The title is basically the topic, and I know it’s generally tired, but every time I see posts on the forums about support players and Comp, it’s just a bunch of support people complaining about being stuck with bad teams. As a support main, I’m honestly pretty sympathetic to this gripe, but I’m starting to think that the prevalence of the complaint is an indicator that getting over this complaint and fixing it is what separates Gold/Platinum healers from Silver/Bronze healers. While I’m certainly a bit whiny about placing over 2000 and ending the season sub 1800, I want to fix it, not wallow in the muck.
So here’s my general question: what can I do, specifically, to be a more successful healer?
I’m looking specifically for input from other support mains who are in high gold/platinum placement, but if anybody has observations, I’m happy to hear them. I think my healing numbers are pretty strong, getting 10k+/10 minutes with Moira (they dipped a bit from my experiments in quickplay to see if I could increase my damage output without sacrificing healing, and it doesn’t seem to be the case), and I’m slowly getting better with Moira and Ana.
I noticed a slight uptick in success when I started babysitting my teammates and demanding they do specific things; as a healer I’ve noticed I have a unique position where I’m constantly monitoring the field and am acutely aware of weaknesses of my team’s compositions; I’ve noticed that sometimes people are obstinate to change/direction, though; is that something I just have to accept as a thing? Are there tips for team management? These are the things I’m curious about.
tl;dr: I want to be better at competitive as a healer, and want to know what makes a good healer that climbs ranks instead of drops in them.
My tip is: get used to Lucio.
Why? Because if you get used to wallride, you’ll be a pain to hit, and you’ll keep healing your teammates, holding objectives in overtime, etc.
I used to main Lucio quite a bit back in the early days of comp, and while I like how annoyingly persistent he can be at holding points, he’s really trash at saving teams when the damage comes a-callin’. I love his ult when it’s timed correctly, but his lack of burst healing can be a game-loser, especially when nobody else wants to play healer.
edit: I’m not pointing this out to be a contrarian/argue, I’m just not totally convinced this is a good answer to my problem? Or maybe it is. Hahaha, who knows. I guess a good Lucio can do a lot more aggressive carrying than any other healer.
I’ve been able to do extremely well with him if you wallride properly and save your Amp it Up at crucial times.
But depends a lot. Have you tried Moira?
I’ve played a lot of Mercy, Lucio and some Zen in comp and I ended the season in plat. My tips would be to communicate with your team and to have good positioning. Tell people “come to me for healing”. Being in voice chat helps a ton to hear where people are and what’s happening. (text chat and key binds are always an option)
It’s also good to dive with your tanks to keep them healed when they’re grouped up. If your Winston jumps in alone and you have no back up, it’s best to stay with the group and keep everyone else healed. Having good team communication would make the team push in together. The biggest mistake in my opinion is over extending bc you feel like you need to keep everyone at max health. Sometimes it’s better to keep yourself alive for the sake of the rest of the team. Hope this helped a little : )
My input may not be as valuable as others as I am not really a support main, but I do play Zenyatta and Moira frequently. I do heal with both, but I also heavily DPS. An important thing for Zen is to always inform everyone where the discords are at so they can be mowed down. As for Moira, if you learn to use her fade abilities well, you can bait out ultimates (Junkrat, Hog, Dva, etc) and mostly escape unharmed.
However, and important thing to remember is that Moira is also a flanker, so she can go with Genji/DVa/Pharah in most circumstances to help DPS and heal when needed.
As for getting out of silver, I’ve been there and it can be pretty hard, but the important thing to focus on is that you only have control over what you do and how you play. Once I started focusing on that and what my job was (depending on the hero) instead of the negativity that sometimes comes with Silver, I started playing a lot better, placing higher, and climbed up to nearly diamond last season.
This is all really good input, honestly. I may be focusing too much on my healing numbers (which is partially a complex I have because of the way people treat Moira as a character). This thread confirms a few things, in that mostly I need to communicate more with my teams, and maybe be, ironically, a little bit less afraid of dying? I generally stay alive most of the time, on an average game only dying a handful of times, but I do frequently let aggressive tanks bite the dust because I’m afraid that the 2 of us versus 6 others won’t work out, but maybe I’ll try experimenting with being more risky in those pushes and having marginally more faith in those suicidal Reinhardts.
I’ve actually been doing research on this for a project in my Master’s class.
Put in the time. I don’t think you’ll get it with below 15hrs. There will always be highs and lows. I’d say 30hrs is about what you’ll need to climb from silver-> gold.
Quit for the day after 2-3 losses. Maybe come back to it later, but it has to be later, it can’t be after 1hr or something soonish.
Duo with a flex partner. I can’t say how much this really did help. If you and a partner are willing to flex, you’re already upping the chance to win tremendously.
