Let Lifeweaver swap between heal and damage quicker

General Discussion
1

LW’s switching between heal & damage feels so clunky compared to Baptiste, Kiriko and Moira.

When everyone is at full hp, I rather be charging heals instead of do damage because I can heal immediately when a teammate gets heavily tagged. If I do damage, it takes time for me to switch back to healing → charged heal → heal the ally.

Thorns can barely kill anyone except the enemy is at very low hp, thus I will be usually feeding ults to enemy Supports.

I prefer to reduce his max heal back to his release days (75 at max), but increase the swap time between heal and thorns. I will be also nice QoL change if LW could charge heal based on how much damage he did on enemies (or maybe shields too) with his thorns, thus he can heal a teammate immediately when switch back to heal instead of switch → charge heals → heal.

2 Likes
2

It’s still a good idea to weave damage into your gameplay because you can threaten enemies in close range and damage also helps build your ult charge when nothing else is happening. Lifeweaver may not feel like a lethal hero a lot of times and that’s really just because he is a projectile hero. Every projectile hero suffers from this mentality of not doing enough damage to be lethal. Even Junkrat mains are asking for buffs, with all of the damage he currently has in his kit.

Lifeweaver’s gauntlet is already pretty responsive and much easier to use nowadays. Especially compared to when he was first released. The issue with Lifeweaver, and single target healers, is the fact that there’s so much damage in the game that it can’t all be healed at once. This is why Kiriko has protection suzu. Her healing has travel time and that can honestly make playing her feel like you are lagging behind.

Your tank is taking a lot of damage, people are poking from flank routes, here comes a random Junkrat tire out of nowhere and now half of your team is dead. Faster swap times won’t help in a lot of cases simply because you still have to charge up your healing. That split second buff won’t feel as impactful when you still have to wait a full second to get your maximum healing output.

I think allowing him to build healing through damage would create a lot of problems for Lifeweaver players. It would be nice if Lifeweaver could store his healing when he needs or wants to do damage. That way it’s not an issue for him to swap back to healing at any time, and he has a full heal ready to go. That could eliminate some of the issues with charge times and feeling helpless as your team is dying on point.

3

No, this isn’t supposed to he a thing everyone can do only those really good at Weaver can weave in damage and healing well and hell I even prefer healbot Weavers to do it all the time a lot of people seem to forget there other support exist and can heal much easier then Weaver can with literally the press of a button.

Baptiste is 75 direct.

Remember Lifeweaver is an off support with Main support capabilities, it isn’t much your job to do much healing that comes Naturally he does a lot of healing regardless especially when you know when to spam heals.

He also works better when combining his heals with his other support compared to solo.

Just use the gun, it dosen’t need to be faster or slower just know how to switch the hands that’s the skill gap.

4

When I tried out LW, I found that swapping from thorns to flowers sucked more than the other way around. I still think that a flower should passively charge up while thorns are equipped. (And the movement penalty for holding a full charge removed completely, of course, so it doesn’t end up as actually being a nerf to LW.) Prick people for a little bit, swap back to flowers, bam, there’s a heal ready to go. I think I’d prefer that to instant auto-swap personally. Not that I would complain if that happened instead.

Also, there should be an indicator for when the other weapon’s reloaded passively. It’s not the standard 1.5s that the likes of Mercy and Torb enjoy for insert reason here. If auto off-hand reloading has to be different for insert reason here then make it more apparent when it occurs.

5

What damage dude, his weapon is inconsistent, you can take it away and there will be no difference. This char is about healbotting. If you want to do damage, there are much better options available.

6

Tbh, this is something you can and should just Play The Game to get a feel for instead of adding more UI- You can also base it off blossom charges and thorns fired.

7

Dosen’t matter if there are better options avaliable not doing damage is why so many other Lifeweavers have negative win rates compared to people like me and Ayanga, and Naz, and Bogur and etc.

Another characters existence isn’t an excuse for you to throw the game.

This is a dumb as hell statment you made, you pick Lifeweaver for Lifeweaver he has good movement that Baptiste Dosen’t have, a repositioning tool, as well as a sit up to get his team to high ground if applicable, massive amlunts of shield break and can break depoyables from far off with no shield break, so can zen but with far far FARRRR less mobility, as well as tree of Life essentially being a Mei wall.

You pick Lifeweaver not just for the damage, in fact if you pick any hero just for the damage and not for what they fully offer you belong in bronze if I’m being honest.

Lifeweaver has plenty of damage to get “His” job done (well after the season 8 changes it’s definitely harder).

But another characters existence isn’t your excuse to play a hero improperly, this is stupid.

And how do you know this style is improper… because a scarlet Lifeweavers win rate is no where close to how pathetic it looks on overbuff.

If you want one of those Lifeweavers contributing to his 46.80% win rate on your team keep thinking dumb crap like this.

But if you want one of the 55+% win rate weavers on your team, you should probably stop thinking idiotic stuff like this.

Even worse on console tho I don’t play there it shows 44 as his lowest.

8

It matters! Why would you use a Phillips screwdriver when you have a
straight screwdriver available, which fits the screw better? Why do you need a phillips-head to be tuned into something that already exists? Characters are tools to solve something.

Yes, so go back to spawn and switch. LW is designed for low ranks, where people don’t want to learn and adapt.

