I’ve been following this thread since it popped up last night. I sat down with the hero design and balance team this morning to talk about why we’re testing this change:
Josh Noh: this goes back to what we discussed previously: with a change to 5v5, heals were just too effective in combat due to the fact that Tanks in general provide more damage than what they mitigate.
Another possible approach would be individually nerfing each support Hero’s healing output, which could result in out of combat healing taking significantly longer. Because we’re still in internal testing, we could take this more broad sweeping approach, which helps us more quickly establish new baselines for individual support Heroes.
I do want to caveat: this is only a test change, and per Lead Hero Designer, Geoff Goodman it’s “unlikely to make it through to the live game, as it is now”.