Lets give all the supports more defense

General Discussion
1

I think Support mains will like this: What if all the supports had some form of defense to mitigate damage for themselves upon being flanked or poked?

Basically, if Genji is harassing you or Widow is looking at you, you can activate a special self defense skill to do something. Here’s some ideas I had:

Ana could become invisible once every 15 seconds. While invisible, you can relocate safely away from danger, but this invisibility run out after a few seconds. To make Ana’s invisibility different from Sombra’s I’d say hers should work like the Active Camo in halo: move slow and you’re more invisible. Move fast, and you’re easier to see while still being cloaked. Also, I think her cloak should break if she uses her nade, but this isn’t needed. Mainly because, after nade is out, shooting Ana wouldn’t do anything, anyway.

I believe the “Ana invisibility” thing was suggested by someone else as a way to replace sleep dart, but personally I think she could keep both. That way, we wouldn’t have to butcher mobility characters.

Zenyatta has his kick, and that seems fine to me, but we can still brainstorm ideas to keep him safe. I like the idea of him spinning his orbs all around himself to block bullets and contact damage enemies. Again, this would be something like a 15 second cooldown.

I think Baptiste should get a personal barrier for a few seconds. Like brig, but radial. I think he needs more options for protection besides dumping skills with lengthy cooldowns just to save himself. I don’t think his kit is powerful enough to warrant that, but that’s just me.

I’m not saying these are great ideas, but I think these are the sort of changes that could help supports, so we should talk about what sort of changes supports should get to retain their identity while giving them defense. People seem tired of mobility, but I think characters should get mobility if it fits their character.

Also, we can tweak the numbers. I don’t know if 15 seconds is too long or too short, so lets talk about numbers if you want to.

3 Likes
2

Supports should be close to team for peel and imagine youve finally gotten an opportunity to pinch one and they have some rediculous get out of jail free card. Nope
They got enough utility and you can swap supports for your needs if youre getting dove go moira brig or lucio very simple

6 Likes
3

Most characters have this already. Imagine you’re about to kill Genji, but he climbs a wall, dashes, or straight up blocks your damage. Or you’re about to kill Mercy, and she GA’s a way, or Moria fades, or Reaper uses Wraith form, ect.

This is only improving on Blizzard’s formula in a way that means no one needs to be nerfed.

1 Like
4

I think this change is ludacris. I respect you and your creativity though. They already have supports that give up output for increased survivability. Youre mentioning how other dps have movement abilities but the whole roster is filled with heroes with and without, not every single hero needs to have something to escape

2 Likes
5

I think instead they are gonna go an agile way and help them have more movement. I believe someone said that in a Q&A but I dont have a source.

6

Every support currently has mitigation built in its just player skill level to use it boops, sleeps, etc

I mean all the support self regenerate now fairly quickly after a fight

%90 of support is positioning if you’re dying more than 10+ times a game and rewatch the VOD guarantee it’s bad positioning that got you killed because of: no cover, staggerd from team, no highground advantage when highground is available etc…

7

The last thing supports need is more survivability. Every support has the ability to self-peel, and they also have their new support passive. This would be unnecessary.

1 Like
8

How about, now this is crazy and probably broken, give supports a damage threshold where they have to take a certain amount of damage before losing hp maybe like 15-20% of there max hp and once this threshold is broken they have to trigger there support passive before getting it back. You could play around with it for specific abilities and it should allow for a bit more time to react. It won’t have any effects with ults. And widow/hanzo/ashe with DMG boost will leave you at 20% health instead of outright killing you.

9

I don’t think this is enough though, and supports need something to make them more appealing. A lot people mention the flankers specifically, so why not a buff to help in that department?

It wouldn’t be too overpowered either. Lets say Ana cloaks. Genji still has his M2 to fire in an area and potentially find her, and he has other teammates he could rely on if needed. Removing stuns has forced us to nerf flankers; why is everyone content with that? What’s next to be nerfed? I really think we should try a buff to supports first.

At least try it on the experimental to see how it feels.

10

Ageeed experimental, Supports need some love but giving them new ability on top of their regen passive is a slippery slope

You can still ne a great support in the current build of the game, just new players are learning and old players have bad habits that carried over from OW1 depending on barriers and second tank to peel

11

I don’t think you can fix the “support problem” this easily. This would just make the game a frustrating mess for non-supports.

There are specific changes to specific heroes I’d like. I’d like Ana to have wall climb. I’d like Kiriko to have double jump. But neither of those is because they need that, more that it fits with their identity and kit.

As someone who plays support a lot, I don’t think in general supports have as hard a time surviving as the forums make it out to be. There are some instances, sure. Had a game the other day where I just could not escape from the enemy Reinhardt no matter what I did because my tank was who knows where and the enemy Rein was effectively uncontested the whole match. But that isn’t the games faut nor is it my typical experience.

I think there are 3 problems.

  1. Many players are still trying to play 5 v 5 like it was 6 v 6 and it just isn’t. There’s a lot of difference in the way OW2 plays vs OW1. And if you play it like OW1, you are going to die a lot and it will feel terrible.
  2. There’s some specific interactions that suck that hopefully get nerfed but that might lead to new interactions that suck. Sojourn 1 shotting everyone for example. Zarya melting you faster than you can say Zarya.
  3. The matchmaker is not doing a great job. Sometimes there is an obvious mismatch. And it can be frustrating.
12

Nah just no supports are already ungodly powerful. Just no.

13

Get rid of DPS and Tank passives and the 30% ult charge passive and see what happens before going through with a bunch of buffs/changes.

14

Yea that’s why everyone queues up to play them right because they are ungodly powerful right? :joy:

2 Likes
15

Supports already have defense…Its called “peel”
DVA is a “peel” hero and should be protecting the backline…But most players below masters cant even heal,let alone “peel”

16

I mean supports and dps have fast ques I think tank is the longest que rn? What does que times have to do with how powerful a role is tanks have long ques but are the strongest role in the game by a mile huh?

17

Don’t forget to remove the healer passive

18

The quick support queue is what causes the other roles to have longer queues the tank queue is long because there is only one of them per team. When you queue for tank or DPS you are waiting for 4 support players at your MMR to join your team if there is a problem with the role less people will be willing to play it if less people are willing to play there are less players in the matchmaking pool thus longer queue times for the other two roles.

19

Honestly support mains have become whiny spoiled and lazy. Rather than learning how to survive by paying attention to cooldowns choosing the right hero for the job or simply being in good position they just cry for any flanker or 1 shot hero to be nerfed because it’s “unfair” and protest by not playing the role properly and trying to out DPS everyone. It’s also by far the easiest role to climb on IMO and other support players act like it’s impossible. They insist on pretending to be oppressed in some way and it makes the ones actually trying to do our job and get better look bad. Supports already have too many get out of jail free cards if you ask me.

20

I happen to think the passives have mostly failed. For some characters, it just doesn’t matter. Zen and Mercy already had a regen passive, and most of the Supports have self heal anyway. The only one that doesn’t is Ana, but that’s more of a balancing thing than anything.

Maybe they should have all gotten some sort of dramatic ability to protect themselves before adding these clunky passives to everyone.

So, no one should have passives but supports? That doesn’t sound like a great idea at all.

Oh, so they can peel for themselves?

Then peeling isn’t a support passive, is it? If your “passive” is to rely on everyone else for protection, then you have a trash passive.

1 Like