First things first, make sure you have his settings optimized before you start developing any muscle memory–
- Legacy control scheme on (and rebind things in a way that feels natural to you)
- “Secondary fire cancels primary fire when using manual swap” set to off
- “Interact destroys Petal Platform” set to on
- Set ultimate to cast on release
Get a good sense of when you should be focusing on healing, when you should be focusing on damage, and when you should be quickly swapping back and forth between the two. Immediately disregard ANYONE who tells you that Lifeweaver is a “healbot” or that his weapon isn’t worth using. Healbot Weavers are the reason why his winrate always looks so bad. They’re wasting a crucial aspect of his kit. You MUST deal damage on LW. He is not Mercy. Mercy can get away with not doing damage because of her blue beam boosting the damage of her teammates. LW has no such thing in his kit, so he must deal damage himself
Be careful with your Life Grips, but at the same time don’t be afraid to use it. Develop your ability to tell when a teammate is actually in danger. Pay attention to their survival cooldowns as much as you’re able to. Try not to defensively pull your tank unless absolutely necessary. Don’t worry about attempting aggro grips until you’ve gotten the foundations down first
Get good at dueling. This will help you protect yourself from flankers, and also increase your carry potential by improving your ability to get crucial kills
Don’t be too stingy with your petal. Unless you have a specific reason to be saving it, ie. countering an ult like Zarya’s or Orisa’s, always make sure you have one placed in a useful location. Try to place it ahead of time if you can. Petal’s cooldown begins when you place it, so by pre-placing it, you can use that existing petal, but also potentially have the ability to replace or relocate it on demand if done right. It’s almost like having two charges of the ability, though only one can be placed at a time. It allows you to be much more dynamic with it too. What location is considered “useful” varies depending on many factors including the map, which heroes you’re up against, and which heroes are being played by your teammates. If the enemy is flanking or diving, you may want to place your petal in a location where you can easily access and use it to evade them
For his perks, focus on Life Cycle and Superbloom. Cleansing Grasp is niche and of questionable value compared to Life Cycle’s constant 10 self-HPS, and Lifeweaving is NEVER worth using over Superbloom
There’s actually a workshop code for practicing LW’s various ability interactions. It’s a bit outdated, and some of the tasks are probably impossible since they nerfed Petal’s HP, but there are still a ton of usable tasks to practice in it. I’ll grab the code next time I’m in the game
Let me watch that before I head off to battle.
