[OW2] A possible Future for Supports

[LuckyTiger-1120647]

@GreyFalcon-11737

So what happens if they get 2x as many DPS players because of all the people coming from FPS games?

I think its not going to pan out like that

I played fortnite, cod and destiny myself, and im a support main here. New players will play roles at about the same rate as everyone else, no reason to think they are all screwed to playing damage

I dont expect a ton of pure cod players to jump ship anyway. they have a new one coming out soon

[zoopy-11314]

THANK YOU.

As a support main I get way more satisfaction in supporting my team by other means not raw damage and kills. Providing utility or heals is why I play support. If I wanted to focus on kills and damage I’d play a different role. I have a feeling most people who typically gravitate toward support roles, across games, feel similarly.

With these kinds of solutions, I feel that people are trying to solve the problem of how to dissolve the now massive amount of DPS players into other roles instead of how to re-inspire the kinds of support players Overwatch first enticed. The solution OP brought up addresses the former, but, then at that point, when do we just remove roles altogether and everyone becomes either a DPS or DPS-lite role?

I hate it.

[Jake-1493]

@GreyFalcon-11737

@Jake-1493

I think having Kiriko will honestly solve queue timers for the first month.

Maybe.

But even if it does, we’re only getting 1 more Support hero for all of 2023.

That sounds like a lot of months where the problem isn’t just going to fix itself.

Ask Kiriko does is buy us a bit of time.

But heck, even with Kiriko, I’m betting DPS queue times are still going to be the highest.

Since it’s very likely we get a crap ton of DPS players from all the F2P FPS games. That will more than cancel out the impact of Kiriko.

I could be wrong, but they said 2 of the 3 post launch heroes they have in the pipeline are supports. I think we’ll either get support tank support or support dps support.

[RaziTheRed-1999]

@zoopy-11314

If I wanted to focus on kills and damage I’d play a different role. I have a feeling most people who typically gravitate toward support roles, across games, feel similarly.

I certainly didn’t play mostly Medic in my TF2 days to go on saw or needle rampages, uber/kritz was great to pull off.

[VexInsanity-2870]

Support is fine though? It doesn’t need a major swap, it just needed a few balance tweaks and to wait while more adjust

[KingOfSharts-11965]

I don’ understand why any of this is needed, support has a good direction in OW2.

[Hypovolemic-1753]

It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think this will solve queue times with 1-2-2. Asking 40% of players to queue for healer in any video game is a completely unrealistic goal. It’s not a problem specific to Overwatch. If you buff healers sufficiently (but not unfairly), then you’ll keep players that like playing healers in the game, but you’re not going to remove the preference for dps or hit anywhere close to 40% healers in the queue.

That said, these sorts of changes could be a path to 1-3-1 by transitioning responsibility for healing to passive regen and health packs. And wapping to 1-3-1 would fix queue times. But, I think you could simplify this a lot.

Just keep these:

@GreyFalcon-11737

• Everybody gets an out-of-combat Regen passive
• 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

And add:

• +25 to +50 HP on all Supports.

Supports don’t need to be more DPS-like in 1-3-1, but they will need some compensation for being the only Support on the field (and hence as high priority to kill as the Tank).