Tanks are powerful, DPS is powerful, healers are… Frail.
I’ve never ever posted once on these forums, until now. All of the experimental changes given to us in the newest round have been absolutely awful for healers. I understand these changes are “experimental” but many of them, particularly for the healers, should not go live. Based on my experience, most of my weight is levied with Moira. However, after playing the other support characters, I found myself coming to similar conclusions.
As a Moira main, I found it impossible to keep up with aggressive tanks. Where once I could comfortably heal behind them with both my standard healing and orb, now I see them plummet in front of me despite me putting literally everything I have into them. Draining my own health when out of energy? With fights being so chaotic, the absolute last thing I want to worry about is the possibility that I can drop my own health down to zero just by healing my targets.
Even Moira’s fade seems like a pitiful buff by comparison, and the changes to her orbs do not offset the balance lost because of the sheer amount of damaging abilities and pro-damage changes made in the latest round.
Mercy’s drop in healing because of her “bonus charge” is one of the most painful nerfs (and it is a nerf) that I’ve ever seen. Where once she could plug into someone for great health benefits, now her targets wilt immediately. This makes keeping up a team impossible - the healer is being punished for doing their most important role: Healing.
Also, Baptiste’s “Regenerative Burst” should obviously be name changed. If it’s going to not even heal, it’s not very “regenerative”.
All in all, it looks like almost everyone was turned into a glorified DPS this time around. While dealing damage to get your enemy’s health to 0 is how you win, not everyone has to be “optimal” when it comes to performing damage. Different roles and their varying strengths create the diversity that is important within the character types and their playstyles. The fights are far too chaotic for any healer to actually hold their team together, and once considerably casual matches become as sweaty and hectic as ranked play.
While these changes are fun to play temporarily, implementing too many of them as they are now will result in an overly fast-paced game. Fun will be replaced by panic and chaos as healers, more than any other role, struggle to perform their duty under the weight of way-too-fast moving targets that deal way too much damage that cannot be compensated.
If the healers’ had their healing abilities enhanced to keep up with the damage dealt, then there wouldn’t be so much discourse between healing and damage. If these changes are locked in, c’est la vie, but for as long as my ability to offer my opinion stands, I can summarize it as such:
Too much, too fast damage. Too slow, not enough healing to compensate.
Thank you.