I have put time into Illari, but whenever I did it was always with my friend who would play kiriko.
I never considered that her pylon was so strong it could out pace the damage delt by tracer…because we never went against tracer
Tracer gets low health picks and elims from wearing them down over time. The healing pylon will sustain the damage Illari takes if she is the only one that is hurt and near the pylon.
I offer this simplistic exchange that allows Illari to remain unchanged by prevents her from being a duel monster/having infinite uptime
Pylon no longer heals Illari, EVER
Sunburst now heals Illari for 50 hp on cast (ENTIRELY OPTIONAL)
Max charge damage is now 85
So Illari requires her co support to support her dps uptime or she must play health packs or wait for the passive to heal her.
This keeps her dps uptime in check and makes her decently susceptible to dive (actually incredibly so, hence I suggested a minor heal on sun burst in exchange for this massive self sustain nerf to justify her damage)
With this change, Illari would now be capable of sustain-supporting her team, and burst supporting OR burst dps when she finds an opportunity.
She would NOT be able to hold angles for eternity until you push her and break her pylon/possibly kill her, unless she was earning that space by accurately applying heat damage frequent enough.
These changes lean her into a more zen style and less of the very unfortunate Baptist style that players hate, and can be oppressive when her power level is even just decent.
I’m glad you enjoy it! I’m a bit of a game balance afficionado, so I like to put effort into my ideas (even if the devs will never see it).
It’s always fine to disagree, but I feel the discussion matters. It’s what the forums was made for after all. Its a shame it has become not much more than a complaint board.
When I come up with these things, general viability strongly unfluences them. A lot of the goal of my adding skill to hero usage is to open up opportunities to make things less niche.
But, this where there’s a problem. Life Grip has such a long cooldown because it has no margin for error, other than timing. A second probably won’t make much of a difference, but I sense that even the devs know players would dislike it if an ability that can’t really fail is more often available. If it was a healthier ability with margin for error, then they could make it more powerful or even give it additional effects — this is the crux of my argument.
Its a combination of things. Her DPS is low, but it is 100% consistent. You won’t miss with it, and so it is easy to farm stats. Damage orbs (though they should be used less than healing orbs) also help her damage. The biggest factor of all is that Moira can survive for a long time — less time in the spawn room, more opportunity for damage.
I had the exact circumstances I described in a game I played a few days ago. I was playing Tracer, but I just couldn’t kill anything through the Pylon. It was so perfectly placed that I couldn’t break it without potentially dying. I had to swap. I wish I still had it to share 
yes I already cast it as an accidental heal anyway
As an Illari enjoyer, I think she’s fine as is. Her damage was enough to two shot enemies back before the global health increase, and it wad complained about a lot because of it.
I’d much prefer to keep her as she is now. Her damage can still be threatening against backline targets. And that really is where you ought to be applying pressure with her long range. Not to mention she has a projectile size of 0.12, so you’l be landing those hits pretty easily if you’re a decent enough shot.
You can still pressure the enemy team greatly and provide offensive value if you hit literally anyone but the full health tank.
I simply don’t think we need to put her on a level close to Ashe. Not again.
But hey, that’s my opinion anyway.
If Illari needs a rework, it should just be to her pylon. Everything else in her kit is pretty standard stuff and has no reason to be as numerically weak other than the fact that Blizzard just refuses to let Illari be good.
2 Likes
Id be okay with her not having the crazyest damage but why does she do less damage then ana?
Why does she have so much falloff?
Whats the point of the charge and fire quirk if doesnt actually deliver good damage?
If illari didnt need to charge her shots id agree that 70 damage is fine but she has to charge them. She has to wait to shoot in order to do mediocre at best damage.
Thats why i think 85 is a much better number for her full charge shots. It makes playing patiently and skillfull actually rewarding. Because tbh most of my games today i couldve swapped off to ana and had a much stronger kit with more damage done easier.
It wasnt an issue before but now that ana can crit that buries illari so deep into completely usseles and i hate that because i think illari is a really cool hero.
You can do that better on ana. My point is illari needs her dps identity. Her damage output should be the most threatening part of her kit. Not her turret.
All day long ive got tanks just walking up to me knowing that even if i hit headshot after headshot i just cant kill them before they kill me! That feels awfull.
