See title. Since we don’t have any, I’m highly interested in non-healing support heroes.
What would they have to be capable of in order to compete with the likes of Mercy and Zen?
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well we did but not anymore
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Be honest. Sym was never really a support.
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It doesn’t work really.
A support would need ways of basically increasing health pools in order to be considered over a healing support. Or something to that effect.
As is you basically must run 2 healers or be at a severe disadvantage.
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except she was, giving shields to your teammates and teleporting them is support hell even torb was planned on being a support at one point just because he could give armor packs to teammates
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My thought is that the only reason the healers are as mandatory as they are is because the only non-healing “support” we’ve ever had was so bad she’s on her second rework.
It’s why I’m asking how powerful one would need to be in order to be viable.
Basically, what kind of functionality is equivalent to 60 health per second?
That’s it really. The situational element of any non healing support won’t be enough to make it worth over on demand healing.
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25 shields at release. 25 shields is nothing.
And neither her nor anyone else ever had any kind of synergy with her shields to make her not suck.
More like the deployable style of gameplay never worked. The game turned out to be a lot more mobile than the devs ever envisioned. If her teleporter ultimate had been more like Mercy’s rez, it might have been viable from the get-go.
This is why I’m asking the question. What level of usability is necessary to compete with 60 health per second on a short leash?
They could have explored the Shield HP giving aspect of Symmetra but no.
Although according to Blizzard it is too strong of a synergy with Armor from the likes of Brigitte and Torbjorn which I find to be bull. Just because of those two, Symmetra has to lose her shield HP giving capabilities? It’s a neat niche they could expand on which has always been more balanced than Armor but alas, let’s enable the Armor givers and cut Sym’s shielding and make her a DPS.
I’m angry about it because it could’ve been a good concept to pursue and now I doubt we’ll even ever see it be recycled into a new support hero.
Shield HP is so versatile and effective since it is like extra health that regenerates after a certain amount of time. Sure it doesn’t give damage reduction (Controversial) but it comes back if you don’t take damage.
They could easily up this to match healing if they gave the capability to spark the regen effect instantly and “heal” the Shield HP or perhaps have it regenerate after 1.5 s instead of 3 s.
They also could toy with Barrier HP (Decaying Barrier health like what Sound Barrier gives out).
There’s a lot of possibilities but it’s clear that Blizzard has a complete lack of imagination.
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I disagree. It’s a matter of opportunity cost and overall power. There are problems that need to be solved before a non-healing support could be viable, but they still need to be solved first.
I completely disagree. There is a breakpoint somewhere.
To be a support with out healing the hero would have to have massive buff/nerf potential. Something like un nerfed nano or a mass hack that reduce enemies anything. Both would have to be tied to a none ult ability. Because without healing they would need to bring a passive value to replace a support. Over all in most moba support are there to cover mistakes.
Oh for sure. Getting there without breaking much of the game would be difficult.
They just need to provide enough utility to justify not needing the second healer. They’d honestly need stuff like damage boost , possibly an ability or passive that lowers the teams cooldowns, maybe something that buffed the healing rates of your healers, or a speed boost for the team or maybe a speed debuff for the enemy team? They’d need to have the right mixture
should have been buffed to 75 to be on par with Torb
it basically was rez except you had to walk 3 meters in the spawn room and bam instantly back with your team
They need to be like Brigitte as a 3rd support to be effective, to do the job of another role. Most of the time you need 2 healers. For them to heal each other, to have a healer if 1 dies, and making it a lot easier for each of them, as Mercy healing tanks and Zenyatta healing flankers.
I like the idea of barrier-type shields where they decay over time if you stop with the M1 pewpew. It would be a different feel from a healer as you’re not dealing with “topping off” targets, but rather providing buffer that doesn’t stay around.
IMO, the primary problem that Sym’s shields always had was the fact that they were permanent. She had to ‘E’ you every respawn before her rework, and you had to help her babysit a deployable after the first rework.
The lessons there were two-fold:
- 25 shields doesn’t even touch the usefulness of 60 health per second and,
- Deployables kind of suck and are very easy to kill.
I really wish they had gone with the shields instead of the area denial since we already had a good area denial hero (debatable after that last nerf, but he’s there) and have zero non-healing supports.
Se la Vie.
By reducing the insane amount of healing there’s available.
75 + allow her to refresh it with her E for some burst “healing-that’s-totally-not-healing”.
And her Teleporter mostly sucks because it’s a deployable. First she has to remove herself from the fight to deploy it, and then it needs to be babysat or it dies to the first flanker who happens to come looking for it.
Honestly, healing is the best kind of utility a support hero can provide. So if we were to have a non-healing support, they would have to have massive utility.
I’d like to see a tank with a special hp pool that is linked to an ally and absorbs damage on their behalf. And damage done by your linked ally applies heals to the special hp pool.