How do you climb in support? Do you NEED a team?

Competitive Discussion
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Idk, I’ve been trying to grind and I can’t climb. My team members will walk out one at a time and take the full force 1v5 while I’m pocketing and die. Main problem is that 1 support can’t heal the attack of 5 players… so everyone dies and I have next to no heals. Making my team lose, ranking me down further. Then the cycle continues due to poor matchmaking. I try to do more damage, I try every life saving tactic support has, i try to sleep more enemies, etc, and my team will still feed

How/who do you use to rank up? In my mind it shouldn’t matter who, they should all have the potential to rank up.

I really think that if GMs had to play with one wildcard bronze on one team, eventually there would be no GMs as it would bring everyone down

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Gms play with plats, which to them is basically bronze.

My one acc is plat and it feels like bronze.

If your mechanical skill isnt consistent then yes getting a 5 stack would show a better outcome.

At least your losses feel like you’ve tried and is less tilting.

Otherwise dps your way to kill, while keeping your team alive, is important.

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First off what hero do you play mainly? Because I main support and solo queue with little issue on zen and lucio.

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Mercy, Moira, zen, Lucio usually

Kiriko if they’re playing Ana

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I’d recommend zen as often as possible if you’re in metal ranks. Discord is insanely strong. Just keep it on the enemy tank stay far enough away that you don’t get pressured and spam damage plus trans to counter ults. Gotta learn to consistently duel flankers though with zen and output as much pressure as you can through damage and staying alive and keeping priority targets discorded. If you feel flankers are too much for you or you have a rein that is aggressive go lucio. Focus on speeding your team in and out of engagements but mainly just stay with your team and farm beat and poke down the enemy rank and peel for your team with boops. Beat wins fights. I’ve played almost exclusively just zen and lucio thus season and im GM4 atm with solo queue.

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By playing better, thats pretty much it. Yes, sometimes your teammates suck and you cant do much, that happens. But on average in multiple matches, your and the enemy teammates will be at the same strenght. The only consistent variable throughout multiple games is you and the better you play, the better your team is on average

If you play a better support, your teammates get more help than the enemy ones. Meaning if your and the enemy Team are at the same skill level, the one getting more support wins. With some Hereos like Mercy you cant go for such clutch playsbas with DPS, but this only changes how fast you climb, not if you climb. If you are better than the average player in your rank, you will rank up, some Hereos just a bit slower

So in short: Fixate on a few Hereos. Main one Hero and have 1-2 Hereos as secondary option. More than that hurts more than it helps, as you learn slower.
Actively think about what you could have done better, and with that I dont mean specific things like “oh, I missed a shot here”, but rather “I was too far in the open which caused me to die”. Then try to work on fixing one issue at a time. As example, actively concentrate on “is my position save? Do I have cover near me?” as solution to my previos example. Also dont fixate too much on winning. Winning a few games doesnt do anything, as you just drop down again. Try to not get too toxic if you loose, which is hard, but remember: Dropping is normal from time to time and you will naturally get back up again. Focus more on “did work on my mistakes?” rather than “did I win?”

I main support and started at ~700sr and got sometimes extremely toxic and searched for countless excuses why I dont climb, but the only thing that really helps is improving yourself, climbing comes naturally with that. Not that this is easy, improving is hard, but also far more rewarding than your rank itself

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Thanks for the tips, I feel I do that already though. If I’m Lucio I try to speed my team up and end with like 60% speed, 40% healing boost. Is that where it should be?

You might feel plats are like bronze from where you are, but I assure you it’s a very different game. Having your team not understand the full mechanics of the game yet, Not taking cover, not knowing the map, not using their full kit, trying to 1v5… does this happen at GM level?

I was gold 1 and ranked down to bronze 2 and can’t climb out

I had a bastion on crit spam three heal calls while a mega-pack was behind them. I ran over to heal them and before I got them to half health they started to attack 3 enemies again. It’s like they think one support can stop the damage from 3 enemies. I just don’t know if that happens on higher ranks but I hope it wouldn’t

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Totally depends from game to game. In some comps you dont need to speed your team much, in some comps your entire team relies on speed

In generell: You speed if the tempo of the fight changes, if it is not changing you heal.
Breaking this down easier to understand:
Lets say both teams play a Reinhardt comp. If both teams just wait at choke waiting for the fight to begin, speed is not doing anything, because nobody wants to move. If Both Reinhardts are already hammering on to each other, Speed is not doing much either. BUT: The moment your team switches from being passive to going in aggresive, thats where you want to speed. If your Reinhardt isntrying to push in, speed helps a lot so he reaches his goal faster without taking so much damage. Or if your rein gets a nano, he will go extremely agressiive and speed helps him get more value with it. On the opposite, if the enemy Rein gets a nano you might want to speed so your Rein can run away.

