Zen has excellent carry potential if you have great aim. and can help the team focus targets easily. Moira can use Damage Orb + Right Click to quickly kill a nearby squishy. Mercy can boost DPS to score quick picks. Even Ana’s kit has tools that can initiate a winning fight or help finish off low HP enemies. Lucio’s damage can accumulate over time, but it’s rarely capable of making game-changing plays. In a meta where it’s tough for things to die, the inability to dispense of an enemy quick is a major problem.
Lack of Burst Healing
This is not to say his healing doesn’t offer any utility, but 16 HPS not strong enough to help a team mate that’s close to dying or being focused down. He can provide 48 HPS during Amp It Up (for a whopping total of 3 seconds), while the main healers heal 60-80+.
Lucio’s Assets are Less Important Now
Lucio is viable for triple-tank, but Tanks are less powerful now. Brigitte counters the majority of them, Hanzo can outdamage them more consistently the majority of Tanks are weak to Brigitte. We are also in a meta that values slowness and damage over mobility. With Zarya and Rein being common, Lucio’s offers limited utility to the shield war.
Brigitte is better
Mercy and Zen are better, of course, but the addition of Brigitte is worse for Lucio because she replaces him in many situations that he would be useful in. Both off-heal for deathball comps, but Brigitte is able to initiate game-changing plays and go full aggro with her shield bash.
Lucio struggles to carry
This is a combination of reasons mentioned above, but Lucio has arguably the least carry potential of any support.
In higher ELO’s, kills need to happen quickly; incremental damage and incremental healing won’t stop better players. Also, faster movement won’t stop hitscan/Hanzo players with good tracking from scoring picks.
In lower ELO’s, Lucio can help a team that’s already sticking together (and maybe help you win more). But if you get a team that’s plain inferior to an enemy team, you have very limited tools to save team mates from their stupidity or exploit enemy stupidity.
I’ve seen some cool GM vids where he dive bombs people and does 200 burst damage in about 1 second. But is a lot harder to do that with Brigitte around.
My big peeve with him is that his Ult start up needs to be faster to effectively counter Junkrat tyre, death blossom, tac visor, etc. Or if it’s designed as more of an initiation Ult to start a fight, help to win one, needs to be as good as Rally Ult, or thereabouts.
I agree that I would like his Ult to be a little bit faster. But giving Lucio extra shield upon Ulting is debatable. It seems like an inflationary buff.
If we are to buff Lucio we should fix the main problems of his kit?
Why isn’t his healing effective? Is there a way to make his healing more effective without necessarily making him a main healer?
Why isn’t his speed boosting effective? Is there a way to make his mobility more valuable?
Is there a way to make Lucio’s damage matter more without giving him higher DPS output?
Potential ideas. (I have not fully weighed them yet, but these are just nudges in the right direction)
Make his projectile speeds faster but require more precise aim?
Increase Lucio’s radius to enable non-deathball comps?
Increase the effects of Amp It Up to allow him to make burst plays?
I cant believe my main is garbage right now he get countered a lot I really used to save a lot of overtimes with him but now he seemed just not healing and he loses his ult most of the time
Sound barrier needs to be fixed, its almost completely useless for most ults since it still can’t save you from a determined 76 or Genji. It needs to either last longer with a tiny increase to shields, or a big increase and it drops off more quickly.
I wish his design woudn’t go in 2 different ways!
The latest changes where to support Lucio doing the wallcrawler more easy, but because his range is so limited he can’t do that and be usefull for a team at the same time.
The easy change would be to have his aura go as far as it was in the old days.
Lucio wouldn’t have to be so close to the fight that he gets deleted from the game everytime the enemy team plays brawl.
p.s. ana is way more viable for 3 reasons:
antiheal counters tanq and brigitte
ranged high HPS healer
offensive ult (combo play)
Lucio is not for burst damage or carrying. He is meant for helping others carry. Infact you should not be carrying with any Support.
Lucio has excellent damage. I problem I find with most Lucio players including myself is we jump way too much…on anything and everything. Even on nothing. If we just calm down and try to focus rather than relying on some sick luck to hit targets, we’ll be better off. So don’t say Lucio is the worst healer when he’s one of the most picked healers and a very reliable healer at that. It’s you who is bad at Lucio and complain about it.
Regarding Lucios burst damage, you can speed boost, shoot, boop and shoot again. It accumulates the damage. Depending on where you hit and your aim in general. I think people are just bored of Lucio nowadays. I know I am but he’s my main so I’ll defend him till my last breathe.
I think the issue with him is that people don’t realize that you are alternating purposes and roles instead of doing extra while still doing one.
I saw someone mention the whole focus on mobility means he can’t support his team. But really it’s just supporting in a different way. Enhanced wallriding means he can do things like hunt down and take out or drive away a Widow. Or he can use it to get up into the air more and be out of casual view of the enemy team while still providing constant healing to his teammates and damage output.
He’s not “worse” than Brigitte, the two of them both provide aoe healing but one excels when either team wants to keep distance while the other excels in close quarters.
Lucio isn’t the exact worst support its Ana and will always be Ana because of how much she has to do to get value. Lucio is in a bad spot as well but he still brings more to the table than Ana.
Ana is high risk low reward and Lucio has some risky plays that can be very rewarding and he’s always consistently healing. Now yes his ult is outclassed by Zenyatta and even Brigitte but it still brings more to the table than Nanoboost.
Lucio gets way more play time than Ana in OWL and also has a better win percentage than Ana. His speed also helps brawler type comps a lot.
Lucio is mostly suffering because of the Mercy/Zenyatta combo. Every support besides Brigitte is suffering from it. He just doesn’t have it as bad as Ana.
So is Lucio the worst support? No, just overshadowed.
Ana is the worst support because she’s overshadowed and carries a lot more weaknesses than him.
what am I even reading, ana has the capability to ruin dozens of ultimates through her anti heal and sleep dart and can counter snipers… its not even high risk its more like high skill high reward
Have you not seen the post going around about Ana on the forums? A lot of us Ana players know what we are talking about. Yes those are possible. She brings anti nade to the table but sleep dart is to easy to distrupt.
Ana always being dead as a main healer with no self healing besies nade does not bring much to the table if the main healer doesn’t have that much good self sustain to stay in the fight. There’s a reason why everybody talks about her and even youtubers saying she’s too weak.
dont start off saying that she has no self heal then go on to talk about her self heal
she has self heal, 100 almost instantly… many other healers dont… like zen, mercy, and brigitte who heal over time which doesnt help you one bit in actually defending yourself