Just when I thought there was some hope for support changes

General Discussion
1

Cooldown changes… Really?

Not nerfing the amount of healing they can output

Not nerfing the fact that basically any support at this point can outduel anyone in the game (outside of obvious outliers)

Not nerfing the fact of how bloated support kits are

Not nerfing how supports essentially run the game and HAVE been running the game since the move to ow2.

I mean are we serious right now? Cooldown changes don’t do AIR. There’s nothing there from these changes, the abilities aren’t strong because of “low cooldowns”??? Most of them don’t even have low cooldowns to begin with. The abilities aren’t strong because of their ability to spam them in quick succession, no!

Supports are too strong because they are bloated busted heroes, who can outduel anyone in the game with less of the effort, and out heal essentially any form of damage at the click of a button with again… no effort. And are a near impossible task to kill without singling one out, and full man plowing them.

Once again blizzard proves, that their balance team:

DOESN’T PLAY THEIR OWN GAME.

We have a balance team who:

DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN GAME.

We have a balance team who thinks that staring at a stat sheet, counts as:

UNDERSTANDING THEIR OWN GAME.

Let’s run through the changes to see who actually got NERFED:

ANA:

Yeah the support hero that’s been meta for like… 3-4 years STRAIGHT now, and has been busted for a grand majority of overwatch’s existence?

Cooldown change! :smiley: That definitely solves her problems!!!

(it doesn’t).

BAPTISTE:

The hero that got gigabuffed at the start of OW2, for zero reason!

Cooldown change and an inconsequential health change to immortality field because it’s placed behind cover… anyway!!! And it’s STILL a free immort ability that let’s him just plop down instantly and survive entire ults! Immortality field is just as stupid, as the day it was conceived.

ILLARI:

Now these are bigger changes. Slightly harder to hit shots with, and her pylon is now at a lower HP. The reason THIS HP change to a deployable matters, is because the time she can put it back up is also getting increased, and it’s not like immortality where all it takes is a 0.2 second use out of it, to get insane value.

Pylon NEEDS to stay up for extended period of time to get value, NOT immortality field.

KIRIKO:

The 2nd most busted support hero in OW2’s existence, and funny enough, the 2nd most busted support hero was designed and developed as a hero, to hard counter the 1ST most busted support hero, in ana.

She got a cooldown change. Means nothing, hero will keep being busted. Zilch.

LIVEWEAVER:

Slightly lower healing that means nothing in the grand scheme of things, because… the healing amount will be barely noticeable, and his healing amount isn’t his problem.

And an inconsequential cooldown change, because lifegrip is still just a free get out of jail immortality card for people with horrendous positioning that can’t be punished because lifeweaver clicked a button.

ZENYATTA:

Now THESE are good changes!

The past time of just holding discord on tanks is slightly over because now, tanks have a cooldown period where they can get it off and ACTUALLY attempt playing the game now! Thank you blizzard, I see you at least attempted to consult someone who actually plays the game with these changes.

I would’ve taken, just a flat dmg boost percentage decrease for tanks specifically, but hey maybe this works too, we’ll see.

And that’s it. Brig goes untouched somehow, Mercy goes untouched somehow, moira and lucio will most likely keep being the bottom of the support role.

And, imagine my shock here, ana will KEEP being hard meta. At this point, ana will be meta for the entirety of overwatch 2, I’m convinced.

Also complete sidenote I think I just came to the realization that some of these changes are here to sell skins…

KPOP event coming:

Let’s see, dva gets buffed??? SOMBRA GETS BUFFED???

Kiriko gets a nerf that straight up does nothing and brig dodges changes entirely…

This is a joke LMFAO has to be. How do you BUFF SOMBRA. HOOOOOOOOOOW.

