If you think about it, maybe barriers would be the only reliable utility to compete with healing for non-healing supports.
Imagine if Sym, back in the day, had a long lasting and flexible barrier like Sigma’s, it would even be more balanced than giving this barrier to him at the first place cause she is squishier than him, there wouldn’t be any hard CC (if you don’t count the slow effect of her turrets) and she wouldn’t heal teammates, so there could be more counter play to it, like close range mobile flanking.
Thoughts like these that just make me wonder how the game could have been different if no Tanks had barriers, they were just pure Brawlers / Bruisers, and Supports were the ones with either barriers or healing.
2 Likes
Barriers would be interested to try again in the support role, when Sym had the mobile barrier she was still busted with 6 short range turrets and a left click with the aim requirement of just keeping them on screen
They really need to try these concepts of supports that provided support in other ways than healing cos they’re really missing out
Maybe in OW2 when healing is being lowered they could give it a go
In this specific case of barriers, I guess they’d probably be afraid of a double barrier (from supports this time) comp again 
, but think about it, those supports would have been non healing utility ones.
OMG please dude - they are NOT doing this kind of thing. Why won’t you guys just accept the fact the devs have directly stated they are not interested in damage mitigation abilities like temporary armor and shielding? I mean its fun to speculate on, but in a roundabout way you are still asking for it. The reason it doesn’t work, is sustain gets too high when stacked with healing. This is why all that stuff was removed. Now, me personally, I think as mechanics I like variety, but most people grew very frustrated with barrier breaking, its a giant drag. I was reminded yesterday when repeatedly I get stuck with a Hog and Dva vs. two shields…whole game spent endlessly trying to break two shields… no wonder people quit the game… damage mitigation like barriers, shield gen etc. all just do the same thing…
I don’t think barriers are nearly as essential as healing is. They’re both good at mitigating damage, but healing is what removes the premenant nature that damage otherwise has.
It’s too late to do this now because heroes like Mercy aren’t designed to do much damage, but I think supports should have always offered Soldier 76 levels of healing or support.