Its official: Nearly every support has gotten nerfed šŸŽŠ

General Discussion
1

EDIT Seems Brigitte got hit yet again.

Congrats support mains! With the release of the new patch notes, every healer has been nerfed!

The list below is the healers who have been nerfed in order to their or current meta at the time.

Ana

[quote=]

Nano Boost

  • No longer increases movement speed. (150 Health or something added as compensation. Pretty sure its 100 now)
  • Ultimate charge increased by 20%.

Biotic Grenade

  • Effect duration decreased from 5 to 4 seconds.
  • Healing boost on allies has been decreased by 50%.

Biotic Rifle

  • Damage decreased from 80 to 60. (Later increased to 70 for compensation)
    [/quote]

Mercy

And when Ana got gutted, dive became meta, making Zen/Lucio/Mercy the most optimal healers, but Mercy was the most optimal above all due to mass rez, ESPECIALLY after this balance change
[quote=]
Resurrect

  • While performing a resurrection, Mercy now becomes temporarily invulnerable along with the allies being revived.
    [/quote]

ā€¦and you know what happened after that.

And following shortly after came the 11 nerfs to her kit (This isnā€™t even counting the ones they did on PTR)

[quote=]
Guardian Angel

  • Cooldown no longer resets when Resurrect is activated.

Valkyrie

  • No longer resets or reduces Resurrectionā€™s cooldown.
  • Now gives players a bonus resurrection charge.
    • No longer grants a bonus Resurrect charge.
  • No longer makes Resurrect instant.
  • The speed bonus Guardian Angel receives when activating Valkyrie has been decreased by 50%.
  • Duration reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.

Caduceus Staff

  • Healing beam reduced from 60 healing per second to 50 healing per second.

Resurrect

  • Cast time increased from 0 seconds to 1.75 seconds.
  • Mercyā€™s movement speed is now reduced by 75% while casting.
  • Can now be interrupted when Mercy is knocked back, stunned, or hacked.

Compensation buffs

Valkyrie

  • The extra beams created by Valkyrie now ignore enemy barriers.
  • Ultimate cost reduced 15%.
  • Healing per second increased from 50 to 60.

[/quote]

Mercy is a bit of a mixed bag considering many like her new ultimate while many still prefer her old playstyle. Regardless, she took a LOT of hits.

Brigitte

And now that Mercy/Ana are both gutted, it was around the time Brigitte came into the game, and good lord was she OP.

[quote=]
Shield Bash

  • Cone angle decreased from 90 to 60
  • Cooldown increased from 5 to 7 seconds.
  • No longer can travel or stun targets through barriers.
  • Damage reduced from 50 to 5.
  • Stun duration reduced from 0.9 seconds to 0.75.

Rally

  • Maximum armor per player reduced from 150 to 100.
  • Now has a maximum duration of 30 seconds.
  • Effect no longer goes through Shields and Barriers.
  • Ultimate cost increased 10%.

Barrier Shield

  • Shield health decreased from 600 to 500 200.
    [/quote]

ā€¦And then came her mini reworkā€¦

[quote=]
Repair Pack

  • Now has 3 charges.
  • Healing amount changed from 150 to 120.
  • Now heals over 2 seconds instead of instantly.
  • If you throw multiple packs at the same person, the current duration will be extended by 2 seconds.

Inspire (Passive)

  • Healing amount increased from 100 to 130.
  • Self-healing from Inspire is now halved.

Compensation/buffs

Whip Shot

  • Out-going velocity increased from 60 to 80.
  • Retracting time reduced from 0.6 seconds to 0.3.

[/quote]

In my opinion, Brig was stupid strong, but she got gutted. I dont think she needed that many nerfs, and the buffs she got wereā€¦well, eh. Aside from a few QoL and bug fixes, the negatives heavily outweigh the positives. This isnā€™t even mentioning that she caused armor to get bumped in front of shields rather than shields being before armorā€¦

Lucio

But since there were now three healers that could do AoE, GOATs became a thing, and Lucio got nerfed alongside Brig during this time. (Iā€™d say out of all the healers, Lucio and Zen got off relatively lucky. Lucio got a TON of buffs prior to GOATs, so thats why this list is smaller than the others.)