Dude, just say: LW has pull! Nice, that’s why you don’t have consistent weapon - this is your downside. If you want to have pull and better damage, you want too much, simple as that. So watch your own statements which are not shining smartness.

You pick LW if you belong in bronze, you pick Bap for any other rank, simple as that. Want precision - pick it and learn to aim both with your healing and damage.

Yes, just switch it, and problem solved.

9

I currently have a 58% comp win rate on Lifeweaver actually.

I get it you constantly get healbot Lifeweavers on your team not contributing to anything, using Lifegrip incorrectly, not making plays, and hay because of that 1 time he didn’t heal you and you died he’s now the worst hero ever, or maybe it was those pathetic heals he kept trying to spam out to you that caused you to die in the first place as he ended the game with 15k healing and 100 damage claiming he did sooooo much hard work. Hehehehehe.

He’s a regular hero like everyone else, he has his counters, his good situations his bad situations, sire he could still use some buffs he’s definitely ruff ariund the edges.

I also play Baptiste and he’s a hitscan but he has fall off and he shoots slower so dealing with certain things like shields takes longer.

I’m not talking about like no 50% win rate not any negative win rate like the ones You’ve meet, Im talking nearly 60%.

And this is in diamond/masters btw.

He’s not designed for a specific rank, if you actually play him correctly.

Even in masters the current guy with the highest win rate is a scarlet weaver.

At gm it looks like people just aren’t playing him, but hell up till masters he’s fine right now if you just play him correctly, well I won’t say “Fine” but definitely not a throw pick.

Against Stuff like Mauga and pharah and etc like there’s definitely situations you just straight up shouldn’t pick him in.

He’s not a throw like he’s legit only a true throw if you play that healbot style.

As you can tell by like the MAJOR difference in win rates.

10

Oh yeah I forgot his heals are also easier to hit then Baps, as well as him being able to like do things from varrying different positions, baps more like always mid to close range, he also has less hp and dosen’t have the shield health thats if you don’t want to waste cool downs to much.

Theres also like “The way” weaver shoots which can apply pressure to certain choke points and rooms and essentially lock people from moving.

Not saying hes like good or like this top tier meta threat, he definitely needs some help.

But the game isn’t like over if you have at least a good one on your team.

11

I mean, bruh, I am not flexing on your ability to play the hero to its full potential, you got it! What I say, that there are plenty of better tools out there that allow for skill expression (Aim-wise) much better than the hero you pick for some unknown reason and insist on getting changes that he doesn’t need because he has different purpose. The same Bap does LW job much better, and he doesn’t need any pulls or buffs for his damage cap to keep someone alive, he just makes it differently w/o the pulling.

Having LW buffed or playable means the worst experience possible for all, and we already had LW metas where nothing dies, which has proven a healbot status with a pull for this char. I think heroes like that are generally unhealthy for the game in the first place, to even discuss any buffs or changes outside his already broken kit. Before doing anything in regard to his damage capabilities, get rid of aimbotting mechanics first. But once again, you will just re-create a bap or kiri, or illary or ana with pull. Those already exist. So basically, we consider LW as a character for those who are not mechanically gifted (I see no other reason to play LW), so we revolve the rest of his kit around that factor. Which means you could not have any better damage capabilities on LW.

And the initial thesis was about doing damage in general, so why would you choose LW for that. Swapping between heal/damage change is fine QoL, but other than that, this hero doesn’t need damage buffs for sure.

12

Hahahahaha, you don’t even realize his actual issue right now, his already playable pretty well in season 8 people still consider him garbage, but guess who held the top spots?

Everyone who actually knew how to play Lifeweaver, your not even aware of the season when Lifeweaver was legitmeatly good because you never encountered them before as far as you know this mans never had a good season in his life outside of that 1 season where healbotting was really good and guess what? He was still thrash.

Also no Bap A has fall off, B moves very linarely, and C the way he shoots is different he can’t apply pressure to small rooms or block off chokes the way weaver can because its 3 burst.

We’ve already had a none healbot weaver “Meta” and that was season 8

He really just needs more ammo and he’d be perfectly fine everyone got a bunch of hp and armor buffs so it changed his breakpoints by a lot.

You won’t notice a damn thing different about the Lifeweavers on your team or on the enemy team, he’ll still be the same “Unhealthy” “auto aim” “Easy” hero as always, but people like me would have our full power back.

It dosen’t matter if there are heros that do “Higher” damage in a vaccum, tbh I can usually outdue ana, kiriko, and Lucio relatively easily, as well as illari, the ONLY heros who realistically outdamage me, is dedicated fast past shooters or constant ones Like Baptiste, Zenyatta, Moira.

Everyone else it’s actually not that hard to keep up with them, when I get like those REALLY good Lucios we usually jump on targets together.

13

Imo there’s no real reason why he has to switch at all. Kiriko has both options available at all times, why not weaver too? Next up is mercy, I wouldn’t want her changed, but because she has to swap weapons I think she needs a dmg buff on her blaster ^^

14

Weapon Swap delay is a mechanic you can base balance decisions around.

It taking time to equip combined with his heals being on a charge mechanic with travel time gives LW this Time Management gameplan that justifies Thorns being one of the upper-tier Support weapons (Likewise with Blossom being one of the better Heals).

This is why Mercy gets a weaker gun; because she has a faster swap and her healing application doesnt need to charge and is immediately attachable as soon as the staff is out.