I just worry this would extend to tanks as well.
More incoming damage from 60% of the enemy team might force tanks to have stricter positioning/ability usage lest they get blown up. It’s a tough balance, to satisfy 3 conflicting roles.
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They would be balanced around having that option. They would have to DPS or just lose SR hand over fist.
You can’t force all of the supports into that mold.
Sure, you could do it for some, but you need to keep the “support style play”.
Who are you trying to attract there? DPS players into support? That has never worked. So, pushing some of the support players out? and not have replacements lined up?
I’m not seeing it.
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Well at 20m range it would be a 1.1x damage boost, and 1.1x damage on existing Support damage numbers isn’t that much of a damage boost. Compared to the raw lethality on DPS/Tanks.
If I understand what that means, yer thats a pretty cool idea.
I would wholly support that and think it would make Mercy’s gameplay 10x better/cooler.
However, I don’t play Mercy.
The fun part is that because Tanks don’t have to worry about Tanks synergy, and if the overall level of defense is too low. Then you just buff Tanks.
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Just a few changes that could work if they reduced damage.
Ana: the change I proposed where each dart takes longer to apply its full heal
Mercy: deal increased healing for the first .5 seconds you attach to someone (Brings her more in line with the All-in healing support character design she originally had)
Zen: increase time for orb to detach when out of line of sight and Discord damage increase reduced but provides sights to teammates
Baptiste: Swap Lamp with Window. Window is on a 15 second cooldown but increases healing and damage by 20%. Increase health of Lamp by 100% with 50 Armor and double its range. Lasts 10 seconds.
So brawl and dive become meta and supports would be overtuned to the point of determining games.
I think there’s a reason why supports don’t deal as much damage and without some kind of compensation this idea would be insanely bad for the game’s health.
EDIT: I used buzzwords so my point is automatically invalid whoops.
I actually really like this one. Because it means that pinballing becomes more viable (which is a fun low ranked style), and giving her even more tradeoffs around positioning is 100% playing into the Mercy players thing.
I like it a lot. It is making changes which fit into the support players playstyles.
TBH, I don’t really have a good answer for this. Yet. Just trying to nail down the root-cause issue.
But a lot of the “problem” with Supports is that there’s not enough downtime between HealBotting and NotHealBotting.
Like I’m wondering if they need to rework healing entirely or something.
Like maybe all healing gets added to a “heal bar”, and then that heal-bar is consumed at say a rate of 55hps.
Which would devalue “Pocket healing” from Moira/Ana/Bap a lot. Or 2x Supports pocket healing a Tank.
Yer, I get what you are saying.
I would like to think that Grey’s goal is to get more of the DPS playerbase playing support by making them be able to be on a more lvl playing field against DPS in engagements but this is obviously contentious to the current support playerbase who just want to heal.
Devs could just make new supports that can attract a wider crowd like this but it would be a balancing nightmare between old and new supports.
They are swinging at that fence. There is a new “pure support” coming after fox girl.
I think that is a good thing. Since you have 1½ pure supports now. (Mercy/Moira).
That split is going to become more so I guess, Blizzard isn’t going to get less headaches, but I am sure they will get and keep more support players with a second pure support in the roster.
I can ONLY see this as a good thing overall.
But it wasn’t their original vision, I get that. I am just glad it is happening.
Pretty much. A large part of how they “fixed Tanks” was to make them have a playstyle that DPS enjoyed playing.
So it would stand to reason that a lot of the way you “Fix Supports” is to make them have a playstyle that DPS/Tanks enjoy playing.
And that yes, making existing/returning Support players happy is important. But unless they can do some extremely strong nostalgia pull on Supports. i.e. “OMG THEY BROUGHT MASS REZ BACK TO THEGAME”. I just don’t see the raw numbers of Support players really doing much.
It’s a “Fraction of a small number, is still a small number” type of issue.
yer I heard. Making more supports like Mercy.
Here’s the thing, as a DPS player I love Mercy. She is probably my favourite support to have on my team AND fight against.
She is just so inoffensive. No knockbacks. No stuns. No BS mechanics. She exists and she heals and she carries your a$$.
Mercy is also incredibly popular to the support playerbase, so in many ways it is a win win.
However, I did just make a thread about how pocketing can actually be another unfair mechanic imo. Which is another aspect why Overwatch feels bad to play sometimes.
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Pocketing feels unfair, and that is important, a game needs (1) to be fair, and (2) be seen to be fair.
And (2) is the more important of them. So yeah, I get that.
On the other hand, I don’t really see any support ability which can be made to seem to be fair, and be fair.
Their abilities by their nature, seem less skillful than they are? I think I am pretty safe in saying that.
Well the alternative to pocketing… is that both players are shooting
Instead of only 1 player shooting, and 1 player healing
I’ve played a lot of tank as well, it’s my second most played role. And I have to say that I’m not sure if I like the changes to make them DPS like. I enjoyed protecting and taking space and being threatening but it seems that they reduced a lot of what made tanks actual tanks in OW2.
A lot of this can be explained by their removal of a tank slot where the imbalance of the tanks feel really bad. The tanks that were never meant to be the main tank are now shoe-horned into a role they were never designed for. The clearest example is Doomfist. I LOVE the changes to him and think he is very fun to play but ironically awful to play in OW2. He would be incredible as the off-tank dive brawly tank that can dive and disrupt as well as peel for defense equally well. In OW2 he simply feeds if he isn’t killing everything constantly.
Only 1 tank got a damage buff and a pretty minor one at that.
Tanks got better because of the CC decrease, newly gained independence and massive increase in, well, tanking. Just adding damage because damage player want to damage doesn’t work.
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But would that be a bad thing?
Asking for a friend jk
That’s the thing. “Roles” tend to make a lot more sense if you look at them as “Heavies”.
They’ve pretty much given up the MOBA/RPG concepts for Tanks in favor of “Tanks that come from Class Based Shooters where they are called Heavies”.
Similarly, you’d think it would make sense if “Supports” were more in line with how lethal Supports are in “Class Based Shooters”. And deliberately ignore the MOBA/RPG definitions of Supports.
Yeah, but, wouldn’t you just queue DPS instead?
If that is the game you want, you could just play that all the by queuing a different role.