Some examples from HOTS (cuz it’s been too long I played any other moba):
Whitemane: can heal targets for a lot with quick consecutive heals, but it progressively costs exponentially more mana to the point that you’re out before you even spam healed one target to full.
Alexstrasza: her first heal sacrifices her own health, her second heal is on an area but has more than 1 sec charge up time and forces allies to be clumped up (which is way more dangerous in this game due to the absence of shields and much more AOE damage)
Auriel: can only heal if she charges up her resource by dealing damage (also starts with 0 charge and doesn’t automatically replenish like Moira’s) and also depending on one ally to charge up the resource by dealing damage. This ally needs to be in range of her.
Tassasar: can’t even directly heal, but can only give temporary shields which also add a leeching effect to the ally’s basic attacks, which means it depends on the ally how much you heal.
Are these mechanics especially hard? Not really, but definitely harder than the healing mechanics in OW.
This should show you that the complaints are not about ‘muh aim’. It’s not even always about the support heroes themselves, but just healing in general.
I think for Mercy the problem is valk removes the need to heal target juggling with the multi beams. they should make valk just heal one target but raise the hps maybe to 75 or so.
*oor maybe rework valk. with a cherry on top. \‘3’/
If healing were to require comparable skillshots to DPS, we’re left with two options, neither of which would feel good for anyone:
Option 1: Healing requires the same kind of skillshots as DPS does, but does not have comparable impact (i.e. Widowmaker can oneshot kill people, but Ana can’t oneshot heal them; Zarya’s base beam damage is 95HPS, Mercy’s is only 50, etc.). This prevents stalemates in battle. But this feels bad for healers, because they are having to land all the skillshots that the DPS heroes do, but they have innately lower payoff for their effort.
Option 2: Healing requires the same kind of skillshots as DPS does, so it has comparable impact to DPS (Ana can oneshot heal someone to full; Mercy’s HPS can keep pace with Zarya’s DPS, etc.). This feels bad to the enemy team, because nothing will ever die.
In either case: If healing requires the same kind of skillshots as DPS does, healing becomes just as unreliable as DPS is (and moreso, because it has to be reactive to the damage done), which means the friendly team is far, far more likely to be beyond the help of the healers at any given point in the match. It throttles the value of having any healers on the team, because what’s the point in hoping that your teammate can wheel around and land a pinpoint-accurate heal on you before the enemy McCree finishes two-tapping you?
This is in addition to the fact that healers have to juggle a fundamentally different set of information and are under a constantly higher threat level than the DPS are, so adding a DPS-level skillshot requirement to a healer makes the healer have a harder job than their DPS teammates, not an equal one. The DPS trade off more demanding mechanics for having to concern themselves less with the state of their entire team; tanks and healers shoulder the bulk of the demands re: coordinating their team, watching out for their teammates, initiating pushes, supporting and sustaining, etc. etc., and so their tradeoff is having mechanics that are less all-consuming to execute.
The reason this works in MOBAs/RTS, but I think it wouldn’t work in Overwatch, is because of the third-person perspective. In MOBAs and RTS, you have a much clearer view of the battlefield basically all the time and you don’t have to physically spin your character around in order to see that there’s someone behind/above you (if it’s even possible for someone to be above you). You can click on an enemy or teammate even if there are people or obstacles between you and them. And MOBAs/RTS often have slower movements than Overwatch does (compare an overhead view of DOTA/LoL/HOTS to the overhead cam in OWL).
Things that work in third-person tactical games—even things that require skillshots and good reaction time—are not likely to translate well into the chaos and limited FOV of a first-person game.
see thats the point i’m trying to say… looking at the past, and not even at the time of the release of the game, its clear to see that the devs WANT these “skilless elements” … they said multiple times (and the wallride change you listed is just one example) that they want every hero to be viable for players. they will not go on and change things that they done with intend because its part what made their game so successful. they don’t want skilless abilities to be stronger than things that take more skill, but they certainly wont make such things only viable on low elo. especially with their philosophy “everyone can play every hero they want”… so that would mean, they have to admit and remove certain heroes from higher ranks.
after all i could not care less about it, i just think its pretty delusional thinking that the devs will rework skilless abilities. after the symmetra rework they have said, there are no plans to make any reworks. you are asking for half of the heroes to be reworked here when you want every skilless ability to be gone. good luck with that wish.
In theory I totally agree with you but we must consider how much less people would play heal if it required more skill than it currently does. Even now everybody is hung up on dps. Imagine healing taking more skill, nobody would switch of dps.
Playing a healer, with all of the pressure, multitasking, prioritization, team focus, and targeted fire from the enemy, is already hard. The act of applying healing itself is easy, but the tradeoff is everything else that healers have to do, and the limitations they have when it comes to making aggressive plays.
And if the actual act of healing were to be as challenging as the actual act of applying DPS—either it would be just as challenging but much less rewarding, which would suck for the healers, or just as challenging and just as impactful, which would suck for everyone since nothing would ever die in an evenly-matched fight.
We have a healer who shoots her allies already; what else would you propose (that doesn’t rely on a 2D field, mini maps, slow pacing, or third-person views of your character)?
Yes, challenging are the feelings of players rather than skill requirements of characters. Everyone can have his/her own opinion about this part. Somebody even feel W+M1 is super duper challenging. Well, i don’t disagree with other’s personal feelings.
We have one, yes, not a bad start, except:
The huge difference of hit box between healing and damaging.
Usually healers are closer to its teammates. That means, mostly, the skill requirement of healing is less than damaging (especially when the healing target is tank). Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with this point. It’s just a piece of fact.
Increase in skill needed means an increase in effectiveness as a reward for that skill, Ana got a lot of added benefits for her still large healing hitboxes. She’s basically a main healer and off healer in one.