Nothing more to say really, although support players will disagree.
Heroes with blatant overbloated kits that are also incredibly easy to get value with in higher elo (where balance matters the most since players can actually play said heroes to their full potential).
The combo of horrendous support hero designs on top of the new support passive and 5v5 being horrendous has genuinely created one of the worst gameplay experiences out there, crazy how we went from goty to this.
Brig (mainly ow1 brig even though ow2 brig is still very good) Kiriko, bap, lifeweaver, Iliari are all straight up terrible support hero designs and do nothing but add to the list of horribly designed abilities/overbloated kits.
I always laugh when people mention sig and orisa ruining the game acting like the version of double barrier we had at the end of ow1 was playable if you ran any other support that wasn’t brig bap lmao, disgusting support combo.
DPS players wanted this, Supports outside of a few weren’t really clamoring to be DPS, but got that anyways so DPS players could feel if they died there was skill involved. Or something.
The support role has consistently produced problematic heroes for higher elos, bap brig kiriko iliari ana etc. brig bap kiriko iliari are just straight up terrible hero design idk how people can defend it.
Yeah. I’ve been playing a lot of Illari and enjoying it, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that she is extremely poorly designed.
I mean she’s a long range dps, an extremely short range healer, and has a completely overdesigned mobility option meant for escaping. How do these work together into a coherent hero? At least Ana/Bap/Mercy are consistent in this area with just problematic abilities (inv/nade/rez).
Kiri is 10x worse with her magic bs and autoaim heals + projectile shurikens (why give autoaim to a char that NEEDS AIM to use her kit? And I’ve already posted about Suzu specifically being the worst ability in the game).
I haven’t played any LW so can’t really comment here, but I don’t see much problems with his design.
Zen just can’t work in 5v5. But that’s 5v5’s fault.
Idc about Moira, always been bottom 3 char imo.
Lucio one of the best designed in the game, no surprise as he’s a release hero.
overbloated kits…
bap has insane aoe heals, a self heal, insane duelling potential, lamp which denies kills and counters ults, movement and a great team ult,
kiriko has great heals, suzu which is basically a “no” button on short cooldown that can cancel ults and deny misplays for the kiriko and her teammates, a tp that basically allows her to escape any flank/dive all whilst allowing her to feed her brains out for a kill only to tp away last second without being punished, she also has insane duelling potential thats a combination of her high dps and suzu + tp helping her win duels. And to top all that off she has an insane team fight ult cause why the hell not?
Brig, amazing ult with rally basically being a teamfight win on top of her ability to sit on other supports and protect them from flanks/dives all whilst using armour packs to heal other players on top of her trigging inspire to heal herself and the other support she’s sat on making those two 10x harder to kill as a flanker. (quite literally the best support in ow1 due to her ability to sit on the other support that was usually a zen or an ana and deny flankers from coming close/killing them btw)
Ana’s sleep and anti are legit the product of kiriko being created to counter her in 5v5 (although she was still easily the 2nd best support in ow1 behind brig in high elo I wouldn’t class her to be terrible game design like the others since she doesn’t have any “no” abilities)
Iliari straight up doesn’t have to look at you to heal you, she literally has an ability that does it for her passively all whilst having insane dps and duelling potential, an AOE boop that acts as a “no get off me” button and a great teamfight ult paired with extra m2 healing despite her having an ability that literally heals people for her (so skilled).
Lifeweaver is like ana and isn’t as bad as an offender when it comes to hero design but the two stand out things for him are lifegrip and tree, lifegrip basically acts as another suzu aka another “no” button just like the ones bap and kiriko have. oh you made a misplay? nah don’t worry let me just press 1 button and erase your mistake/let me press this one button and deny your ult from having any meaningful value. Meanwhile tree is an insanely strong team ult that can easily secure fights and to top this all off he was giga buffed so now he has very strong m1 heals, an escape route with petal + mobility with his dash and 225…
They all have insanely stacked kits that have little to no downsides all whilst being extremely easy to get value with, the addition of more and more immo abilities/“no” abilities/buttons just isn’t healthy for the game and is terrible hero design.
And to top this all off they all have the support passive which allows all of them to not waste cooldowns on themselves (like they had to in ow1) since now they can automatically heal passively and save their important abilities for fights!!!
(and 5v5 makes most of these issues 10x worse lol)
Yes Supports have problems, but it’s not a Numeric Balance Problem, it’s a Qualitative Counterplay Design problem.
And the desire for more mechanically difficult heroes, that are less frustrating to play against at high ELO, is a Qualitative issue. Not a Numeric issue.
The stuff where the devs shuffle cooldown numbers around, that’s Balance.
The Zen changes where they put a 7 sec cooldown on Discord. That’s a Qualitative Counterplay fix.
If you want specific results, then you should use the correct terminology.
Support’s survivability was overbuffed. But we can’t really nerf them anymore either because of flankers like reworked sombra in the game. S76 received a net-buff or the same power level as his OW1 counterpart too. Even though every other flanker DPS have received nothing but nerfs (e.g. tracer/reaper/genji). Not to mention they buffed junkrat’s grenade hitbox because he was weak against hitscans in 5v5.
Tanks are a lot more tankier now so they can just press W and kill supports too easily without the support survivability buff.
So even if these support survivability buffs are bad design, they’re somewhat necessary in 5v5. They can be toned down for sure, but we’ll never be able to tone them down to 6v6 days because the game is played differently now.
I can agree with the complaints support has but the issue is DPS DOES NOT PEEL most of the time. I don’t know my exact rank but I played a lot of OW and there is far too many DPS who do not disengage and become a liability on themselves when they go into raw pew pew mode. When someone is focused on a support, they’re on their own to survive that while the DPS is expected to be waited on hand and foot. I know this is generalizing but that problem was REAL during Season 1. Enemy teammates get in the backline and even with pinging, no one would come to my rescue and was forced to use that bloated kit (Which technically is supposed to be for the entire team, but I’ve done my “every role has different perks and responsibilities” rant enough times). I would feel more comfortable with support nerfs if that can at least be acknowledged. As mentioned above, this causes an issue in higher ELOs when the DPS is less dependent on support because heaven forbit they fall back to a health pack and have an escape route planned before going on the offense.
Maybe if all of support was reworked with raw damage reduction proportional to their mobility at the cost of far less DPS but I’m sorry, you have to earn your dopamine hit a bit
brother you don’t need peel on kiriko iliari bap lmao you literally have everything to deal with the flank yourself and thats the issue with 5v5 and the current state of the support role.
What ruined the game was balancing it around what streamers in the top 5% whined about and what OWL players whined about, throwing all the stuff casuals enjoyed out the window. Stupid move considering casuals were 95% of the playerbase.
Because she is supposed to position such that her team is closer than her enemies. It makes sense once you actually play in that range instead going to melee range like many DPS players do to compensate for poor aim.
As we get more and more heroes, each hero will be put in a niche. It’s inevitable. So, although you call some supports design bizarre, they do support a niche, each of them. There will always be meta heroes for organized play, but that only really matters in organized play - not ladder.