Unlike ana or zen illari does have a cooldown that threatens. Unlike kiri or bap she doesnt have an immo. Unlike lucio and juno she doesnt have speed boost. All illari has to threaten is her turret and damage. Her turret doesnt stop a tank and her damage is patheticly low.
Illari is numerically and factually one of the weakest characters in the game, if not the weakest.
She does nothing better then any other character. Litteraly nothing.
Bap is better at taking and holding angles.
Ana does more damage.
Moira heals more.
Of the three thing illari can do she is outclassed heavily and unlike bap ana and moira she doesnt do more then those three things.
So i say let her have the highest damage output in her class.
I’ve been tinkering with an Illari rework in Overwatch’s workshop mode, albeit for different reasons than the ones listed in this thread.
For starters, I gutted how much hps healing pylon does. It didn’t sit right with me that a set-and-forget ability has similar HPS to Mercy, who (unlike Illari’s pylon) has to manually select her heal targets and can’t deal damage while healing.
My version of Illari’s pylon deals similar HPS to a Zen orb: it’s not supposed to do all of Illari’s work for her while she runs off to deal damage. It’s there to supplement her primary heal during teamfights, and reach targets that are too far away for beam healing.
Next: I lowered the hps of Illari’s healing beam, but turbocharged how quickly it recharges. The reason I did that that is because the relatively slow recharge rate of Illari’s beam feels really, REALLY bad to me.
It sucks to have your hekkin’ primary fire disabled for most of a fight, for no other reason than “it takes a while to recharge.” It feels ESPECIALLY bad when I’m surrounded by teammates who need healing… I wanna play whack-a-mole with my team’s healthbars, dangit! I don’t mind trading off some raw HPS in exchange for being able to regularly use Illari’s healing beam throughout the entire fight.
Finally: the passive charge-up mechanic of Illari’s damaging shots feels awkward. She deals poopoo damage if they’re not fully charged, but it’s not like Illari has any other (non CD) attacks to use while she waits for her primary attack to finish charging up.
I, uh. Gave Illari a flamethrower.
To be more specific, I made Illari’s heal beam capable of dealing burning damage to enemies. It was an absolute bear to code (mostly because I’m a self-taught programming noob), but Illari’s laser beam already looks like a cartoon depiction of what happens when you hold up a magnifying glass under direct sunlight… And I REALLY wanted to set stuff on fire with it.
After a lot of trial and error, that’s exactly what I did! The resulting one-two punch of cycling between burning enemies with a solar-powered laser beam (while waiting for Illari’s bullets to charge) and shooting enemies (while waiting for Illari’s beam to recharge) feels really good!
Illari just bad for flanking. Firstly you need take angle faster which most flankers does. For that you need use your only one escape ability with 7 seconds c/d. Then if your plan was failed and some dps chases you, you just die, cause outburst not good for returning to your allies, and also long c/d time for hero with that philosophy type.
Also in last month I created custom game with classic and new heroes where every hero did have old HP (usually 200). And there Illari was able take down all DPSes except Bastion, yeah… So, I guess Season 9 changes hurt Illari, and damage decreasing from 75 to 70 totally burrowed her
Illari’s pylon does 25 hps to her…
Tracer can potentially do 110dps with reload +headshots.
Even if that tracer misses half of their shots they will still be out damaging the heals.
That tracer would need to be outside of their range, and missing half their shots without landing any headshots for the pylon to outheal them.
[quote=“Itami-11890, post:23, topic:955842”]
Pylon no longer heals Illari, EVER
Sunburst now heals Illari for 50 hp on cast (ENTIRELY OPTIONAL)
Max charge damage is now 85
So Illari requires her co support to support her dps uptime or she must play health packs[/quote]
This sounds like the time without the regen passive, which i think should be removed anyway from all heroes. It’s existence enables so many abilities to be used offensively more freely than designed.
Many sups were designed with cooldowns and abilities that can heal themselves.
Ana nade, lucio aura, zen shield health, brig stun and dmg, moira orb and bap heal burst. For the reason that passive health regen didn’t exist.
Those abilities were important to use right and sparingly, because it was the only way to stay alive. The regen passive has allowed these abilities to be spammed more freely, which also made healing more oppressive and necessiated in part tha dps passive.