[quote=]
Amp It Up

  • Speed Boostā€™s amplification reduced from 70% to 50%. (Bumped back to 60%, 10% loss overall)

Crossfade

  • Speed Boostā€™s effect reduced from 30% to 20%. (Bumped back to 25%, resulting in a 5% net loss)

Wall Ride

  • Speed buff reduced from 40% to 30%

[/quote]

Like I said, this isnā€™t counting the insane buffs Lucio got that made him amazing, but speed is part of his kit, and this hurt him hard.

Zenyatta

Well, hes fine tbh. But, his overall team effectiveness has been nerfed, especially with dive thanks to discord nerfs.

[quote=]
Orb of Destruction

  • Secondary fire rate of fire reduced by 15%.

Orb of Destruction

  • Damage increased from 46 to 48.

Orb of Discord

  • Effect reduced from 30% to 25%.
    [/quote]

Again, this isnā€™t noting the buffs he got with transcendence, the movement buff, etc.

Moira

After 2/2/2 became a thing, and Moira got THIS buff.

[quote=]

  • Heal over time duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds.
  • Total healing increased from 50 to 65
    [/quote]

She was widely considered a weak main support before 2/2/2 was implemented, mostly due to this nerf

And after that, the complaints started to roll in, resulting in yet another series of nerfsā€¦

[quote=]
Biotic Grasp

  • Self-healing reduced from 30 to 20 health per second.
  • Healing reduced from 4 to 3.25 (80 HP/s to 65 HP/s).
    [/quote]

Baptiste

Unsurprisingly, Moira dropped like a rock after this, all while Baptiste got a buff to his gunā€¦

And guess what happened? Marking today, January 23rd, along with the previous nerf to his matrix, Baptiste got demolished.

And with that, that means every healer has gotten a substantially amount of nerfs that have either crippled them, or made them absurdly weaker compared to others.

Oh, I forgot to mention Sym being moved to the damage class. Thats a whole hero gone.

Ok, on a more serious note, do you see a pattern?

While the most optimal main healer is meta, the next optimal healer gets a buff during that main healers meta. And when the meta healer gets nerfed, the one who got buffed recently gets targeted for nerfs.

This isnā€™t an attack or calling out devs. This is to show the destructive cycle of balance that supports, and almost all tanks, have suffered through. Wonder why que times are so long for DPS? Its because of this right here. Why bother playing a role that always gets CONSTANTLY nerfed?

This is not the right way to go about balancing. This is outright detrimental to the heroes core kits. Iā€™m not a support player, but seeing all these nerfs and barely anything given in return discourages me from ever touching the role.

Big shout out to this Every balance change by hero logged

This helped a ton making this since I canā€™t remember every balance choice made off the top of my head.

114 Likes
2

Some supports got nerfed to make them balanced I get that.
Some other is like just why??
Some are just Blizzard are you ok?
Same with tanks
They made sigma a heap of clunky mess
they made Orisa too op then made hero a paper mache
they made dva useless and she still is useless
like bruh

33 Likes
3

Honestly some of these nerfs are deserved but some also feel like they only happened because so many people started shouting about it without knowing what theyā€™re talking about (eg if stylosa didnā€™t say anything people wouldnā€™t falsely think bap does more damage than soldier) (bap definitely needed some nerfs tho)

8 Likes
4

Honestly

If Hammond ever gets touched, Iā€™m considering making a thread similar to this to show just how often tanks have been crapped on

8 Likes
5

If they touch reinhardt, I give up on the game.

6

Support have to get ā€œbalancedā€ at some point. Canā€™t have them fighting back.

Iā€™m wondering which support is next? I notice that Zen can discord without a CD Blizzard might wanna take a look at that next patch.

