How to properly rework Lifeweaver's pull ability

General Discussion
1

Currently, lifeweaver will shield an ally while pulling them(against their will) to his location. Conceptually, this a major problem because it takes away player agency and gives it to a teammate, someone who a) can’t see their screen and doesn’t know the situation like they do, and b) are more than likely in a role dictating gameplay of roles they aren’t as experienced on.

To fix his ability while keeping it 100% intact, change it to the following:

Option A: lifeweaver gives any ally in his field of a view a shield. The target can hit an interact key while this shield is up or for 3 seconds(whichever is first), which will bring them back to lifeweaver. In the menu, there is an option to enable “auto accept” which will keep the ability functioning exactly as is.

Option B: give the target player 3 seconds prompt to accept the pull, and only after accepting does it go through and he gets the shield. If the player dies or opts not to use it, lifeweaver is refunded the cooldown. In the menu, there is an option to enable “auto accept” which will keep the ability functioning exactly as is.

Either change will keep his ability 100% functional without changing anything on it, but removes the ability for lifeweaver to dictate choices of his teammates by pulling them back involuntarily. This changes it from the most frustrating ability in the game into one of the most useful. The shield value and/or time to accept the pull can be altered until it’s well balanced(will likely take a few tries to get it perfect).

Doing this will make lifeweavers pull behave more like more like Thresh lantern from league of legends. For those unfamiliar, Thresh is a support hero. His lantern is a skill shot aoe that lands an object(cool lantern) where you choose, which shields nearby allies, but also gives one of them the option of clicking on it to return to thresh’s location. Thresh dictates when and where his lantern is placed, but his ally dictates whether or not he takes the lantern. It’s one of the best and most fun abilities in the entire game, and it doesn’t remove player agency.

I believe this simple change will completely reverse the negativity around lifeweavers pull. There can even be an option in the menu to make the pull automatic, so players can choose to always opt in, or conditionally opt in, or opt out. Everyone is happy. Lifeweaver is happy, the tank/dps players are happy, even blizzard is happy(because then they don’t have to hear people complain about their new hero and we can all go back to complaining about widowmaker).

12 Likes
2

Him pulling me messes me up more than helps me most of the time.

7 Likes
3

Exactly why it should be up to you to determine whether you want to take the teleport or if you want to stay.

For players who automatically trust lifeweaver, as per my suggestion, they can keep the option to auto accept lifeweaver pulls. For the rest, making it optional is the best way to use it.

6 Likes
4

Like i get its to help pull you back from danger, but for me i already know when to actually stay/go into a fight and when not to. I dont need a person to physically take control of me whenever they feel like it.

3 Likes
5

Yep. Pretty much every tank/dps main are in agreement about this, and even other supports are 50/50 split. It seems only a very small minority of people(mostly people who intend to use this ability to troll) think it’s acceptable in its current form.

I’ve already had players in my game refuse to leave spawn until lifeweaver swapped to a different character. One bad pull is all it takes to completely break any hope of team cohesion.

5 Likes
6

while learning weaver the only time im pulling is when players on my team are stuck in enemy ults safe bet that they would prob die , so its a good move,

1 Like
7

That is a good way to use the ability without possibly trolling your teammates, so I commend you for being one of the first lifeweavers I’ve seen who I wouldn’t consider a troll pick.

I think for general acceptance, however, the changes I suggested to his ability are going to be mandatory. It will also allow you more freedom as a lifeweaver, because a single bad useage of your pull ability won’t tilt anyone(since it’s their choice to accept or reject!).

I think you feeling limited to only using pull to save ult/cc’d teammates is terrible, because you are so worried about accidentally tilting your teammates that it’s affecting how you play the game, as well. This makes me think a quick rework is even more important than I initially thought to enable lifeweaver players more freedom in their ability useage without having to worry about their teammates mental if they do a bad pull

2 Likes
8

I honestly dont know how they thought this ability was going to be a good idea.

2 Likes
9

Both of these options ruin what makes the ability special and interesting in the first place, the fact it can go wrong and is high risk reward on the part of the lifeweaver.

God you people are determined to kill this game aren’t you? This is the most fun and interesting ability they have added in years, perhaps ever, and you wanna clip it’s wings like this and ruin it because of your fragile e-peens and egos.

3 Likes
10

It’s completely renewed my interest in the game, probably the best ability they have ever added.

5 Likes
11

In the menu, there is an option to enable “auto accept” which will keep the ability functioning exactly as is.

One of the parts of my post.

Second,

Both of these options ruin what makes the ability special and interesting in the first place, the fact it can go wrong and is high risk reward on the part of the lifeweaver.

This is completely wrong. You aren’t risking anything as lifeweaver. Your dps/tank are doing all the risk. The only risk you take as lifeweaver is whether or not you’ll piss off your team so much they’ll tilt or start throwing to spite you. That is literally the exact opposite of special or interesting.

You are clearly the kind of person who only likes lifeweaver because of the trolling it enables. That’s why you argue against the changes, because it could potentially take away your ability to ruin your teammates games.

Disgusting.

12

it does feel like that at the moment , unsure if it because its a new hero and i dont fully know when and where to use the ablities , either defensively or agressively . next couple of weeks learning the hero will tell

13

Maybe you know it, but what if you have already blown all your cooldowns and the enemy throws an ult like Torb’s. That seems like a very common situation and one where you would appreciate being gripped out of it. Even if you personally are an amazing player (I’m not trolling), most people aren’t and could really benefit off of this.

That being said, I also believe one should be able to choose if they want to be gripped or not.

1 Like
14

Not to mention the ones who complain way too much about teammates ‘feeding’ when their team is running a flanker.

16

Teammates are not npc’s for supports to just command around.

4 Likes
17

Honestly, lets turn this around. How great would it be if a flanking DPS had a similar ability, where they could just pull any support to them when they wanted healing?

And the support didn’t have a choice.

I wonder how that would change the tune of support players? Do you think suddenly they would complain about losing player agency?

3 Likes
18

Right? Like it’s okay when THEY do it, but when a filthy DPS does it, ooooohhhh no!

19

Visual clutter and adding more of an action for the player like an “accept” option is also kind of annoying and, in some cases, will probably be more annoying than just being straight up pulled.
What about certain conditions like taking a specific amount of max health damage to be pulled in a short time frame window or reaching “1 HP” for it to auto-accept?
That way your Lifeweaver can’t make a bad call on you for what you’re trying to do and still gives it skill on being used at the right timing AND some counter-play.

20

A 3 second shield? That’s a bit much. Zarya bubble anyone? And no damage during a full 3 seconds? They should get max 1 second to respond and take damage until they are offered the option.

21

That would both make the ability infinitely less useful and also take LW’s agency out of his own ability, while also making it broken (depending on how much health the shield has). The point is that grip is a save mechanic, you’re supposed to use it when a teammate is in a sticky situation where they would die the next second if you don’t pull them, like suzu.

Imagine if you had to press interact for suzu to work. 99% of the time people would die without being able to confirm or deny it, because the half second it takes to register the input is more than enough for you to die.

Not to mention, if you’re the LW, the majority of your skill expression is taken away and given to another person.

Same situation I describe above except now it’s even weaker. You would have no reason to run this over suzu or lamp.

3 Likes