I personally have so many grievances over how we look at and handle supports, both character design -and gameplay wise. Of course character design is not as important but I am going to say that I want more villain supports after six good supports in a row and also more supports that are not young girls. Like gender doesn’t matter at all. All I want is more villains and if we just have get more female characters, at least make them older than late teens and early twenties. Of course more male supports would still be welcome.
So people like to keep repeating that “Supports are not healers”. But here’s the thing. Without healing they would not be supports but just 3rd Dps:s. But without damage they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves and become too reliant on their teammates. So the only way to make them more than just healers or damage dealers is to give them utility to improve their allies’ or weaken their enemies’ efficiencies. But every support utility in the game (biotic grenade, immortality field, protection suzu, damage boost, life grip, speed boost, discord orb) is hated and wanted to be removed from (albeit with good reason but still without utility they would be just healers or 3rd dps:s). This makes me fear that whatever utility Space Ranger is going have will share this same fate too. With that said I would still want her to have utility so she won’t become another Illari.
So we don’t like them as healbots, we don’t like them as 3rd dps:s and we don’t like them when they do utility. So what should they do or be for us to like them?
Personally I think supports should be more healers than DPS:s. Of course they should have some damage to defend themselves. But the thing is if you have to do more damage it doesn’t mean you should do less healing. And utility is what would make them more than just healers and dps:s. It should just be toned down a bit. Like Ana’s anti heal should lower healing received instead of preventing it entirely and maybe Kiriko’s Suzu should provide damage mitigation instead of invulnerability.