I have seen alot of people lately complaining about healing being too strong. And I agree. Below I will come with some observations on healers relative to the highly skillful healer Ana, followed by a conclusion.
If Ana is attacked and she is forced to defend herself, her healing will be completely shut down. If she uses her grenade to defend/self-heal, even the burst healing for the team is gone. When considering the cooldown on the grenade, it is a heavy price Ana is paying for her selfdefense.
Compare that to Brigitte, that will heal without having to make a single choice. It just happens in the background. Her burst heal requires no aim and is extremely strong.
Zenyatta can put a heal orb on someone and it will just work, while he does whatever he does (usually right-click-snipe enemies). Zenyatta has the heal for free, it doesnât even come at the expense of the damage orb, limiting the âinteresting choicesâ, which is at the heart of gameplay.
Lucio does have to choose between his two auras, but he can fully fight while one of the auras run passively in the background. His healing is passive and requires nothing from Lucio aim or input-wise.
Mercy requires no aim and usually it is obvious whether she should heal or damage buff, reducing the amount of interesting choices. Since Mercy at least have to actively heal and she can do nothing else while doing it, she feels fair.
Moira. Minimal aim, both with main heal as well as healing orb. And with her damage.
I feel like a problem with healing in this game is that it is too consistent and it is hard to shut down. Even when attacking the healers, many of them can just keep on healing with passive abilities, making it hard to counter them - short of outright killing them of course. If more of the healers, like Ana, could be interrupted, I feel healing would be less of a problem. Even if Ana is not killed, her effectiveness as a healer is completely shut down.
The none-to-low skill requirement for most of the healing is another factor. When the pressure is on, skill shots fail more, but that has no effect if it takes no skill to heal.
IMO the game could benefit from having several healers reworked to require more skill.
this is not a pure fps⌠it was clear from the beginning of the beta. lucio had his aura, mercy had her beams, zen had his orb. if you dont like that healers dont take the same skills like fe. widowmaker⌠then just leave the game. they will not change fundamental hero designs.
Ana is fun to play, which is not to be underestimated
There is only three main healers
Ana is the only really effective long-range main healer, rivalled only by Mercy
Mercyâs heals are not as strong as Anaâs, and Mercy canât burst heal
Moira has a very hard time to heal at range
This post is not about Ana or any other single hero, but about healing in general. At least Ana can be shut down by as little as putting pressure on her.
When compared to other games, very much so. Healing in other games, not just FPS games, is not just powerful but counterable and skillbased because those games understand the impacts of specific mechanics and the flow of gameplay.
First things first, when I say skill based I donât mean aim or any of that but more technical than it is in Overwatch. More thought is put into healing other than press button to heal.
OPâs argument had nothing to do with aim. The example he used with Ana being a skillful healer was about her nade usage and how that effects the flow of gameplay and Anaâs effectiveness. You have equally a one track, small brain if you didnât get that and just went for aim.
It doesnât have to be only aim, but as a bare minimum we need more heals that require choices. If you heal or defend yourself, you canât heal allies. That is the only way pressure can interrupt heals.
Anaâs grenade is a perfect example of such a choice, as landing the grenade itself is not that skill intensive. The choice what to use the grenade for, however, requires some game sense, as the investment is big.
None of the other healers have even that amount of skill involved.
The reason why you percieve Ana as being powerful, is because her grenade has the ability to counter heals. No other ability in the game can directly do that.
As has been seen from Anaâs recent buff, she is not far from being completely trash tier.
Remember that.
I hope in your next post that you will stay on point instead of discussing hero balance.
even though you play the heal game, you have to play the offense game with mercy if you want to be effective as a team. Her pistol in ult mode is deadly, Iâve taken out 1/2 a team with it. Knowing to use pistol and not her heal stick is important too, sometimes only she can take out a turret. As for your other comments, it seems that on top of what youâre saying, healers have a way of taking extra damage when they are full health that I donât understand, esp brigitte.
It doesnât just have the ability to block heals. It does a sizable chunk of damage and burst healing in an AoE. It blocks healing on enemies. It buffs healing on allies. All in one ability. And guess what? In a team fight, Ana can often get all the effects of it in a single toss.
No other ability in the game is that overloaded. Her bio nade is stronger and more impactful than a lot of ultimates are. Other healers that have powerful abilities do have to make a choice. Either damage orb or healing orb with Moira, for instance. The ones where they donât have to make a choice, like Zen orb, or things like passives that heal like Lucio and Brig, are far less powerful and impactful.
Can we all just stop and take a moment to ask why is ana using her nade instead of sleeping the flanking jabroni and regrouping with her team. And in my personal experience Iâve seen anas that know theyâre going to die chuck that nade to heal their allies causing my team to still lose the fight.
I feel like youâve never played any other genre or other games for that matter because Overwatch falls under the standard for healing mechanics in my opinion.
Example. Battlerite, a MOBA-esque deathmatch game. My favorite healer is Pestilus. He has several options for healing and each of them have several choices for shifting the flow of a teamfight. I wonât go into the specifics but heâs a lot more interesting than âwhoâs low?â Heâs not press button to heal but heâs not meant to be xXaimgod69Xx.
There isnât really a problem with healing in this game, though. For the overwhelming majority of the people complaining about healers in this game, itâs a simple case of PEBKAC.
ive played enough other games to knew from the beginning that overwatch specifically caters to casuals. tf2, evolve, rainbow six siege, csgo, dbd. i do not like mobas tho⌠most time the gameplay looks straight ugly and the characters are ugly and too fantasy like for my taste.
Brigitte is one of the most skilled healers ironically (not Supports). She has to put herself in danger (shield drops) to get her primary heal going and a lot of times itâs with a mid/long range skill shot.
Compared to Lucio, Zen and Mercyâs passive unlimited healing Brigitte is actually pretty skilled
I agree with the premise, that consistent healing is what is support Goats. That being said, it is very easy to shut down healers and if youâre good you can outright outdamage the healing. The vast majority of DPS heroes outdamage the healing of two healers with just their primary fire.
The trade off is this: healing is relatively low but consistent and damage is relatively high but more inconsistent. The pros donât just play whatâs considered âbest,â they play what is also easiest. All the characters that were good in Dive were almost as powerful as they were during Triple Tank, but itâs easier to have Ana pour healing into three tanks as they brawl it out after a shield break than coordinate a Dive every single fight.
Most of the the flex support heroes that have very easy healing are near worthless when it comes to healing in an Overwatch correct sort of team fight. As in a 6 player attack rolling into the other team.
They donât put out enough healing to save anyone and almost all of the non-single target healing in game can be 100% blocked by shields.
Sure when you stack up 3 support, throw an Ana grenade into the mix and wade in with 3 fat tanks to soak up damage itâs an issue. Yet IMO that says more about a balance problem that anything with the healers.
Normally in a decent 2-2-2 comp healing isnât a problem at all if people would focus fire a bit more.
