Off angles and positioning

General Discussion
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Ive been watching some videos about improving my OW skills, from a support perspective.

One thing ive been trying to work on, as one of the vidoes i watched suggested, is to not be healing all the time. They suggested that you dont need to heal anyone until they are at critical level, then you heal them just enough to get them out of critical, but you need to be more focused on being aggressive with your DPS. So thats what ive been doing.

In this, they said that, for Ana, for example, you dont want to play too far out but not too far in, and that you want to play the off angles. They said you want to position yourself so you have a good LOS to your team and to the enemy. I find this challenging because, the way blizzard designs maps, they tend to make everything like a corridor, with, often, not much line of sight. There is always geometry blocking your LOS to your team and to the enemy. They did a real good job of keeping most maps “blocked in” for support type characters to where, sometimes, the only place to stand IS behind your team. Its frustrating.

The issue I have is shield classes. Sigma, Rein, and orisa with her perk. When shields are deployed, it blocks most of LOS from anyone standing in the rear position, and since side angles are often difficult because of map geometry, it often forces you to be out of position in a place where you are in danger of taking damage from the other team.

How do you deal with this? What is the trick to finding good positioning specifically around shield classes.

The other reason why I find positioning difficult is, I cant tell you how many times ive seen a hanzo, a widowmaker or an Ana standing in the back, or some off angle, standing in one spot, for 2…3 minutes attacking and healing, and nobody ever notices them, on the flip side, it doesnt matter where I pop my head out of, the moment I do, someone knows im there.

Just looking for tips to help improve my positioning and off angle play, when you have to deal with shields, and being forced into a position where you are exposing yourself to the enemy.

thanks!

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That’s a team issue, the team should be hard focusing down the supports, regardless of where they are, because tanks will not die other wise.

As for positioning, that depends on who you’re playing. Ana and Juno (These are two I mainly play), you want to position on high grounds, with wide views of the battle, and keep moving.

You want to be able to hit anyone, see anyone, really with Juno’s torpedoes. Mercy you need to position cover to cover, GAing across the battle field like a medic on crank.

Moira can position mid line, and get more aggressive or passive as needed, but you want your tanks in front of you, and DPS protecting your back as Moira, as she’s very weak these days.

Zen is backline, lob, and protect yourself. Discord a tank or whoever dives you, and start hitting heads and kicking them away, he’s highly immobile.

Brig is a mid to front liner, depending on comp. You want to be brawling with her, with her new perk to reduce armor packs per swing, and using your armor packs to keep people up, while you keep your Inspire up, never be afraid to whipshot anyone you can land it on, keeping inspire up with constant pressure should be your thing here.

These are the ones I mainly play, and I’m a master across all ranks, with Support being my lowest (Sometimes slipping to Diamond 1 but regaining eventually).

They may not be correct ways to use them, but they work for me.

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It depends on the tank and team, really. Some DPS can punch through tank defenses and outdamage their healing. No amount of healing will save a Sigma or Orisa from a half supported Symmetra beaming them down. She just doesnt care about their defenses and will grind them down if not killed fast.

Likewise, a good Mei wall can let you dumpster a lot of tanks that would otherwise be too sustain-y to kill outright, like JQ.

You only need to focus their supports if the enemy tank resists your DPS picks. Again, I guess that you need to cut their healing first if you want to win with Genji/Tracer/Hitscans as your DPS against a Sigma or Orisa.

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I run into a lot of JQ, Zarya, and D.Va lately. Can’t do much through DM, unless you run JQ, Zarya, Road, or Sigma. Zarya is biggest annoyance with bubbles for free damage and free healing.

I will argue that if you don’t take down supports and let them have free run, nothing will die. Healing is far too high, as well as the damage numbers. If anything the game is due for a complete number crunch like they did for WoW.

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Post a replay code of where you’re struggling with the positioning. Easier to narrow down

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Saying this after 30% anti-heal DPS passive is insane.

There isnt too much healing, your DPS players are just picking and playing like crap and you have to pick up the pieces.

