More Lifeweaver changes.. Think they finally realised?

General Discussion
1

That, when they made Lifeweaver, they made a Utility Support and not a healer? I mean, let’s look at his launch kit - It’s proof enough.

He had Thorn Volley, Healing Blossom, Parting Gift, Petal Platform, Life Grip and the Tree of Life. And there’s a couple things of note here:

  • Life Grip shipped without a heal, and had a shorter cooldown
  • The Tree of Life didn’t have an overhealing mechanic, and was worse for it
  • Healing Blossom had a max heal of 65, and less ammo, but a faster charge speed

Okay, so let’s look at an actual dedicated Healer for comparison. Like Ana.

Ana has her Biotic Rifle, Biotic Grenade, Sleep Dart and Nano Boost. Notice something?

Lifeweaver had a single ability that healed, at launch, being the Tree of Life, on top of his weapon, giving him 2 ways to heal. Now, he has Life Grip, but this only heals 50 HP, comparative to Protection Suzu, which is a Utility tool, over a healing tool; the fact that they both have long cooldowns is proof of that.

Ana has 2, with Biotic Grenade and Nano Boost, on top of her weapon, giving her 3. What’s important to note is the massive gap between healing numbers with Ana’s abilities and Lifeweaver’s. Bionade heals 60 HP and doubles healing done for 4 seconds. Nano Boost heals for 250 HP and provides 50% mitigation and damage boost. Her weapon also has much higher average healing, even factoring in the chance of missing.

Lifeweaver was never a dedicated Healer. He, like Zen or Brig, was a Utility Support, or Off-Support, with healing on the side, as his utility is incredible. It always has been. There’s a reason pairing Lifeweaver with an Ana, Baptiste or Moira works great, but pairing him with a Zen, Lucio or even Juno, from her playtest, sees his value drop significantly. He simply doesn’t have the healing numbers to support being a Healer. And that’s okay - A Support doesn’t need high amounts of healing to be a good Support. I mean, hell - Look at Lucio. He’s living proof of that.

What Lifeweaver needs is a small rework, not changing his abilities, as they’re all good. He just needs to have his focus shifted from being shoehorned into a Healing role to being pushed into a Utility role. Because that is clearly what he was designed for, but people saw the weapon swap and decided he should be played similarly to Mercy. So Blizzard kept trying to buff this playstyle, but it still hasn’t done much for his overall viability as his very design plays against this playstyle.

If he was meant to be a dedicated Healer, they would never have given his healing a charge mechanic. A dedicated healer would need their full healing output as and when they needed it; Lifeweaver doesn’t have that. And unless they rebuild him from the ground up, no amount of buffing his healing will fix this.

So, here’s what I hope we see, with these new changes. I’m not expecting anything drastic, or multiple changes, but these are ones I’d like to see. Also note that this isn’t me saying ‘Give Lifeweaver all these changes all at once’. These are just ideas that would help make him more effective as an Off-Support.

Lifeweaver:

General:

New Hero Setting: Confirm Life Grip

Toggling this setting on will prompt the player to confirm a Life Grip, before pulling the target.

Parting Gift (Passive):

Ability returned to Lifeweaver

  • Now creates 3 Lotus Flowers on death
  • Allies who pick up a flower are healed for 20 HP/s for 4 seconds
  • Enemies who pick up a flower take 20 HP/s for 4 seconds as *true damage
  • Enemies who pick up a flower are revealed for the duration of the damage, and 3 seconds afterwards
  • Picking up additional flowers resets the duration of the effect, but does not stack the effect
  • Each Lotus flower lasts for the duration of Lifeweaver’s respawn time, and 4 seconds after, on his respawn or revival

*True Damage deals damage to the target whilst ignoring any and all beneficial effects, like Armour and Mitigations. The damage cannot be reduced in any way.

Healing Blossom:

  • Max Healing reduced from 80 to 70
  • Charge Time reduced from 1.2 seconds to 1 second
  • No longer slows Lifeweaver
  • Automatic Reload time reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds
  • Delay before firing removed

Thorn Volley:

  • Damage per projectile increased from 6 to 7.5 (15 per shot)
  • Automatic Reload Time reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds
  • Delay before firing removed

Petal Platform:

  • Now grants allies standing on the Petal 20% damage mitigation
  • Max duration, when raised, reduced from 10 seconds to 9 seconds

Life Grip:

  • Healing reduced from 50 to 0
  • Now removes negative effects on the target (I.E Burning, Hacked, Anti Heal, Sleep)
  • Cooldown reduced from 18 seconds to 16 seconds
3 Likes
2

I agree with most everything except for the Healing Blossom and Life Grip.
He doesn’t need reduced healing in this economy of the DPS passive.
(But with suggestions below relating to a poison DoT, I’d allow it.)

Disregarding the removal of the heal of Life Grip, these would all be nice changes.

Something else I’d like for Lifeweaver is the ability to control the petal platform. People randomly walking on it and making it go up annoys me so much.

I’ve also seen the idea that Thorn Volley should apply a brief DoT for the flair of poison… and similarly for his Tree of Life - it could poison enemies in the radius for each pulse.

