Just played a few matches on support because I was bored and didn’t wanna wait all day in DPS queue. This role is hot garbage for a solo player. You can’t carry, you make minimal difference and you are completely at the mercy of of your team being good or not. If your DPS or tanks are diffed then all you can do is watch the clock run out knowing you’re taking an L. I see why no one wants to play the role.
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You can disguise as DPS in tank role playing Hog
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You can carry, especially as Bapt, Zen or Ana.
It just requires double dipping and doing two jobs.
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Yeah, the magic died for me a long time ago.
Playing support was a lot more exciting when they had defensive ults that could flip a fight if used at the right time. Now it’s mostly just boring “utility ults” and other stuff that can’t actually save anyone when the chips are down.
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You have to go into playing support with a different mindset for you to tolerate the role. You can’t expect to get PotG and be the MVP of the match because tanks and DPS will most often steal that from you. At most, all you will be given is a card for most healing at the end of the game, that’s about it. You’d have to work twice as hard as tanks or DPS in order to get PotG.
You also can’t just mind your own business and duel enemies like you can on tank or DPS either. You have to accept that you’re going to have to healbot 50% of the time to keep your teamates alive. Since healing is part of your job, after all.
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You are better off playing support DPS instead of Support. If you do well as Support you are basically the devil that will bring ruin to the entire game.
Well supp is great in ow1 i can play it for hours… Ow2 it was very boring.
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Cause it’s fun and a certain excitement keeping your team healed up while also triaging who lives or who dies.
It requires a certain mindset if you want to support.
Or realize that some supports have some equally strong DPS skills (I.e Zen/Ana), so you play them to kill enemy while also healing your team.
That, or just play Lucio to RP as a Titanfall character.
Got news, OP. Supports mostly don’t do it except for their stack members.
Yeah good luck carrying when all of those heroes still have drawbacks in carry potential in low ranks.
You’re playing zen like a pro? Getting multiple picks each fight? Well guess what, you have a feeding sniper dva who facetanks every bullet in the lobby because they don’t know that they can just avoid sitting in open space doing nothing, negating whatever huge value you are getting by existing.
Like seriously, about 2 months ago I was playing Brig on Eichenwalde in a diamond lobby. The team was about to push to second (payload was just over the bridge). I kill enemy hog with environmentals for 2 fights in a row so they automatically had to regroup/lose the fight (he was flanking through the castle left side. Anyway, final fight I enviro hog again, kill enviro rein, and then kill their Bap, leaving them with lucio/mercy heals (i don’t remember but it was one of them). Anyway we lost that fight and lost the game lol.
I’ve had instances where I have slept enemy rein who our rein was fighting in an isolated 1v1, and our rein failed to kill him somehow lmao. 80% of the time playing Mercy I valk damage boost to push a fight and then people immediately start playing super passive for no reason…
The only carrying I ever see in lower ranks on support are the few ximming baptise players who our DPS too terrible to deal with (no coordination, bad aim, and the bap will usually immortality field self pocket and just ult on a high ground flank or something and kill half the team casually using all his cooldowns
You can only properly carry on support in higher ranks, when your teammates have the skill and braincells to capitalize on great players. In contrast I think DPS decreases in carry potential in higher ranks, especially due to the increased quality of tanks which deny space/contest DPS doing dumb **** that they could get away with in lower ranks.
Like one of the main reasons I stopped playing OW1 as much as I did is because I found it strange that after having winrates of high 60’s, 70’s for brig after playing a significant amount of games, then it suddenly drops the next season to ~30, despite me playing just as good (probably because support is way too team-dependent, which is a big W in OW2 where they feel offensively very capable and have more opportunities to use their offense)
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Can be frustrating when you feel like there is nothing you can do.
Played Nepal last night and I started the first 3 fights by booping both of their tanks into the hole next to the point. Instant 6v4 and we still lost all 3 of those fights.
Like, I got both tanks and their Zen after, how do we lose that? Lost both rounds and never captured the point.
I don’t know what about supports but every time I kill multiple enemies, I rarely ever get value on the role for some reason.
Whereas when I’m on DPS, getting 2 or 3 picks can be a huge game changer. Same with tanks. But on support, healing seems to provide way more of a value at least in OW1.
What’s that? You killed 4 enemies on baptiste? That’s good, but are you still keeping your feeding teammates alive? If not, then those elims will mean nothing. Since enemies can still respawn and your teammates can still feed.
