to be fair in this beta supports got no real big change.
Tanks got reworks and solo tank experience, dps got a new hero.
That doesn’t change that in three years the changes to support amounted to “out of combat heals” and some very small number tweaks despite removing one tank and 90% of hard stuns from the game.
It’s like they didn’t once stopped to think how the game was gonna actually work. and the current beta comes after internal testing with pros and a closed alpha
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All I can say is that support doesn’t FEEL good to play. I’m not arguing that there’s more or less impact to be had, or that support players need to git gud. In live OW I enjoyed keeping my tank alive through impossible damage, or boosting my carry dps, or getting picks as zen. So far teamplay has been nonexistent which is something supports inherently excel at. There’s more focus fire, less peel, dps are faster, and smaller ult charge from healing. I think the issue is if it was ONE of those things supports might feel a bit better about the beta overall. Instead these issues actually compound on one another resulting in the a gamplay loop that doesn’t feel satisfying to play in.
The thing that drew me to OW in the first place was that healing and supporting felt important
Unlike games like COD, Battlefield etc. where killing is king. I’ve played overwatch since Ana came out. I play support in Masters and Diamond. I’m not a stranger to needing to dps to get ahead in the game, but with all of these changes it makes it playing support feel less fun for me personally. I can’t speak for everyone but I know in not alone when I say that support feels less fun, more stressful, and more homogenized with the other roles.
Hopefully we can have a conversation about how those aspects and others affect queue times, player dispersion, etc
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Yeah, I think that conversation will happen more and more as we get closer to release.
The later Betas which will have more support stuff in them will make for an interesting comparison in queue times.
I’m not alarmed yet, but I have my concerns.
Yeah, you are not alone, and how that translates to players in queues will be interesting and important.
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Support main chiming in. Support doesn’t feel much worse to play than in OW1 except that you have 1 less tank acting as an ult battery, and that can be fixed with a simple ult charge rate change. I think the reason so few people are queuing for support on the beta is that LITERALLY NOTHING CHANGED.
Not so much as a new ability. A few changes to ability recharges but other than that you are playing 1:1 copies of the live server heroes. People who joined the beta want to try the new stuff, we haven’t had any major OW1 updates in 2 years since Echo released. So of course people are disproportionately going to queue for tank and damage. Let’s wait and see how things balance out towards the end of the beta once people have had time to try out the new stuff. I suspect queue times will even out once the new stuff is no longer new.
But Blizzard: PLEASE RELEASE MORE SUPPORT HEROES FOR THE NEXT BETA. Us support mains are getting bored over here.
I feel like it’s the Tank problem in the live game
Yes, they can be impactful. Yes, they can have an influence on the match. But they have to deal with a lot of frustration because core problems are not addressed, and that makes them unfun.
I can queue as support and I can have impact, I can survive flankers and DPS, and I can help my team - but oh my god the effort i have to put in is so much higher than the person jumping on me. It just…doesn’t feel worth it. I can go on tank or DPS and have more impact and be safer and have more fun.
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I tried playing on a friends account, but the ping times of the games we were getting made it basically impossible to play, we were being routed to the US, from the OCE.
So, I couldn’t even get a handle on how it felt myself to play.
Anyway, how it feels for one or two people doesn’t really matter, what matters is will people queue for this?
I honestly don’t know, but what I DO know is the devs will have to design around that answer.
Next Beta has a new support hero in it, and likely quite a lot of tweaks for support.
Yea so far I’ve been having a great time supporting in OW2. Literal instant queue times are great. Brig is so aggressive now with 5 second cooldown 12m 50 damage bash, I’m dueling DPS & Supports left and right and hurting tanks too. Lucio and Moira are nuts & can play way more aggressively, Ana is still good, Bap is decent, Zenyatta is decent, but all in all having a good time.
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ಠ_ಠ
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I wonder what queues would look like if they added a new Healer character in the next Beta…
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we will get to find out, because my understanding is that is exactly what is going to happen.
the only reason I think support queues are low/bad is because there is nothing new for them!
that is it… a lot of people are complaining about the support role because they are playing it like ow1.
you can’t just hide behind your tank daddy shields… get ready to fight for your life!
I actually am now more for Echo being reworked into support just to fill that role out more.
I’m not sure what this face is for 
when I queued for support for around 10-15 games last night I found games within 1-10 seconds almost every time
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All of the supports need some sort of adjustments in some way, shape, or form.
But I’ve been having fun with them in the Beta, so I don’t mind the low queue times.
I haven’t had a chance to try out the tanks in a match yet, since I flex queue, but I’ll just wait through those long queue times when they make the Junker Queen available to play in a future beta, to make the wait in the long queue times worth it.
Agreed. Both tanks & DPS got shiny new toys in this beta & Supports didn’t. It’s no surprise that supports are going to be the least popular in this closed beta specifically for that reason. Give the supports a shiny new toy and everything changes. I don’t think queue times in this closed beta are at all indicative of what they’ll really look like once every role has shiny new toys & who knows how many balance changes leading into launch. That is literally the purpose of these betas, to make launch the best it can be
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So what happens if it’s like 2 minute DPS queue, 2 minute Tank queue, 8 minute Support queue.
Then I would guess, we are likely to have good balanced queues when we go live.
I for one would be pretty happy.
I’ve had games where I feel my main impact is by suiciding just to get two kills. My team wins the team fight cause 4 beats 3, but that means I get to come back over and over. Like me staying alive doesn’t have any importance just as long as I trade out positively. Or if I die killing the enemy tank, we win.
Real fun gameplay loop… but hey, I’m having soooo much impact you know?
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Honestly, highly doubt this would ever happen (at least not for more than a couple hours after the hero’s release). It’s not like Sojourn is in every single game right now, and yet DPS is still the most played role (tank queue is longer technically by like 2 minutes, but you only need one), so it’s not like everyone is rushing to play the new hero anymore.
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I’m expecting a whole bunch 'o changes to the support heroes though.
If we are seeing times like that, it is because they made them fun in general.
I am not expecting those times.
I’d be curious just what kind of changes they would make. It wasn’t that hard to think of making tanks brawlers, we already had Hog as a basis in the first game. But what would you even do for supports that aren’t strictly just number changes?