3

I’m inclined to believe that it’s just going to be another troll and they’ll give us +10 healing again

5 Likes
4

The idea of a poison is nice, but Mauga’s always been an issue with his constant burning. Have this effect on a Support might be a little much, although it’s also more easily balanced on a Support, so I can see it.

And the reduction of the healing is because they’d be making his utility more powerful. They haven’t buffed Harmony Orb with it’s 30 HP/s, even with the DPS passive, and it still works fine, thanks to Discord applying good offensive pressure.

And here, Lifeweaver would have more ways to mitigate damage, so his healing would be healing for more, even with a reduction, helped out by the faster charge time. It’s why Nano Boost targets feel immortal - They’re receiving the same healing, but are taking 50% less damage, so the healing they receive artificially recovers more health.

1 Like
5

Yes, but Mauga self-heals while he’s on fire, doesn’t he?
We don’t need to give Lifeweaver the self-heal ability unless it’s just because he’s in proximity of the tree - to which would be balance-able because it being an Ultimate only.

6

It’s just going to be a few random cooldown reductions and slightly more healing will still be a bad hero but more obnoxious

7

You mean something like Ana has with her Nano? In that case, it could be a good thing. As long as it still respects all of the ability’s limitations like needing LoS

Ohhhhh this is everything I could ever ask for and then some. Yes pleaseeeeeee :pray: Honestly, they could JUST give him this and it would change so much. I don’t think a lot of people realize just how important it is

The rest of the changes, I’m relatively neutral on. I can’t really tell for sure how they would feel to play in-game. But again, the thorn changes ALONE would probably be plenty, imo

Sidenote, I’m actually kind of terrified about what’s actually coming. I don’t have a good feeling about it at all. I’m just so scared that they’ll somehow find an excuse to NERF his damage and/or make him feel way clunkier

1 Like
8

Actually it had a 20-second cooldown that was later lower to 16 seconds.

It did have an overhealing mechanic, but only applied a smaller portion of its heal to overhealth, later this was buffed.

Also incorrect. Healing Blossom had 20 ammo, and healed at the same rate it does now; but less total healing per charge.

This isn’t quite correct.

Ana’s Biotic Grenade originally healed for 100 healing per target, despite the explosive splash, there was no scaling, so anyone caught in its effect would get 100 healing.

Nanoboost, originally did not heal, but provided a speed buff instead. When it was removed, the eventually added healing to the Ultimate.

Finally her weapon fire’s healing over time is comparable with all other Supports; even adjusting for accuracy, Ana tends to heal slightly below all other Supports with healing over time (not burst) effects. She makes up for this with Biotic Grenade.

According to Blizzard, Lifeweaver tends to have one the highest average total healings in the game. Bordering on Moira and Mercy total healing rates. This probably has more to do with Lifeweaver’s lack additional activity beyond healing others, since he lacks any specific abilities that require more than a simply button press.

Lucio has one of the highest healing rates in the game. His Ultimate, Sound barrier, is also one of the msot expensive ultimates in the game, and routinely charges his ultimate by over 100 points per second.

Lifeweaver’s design is fine. The questionable utility is something that players actively have to evaluate whether it’d be useful for them or not. Much like Symmetra’s teleporter, Lifeweaver’s utility isn’t forced upon the user, but an option and a choice that the player has to make; and so it can go (frequently) unused by the team.

This is false, and tends to show a lack of understanding between what is burst-healing and what is sustained or healing over time.

Not a terrible idea, but Lifeweaver’s kit is fairly loaded as is.

Nope, it would be too powerful then.

Burn is different from Poison.

Mauga doesn’t heal when a target is on fire. Mauga’s burning on targets allows him to critically hit targets, which generates overhealth for him. Mauga does not heal unless he triggers his cooldown to do that.

1 Like
9

“Confirm Life Grip” might be unworkable. As it is, the reticule is supposed to only show up when you can Life Grip them, but even then there are occasional bugs with getting stuck on map geometry. What if the player moves out of LOS and then confirms?

Worse, the setting would automatically be meta, to allow for this to be done deliberately – so that your teammates can get the moment of invuln plus healing and/or status effect removal, but still stay in the fight. And then how long could they “hold on” to the Life Grip to use at the perfect moment? Plus there would be plenty of people who simply dislike getting pulled and would get mad at their LW if he had the setting turned off.

There’s a reason hero settings never allow you to do things you couldn’t, in principle, also do with those settings off.

You might be able to massage things so that it still technically kinda worked as intended, but I honestly also just don’t like the idea in the first place – it eliminates Life Grip’s character as an emergency bailout, in situations where your teammate may not have the time, or may be too focused on other things, to notice the alert and press the necessary button, let alone make sure they’re in LOS to do so.

2 Likes
10

Why do people keep saying this? Do you guys look at any stats? Lifeweaver has always been one of the highest output healers in the game, and even now as I type this, he is still the highest output healer in the game.

Lifeweaver was introduced as a mercy-like, high-healing support with defensive utility and less focus on damage. The vision for his character was always a “healbot”, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why people keep insisting otherwise.

