So here’s a thought experiment in the direction they could take Supports for OW2. Mostly in a goal to make Supports more desirable overall to the playerbase we actually have.
Support Changes
Healing across the board lowered by 30%
Support damage raised by 20% across the board
Everybody gets an out-of-combat Regen passive
Supports get a +10% mobility passive
Everybody can do a 100% immobile Resurrections, which brings people back at half HP with their weapon reloaded.
No changes to Mercy firepower or healing, however Mercy can Heal a downed player to Revive them. Possibly leaving room to give her a different E ability.
Small healthpacks heal up 40% of a player’s health, instead of 75hp
Large healthpacks heal up 100% of a player’s health, instead of 250hp
After a player hasn’t received damage for 10 seconds, the healing on that player is 50% stronger.
Not really sure if I’m missing something to make this tradeoff desirable to Support players. Just kinda got me thinking.
Queue Times are important, and a big part of that is convincing DPS/Tank players to play Support instead
A lot of the balancing “Limitations” of the game are "Does this allow for Compositions to be “Too durable”. So this would be kinda “reverse power creeping” Sustain from Supports, similar to how they “reverse power creeped” Sustain from Tanks.
Role Limits allow for making Supports have more overall “Value” than DPS, however there still would be a big outcry for some big tradeoff for giving Supports more lethality.
There could be other mechanics that offload some of the burden of healbotting.
However Mercy should be much better of a “Healbot” since that’s kinda what she’s about. (And that she would need some other advantage if everybody could rez)
And yes a lot of this is just "What would Overwatch feel like if it had some Gundam Evolution and Team Fortress 2 mechanics
Overall, I don’t really know what all this would cause or feel like. But I’d really like to try an Experimental Card to test it out.
I’d argue that Overwatch is heading in more of a Class Based Shooter direction with Tanks and DPS, and that roughly 80% of the playerbase would prefer if Supports headed in that direction too.
And that what “MOBA/RPG preferenced” players we have will but cut by a large fraction when PVE comes out.
And that if you look at the playerbases that Overwatch is trying to recruit from, Apex, Valorant, Paladins, Warzone, Halo Infinite, Team Fortress 2 etc. It’s all in the FPS direction. Like even Paladins for example, Supports are way more lethal proportionally than Overwatch.
So really, it’s more about designing the game around the playerbase they have, or the the playerbase they will likely have.
Two problems. The first is that universal percentage changes are inherently imbalanced. Kiriko is a great example. If you lose 30% of healing for a 20% damage increase, she would actually start out damaging dps… On crit. People are going to shed enough tears over here, I would rather not have more of it.
The second is that the 10 second increase is either useless or necessary, which promotes overly defensive play, depending on the self heal value.
And as a personal issue, everyone having access to a revive, especially without reworking Mercy… It is just insane. No.
Yeah basically. But that’s kinda what the devs themselves do as well. You have a problem, and then you think up a bunch of possible “paths” to solve it. While trying to get the most “Pros” with the least “Cons” relative to the playerbase they actually have.
Well yeah, the universal percentage changes probably would need fine tuning. I’m just trying to ballpark it.
Well it’s in Apex and Gundam Evolution, and tbh it works pretty fine.
The trick with a 100% immobile rez, is that you are taking on a TON of risk going for a Rez.
That 4v5 could instantly turn into a 3v5 if you screw up the Rez attempt.
TBH, I kinda ignore opinions that don’t have valid justifications.
Also, while I’m sure some people would outright hate this. I’m looking towards “What would it take to get the largest playerbase size”.
So “Lose 10% of the playerbase, but gain 50% more players” is just a good thing to me.
But if you look at League of Legends top executive balance guy, his #1 thing with big fundamental balance changes is to do “Macro Calibration” first, then worry about the fine tuning “Micro Calibration” later.
I don’t really want this tbh. I think support was pretty fun in the beta. Only support that is universally agreed to be bad is Mercy. I’d leave it to the Mercy mains to tell us what they want for her since they know better.
Your solution is to make supports DPS but give them all an ability(the same ability) you saw in gundam evolution?
You’re also trying to fix a lot of things supports don’t have problems with and instead targeting why the other roles dislike certain support players playstyle.
I’d never touch the game again if something like this went through.
If the Support role isn’t as popular as DPS, or even half as popular. Then it’s a problem.
And I’m looking for how what sort of queue times problem they are going to have on their hands AFTER the Kiriko hype dies down.