11 Likes
2

Unfortunately the devs are unwilling to actually change the more problematic support abilities. The game will feel a bit better for tank/dps but long cooldown abilities are boring. If they just addressed the problem of invulnerabilities then they could give supports lower cooldown abilities so they have more engaging kits. This current dev team is obsessed with support abilities that just make nothing die and the only way to balance them is with super long cooldowns :man_shrugging:

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I expected Brig nerfs. Do you think she needed adjustment?

I only play Brig and Lucio in high rank console games

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Brig definitely does. Brig alone makes trying to kill the other support an impossible task, because you’ll get smashed upside the head, whipped away, and even if you manage to still stay next to the other support, they’ll just get one pack and instantly be back to full.

And don’t even BOTHER trying to go for the support hero with a shield. It ain’t happening.

5

Yea I find Brig to be absolutely insane, but I’m on console so I never play aim-intensive heroes like the problematic ones

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Yes they are

AND you are surprised by this? What did you think was gonna happen? There was countless posts about who was gonna get nerf. Did you think they where just blowing smoke?

Ana is NEVER GETTING TOUCHED, and if they just happened to look her way. She will get a slight tap on the wrist.

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7

Look on the bright side. This is their “big” balance patch. Next one will be less. May as well set your expectations correctly for the next one. :smiley:

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8

Maybe, just maybe the people of the forum will listen to us…

They are never ever gonna address the problems. If another support hero gets to close to Ana or Bapt they will get nerfed hard.

We see this over and over… AND we keep taking Blizzard abuse, we keep eating this putrid garbage and asking for more over and over again.

9

Supports aren’t the only class with problematic abilities, the devs have balancing favoritism for all roles, it makes no sense to try to hyperfocus on support like the other two classes are balanced or anything close to it.

Then they need to also completely remove one-shots. You cannot remove one extreme and ignore the other, especially when even invulnerabilities that exist outside the support role all have cooldowns yet ohk’s are tied to some heroes’ primary fire.

It doesn’t matter if an ability has no cooldown if it’s useless which is mainly what people who say this nonsense want. You just want to be able to completely negate and ignore any support impact. The condescending nonsense is wild, people see right through the “make them more engaging” bs. There is an outcry every time supports engage in anything above the level of just standing still and dying. Healing, damage, utility, mobility, or survivability, any and all of it is demonized every time a support does it.

Supports cannot save teammates without it being an issue, they cannot save themselves without it being an issue, they cannot deal damage without it being an issue, they cannot provide anything unique to boost their team without it being an issue.

People whining about supports do not want them to be “more engaging”, they want them all to be Zen harmony orbs that instantly die when looked at.

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10

You are the perfect picture of the term “Victim mentality”

The same as every other support players, anytime anyone brings up the fact of how broken supports are and how we want it toned down “ohhh waaaaah waaaah you guys just don’t want supports to be able to do anything other than heal bot waah waaaah”

It’s so tiresome dealing with you VICTIMS.

The support role IS BROKEN.

The support role has BEEN BROKEN.

The support role is LEAGUES above the other 2 roles, 90% of the support role is bloated busted heroes that can do whatever they want because they so above the other heroes in this game.

Trying to compare the support roles unfairness to the other roles unfairness is like a nuke vs a crying baby. There IS no comparison.

Yes, one shots are absolutely stupid, but do you know why they are also almost essential in the current state of the game? Because other wise NOTHING DIES. So yes, OBVIOUSLY if supports got toned down, one shots should too. No one has ever argued otherwise.

The issue is attacking the root problem first, because the support role IS the root problem. The support role is the one making entire heroes completely useless because they feasibly cannot out damage what is being healed, and most heroes in this game at this point get OUT DUELED by support heroes.

No, people don’t want supports to just roll over and die. Stop acting like a victim, the support role has been running overwatch FOR YEARS at this point. To say otherwise proves you either flat out don’t play the game you’re on the forum for, or you are just being purposefully naive and bias to your role.

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The wall.

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You were whining about the Doomfist nerf, this is clown fiesta levels of irony coming from you.

