Isnt that the point? You keep everyone alive so you need to be targeted…
3 Likes
But then we’re not provided sufficient tools to defend ourselves, and our defensive abilities are getting nerfed instead of buffed.
7 Likes
right, but that would end up looking like buffs to a bunch of the player base anyway.
But yeah, they don’t need pure buffs, but they can’t stay where they are now either.
Well they are going on holiday vacation, maybe as soon as tomorrow.
And probably won’t do much until January 9th.
Kinda understandable they don’t wanna go in the deep end on rehauling the entire Support role.
1 Like
Playing devil’s advocate here,
I wouldn’t know exactly how to change supports to make them fun without overly buffing them in this new Overwatch. For example, Mercy. To me Mercy’s healing output is kinda low and she is riddled with bugs that need fixing. However, her flying is still strong and her blue beam has way more resource value than before especially in high ranks. I don’t know if she needs buffing or a soft rework.
Same thing with the other supports. If you buff their weaknesses to have more survivability, is that in their dueling potential? Would buffing their movement speed be too strong or too weak? I think their small changes slowly over time is to figure out how to fix them overall and hopefully in January they’ll have a fantastic idea.
lets not forget that ana and bap can both 3 tap cassidy (225hp) and 2 tap tracer. and kiriko can headshot+melee tracer and 2 tap most squishies.
its not that support cant defend themselves its that they cant sustain against tanks (and coordinated dives), particularly mobile tanks like winston, dva or doomfist (and ball).
the issue with support varies depending on your rank. in low elo the main problem is that supports are not competent enough too fight back with there current kits so they want massive buffs to compensate for there terrible aim, awareness and positioning.
in high elo, supports will just get dove by a tank+dps and or support and die with zero potential outplay due to a lack of mobility for themselves, this is why kiriko mercy and lucio are the top 3 tanks since they can dodge the dive. but in 1v1 situations against squishies they are still fine most of the time, which is what most supports on forums are complaining about.
as ml7 put it, its more that support feels as if it doesnt impact the enemy directly because they mostly focus on there own team instead of hurting the enemy. which is boring beyond belief.
3 Likes
Give supports more damage and less healing and let them have their fun. I would like to add that they should rely more on utility and less on healing.
2 Likes
So do that then.
And ignore people who insist you gotta balance Supports like it’s 6v6 Open Queue.
Just so long as they avoid making compositions too durable. Which can be solved by
- Nerf Tank Survival
- Buff Support Lethality
- Nerf Support In-Combat Healing, but buff out of combat healing/regen.
Then suddenly there’s too much suppression on tanks and DPS. The DPS that are bad right now will become much worse and the niche situational ones lose all purpose and tanks no longer can commit to their purpose from the extra DPS output.
I think they need help but I don’t think inflating numbers solves this.
2 Likes
Fair, but let’s also temper this with how it would actually play out. DPS are better equipped to kill than supports are, and the edge is towards them if the support’s team is not paying attention. The DPS has the luxury of the opening strike, and attacking with all cooldowns ready. The support will be distracted and likely have used cooldowns.
Sticking with Cassidy - while Ana and Bap can kill him pretty well, he also can kill them quite easily. If he sticks the grenade on them (which he’ll likely have off cooldown if this was a planned attack) and can get at least one other good shot on them, the kill’s sealed.
Kiriko can two-shot DPS, but it’s effectiveness is rather overstated. I have about thirty hours on Kiriko at this point and I can’t consistently get more than maybe one or two kills per match in that manner. Sometimes the knives just don’t land. Tracer in particular is very difficult to hit.
The skill differences definitely matter and I know that’s hard to balance around in a game like this. I definitely have an accuracy issue on Kiriko.
Unfortunately, all I can go off of is what’s in front of me - my personal experiences and what I’m hearing as consensus. That suzu nerf in particular stings for me, and it’s indicative that a lot of the popular calls for buffs just won’t be heard by Blizzard.
I agree completely.
1 Like
Ana
Kiriko
Lucio
Moira
There’s fun to be had with support. It’s just half of them aren’t that fun. Not exclusive to support. The other roles usually have half the heroes be bad too. It’s just worse for support because they have less options. I think the next couple heroes should be support until they’re even with tank before we get another dps.
2 Likes
I think Brig needs her rework and hope they come through well with that and Mercy needs her ult updated to fit 5v5 a little more. I also think I’m general balance changes need to be made and not just supports but overall I don’t feel like my impact as a support is little.
I think that super buffing supports to not die to flankers/sojourn is going to bring way more issues than it will solve.
Its going to cause a powercreep arm’s race that wont be good for either role.
2 Likes
Then just do direct rebalance tweaks on the Tanks vs Tank rankings.
they dont, i’m/was a sup main, now i only touch they to get the week challenges
All that super buffing supports is going to cause is to make 15 dps heroes and half the tanks completely obsolete because some support players want to solo heroes like Sojourn and DF through sheer numbers.
Honestly they just needed to take the time to adjust supports to fit 5v5 like how they did with tanks and some of the DPS.
I still don’t get how they thought that the passive was the only thing they needed.
3 Likes
As a support main, I just play the role because its fun. Bonus points for actually requiring more brain compared to Ow1 when it was the most overpowered role with less skill required
The issue with the support role right now is that the support role was never intended to be the only layer of survivability a team has. Neither are they supposed to be lone wolves against flankers.
Tanks and defense dps heroes that naturally synergize with supports against flankers and snipers have all been destroyed and nerfworked over the years, or simply been powercrept.
Sojourn is glaringly overpowered but the rest of the current problem heroes farming supports left and right are hypermobile heroes running unchecked because Blizz removed CC, nerfed defense heroes and never allowed them to actually counter/punish/deny mobility.
13 Likes
Because I don’t have to paly support 100% of the time. Last I checked, there are 28 other characters.