. Except during trans the healing output of this team is significantly lower than if people took Ana or Moira. The one factor that remains the same however is the tank selection.

If they can trade out the highest raw healing output characters for one of the lowest then surely the value of raw healing is being overstated a little.

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