They aren’t. S76, Bastion, Tracer, Genji, and Echo sitting comfortably at the top of the damage role season after season disproves this. you do not need to instantly kill someone. Ohks or completely unnecessary.

And yet with this patch, not a single one of the one-shots or insane burst was toned down. (except for Zen). They aren’t toning down the damage at the same time and people aren’t as vocal about it, either. So trying to make it seem like the community is even close to equally vocal about actually toning down both is objectively and observably wrong. Even if it was, the devs aren’t doing so.

It isn’t. you don’t even know what you’re talking about. the support role didn’t start off with super sustain but the damage role always had Hanzo and Widow’s ohks along with Tracer and Genji’s burst. They supports kept getting more sustain due to the damage in an attempt to avoid nerfing/reworking the problematic damage characters. Every single meta either revolved around dealing as much insane burst as possible as fast as possible, or surviving against insane damage as long as possible. Tracer and Widow warped the game and other character design around them and the problems they created, for years.

They didn’t buff every support and add brig, moira, bap, etc. then say “alright, now it’s too much sustain, now after 7+ years, lets add Widow and Hanzo’s ohks, lets add in some burst damage to counter all the new supports”

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Lol,

So he had to put in parentheses outside of obvious outliers. :thinking:

Because this statement is just not true.

Lets take brig.

Brig can duel SOME dps but many make her irrelevant. And thats most of the dps supports. Yeah they can duel some dps who miss more shots then theyre are willing to admit.

But not EVERYONE. brig can not duel tanks(no support can). Stop the hyperbole

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14

Doesn’t this contradict your point that invulnerabilities exist to counter one shots?

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Well, the real problem is that they shouldn’t be focusing on “Balancing” Supports.

They should focus on making their “Qualitative Counterplay Design” be more enjoyable to play-as and play-against.

The problem is that the community has been asking for Balance. And the devs have done that, verbatim to the textbook definition of “Balance”.

But what players say they want, and what they actually want are different things due using the wrong terminology.

It’s like people keep ordering the wrong thing at a restaurant, and then get upset that they got exactly what they asked for.

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Yes… because I already stated in that thread itself.

Stop changing ONLY rocket punch.

The comparison you are making means literally nothing because they aren’t the same. I’ve already stated multiple times, if you think doom needed the nerfs, that’s perfectly fine. My problem with doom, is this idea of making one of the top 3 hardest heroes in the game, super one dimensional for NO reason and ONLY patching his rocket punch while leaving everything else he has to rot.

Yea S76 with guess who… a mercy pocket 75% of the time. And guess what he also has… a burst damage option that immediately puts someone in range to just get a couple bullets and die.

Echo… mercy pocket.

Tracer and genji… don’t kill things as you think they do. Tracer especially. Tracer at this point is the fly on your wall that is there to annoy you and drag out abilities while you try to deal with her. Neither genji nor tracer is this killing machine lmfao.

YOU are the one objectively wrong.

People CONSTANTLY complain about one shots, you are actually delusional.

Not only that, why WOULD they tone down one shots in this patch? Supports didn’t get nerfed! LMFAO The support nerfs do nothing about the amount of healing in the game, nor do they even mean anything as I said in the OP.

The nerfs are inconsequential and do literally nothing.

Because brig… is a part of the outliers.

The outliers being mercy (who never fights anyone anyway), brig (who can still hold her own against multiple heroes in this game), and lucio.

Also being able to duel people isn’t brig’s issue.

Making the other broken support on her team a near unkillable character because of her CC and her armor packs IS.

They may not win in a straight 1v1.

But nearly all of them can ABSOLUTELY survive any form of tank trying to kill them by either

  1. Mobility
  2. CC
  3. Self healing

There is no balance with how the support role currently is. They have not done, AT ALL, the textbook definition of balance, when their idea of balance is taking the support heroes who have been dominating the game for years (or in kiriko’s case since her inception in ow2), and adding a second or 2 to their cooldowns.