So in short: The biggest uses for Speed are: You switch from passive to being aggressive, or from being aggresive to running away. Thats what I ment with “If the tempo changes”.

In bronze your team rarely functions as one unit, so you want to focus a bit more on singular players. Your tank as example, if you play something like Rein, Zarya, Ram, Junkerqueen, etc.

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Maybe you can upload a Replay from one of your games, then its easier to tell what you can do better to climb

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If your team isn’t getting any value out of trying to enable them then you have to do it yourself. If your DPS aren’t keeping up or if your tank is dying to X threat, then your only real option is to kneecap the enemy team yourself. You’d be surprised at how much impact you can make just by confirming kills or forcing out enemy support cooldowns. Ana, Zen, and Kiriko are probably the top 3 for solo climbing just due to either having high damage potential or game-winning utility. Bap and Lucio are also options, but Bap can be a little inconsistent in some comps and Lucio is only a hard carry if you’re willing to learn how to DPS on him. Try to avoid playing Mercy or Brig unless you know your team is reliable, in which case being an enabler is totally fine

Obviously, it’s a bit more involved than that. But if you want to climb as support you need to start getting in the habit of making your own plays. Rather than just focusing on your teammates, plan out how you will dictate the next fight. Instead of hoping that your Rein blocks a shatter, think about how you can position yourself to avoid it and counter it with suzu/sleep/lamp/etc., basics like that. Support isn’t just an enabler role, it’s also a punisher role with respectable damage output.

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This isn’t the sort of thing that you should be focusing on. As the other poster said, it will often be context. Speed is the reason to bring Lucio, for sure, so it’s always best if you can be on speed aura more than heal aura, but… Lucio right now is not heavy on the carry potential, especially if you aren’t securing kills with him. He’s also better on some maps than others due to environmental and wall riding potentials.

Mercy is also often ineffective. If you have good dps on specific heroes that are good to be pocketed (Pharah, Echo, Ashe, Soldier, McCassidy, as the main examples) then Mercy can do decent work (make sure to push that damage boost to its limit!), but generally, to climb, it’s best to take things into your own hands.

Zen is very very strong. So is Ana. And Bap.
Moira is strong in bronze, but her lack of utility makes her become increasingly less effective the higher in ranks you go.
On all 4 of these you should be pushing your damage as much as possible. Also try to almost never use biotic grenade to heal. Antinade is a fight winner.
Kiriko is great but unless you are going on hyper-aggressive flanks, you may not have a lot of consistent damage/kills. Nonetheless, you can weave a kunai or two between each ofuda. Suzu and Kitsune are amazing when timed well.

I helped a friend climb out of Bronze and used Kiriko, Ana, Zen, and on rare occasion Mercy and Moira. (I don’t really play Bap much, and the friend I was helping mains DF which doesn’t have the best synergy with Bap anyway.)
Ana is the best carry support imo. Zen is very good too.

Anyway, post a replay code or two. I’m sure people would be happy to give input on things you could do.

I highly recommend looking up Awkward’s OW2 Unranked to GMs on Youtube. He gives fantastic direction.

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Depends on what rank you want to climb to. I was lucky since I climbed to gold in OW1 when supports had less heroes choose from. I think the less heroes your role has, the easier it is to figure out the best win condition.

I personally climbed to gold by playing mostly ana and baptise and not much else. But now that kiriko exists too, you might also need to have her in your arsenal as well. So ana, bap, and kiriko would be your best bet imo.

What I usually do is play few games of each hero in the role and see their win percentage. Compare that each season and that should give you an idea of what hero works and what doesn’t.

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This is such a great response and basically a lot of what I tell people in plat and gold.

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I agree. I find I don’t get value playing Kiriko/Mercy/Ana in metal ranks compared to when I was in high plat/diamond.

After Blizzard’s world class matchmaker gave me a 90% loss rate and f-ed me all the way to silver, Zen has been the only viable option to slowly climb back out of it. At these ranks, playing Zen gets essentially allows you to perform a 2-in-1 role. I do more damage than the dps Blizz decides to put on my team to force another loss. This mitigates that trash matchmaker’s impact on not just my rank but overall mental wellbeing.

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5W/6L + 1 abandon = D5 90% to D4 96%

Thats something like 100SR gain.

If you think anything makes sense this season, just no.

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Hello, GM Support main here.

My hero pool is 7 of the 9 heroes (No Mercy or Lifeweaver), however the vast majority of the time I will try and force either Bap or Brig, and then change when necessary.

The 2 biggest things I consider when choosing who to play is the other support and the tank, however the other support pick takes priority most of the time. Generally speaking I’ve never considered the DPS choice because on this patch and this meta, they are generally the ones expected to be the most flexible/counterpick, or will likely pick a sniper (Hanzo/Widow) that don’t require much help to be effective.