11 Likes
7

Dont give them ideas :sweat:

14 Likes
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I legit remember getting zens golden guns was so happy the patch after (legit 1 day later) doomfist is meta
Oh boy I got to use those 3k creditsā€¦

1 Like
9

Bad news my dude

Hammond is already a very powerful tank in the higher ranks (With Mercy being the 2nd most used main support to go with him)

Those 2 are going to shoot up with the dumpstering of Baptiste and Orisa

Which means that theyā€™re going to get complaints, especially with the recent Mei nerfs and how trash Sombra is

2 Likes
10

Support mains get all this and are told ā€œwell get over it lol get good lol youā€™re so braindead ez lol you deserve nerfsā€

Doom gets a fraction of a second of stall (which granted was dumb but barely anything for the vast majority of players) and the complaints are astronomical, people poop their diapers so hard Blizzard reverts it partially

And now people are like ā€œlol good riddance Bap is goneā€

People really need some dang empathy and to pull their heads out of theirā€¦ You know

50 Likes
11

oh shut up, what kind of victim act is this? they have nerfed every single dps and tank as well at one point or another

14 Likes
12

Support main here - I donā€™t agree with all of Blizzardā€™s nerfs. I think some of them hit too hard (especially Brigitte, although Iā€™m a Brig main, so maybe Iā€™m biased), but all in all, Iā€™m okay with them nerfing supports. Why? Because if supports are too strong, the way to counter that is burst damage. Canā€™t heal death (unless youā€™re Mercy).

Personally, I think this game has too many one-shots and instagibs and characters who, even if itā€™s not a technical one-shot, can still kill you in 1 second or less. Iā€™d like to see more sustained damage and less instant deletion, so nerfing healers is okay with me, so long as itā€™s not overboard (like it has been too many times).

4 Likes
13

Releasing op heroes is why supports get nerfed

Brigg came out as the best off support

In fact, she was by far the best support and arguably the best the hero in the game at that time

Bap was literally given immortality

I didnā€™t play at Anaā€™s release but I have no doubt she was at least slightly busted

Itā€™s not exactly how powerful heroes are as a whole that makes them problematic. It is balancing their kits.

Sigma, Brigg, Bap, Ana and even Hamster are all very powerful at maximized skill.

Itā€™s hard for a same-skilled zen/mercy/lucio/d.va/winston to compete tbh

basically og heroes < release heroes

2 Likes
14

Its not a victim act - just merely stating that the entire support class has gotten a lot more nerfs than any other class. Tank is a close second.

DPS are lucky in comparison.

20 Likes
15

they have also been the most broken class to reign during shifting periods of time! those nerfs are perfectly justified, you are in fact playing the victim by focusing on the nerf and not the cause

More in my favor is that you talk about Mercy as if she didnā€™t receive one of the most OP reworks TO DATE

5 Likes
16

If Briggā€™s barrier was 300 instead of 200 I could definitely get inspire off more reliably :frowning:

I also want them to fix earthshatter so if it can go through some payloads Iā€™m not screwed by jumping :frowning:

3 Likes
17

Its definitely a victim act because in order for your thread to work you have to ignore all the buffs the supports have gotten to make the thread work like how Ana is far stronger than her release version.

7 Likes
18

Right? And then they just expect tank and support players to play these heroes, through this roller coaster of ups and downs. Itā€™s enough to give someone whiplash, man.

Edit

Itā€™s almost like:

"Spin the big wheel and see which Tanks and Supports are viable, this season."

Ugh.

10 Likes
19

And lucky for DPS, the role was so bad that it was irrelevant for over a year lol.

Lucky supports and tanks havenā€™t had to deal with that yet, at least they get to define metas lol.

2 Likes
20

Only because the balance team doesnā€™t know how to make two viable healers at the same time.

At any given moment, theres always a better main healer. And when that main healer gets nerfed, the next best one is used. I promise you that Ana will be played as the best main healer again now that Bap is nerfed.

You can quote me on this.

And the 11 nerfs that came with it, also removing one of the two counters to ult spam (Mass rez), creating the massive snowballing ultimate issue weā€™re facing to this day still.

6 Likes