Support changes coming

[Solomon-1507]

Are there any plans to improve the unpopular support role so the queues are more balanced?

[Angel-2298]

Yes (sort of).⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

@Kaedi

Q. Will there be any buffs to the healers’ damage, just so healers can defend themselves?

Alec: Defending yourself as a support can come through in a variety of ways. We want to be careful with buffing their damage, as they’d turn into DPS Heroes with healing. Movement is a much safer option as it keeps the Support-Tank-DPS paradigm intact.

@Kaedi

I think one of the themes here is not just, you know, efficiency and power, but also looking at the support role and how maybe some of the flanking and maybe some of the diving is a little too efficient currently in today’s meta.

[Megadodo-11847]

@Solomon-1507

Are there any plans to improve the unpopular support role so the queues are more balanced?

it is fair to say that while this approach is one way to even out the demand for roles, it isnt the only way

example: making dps less popular would also work towards the desired end result

[Solomon-1507]

@Angel-2298

Yes (sort of).⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

@Kaedi

Q. Will there be any buffs to the healers’ damage, just so healers can defend themselves?

Alec: Defending yourself as a support can come through in a variety of ways. We want to be careful with buffing their damage, as they’d turn into DPS Heroes with healing. Movement is a much safer option as it keeps the Support-Tank-DPS paradigm intact.

@Kaedi

I think one of the themes here is not just, you know, efficiency and power, but also looking at the support role and how maybe some of the flanking and maybe some of the diving is a little too efficient currently in today’s meta.

Thanks! However, that does not tell me X is happening in Y patch, which translates to flex queue with still equal support.

Honestly they should have just made everything a variant of DPS ala Apex Legends.

[Angel-2298]

I personally have serious doubts they will ever “fix” supports. A lot of unrelated yet very indicative failures they had just don’t let me believe in their competence:

• Huge monetization mishap with locked heroes
• Substituting match quality with shorter queue times
• Overall terrible match-making, competitive or not
• Technical problems with several heroes at the level where basic QA wasn’t done
• Launch with half the map roaster not being finished for 5v5
• No reaction on glaring balance issues for as long as it was in OW1
• Removal of core game features, like LFG
• Terrible UI, big step down in quality of navigation and informativeness
• The game just not being ready for 5v5 - a lot of heroes are outdated and forgotten
• A lot of game modes completely broken because of 5v5 tanks, such as open queue and Arcade

Less important (to me), but still worth mentioning because a lot of people are unhappy about it:

• Events that don’t engage players because there’s nothing to get there
• Abysmal free BP tier rewards
• No possibility to pay for a BP through playing the game
• Skin prices on the level of a full indie-game cost on steam

So as you can see, they have so many issues piled up that I don’t have any hope they’ll address supports. Soon people will realize all of this and even most patient will stop playing or at least playing as often. That will exacerbate many problems that are currently at a manageable level and they just won’t have enough time or pairs of hands to extinguish all the emerging fires.

On top of it, PvE is expected sometime next year and that in itself likely to extend the list of problems even further which means pushing this “small” supports issue even further to the bottom.

[Solomon-1507]

THIS! SO MUCH OF THIS!

Please, Blizzard, if there’s any good left in you, take this to heart. I agree with all points!

Hell, why is “Options” not even on the main menu, but on the “Esc Menu” when a number of items are on both? That irks me. I bought the Watchpoint pack, but I can see myself easily ditch this game after I’ve spent all the currency that pack came with if the game doesn’t drastically change… forget about putting more money into it. Skins should NOT cost most that $10, and I’m talking about the super fancy genji skin that was just released.