I don’t understand the design mindset behind these heroes. Outside of their utility, all they do is heal. Supports who can deal good damage will ALWAYS be the better picks, no matter what.
Does LW need a damage buff? Do Mercy players need to pull out the glock more? How can they make these heroes more… active?
sometimes people want to play a true support - someone whose job it is to support their team and not directly contribute damage.
Mercy has been viable and meta before even though she doesn’t directly add damage to a fight. Her damage beam was even a point of contention because people felt it added too much.
Lifeweaver’s pull is also frequently discussed because of how it denies kills, and people complain about being pulled lol
Whenever i just want to stay back and let the team-mates do their thing i just play LW or Mercy and do bit of pew pew here and there.
When ever i want to go fully combat geared and down the enemies i go Zen or Moira.
When ever i want to go speedy boi i go Lucio.
I think you can consider those 2 already ‘active’ in their own rights. Being a full-time dad for 4 sprawling children is an unpaid and unthanked job honestly. Sure, I don’t get into fights myself, and yes, by the logic where I am the ‘parent of the team’, I literally let my ‘kids’ fight and destroy you, but where’s the problem in playing a literal OG true support?
I think the direction behind the s12 LW changes were really cool. The passive charge-up does really help allow him to add some damage. An earlier Ayanga thread got me to pick LW in QP again and try and thorn it up a bunch, and it didn’t go badly considering I’ve barely played the guy:
I wouldn’t increase raw damage. On paper he can already do 132 DPS which is not to be scoffed at. I don’t think it’ll take all that much to bump him up from “bleh” tier to “suboptimal but whatever, it’s fine” tier. Increase the passive recharge rate? Reduce spread on thorns? Reduce/remove weapon swap delay? I don’t know which of these should and shouldn’t be altered, but there’s definitely stuff that can be tweaked.
Oh, and change the auto-reload trigger time to 1.5s from 2.5s. It’s 1.5s for Mercy and Torb, IIRC, and it’s weird and unnecessary to have it be 2.5s for LW.
Why is “Activity” only defined as dealing damage or countering an ability with an ability?
When I play Mercy I’m very busy with flying around, sneaking in Reses, and applying whichever beam on whichever teammate would be most helpful at any given moment. And yes, rocking the glock when it seems the best use of my time.
Likewise with Weaver I’m literally weaving through enemy fire, spamming out thorns, and doing those little flicks to make sure my blossoms go to the teammate that needs it most when they’re grouped up with others.
I consider both a lot busier than Ana. (But I guess she’s not the golden child support anymore, so I don’t know if that means much these days.)
Better tutorials.
For mercy it’d be to stop encouraging the pocket play style and actually enable or reward the triage style more. Boosting the db and lessening her hp encourages staying behind walls more as it makes triaging more difficult.
For weaver. Just a better tutorial. He can do darn good damage when needed and his kit is much more versatile than many other supports have. Healbotting on weaver is much more difficult than playing him regularily like any other support.
If you go through the list of OW characters, Lifeweaver either loses 1v1 or is unlikely to have a direct fight with most of them. There aren’t many things LW can crush by daring attack.
Generally speaking, you would use their utility. But yeah, outside of it, they are functionally a playable Pylon. You just have to ignore literally every other aspect of their kit including their ability to move and then the statement is relatively hard to contest.
No, they won’t.
There are dps to do dmg. Support’s main purpose (in this particular game, because that is how the game works) is to heal.
What is more likely to hear during match?
“Our support doesn’t heal”
or
“Our support doesn’t do dmg”
Ppl who have more dmg than heal during a match should be locked into the dps role for 10 matches.
People who can only heal or only damage will be ranked lower on support than people who can do both. The former being in your lobbies is the matchmaking working as intended, placing bad players in bad player lobbies
Ppl who do both also have less of both.
10k healing > 5k dmg and 5k healing
The fact that you’re not shooting thorns right now already is insane tbh
generally their concept is based on the fact that they are mainly NON offensive players, in terms of personal damage output. they are almost considered as a -1 player capable of shooting you, but they compensate for this lack in various ways:
they are two slightly different supports, but very similar in compensating for the low damage output with direct resolution techniques. something that some supports suffer more… or even others are excessively effective in everything they do.
Lifeweaver has utility in his grab and the platform - the only similarities is that the pylon and him heal in bursts lol.
No it isn’t. You don’t understand the game at all. 0 damage on any support other than Mercy is called throwing. In your case I guess it would just be a case of being atrocious at the game. Knowing when to do damage and when to heal and who is too hard for bad players.
That is exactly why mercy is one of the best supports. her healing is already good enough that she doesn’t have to make up for it with dmg.
How Mercy gets played at higher end ladder is more of an alternative to Brig, zen, and lucio. What makes Mercy useful at high end gameplay is damage boost and not healing.
Healing is what you do in in like silver/plat. In diamond+ you dmg bst. Yeah, you’ll end up with high heals, but ~2k dmg bst per 10min avg with like 50-70% dmg bst up time is the common theme. Seriously, go into any Mercy top 500 stat and you 'll generally see high dmg bst up time.
It doesn’t really matter.
She can dmg boost as needed but other supports can only do dmg as compensation because are capped by their own healing output.
So why pick mid healer who can’t heal, when you can pick one who can and still provide dps when needed?
Both of this heroes have one of the most game changing / saving abilities in the game. Idk, what you are on about…