Outside of ultimates, there is simply no way for supports to even outheal damage.

I am talking about DPS heroes. The role whose job was supposed to be adapting to the enemy team since they have the most hero variety when it comes to dealing damage.

Mei stomps JQ and helps massive against Zarya. Sym melts Sigma and Orisa and Dva, etc

Instead, people instalock Soldier/Cassidy/Ashe and whine when they cant point and click the enemy tank away. DPS players those days are so pampered that they dont want to accept that counterpicking is everyone’s job, not just the tank and sometimes DPS.

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Did you miss the patch where they giga buffed tanks in S10 because 5v5?

Also your Mei and sym is getting stomped into the dirt by the flavor of the month hitscan hero

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It’s not, it truly only affects low healing heroes, Mercy suffers hard for it. Other heroes have ways of increasing their healing to offset the DPS passive. Ana has Nade, Bapt has Amp Matrix, Moira can Orb+Left click, Brig can inspire+Armor pack. The two big outliers are Zen and Mercy, who suffer the hardest from the DPS passive.

Which are some of the most selfish and ignorant players. They usually will pick the wrong heroes for the situation, try to shoe horn them, then complain the entire time. It’s getting more and more rare that you get DPS that actually focus supports, then tanks, instead of just pumping damage into the tank.

This is only true if you are letting her wall you in without your team also going in with you. I actively refuse to push a choke if there is a Mei, without my team pushing with me. Once you limit her walling ability, or she walls off more than she can chew, it’s easy to play around her, now that her freeze is mostly gone.

See above statement. In my experience it’s people tying to shoehorn Genji into beam comps, or Ashe/Widow into shields, or double shield if 6v6.

Then they complain at everyone else for their own lack of ability because of massive countering, and false report.

I miss 2.5x wound healing, but that had to go.

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Thanks. Ive heard people say you need to play the high ground with Ana. I guess i need to figure out how to do this. Like I said before, the problem i have is, it doesnt matter where i am, someone knows im there. I can usually step out and take a shot, maybe 2, and then i have to leave because it’s almost instant where sigma is throwing at me, ashe is shooting, or reaper is teleporting to where im at. I really find it difficult to stay in any position for more than a few seconds before i have to move, or jump down from where im at because i have aggro right from the start.

speaking of that, DM is most annoying when trying to heal, or nade a teammate. Her DM sticks out so far that if rein is up in her face with his hammer, if she has DM up, I cant heal him lol.

Ill try to get one posted. Most of my games are spent dodging damage due to flankers, that I dont really have too much of an opportunity to position correctly. Hard to do when you are always running for cover lol.

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This is where you need to practice map knowledge, sleep accuracy, and knowing when and when not to engage. There are plenty of times as a support the fight is lost (Down to a 2v5 with just a DPS and support vs a full 5 team), that you should cut your losses and make your escape.

For Reaper, Ashe, etc coming at you, this is where sleep accuracy comes in. With Reaper you need to bait out of wraith form first, or he’ll just bait your sleep with it, what I do is, he teleports, starts firing, I will flick towards him like I’m gonna sleep, but shoot him instead, they tend to panic and wraith, or wraith anticipating the sleep. Once he drops out of it, sleep, nade, shoot, melee. If you took the damage perks, you can pretty much delete him.

60 from sleep perk, 75 from nade, 150 from headshot, then 45 from melee.

Already up to 285 without the melee, then at 315 with the added melee. I will caution you though, if he wakes up and lands nearly anything on you, he could very well survive and still kill you due to life steal, and just barely doing more health than he has.

Correction: It’s 50 fro sleep perk, so 305-310 damage total.

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ER42HT - circuit royal

ok, just got out of this one. I had a rough time of it, didnt land any sleeps but didnt have much opportunity to use it.

Started out on attack, and on this map, it seems like the high ground is set up for defense, not for offense, so was hard to get any high ground here.

