The call for healing is easily the most known callout in the entire game, ever since the “Genji’s will cry for healing after taking even 5 points of damage” meme back in the day.
As someone who primarily plays support, I’ve seen a lot of people use it, and I’ve seen a lot of people misuse it.
For starters, I want you to be aware of one thing: Supports can see your position and health. Unlike dps and tanks, they don’t just see your outline through walls, but their teammates are also colour coded to show how much health they have: From blue (full health), to green (slightly injured), to yellow (badly injured) to a red, diamond shaped symbol with a white cross on it (critically injured). As long as your are in their general view (even through walls), they can tell if you need healing. I am pointing this out because I suspect that some players who don’t play much support believe that they need to share information about their health when that’s not the case. That information is baked into the UI.
Also be aware: During a team fight, your supports are basically running triage on their team all the time. Some targets are more important to keep alive than others. The priority order goes: Self > Tank > other support > DPS > Sniper > Tracer. Your support may be aware that you are in a spot of bother but have chosen that keeping another player who is also in trouble alive is more important. If both the Winston and the Widowmaker are on 50 health, then the Widowmaker isn’t gonna be the one who gets all the attention.
Lastly: This has been mentioned before, but your supports cannot heal you through walls. Be aware of their position relative to yours.
All that being said, here’s some examples of how to use the I need healing line and how not to:
Legitimate uses:
You are behind or next to your support and aren’t sure if they can see you. Especially Ana and Baptiste are prone to tunnel vision a bit.
You took damage during a flank and are going to return to your team from an off-angle and want to make sure that the support can heal you just as you arrive.
You have a Kiriko on your team and want to ask her to teleport over to you because you are low health and cannot safely get back to your team without crossing an enemy sightline.
There’s some downtime and you have taken a little bit of damage, but not so much that it would be highlighted. There’s not much else to do than to top off the team when there’s no fighting going on.
Bad uses:
Spammed repeatedly under any circumstances. Once is enough.
On your way back from spawn because you blame your death on not getting heals. Best case you might be distracting your supports, worst case they might get annoyed at you and decide that if you’re going to complain anyways, they might as well give you a reason to.
Miles away from the teamfight and completely blocked from sight. Your supports can’t simply abandon the teamfight and go patch up someone who is on the other end of the map. If you don’t stay vaguely where you can be cared for, you’re going to be on your own, Buddy. Go grab a health pack.
Used immediately any time when you are on low health in the middle of a team fight. Your support knows. Whether they can do something about it is a different question tho.
Used when your supports are dead. Informing them that you need heals won’t make then respawn faster or get back to the fight more quickly.
Used when the support is a bit occupied trying not to die. Get that Tracer off your Ana and she’ll get you those 60 health back.
Now, why do I think it’s important to not mis-use the line? Simple: It can make your supports worse. The role is already stressful to play without people needlessly spamming the chat and screaming into your ear. It’s distracting and it can add extra stress when used all the time for the wrong reasons.
It’s a voiceline with limited applications for genuine communication and that’s when it works best.
Adding to this. Heroes with the high ground like Widow or Hazno. PLEASE just back off off the edge a little bit more. So many times I’m jumping as Brigitte to get that “Right” moment the pack will get thrown and died as a result also please don’t play ring around the rosie with me. SO many times it seems like you’re intentionally avoiding my LOS. There’s also no harm in hiding into cover behind us. You can stand being taken out of the fight for 5-8 seconds at worst.
Whenever I want. Incompetent supports will be incompetent no matter what you spam and good supports will continue to heal at their own discretion. I also spam the, ‘Merry Christmas,’ voice-lines for Soldier and if you can believe it I do this when it is not, in fact, Christmas.
Honestly, I ignore the ‘I need healing’ voiceline now. In my experience, 90%+ of the player base only uses it when it’s useless (i.e; both supports dead, when full health, etc.).
I just try to keep my head on a swivel and keep an eye out for damaged allies I can reach.
I can’t even count how many times someone on my team has died just because I turned around to someone like you spamming for heals while at full hp. It’s just simply distracting.
While I play to have fun I’m not going to sweat being called incompetent by someone who admits they let team-mates die because they’re distracted by a voice line. Not when most of my play-time is on support, and I know the real issue is not the voice lines, but the bad gameplay that often accompanies them.
Not abusing voice lines is sweating? Arguing that this is not distracting is just a pure lie. This or you never actually pay attention to people who use it. and it shows. because hey “you’re playing for fun while spamming voice lines” - that right there is just bad gameplay itself.
You’ve failed to understand a simple expression. That or you’re communicating in bad faith. Let me make my position clearer: I don’t sweat you. As a support player I keep track of my team-mate’s status and positioning myself. You don’t, or you would ignore voice lines too. You can lie to yourself about how this isn’t the problem, but as someone who plays support as well, and expects supports to have this level of awareness I won’t swallow it.
The only time, ‘I need healing,’ spam is an issue is when it accompanies terrible gameplay (refusing to use cover, overextending, making no effort to isolate winnable fights) and the bad gameplay is the real issue.
And there they have to make a post about it on forums ‘supports refusing to heal me and I don’t know why!! bwaaaah’
And I would add one more situation when using that voice line is agitating (at least to me). When I am already actively healing you, I don’t need to be informed that you need healing…
Or I will get so fed up, that I will squelch chat from that person… If they write something to me I won’t see that. And when they use that voice line when they genuinely should it won’t play for me… So that is just hindering actual communication with your team.
Yeah I feel you…
I go left around that obstacle to get my beam on them, so they go right… I go right they go left… So annoying… especially when they spam x button like no tomorrow.
Actually no… there is a breaking point for every one…
They keep playing in my ear, so they are distraction… PERIOD… And no one is perfect, I MIGHT not see something… but if I look and it is again, full hp salty genji that is coming back from spawn, because he died 10 seconds earlier in narnia then that just hinders whole team…
Dude, as a higher-ish elo support main, it’s so weird to see low elo supports get riled up about “I need healing.”
Don’t get offended, heal and move on. People aren’t trying to tilt you. If your lack of situational awareness is causing your teammates to spam X that’s on you.
So they not seeing that I AM healing them is MY lack of awareness?
Well that is simply wrong, lol…
If they do it constantly, to treat my like a blind monkey with alzheimer that needs to be told because i cannot see otherwise, and even after that they need to keep telling me that in case i did forgot… Yeah, that is just disrespectful to your fellow players…
No, you’re probably healing the wrong priority target.
That’s tough. If you spent more time worrying about how to improve your gameplay instead of someone using a game feature to ask for healing you’d probably be a better support player.
Actually no… there is a breaking point for every one…
I’ve never been, ‘broken,’ by people spamming voice lines. Actually sounds like a skill issue to me.
They keep playing in my ear, so they are distraction
If you can’t separate meaningful sounds, like ultimate voice lines and footsteps, from background noise (which is constant regardless of what voice-lines people do or do not use) I don’t know what to tell you.
Until I have a “I need more DPS” and a “I need more space made” button, I will pretty much ignore “I need healing” - I can see the red cross on your head just fine.
literally only target that took damage and is still taking it… And that target that I AM HEALING is SPAMMING that… But yeah, it is my fault they don’t see that… Sure… keep making excuses.
That is the thing… That voiceline IS important some times… I have no way of telling if that genji is just salty right now, or he genuinely needs my help, until I look…
This… Unless they are in narnia separated by 4 walls from their team…