I know that Lucio’s value comes mostly from his speed boosting the team, but I find I use him in healing mode about 70-80% of the time and only use speed boost when rushing through choke points with success. And somehow I out heal the main healer on my team. Is there a downside to playing Lucio as if he was a main healer?
If you outhealed the main healer as Lucio then clearly the main healer wasn’t doing their job.
As for Lucio as a main healer, he simply cannot be one. He can do a lot of healing, but it’s a slow over time heal. He cannot heal tanks enough in a given team fight to allow them to survive said fight.
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Lucio is actually treated as a “main support” in the eyes of organized teams. Though their distinction is not as simple as how much healing they output.
A main support is meant to be one that is less mechanically demanding and usually the one that shot calls for the team, generally Lucio, Moira, and Mercy. While the “flex support” title is given to the more mechanically demanding supports, usually the ones with more utility, primarily Ana, Bap, and Zen.
It’s actually not that hard to farm big healing numbers as Lucio, not a measure of whether or not the other support is “doing their job” you’re a support not just a healer, your job is more than healboting.
While I’m not going to say speed-boost at all times, there are a lot more times that it is relevant to speed boost than just getting through choke points or back into a fight. Just things as simple as staying with your Rein and speeding him to close the gap to the other team, or speeding to get to other parts of the battlefield to use the rest of your kit (booping people like Reaper or Doom away from their targets to give your teammates a chance to win the fight or escape for example). The big thing to remember though, track the charge percentages of your ult compared to your other support. If you have or are close to fully charging your ult but your Ana, Moira, Bap (or whoever you’re playing with) doesn’t have as much charge or doesn’t have their ult yet? Don’t heal as much then unless the team needs it (especially between fights), it’s more valuable in that situation to let your other support charge their ult than getting your healing number higher or healing the team faster combined.
Of course if the fight is raging (dramatic wording I know) don’t just not heal if you have your ult, but try to let your other support charge their ult if someone is barely hurt and you both can/are trying to heal them.
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main supp= lucio brig mercy
flex supp = everything else
GENERALLY
and its also depends what was your flex supp etc…
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healing more than main supp is normal, medals don’t matter, he isn’t doing the meaningful healing, its just slow aoe. healing a tracer for 70 health is way more impactful than the rest of the team for ~12hp. Mainly healing will not get you to high ranks. You’re ignoring his main capability, might as well play a different healer. Your team should be constantly moving, rotating, and speed is very important.
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It’s not really that you are playing main heal er so much as you are living longer and thereful healing more. If you can keep your partner alive longer that’s good but otherwise just stay alive and play to win.
If the other healer seems to be dying too much you may need to main heal
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I was actually surprised to see the numbers a Lucio sticking to heal only can accomplish. His healing usually surpasses those of Moira and Ana. In my elo (Gold) 80% of Lucio’s heal only and only use speed boost at the beginning of the match and that is if we are on defense.
I, personally, do not think that that is the proper use of Lucio nor using Lucio to his full potential when you stick to heals only or mostly during a match. He is way more valuable with speed boost, and peeling for his Ana or Zen.
His boop ability is also one of the essential ones. Sadly I mostly see it being used in my elo on boop maps since many people think that his boop is only viable on boop maps.
Random gold players dont really make good use of speed burst
Its best to spam heals up to platinum, and use speed when it’s obviously needed
I hear you and I agree with you, in some extent.
The thing is it will work if you are smurfing and you know what to use where. The problem arises with the fact where you are not smurfing and are a legit Gold player, having over 200 hr (just as an example) on Lucio and you rank up to Plat, does not even have to be Plat, just take any elo where a certain thing works, and then you hit a wall, getting frustrated at the fact that the thing you did for 200 hr does not work anymore.
Low elos inhibit very bad habits. It is so much easier to acquire a bad habit (than to acquire a good one, and much harder to get rid of it once you reach a rank where proper play is rewarded and bad one is punished), thinking it is actually a good habit, making you even think that you are good on a certain hero, just because it happens to work in the current elo you are playing.
A bad habit should never be rewarded, imo, but in low ranks those are rewarded more than good ones. A heal botting Lucio is a bad habit in my opinion (ppl are allowed to disagree with me on that one) and once that Lucio reaches a rank where it no longer works he will come here to complain how matchmaking is against him. Same thing with a flanking high noon.
This happens a lot with people who are not smurfing and have never been in elos where actual teamwork and proper hero play is awarded. I have not been in those elos either, but I have watched (I know that there is a difference between watching high elo play and actually playing in them) so many of them, and not all of them were GM and T500 to actually know when I am getting value by playing wrong. Low elos promote bad and wrong play.
Very hard for non smurfing players to realize when they are playing right or wrong, hence why I stopped long time ago to blame my teammates for anything.
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Support hasn’t been about the healing numbers for a chunk of time now. A Lucio with gold healing in lower SR ranges tends to mean the player was using amp it up when a fight was over to heal up his team’s tanks.
or it can mean Lucio didn’t peel for his main support (his job) and the main support was being killed by flankers a lot more.
both acts directly rob the main support from building their ult and can end up costing team’s games. Even as the Lucio player is going “I have gold healing!!! Yaa me!”…
there is a ton of stuff like this in the game that is just not explained at all.
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So long as you’re healing teammates when they need it (as is the primary responsibility of the Support role) and not off trying to solo DPS the enemy team while your teammates are dying from being a healer down.
I also run my healing the majority of the time unless we are pushing aggressively which isn’t as common or necessary. I occasionally swap to speed every few seconds to move myself or my team around slightly.
The fastest way to get beat is to heal so I use it more to get beat once a minute.
But yes Lucio can’t main heal because he can’t heal fast enough.
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