That is a complete joke of a balance patch for the role that is clearly dominating and holding the game back.

17

That last line you wrote made me lololol

There have been more viable support combos in OW2 than there has been viable DPS options; even LUCIO is moving into the meta. Is he overpowered now too?

Meanwhile the same 3-4 dps have been top dogs this entire time with a shake-up of Bastion this season, and guess who gets complained about.

I wonder how long Soldier and Genji are going to be top DPS picks before they get complained about to the same level as Baptiste being meta once since OW2 came out

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18

No, not all invulnerabilities exist to counter only one-shots or the same kind of one-shots. However, removing the extreme of “you don’t instantly die now” abilities make no sense when “you instantly die now” abilities are more readily available, overall.

D.va ult, Riptire, or even Rein pin are examples of one-shots that kill in a single instance of interaction between both characters/abilities yet invulnerabilities like suzu, zarya bubble, recall, wraith form, IF, etc, can be used to counter the instance of otherwise, unavoidable death. These aren’t the only one-shots though, and these all have way less availability than Widow or Hanzo’s primary which makes their ohks even more out of place, given the lack of counterplay that actually exists. When bomb or tire is out, there is actually time to react to that instance of burst damage, you can actually counter that play, you cannot counter Widow sniping someone because as soon as that play is made, the damage is instantly applied and the interaction is over.

There is no equivalent to Widow/Hanzo’s burst on the opposite end of the spectrum. the only way that would exist is if a character can instantly bring other people back to life from 0-100% just by hitting a crit on their teammate at the frequency Widow and Hanzo can. A true anti-ohk like that would be insanely busted no matter how much “skill” it would take, just as Widow and Hanzo are fundamentally busted.

Nothing in his kit is mechanically demanding, he even has a shotgun. every part of his kit involves big hitboxes and/or spread and/or cones and/or big aoe and/or cc. He isn’t hard, he just plays differently than most other heroes. The biggest things are knowing when to dive/having patience and knowing which part of the maps to launch over/around, nothing is really “difficult” about the character because you can watch a youtube video and do the exact same rollouts as the top players and get similar or even better results since you aren’t playing against the same opponents.

It’s not like Tracer where there is mechanical skill you have to develop on top of map knowledge, cooldowns, and when/where to engage.

Is DF the easiest to learn? no. Is he anywhere near top 3 hardest? definitely not.

Yet every single one of these damage characters aren’t one-shotting like Widow/Hanzo because it is completely unnecessary and overkill.

Yet there are nerfs, to tone down and to just to try to appease whiners. Hanzo and Widow’s oneshots are left alone.

They nerfed Cass, Mei, and Sym, none of which, are consistent top damage role contenders. They also did tone down some supports Illari, Zen, and LW all got their supporting capabilities either made riskier/harder to do and/or reduced/more limited via cooldown increases.

again, ironic saying these nerfs do “literally nothing” while also whining about a little stun nerf on DF as if they actually made anything in his entire kit aim-intensive.

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No because it’s been shown time and time again, lucio only ever pops up when rush becomes a thing. That is his entire niche, and he sticks to that niche.

The other supports are essentially flawless no matter what comp you run.

Yeah and this is where I ignore the entire rest of what you wrote and just move on.

You are either delusional or hilariously bad at overwatch.

You have a good day now.

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The devs have painted themselves into a corner, as they always do with regards to the support role.

They give the role excessive power to encourage people to play it. When that excessive power ruins the gameplay experience for everyone else, which it always does, the dev is scared to remove that power and risk losing the players accustomed to it.

This is what killed OW1 for many of us. OW2 was supposed to finally resolve this, with the devs applying the lessons learned from the balance failures of its predecessor. But those devs left and evidently took the lessons with them. Like OW1, this game is little more than spamming free kill denial buttons every 3s to nullify player skill.

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