I found positioning hard because…people are scattered all around the map, and so i cant be everywhere, and since on attack the map is pretty much all low ground, i couldnt find any position. Freja was just deadly accurate and was keeping me out of the fight to the point where i had to swap to juno to get some mobility.

In the end, it didnt matter, I couldnt find a place to get set up and even if i did, I was continually under pressure.

so, my aim isnt super to begin with, and im curious. Ive found a bit of luck, actually not trying to aim my sleep dart, but rather just snap shotting it. Basically not even aiming, just flick and shoot and it seems to work. Because my tracking is not great, were I to try and actually focus on aiming the sleep dart, id probably miss a lot due to the time it would take for me to track properly, and they would likely put me under pressure before I could really aim it. So, often, ive had luck with flick shot..but not sure if that’s the right way to go about doing it.

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This is going to sound weird but.. Try out Zarya or Sym for a while, they can help you with learning to track better, as they are tracking based damage, even Moira can help if you actively think to keep the crosshair on their body, and not abuse the oversized hit boxes.

Basically, try new heroes or aim trainers to improve your tracking. I also highly advise ML7’s educational videos on support.

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ok. i dont play tank or dps…at all, so i have very little experience on anything else. Ive been pretty much exclusively support since i started playing OW many years ago.

il look at aim trainers nad the videos though

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There was an aim trainer in OW1, that ML7 used for sleep dart training. It was on Hanasoka and would throw Genji at you while he ults and you have to sleep him before he can touch you. He would pop out of random places, ult and dash at you, and if you didn’t sleep him you instantly died. Just watch his Ana vids and you’ll see how insane he is with his sleeps because of it.

I can’t remember the name, but if you can find it, should help a lot.

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The characters who could boost their healing were always able to boost their healing, they aren’t any better off now versus before the damage passive.

Everyone is getting that same percentage decrease across the board, so high healing supports get hit harder than low healing supports because higher numbers get decreased more than lower numbers.

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Who’s this ignored message? Oh this guy. Yeah, I’m not even going to begin to correct you, because you won’t accept being wrong.

Next.

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did he give any input on the best method? i mean, with genji, hes so fast that, it would seem like youd HAVE to flick shot the sleep dart because aiming would take too much time, wouldnt it?

does the aim trainer have settings where you can start out slow and increase the intensity or is it just, full on from the get go? lol

I have a steelseries headset that, if im not mistaken, the software that comes with it has an aim trainer built in, I wonder if that would be helpful or not relevant to OW?

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It’s flick training yes. I have a really good headset so I can hear the exact direction he’s coming from, so I already have a audible queue for him. After that it’s turn, fire and hope.

And to be fair, ML7 is an Ana God, and even he misses some easy sleeps at times, it’s always a gamble, but you can skew the results in your favor with practice.

I use the LiJiang Tower aim trainer and push as far back as I can, and then use Cass to headshot at range so I am warmed up enough to hit small targets consistently.

Could help, but Blizzard could also flag it, so I’d be careful, though I’m not 100% sure about that.

I have the Logitech G Pro X 2 Lightspeed myself.

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ok, so “aiming” is probably not something you really want to practice. Seems the flick is a more reliable method. I know that some people use flick as well for like widowmaker and such. The way I understand it is, its not so much about “aiming” as it is muscle memory and getting to where you can “feel” the shot, so to speak? I imagine it boils down to knowing, instinctively, where the center of your screen is so you dont even have to look at the cross hairs, you just flick and your muscle memory will make it all happen. Sound right?

well, its an aim trainer built in to the steelseries software, i think it’s its own program, no tied to OW in any way.

i had one of those, but needed more buttons for MMO play, so swapped to the G502X for a few more options, when I was playing Dune. Maybe i need to move back to the lightspeed for OW.

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The G Pro X is my headset, I use a G502 Hero SE as my mouse.

I guess, when I flick I don’t think about it, I just.. Feel it and go for it. If that makes sense.

Sleep dart is a combination of aim and flick training, though. You have about .8 seconds to adjust your shot before it fires so you can aim, then flick when necessary.

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