I think I’ve identified one of the root causes of the great support debate. I’ve noticed that players who have the biggest issues with the support heroes almost always strongly subscribe to labeling support heroes. It’s usually the “main” healer vs. “secondary” healer idea.
I’d like to put forth that there are no sub-categories for the support heroes. There are no main healers or secondary healers. There are just the six support heroes, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. Yeah, some have abilities that do more healing per second than others, but that doesn’t mean they’re the stronger support or even close to the best pick for the situation.
I believe that support heroes should be chosen around the rest of the team comp (their team AND the enemy’s team) based on what works best rather than based on sub-categories. For instance, I was told in a lobby the other day that we shouldn’t run Ana and Mercy at the same time because they’re both “main” healers. Well, what if our team comp is one based on being spread out at different elevations (which Mercy excels at supporting) against snipers (which resurrection can counter easily in the right geography) and we also want to shut down the enemy transcendence (that won round one for the enemy team) with anti-heal? Why not run those two? When a pair is the best fit, they’re the best fit. It’s silly to let categories on their own decide how a team is built.
Any support combo can work in the right situation. I think getting hung up on categories affects our perceptions of what each hero should be able to do. Like “Nobody should be able to out-heal Mercy because she’s a main healer”. Or “Moira shouldn’t be able to do so much damage because she’s a main healer”. Let’s examine heroes objectively for what they are based on their own abilities.
Too many ill-conceived comparisons can influence opinions in directions that don’t make sense. It’s not that Mercy doesn’t do more than enough healing to win the match to some people, it’s that she doesn’t do enough for a “main healer” when directly compared to another hero. No number of stat breakdowns is going to change that person’s mind if their perceptions of Mercy’s role are different the person’s they’re debating.
Ana, Mercy, Moira are main healers Zenyatta and Brigitte are off-healers and Lucio could be seen as both. This is not an opinion this is a fact confirmed by many pro players.
You can’t heal a heavy tank line up with Zenyatta and Brigitte, that’s just a fact.
Many pro players argue that even rolequeue would still not be an answer to the onetrick problem in high level solo queue, because a main tank player (such as for example pro player xQc) doesn’t always play off-tanks (Zarya, Dva and Roadhog) well.
Same principle goes for support characters.
Nope. In organised play they do not sort healers by level of healing- they sort them by
a) ability to shotcall
and b) aim
In organised play, zen moira and ana (aim/off/flex support) are one category, and lucio mercy (main supp) in the other. There is very little deviation from their role. Brig is played by the flex DPS.
The main support is the person who shotcalls for the team, and probably talks the most. The category is specialised so that person can focus on shotcalling; it is the most efficent. The aim support needs to aim or stay in the fight more, and therefore needs more brainpower allocated on non shotcalling tasks.
On ladder, however, its main healer (mercy, ana, moira) and off healer (lucio zen brig). This works on ladder, but when you said “pro players think this” you were spreading misinformation, as they do not.
The most common comp in organised play is lucio/zen/brig but they can also run lucio/zen dive efficently. Coordination can fix any problem.
You’re partially right, but you need a set amount of healing power to effectively keep your frontline alive.
EDIT: It’s also important to see whether a support has a defensive ultimate or not.
Only Zenyatta and Lucio can counter an enemy Graviton surge for example with their ultimates.
Being “confirmed” by pro players doesn’t make the concept any less of an opinion. It’s still based on their own perceptions. Even so, in the pro scene, they know enough to make picks around abilities rather than categories.
It’s a little different in the tank scene. Barrier tanks and off-tanks have distinctly different jobs in almost every conceivable situation just due to the nature of barriers.
You’re right that Zen and Brigitte wouldn’t be a great combo to try to heal a tank-heavy team with. That’s because their strengths lie elsewhere. Neither of them have abilities suited to sustaining multiple targets (outside of their ults). That doesn’t mean Zen/Brig is a bad combo; It just means that they aren’t the best pick in that situation.
I agreed with you, because this is true for ladder. But then…
Im just here to tell you that it isnt confirmed by many pro players. Support distinction by pros and in organised play is not that. I agree with you, but saying it is confirmed by pro players is fake news.
Not all teams have a definitive front line, though. More heals isn’t always the best option if it isn’t needed. If you’re part of a team comp that has a lot of self-sustaining abilities, more healing is a waste. That team is better supported in different ways (discord, speed boost, etc.).
Then explain why in the interview with Jayne, xQc, Surefour and Seagull they clearly stated (I don’t know the timestamp and I’m not going to try and find it) that a role queue would need a queue for both MAIN-support players and OFF-support players. Whether or not this is conceived this way in the PRO SCENE is irrelevant, as this thread is dedicated to an SOLO QUEUE environment issue.