I agree that he needs a rework, but none of these changes will help him. The passive doesn’t need to make a comeback— especially not with these changes — and if you’re going to give the grip a confirmation then just delete it because that will make the ability trash.

Any rework to LW needs to focus on making him more capable of enabling his team and not just denying plays. That’s it. That’s all he needs.

1 Like
11

You’re forgetting that Ana’s abilities have many more applications than just healing, the shots also do damage, the grenade does damage and prevents the enemy from healing, the nano gives damage reduction, movement speed and increases the damage of the ally
while the skills of the first version of Lifeweaver only healed, the shot only heals and has no other use, the passive when he died only healed and at worst healed the enemy, the tree only healed the green shields did not have them when he was launched,

12

Dash + tree of life

Our win rates is why we keep insisting other wise I dont know why the hell “For the life of you” omg you cant figure it out…

A healbot Lifeweaver legitimately means not a damn thing to me, dude do you know how excited I get when the other team sees how good Im doing on weaver and one of there supports switch to him? Or like they start of on weaver… and when I get them on my team and check they profiles win rate looking like release date Sombra…

My healing numbers when I actually want and need to carry are very low especially when I need to flank and stuff that takes a lot of time time that Im not just sitting there behind my team charging heals to boost my numbers even more.

Every single Lifeweaver I went against yesterday had higher healing numbers then me actually, every single damn one lost, besides that 1 guy I told to use his thorns because I was getting bored…

I literally got bored of free wins, MY GUY THAT IS A WARNING.

His heals aren’t that good, once you overload his charge mechanic (Which he can easily do against his own healing especially with headshots) annnnd bam useless, especially against a team that knows how to burn tree so allll that ult charge you spent time quick building boom gone.

But our consistent win rates my dear thats the answer your looking for, we just feel Lifeweavers been lacking since the season 8 changes (or was it 9).

But even then healbot weavers legitimately look like crap to us, they play like crap and we threat them like ants to be run over… this aint a ego thing its a well look at our profiles and track records against that playstyle thing.

If you can’t figure out numbers and results thats a you thing.

Why does Blizzard insist on forcing him to be something he’s clearly not no idea, my only guess is this is the original vision for him and this is how “High ranks” have hypnotized people how to play him as well so they stick to this “illusion” but some of us simply got tired of dreaming and want his actual reality to be good.

13

Duh. The point is that people need to stop saying that Weaver doesn’t have “tHe NuMbeRs” to be a healer when that is objectively not true.

You’re playing the wrong champion. There are other supports you can play who are equipped to do this. Would you do this on Mercy??? Then why would you do this on LW?Instead of complaining that LW doesn’t work like Kiriko, why not just play Kiriko…?

His winrate and actual gameplay are COMPLETELY different discussions. Some of us like Weaver’s gameplay as he is now. Yes, he has had one of the lowest winrates in the game’s history and yes, he has never seen a 50% winrate in a whole year of release. and yes its true that he needs some kind of adjustment to make him better at enabling his team instead of just protecting them – I LITERALLY SAID ALL OF THIS.

But this is NOT because he’s a “healbot”. Its a mixture of his healbot mechanics and his overly defensive mechanics that don’t enable his team. Mercy is a healbot, her winrate is at 51% right now. But she has damage boost as solid, enabling utility. Weaver has an elevator that’s useless in most solo-queue, team environments and a defensive ability that notoriously has more weaknesses than strengths.

But objectively the idea that Weaver’s heals are lacking is a flawed one!

1 Like
14

Oh your talking about in the sense that like they needed/needed to be buffed more okay thought you meant and were trying to defend something compltely and totally different.

Hahahaha

Beyoncé, you must not know bout me you must not know bout me

This is something extra Im able to do BECAUSE im good at Lifeweaver and this is one of the plathora of ways I carry games when I get stuck because his movment is that good the fact that I seem to be the only one who can truly abuse that diagonal dash and platform is funny.

Lifeweavers perfectly capable of this, the better his base style is the better the extra stuff I need to do to carry is.

See what most people don’t realize is there’s a difference between base gameplay and carrying there are good Lifeweavers annndd then there’s legends such as myself, of course I can play the base style good all day and with buffs I’ll be able to play the general base style at his maximum power.

But there’s amazing Lifeweavers who can do that, and there’s Lifeweavers who can carry “Unwinnable” games same as a Baptiste who murks a whole team an ana who always hits “Fat” nades or a Lucio who harrsasses widows all game, I am fall under this category as need be, if his base kit gets soom good buffs of course Im gonna abuse it and push it as far as I can, hell I AM the carry.

Lol just got a game to where I did my flank weaver strat but forgot it was on my alt XD it was shambali monastery, legit all I did was distract the enemy supports I even lost the 1v1 I had set up but we still ended up winning, we were hard stuck prior to me flanked as well cause my doom as usual was trash (Hence why I made TDDP in the first place).

Ill try and get you a game on my main later im leaving out the house now, Hopefully I get numbani attack so I can really show you the legend of my Lifeweaver.