I like it.
1 Like
40hp per second. Pylon heals her for 20hp per PROJECTILE, but I call that “tick”. So, for allies pylon heals 80hps. It’s like soldier’s heal station for her and like mercy’s beam for allies
No?
Even without dps passive, mercy’s heals are only 60hps
Also, the pylon’s fire rate is 1.25 per second. 0.08 cast 0.8 cooldown between shots.
It doesn’t shoot twice per second.
Pylon does 50hps to allies and 25 to self
Pylon has 2 ticks per second. If we look at OW wiki we see that pylon heals 20/40hp over 0.45 seconds. The 25(self) means that it heals Illari and her ally (40hp) together. If we record video and measure time you see it.
Also I think, that heal per tick should be 30 like old one for ally and 15-20 for Illari herself. Cause heal using outburst it is like lazy copy of LifeWeaver’s ability or better version (cause also has knockback)
In my opinion:
Return 10m ult explosition radius (secret 9m nerf)
Min charge shot 25 damage, max charge 75 damage
Outburst c/d reduced from 7 to 6 seconds
Pylon now heals 30 hp per projectile for allies and 20 hp for Illari
Bullet hitbox size decresed from 0.12 to 0.07
About last one I’m not sure, cause Illari is pseudo-sniper without scope. Seems like bigger hitbox size compensates scope absence
Edit: or other way, pylon heals everyone for 20 hp per tick (projectile), but Illari’s beam max duration is 4.5-5 seconds
Heal per second: 50 (allies), 25 (self)
Healing prioritizes the hero with the lowest health percentage within the pylon’s range.
Firerate is 1.25 shots per second.
It takes 0.45 seconds for that 40/20 healing to appear on the healthbar after the shot hits your model. It’s not instantaneous.
Just like it takes ana’s healing 0.59 seconds to reach the 75 hp per bullet.
Just like illari’s pylon, it takes ana 0.8 seconds before she can shoot again.
You can still die in that 0. Seconds that it takes for the healing to actually affect you.
Illari is closer to Moira than any other support I’d say. The unique utility isn’t all that great, but the two things they do well is heal and escape.
You compared her damage to Zen and Ana, but both of them don’t have escapes, and while I absolutley abhor Ana, there is an argument to be had for her being threatening because of her lack of escape.
If you give Illari too much damage she can easily become best in class in too many areas. Her healing is not low. Her alt fire can heal 115 hps for about 3 seconds, every 2 seconds. And what your alt-fire can’t sustain she has her pylon for.
These two things mentioned above^ is Illari’s real problem. The application of her healing is… not great. Pylon is often focused and her alt-fire isn’t too reliable because of the gauge and downtime.
That being said, Illari does take finesse to utilize properly, but that doesn’t mean she CANNOT be utilized well.
Her healing is good. Her escape is decent. If you give her Ashe level damage on top of all of that, she leaves behind the Moira-esque area she is in, and becomes a DPS with great healing. And in the hands of competent players, it will become a problem.
I think, genuinely, the only thing illari probably needs changed is he
Bedore perks id agree. But now that ana has access to crits she completely replaces illari.
Zen and ana are also supports that on their own arent strong but with brig or bap completely break the game.
Thats why i think illari should have more damage. She doesnt bring the same amount of util that zen or ana has but she should be able to make up for that in damage. Otherwise there will never be a situation where illari is a better pick and that is the real problem. No character should be left behind. Especially illari right now.
Illari is part of the worst characters in the game right now. She has no niche and is underperforming.
And lets be real ever since perks they directly stated they dont really care about balance anymore.
Juno alone basically counters poke meta so as long as she is strong illari can also be strong.
2 Likes
I get what you’re saying.
I personally believe that Illari’s biggest problem is ease of use rather than not being viable, or AS viable as other supports. Juggling her pylon well is a big part of playing her well. But if you can do that well, you can find some good usage out of her.
Aside from that, I just am very partial when it comes to buffing heroes to other heroes levels. I think there’s too much damage in the game already, and if I had a say in it I wouldn’t be jumling at the opportunity to introduce even more.
But yeah, my take on it is that Illari takes a certain finesse to play well, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t viable or useful. And maybe that’s an okay spot for some heroes.
Bad damage? Illari? In the same sentence?