Ive seen some people call them aim support and less call them off support (I used to). Most people use aim support to get the point across to people unfamiliar with it, as flex support can be seen as vauge. (Other guy actually proved my point here, as Jayne, xQc, Surefour, and seagull stated they would need a queue for main support and off supports.)
Main support= lucio mercy
Off support = ana zen moira
ive explained this.
You are getting the main vs off SUPPORTS mixed up with main vs off HEALERS.
Well put. This is partially what I mean. Depending on who’s playing, definitions and labels can change. People on ladder tell me often that Lucio isn’t a main healer, but he’s used that way by pros all the time because of his shot-calling ability and ability to control the fight. It has less to do with his healing output than his actual play style. If the definition isn’t even consistent at different levels of play, is it necessary to have terms for them at all?
Bottom line is that you usually need one of either, or you’re gonna need to have a very organised well structured team to make it work. Which isn’t solo queue.
100%
It is 100% useless to know the roles for supports. They only exist at organised play to be the most efficent; having people specialise so they can improve the fastest.
Its better to just know the good synergies (mercy zen, ana lucio, moira lucio)
Main Support plays 1-2 heroes and flex support plays the rest.
but the term flex and main support are pretty outdated now, as the support meta became much more diverse. That’s why main healer and off healer are getting used more
Yes, being random players, as in 99.99% of the player base who are not being paid to play the game, need to have a common language about team comps. Internal pro level team terms are near meaningless being I’m sure they change from team to team.
It’s like how in the NFL a linebacker is a linebacker. Yet of course with in an internal team structure you have 3rd down line backers and bliz backs and cover backs. It’s even goes deeper than that but it’s pointless to use those terms outside of the elite level.
So odds are the terms most will settle on is main healer and flex support being that makes more sense than off support or alt support. Main healer and flex is what coaches like Jayne tend to use when doing VOD reviews so odds are that’s what’s going to stick.
It’s also not going to have anything to do with shotcalling being that’s an issue for the few 100 pro players we have right now.
So that makes Ana, Mercy and Moria main healers, everyone else flex support.
as for the OP you don’t tend to play Mercy and Ana being it cost the team a high impact support ULT that can cancel out the impact of offense based ULTs. While only gaining a bit more healing but in most cases the support ULT maters more to the team.
These definitions don’t exist for the vast majority of the player base, though. They just use Tank, damage, and support, and that’s all they’ll ever need. Main and off roles are entirely community-created ideas and the ideas will differ widely across the same community. Even if I had to pick heroes to label with “main healer”, your choices differ from what mine would be. It seems to cause more problems than it solves.
Also, in my proposed Mercy/Ana vs. sniper situation, there aren’t any offense-based ults to heal through unless people stand in Hanzo’s easily-avoidable ult. Now, were they running Zarya and Hanzo, I’d want Transcendence to counter that. It’s all about analyzing down to the ability what your team needs and that’s my point.
True, but one of the main problems people see in games, at least at lower SR ranges is the lack of the one two punch for tank and support roles. The shield tank and the off tank. The main (big heals to keep tanks up) support and the utility from a flex support.
Most understand that tank side of it, few seem to understand the support roles or support synergy with team picks and I have no idea why. They are not complicated and it’s covered by the “edumkatkational” side of this game as far as streamers and youtube. Yet you still see really strange support picks.
My personal theory on this everyone is too timid to mention support pick out of fear the person freaks out and just goes +1 more DPS. The only time I really heard it bought up was the horrible moth mercy meta.
Top end classifications aside, back to the meat of the discussion:
If you are setting up some complex multi-elevation scheme and are choosing healers based on this, you are probably going to lose. In Overwatch, things dont work by planning complex layouts during match setup. Things change rapidly, and those committed to unpractised plans will get the deer in the headlights effect the moment things go even slightly awry.
Being able to react when needed is what wins games. Choosing Ana “in case of transcendence” is really silly, as it assumes that Ana will be alive, in range, and have her bio nade ready at the moment that Trans comes. This leads to a plethora of bad decisions by Ana, such as focusing too much on Zen and not her team, holding onto bio nade when it can be used, placing yourself into dangerous positions just to get that one glory nade off.
Instead, you Play a healer to maximize your team’s likelihood of winning. If the opportunity presents itself, then take action. If you are competent, you will know when to use what.
When picking healers, it is usually good to have a single target big healer, and someone to take care of incidental and non triage healing, which is why the idea of grouping Mercy, Ana, and Moira as “primary healers” and Lucio, Zen, and Brig as “secondary healers” is common practice, because each subgroup fills both of those roles well without overlap or glaring weakness. The secondary healers also tend to bring things that the primary healers lack that are more beneficial than just “more healing” as well.
While it is possible to be successful using almost any approach, there are good reasons to use a primary/secondary