I don’t know what kind of trickery this matchmaker is doing to supports in OW1. But whatever it is, it’s making their fragging not feel worthwhile. Or at least makes it feel like it has lesser value compared to tanks or DPS fragging enemies.
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Disagree if you must, but for many Support mains it isn’t about getting the PotG or even just clutching a single teamfight in your favor (though that’s always thrilling). It’s more about the overall game-long mainstay that holds everyone else up so they can do the good stuff and you can have their back.
For me it’s a genuine desire to help others and I can’t do that as Damage and only a little degree as Tank, but filling up empty life bars brings me satisfaction in any game I play. Of course other people play for different reasons, and Support gets a lot of the blame and hate but “it’s a thankless job, yet someone has to do it.”
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Brig is the most team reliant hero in the game currently. Her value is just peeling, and peeling isn’t enough to carry games in lower ranks.
I strongly disagree with what you’re saying about Bapt and Zen specifically. If you can carry on DPS, you can carry on those two.
I’d say Mercy is. I’d say she gets more value then just peeling though. Her ultimate is really strong and depending on the enemy team composition brig can be immortal with rally up. She also get’s huge value from cancelling ults too in OW1
As someone who plays zen for fun on an alt in lower ranks I’d have to say support carry potential is better in higher ranks. Most of the time whatever value you are getting by killing the enemy is negated by terrible teammates in lower ranks. Like for example say the enemy team has a Pharah and you are on support. You have a few options to help deal with the Pharah if your team isn’t doing anything about her. But then whilst you deal with the Pharah your team is dying to her spam damage because they don’t have the awareness to pace the fight slower.
Now that I think about it, this whole idea of ‘carrying’ makes me annoyed, because you shouldn’t need to carry deadweight teammates in order to be rewarded… they need to change how SR is given/taken away to better reflect the individual skill…
I think the main issue with Overwatch is not that it is heavily team-worked based. In fact I think that is one of the best things about it. But I think the worst thing is that individuals are significantly impacted by their team in the competitive system. Yet instead of addressing this and changing how player value/contribution is found in SR gains they change the fun teamwork part and hero-kits to be more solo carry (but more boring imo) in OW2… The reason support and other more team-oriented heroes feel bad is not because they are team-oriented, but because the players worth is too heavily impacted by their team.
TLDR: i guess the term carry can mean slightly different things to different people. but for me if I am ‘carrying’ I want that to be reflected in my SR gained for wins and my SR lost in defeat. Sure bap and zen can ‘carry’ by killing stuff, but is it really carrying if their teammates are doing the opposite of carrying
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You don’t support, you babysit.
Once you learn that, it get easier until you get dived and find you have a deaf team.
And they dive you because you’re doing the thing right. That means you’ve “won”, you now have aggro. Steal attention from dps who can’t aim, but always keep track of your team and theirs.
Wanna do more damage? bap or zen. Ana if they have no snipes (ha)
Team dying too quick? Mercy (rez) bap, ana. Zen with ult but ehhhh.
Wanna make your heavy teammate better? Pocket them until you lose hope.
As a support it’s just super important to always know where the enemy is. You are the teams legs. Without you they won’t even crawl 9/10
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Low ranks also have little wherewithal to punish Brig for going off on her own and trying to bash people’s faces in. Brig can carry games if you know how to use her kit, regardless of rank, but you have to adjust what you’re doing for the rank you’re in.
Main-healer level of healing is kind of mandatory in loweset of low ranks like bronze though. While I think brig could work on smaller maps like Lijiang control center, other maps like Rialto is probably going to be much harder to win as brig.
On top of feeding teammates, you also have to account for numerous smurfs playing in lower rank as well. Bronze matches are one of the most unbalanced games I have ever seen. Winnable games are too easy, while the more challenging games are way harder than it needs to be for that elo.
You’ll have much easier time winning games by simply pumping heals into your feeding teammates on a main-healer if you wanna climb out of bronze (as well as doing some damage). Instead of being all sweaty and trying to make brig work which doesn’t bring nearly as much easy value compared to other supports in lower elo.
Support is my favorite role. It really just appeals to a certain type of player. While there are definitely different support playstyles in Overwatch, at the end of the day you have to actually enjoy healing.
You don’t have to go full healbot. But pumping heals into a teammate and keeping them alive can be carrying. It just is less likely to get noticed.
Yeah welcome to the wonderful world of Supports. Actually though you can have a lot of impact. But yeah its hard no doubt.