My general rule of thumb is if the other support is a “Main healer” such as Ana, Bap or Moira (Someone who could potentially solo heal if required), I will go Brig and be their permapeel and deny the space so the backline can’t be dived as easily, while also offering a defensive ult with Rally (Post-rework), which happens a lot in GM as Ana-Brig is a very popular comp atm. In any other case I will pick Bap, that way regardless of the hero picks there’s guaranteed to be enough utility to at least not throw a team fight, and enough damage to pick someone off out of position. The only exception is if the other tank is diffing enough I feel it would be better to go Zen for the Discord damage, or if my tank is Wrecking Ball, as good Wrecking Balls need virtually 0 healing from supports, and any combination of supports (Apart from Lucio-Zen, which is almost always just throwing or trolling) can sustain the DPS. Stacking double main heal is generally a bit more frowned upon at high ELO because Support =/= Healer, you’re eating away at each other’s ult charge, and after like Gold ELO you can’t get away with just healing, you gotta get in there and learn to find ways to contribute to fights offensively (Which is why Zen is considered the best support in the game at high ELO).

At low ELO you can also just lock Ana, Moira or Bap (The damage heavy supports that can also get decent burst healing in when teammates are low) and frag your way out, not relying on doing a lot of healing. You may hear the phrase “Damage is healing”, which sounds daft and counter intuitive but is true. The way to win the typical team fight is to bring the other team’s HP to zero, or low enough they disengage and you can progress the objective. Low ELO players generally assume that you do this by having supports healbot to keep the team’s total HP up, and for a short burst this may buy you some time, but if you were to pick a support that can also get the team’s damage numbers up either by doing damage yourself or by amplifying someone else (Think Mercy’s blue beam or Zen discord), you’re going to do more damage than what can be out-healed, and thus win via out resourcing the other team’s backline.

Your low ELO teammates will probably feed whatever support you choose to play, they’re stuck in these games just as much as you are, and this feeding is what’s holding them back, not a perceived lack of healing, you can either blow all your utility trying and usually failing to keep them alive because let’s face it, if they think they’re getting healed, they’re just going to feed even harder thinking they have the green light, or alternatively, you could try and help secure kills and damage before your teammates get low enough they start to panic.

TL;DR: Healbots get hardstruck, don’t let low ELO players tell you to just heal, they’re wrong, getting kills is how you win and climb faster

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I must say, it’s entertaining to see people say play Lucio and speed your team in or play zen. I say that because Zen is extremely easy these days, just perma-orb the tank and just ‘pew pew pew’ without worrying about dives because he has a kick that has no cooldown, does more damage, and has more knockback than Lucio boop.

Basically, play zen, it’s easier value than spending hundreds of hours perfecting Lucio techs and everything just to be barely viable.

1 Like
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Whats interesting is i can 1v5 through bronze and silver using either ana, tracer or zarya. I have done so 3 times and thats one hero in all three roles.

That doesnt mean im pro, just my mechanical skill and game sense is enough to capitalize on the mistakes of the players low elo in that lobby.

I assume thats how gms feel when facing plats and diamonds as well.

Their consistency and knowledge of who is out of position and vulnerable is much higher than most players.

What makes the system unfair is that you feel you’re needed to do more than your 100% to get value to rank up.
So not only play your role, but shoot the turret, kill the flanker, shut down the ult etc. Instead of relying on your team to know all that.

And im sure there are hundreds of thousands of players who feel if they had players who played like them they could rank up progressively.

The biggest issue with low ranks is synchronicity in executing the play.

If a team is highly in sync you can get away with being less consistent but succeed in the play.

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Just learn ana.
Shes probably not the optimal pick in most situations but she is a close second in basically every situation.

She has great stats for healing and damage, a versatile ult (use it mid fight as a tempo ult and youll either bait enemy ults or win the fight, pro tip), ahe has a self heal, hard cc and the ability to deny the enemy healing.

She has the perfect kit to climb with. Learn to play her well and you won’t need another pick.
Id still learn a off heal just to be safe, zens a good choice right now.

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Thank you for the positivity and the tips

…I went Zen and went 5wins and 1loss this morning. awesome right?

But then my luck runs out (matchmaking-wise) and I get teams that can’t hold a choke, or don’t know where the choke is. I get a sombra behind me shredding our back line, as soon as she zips out my team has amnesia about her and goes back to spreading out. And rn I’m 0-5 again. And I wasn’t just playing Zen. I had to dps Moira a bit, I went Lucio and sped up my team when they advanced or retreated, healed them when they needed, but that turned into herding cats.

I’ve always looked at this game as a team game and when I tell my team what’s happening, make suggestions how to counter x,y,z, nothing happens or they quit.

Another question - is there a prime time to play? I’ve found the. I’d afternoon and late evenings to be the worst as far as matchmaking

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Yes, the best time to play is when the smooth-brains are in school and busy being indoctrinated.