Call shots, it’s always going to help.
Warm up, I found this a little hit or miss with some supports, but consider it more for back up tanks or healers (I found the most use of this with ones like Ana, Zarya, Zenyatta, or Orisa which require more mechanical skill).
Watch your games, look through and identify what things you could do better and question why you did one thing or another, even if you win.
(Added) Never play in the last week of the competitive season… I still hate I obligated myself to include this in my research, but don’t. You’ll need to put in way more effort than your team is willing to because a lot of people will enter needing proof and a reason of why they should try (meaning you won round 1).
Edit: The topic for the project was “How to climb in competitive gaming,” and I am in Silver. I climbed up to 1900, didn’t really pass it, but realized I should have put much more time into it.
my tip for you is know which support role you’re filling. Moira,ana, and Lucio for instance are offensive supports, they help initiate pushes with their ults/abilities.
Your defensive supports are Mercy, zenyatta, and also lucio can be played defensively. These support are more focused on keeping the team alive (more so than usual.)
when playing offensive supports like moira for example, use coalesence to initiate fights.
when playing defensive supports like zenyatta, use your ultimate to block offensive ultimates to keep your team alive.(every team should have at least 1 defensive support)
Hi, I am a support player in Masters (not on this account, but on my main account). It is a little hard to judge what you are doing wrong specifically, but I will try to help you based off your stats and my general knowledge:
Moira is definitely a good pick at lower ranks, Ana not so much because she requires good communication with her team and I’m not sure if lower ranks really understand how to play around an Ana on their team.
With Moira you have a few things you want to keep in mind:
Manage healing resources by healing in short bursts vs holding down primary fire. Moira’s heals have a short heal over time period so you don’t have to heal people all the way to full health. If the person is at critical health, its ok to hold down primary fire.
Use healing orb to heal chip damage so you can reserve your healing resources.
You want to build your ult as fast as possible, use it when a team fight begins to skew the fight in your favor vs waiting until all your teammates are low (Coalescence does not heal fast enough so your teammates may die if you wait too long to ult)
To build ult you should be using damage orbs in the beginning since they give more ult charge than a healing orb does. Though, avoid spamming too many damage orbs cause you don’t want to feed enemy support ults.
Feel free to play slightly more aggressively as Moira since her fade ability has a short cooldown, you are very good for taking out squishes like Genji/Tracer.
*Don’t waste your fade ability on just repositioning yourself, you should keep it to save your life (your life>anyone elses).
*The map/team comp you are playing on/with might not always fit Moira. Maps like Watchpoint Gibraltar have a lot of verticality so Moira might not always be able to stay in healing range, the same issue happens if you are playing with a lot of mobile heroes on your team. In this case, Mercy might be the better healer pick.
There is probably some other stuff, but these are a few tips from the top of my head, good luck
I’m not a support main but I do flex to support a lot and I play in Master so I might be able to give you some advice.
In my opinion, the easiest way to climb is to play one or two dps and just get really good at them since you have less of a reliance on your team. If you are really determined to climb as a support I would do this:
Communication is basically a must. You need to call out when you’re in trouble, when to ult, who’s discorded, etc. Not everyone will listen to you, but it can really help improve your comm skills and game sense.
I would try watching really good support players on YouTube and watch what they do. I’ve learned a lot on how to play my main by watching pros.
Last you can try to record your gameplay and watch it back and see if you can see all the mistakes you are actually making. This has helped me to stop making the same mistakes over and over.
I was honestly really torn on writing this post seeing from what I’ve seen in this forum in the past, but I’m really happy that I did, because all of this is really interesting and helpful information (I didn’t know that red orbs built ult faster, for instance.)
I’m also gonna record some games and review them, because usually all I have going on when I think back to my weaknesses is “I played sloppily” instead of actually being like “wow, I really did x when I should have done y, right here, in this specific situation.”
Thank you everyone for all your input. I’m also going to try switching support characters more. I’ve been sticking pretty religiously with Moira because of her strong burst healing and group healing, but I do realize that leaning only on one character creates an exploitable weakness, and I’ve been practicing everyone else in QP. I’ll be braver next season in trying different healers in different games.
Use to be a support main myself and could never get out of high silver low gold until i learned to dps and carry my team to a win. Like literally made it my goal to 1v6 the entire enemy team and pray the 5 left on my team stand on point. All that being said i did go from low bronze to mid gold as zenyatta. Heres my tips.
zenyatta first, then moira if hes already chosen.
positioning is 90% the reason u loose.
did i mention positioning?
call out every discord and leave it on that hero until they die. If u see ur team focusing someone throw it on them.
always have an orb on someone, put it on the front line guys, then tanks, then healers.
dnt peek corners
use trans as a counter but also to heal entire team on a point if they are all low.
