Supports are Hard to Play because there is 1 Tank

General Discussion
1

Simple.

One tank to push objective, one tank to peel.

One main tank, one off tank.

You can get creative with DPS as tanks are empowered as-is.

Without two tanks, supports really are being left to fend for themselves. With no CC, it literally means supports are expected to outperform any flanking DPS. (To which, some can…. But still!)

Sadly, because supports haven’t been adjusted for OW2, they feel really bizarre. Their role should now be focused on protection and cc, with tanks being able to withstand and take damage while pushing point.

Idk, 5v5 feels like such a rushed decision.

42 Likes
2

Yes, one less off-tank means less peeling. But that doesn’t necessarily make supports weaker, because supports are given more tools to survive without relying on their team.

However, playing support now depends heavily on positioning and play making, which involves a radical change in playstyle… and most players haven’t caught on yet.

Firstly, 5 v. 5 gave supports much more freedom to position freely. Supports are no longer tied to the tanks and they can out-last poke damage due to their new passive. Unfortunately, most supports haven’t taken advantage of this new freedom.

Positioning has also become more important for survival… especially utilizing the map and game sense to determine the best places to position. After all, there are fewer shields to hide behind. Finally, positioning is more active… you must be CONSTANTLY moving around depending on enemy positions. If you camp in one position in OW2, you’re gonna die to dps or dive tanks.

Secondly, tanks are finally a lot… well, “tankier.” Therefore, supports are less focused on healing them. This gives us windows of opportunity to either make plays or reposition. Once again, giving us the chance to carry the game ourselves.

Simultaneously, the impact of spamming heals on the tank has been heavily nerfed… whilst healing at crucial moments become far more important. In addition, play making (ex. sniping mispositioned squishies as Ana, landing fat sleeps/antis, perfectly timing long-ranged immortality fields, landing shots as Zen, etc.) has become far more important.

Finally, game sense matters a lot now. You need to keep tabs on flankers, and if you don’t see one, you must assume they’re busy flanking you. Then you need to rotate to out-position them, poke them out and/or keep crucial cooldowns while focusing on winning the frontline battle. If you ignore flankers or you waste crucial CDs, they will dive you and they’ll have a good chance of winning. Once again, we need to be the ones to save ourselves, not our off-tanks.

This leads to a feeling of “intensity” whereas supporting in OW1 was much more laid back and relaxed. Personally, I love this new freedom/play-making potential, but I can see why people might feel stressed out.

In all, supports in 5 v. 5 are pretty strong. But the playerbase needs a lot of time to adjust to the new playstyle.

6 Likes
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Support isn’t hard to play, it’s boring. It’s stale as hell. It’s the same thing as always - try to survive flankers and if you pocket someone it’s almost like they’ll never die.

Add to that the fact we only have 7 heroes to choose from, while tank now has 10 and DPS has 17…it’s stale

33 Likes
4

You are expected to hide and die. It’s a shooter game, not a support-your-neighbor game.

1 Like
5

Considering supports have the strongest individual kits in OW2, yeah, they need to sleep with one eye open. People really oversell the “get flanked and die 24/7” thing though, all of my experience in OW2 so far has been pretty much the same as OW1 in regards to supports and flankers. If you play too far back you die, if you play too far forward you die, and if you get skill diffed you die.

6 Likes
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Strong ? Most of the buffs they gave him are crap , they are still mercy type supports especially brigitte a hybrid of support and tank has less survival than a dps and heals less than a support and more now that they took away the cc literally all supports are like in ow1 with slight changes while dps are ultra buffed and favoured in every possible aspect they didn’t even reverse the nerfing of zenyatta from his right click nor the nerfs to the orb literally are 8 types of mercy with different skins.
And let’s not even talk about the passive they have, passive regeneration in a game where all the dps are agile and do oneshot and the time to kill is minimal is literally spitting in their face to say that this passive is to improve their survival when all it does is reward them for playing like mercy.

1 Like
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According to blizzard’s logic, supports can’t have damage, healing, shields, cc or any type of mechanic that makes a community favourite dps counter. Supposedly with the release of ow2 they were going to take away healing and give damage in exchange but all they gave them is rubbish, imagine that not even the tanks were left in good shape and they removed 1 slot just to speed up the dps queue.

14 Likes
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I was getting d-dunked by JQ on Brigitte and still putting out decent damage and healing. I was putting down damage like a third DPS on Zen, who is also widely regarded as a meme pick.

Dunno where people get into these hysterics that supports are free kills in OW2. You’re more than capable of erasing someone who gets too nosy as a support.

3 Likes
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Support felt garbage to me today. Everyone else seems to be enjoying their new mobility, going off in every direction to avoid damage, leaving me either unable to help or too exposed in the fight and get targeted, or constantly getting flanked.

I get its still beta. But there are no meaningful changes for support to help with the change in match playstyle. More movement on dps, more spread out play due to lack of trad tanks and shields, and a crap-fest trying to support or having a speed penalty to dps that are flanking.

If this is how Bliz are trying to appease dps players, i’m done with support until there are meaningful changes made through. Y’all aren’t worth trying to heal.

2 Likes
10

I’m a tank main, but I checked off All Roles just to get some fast games in. Got Support all night, of course.

And yeah, after playing it most of the night, it isn’t fun. Felt like I was throwing unless I played Lucio or Ana, everyone else I tried was dying too fast or couldn’t do much to stop flankers. Even with those two, it was stressful as hell.

Finally checked off just Tank and Damage and waited the 15 minutes to get in a game, ended up with Damage, so I picked Soldier and went 28-2 in the first round. Felt like I was shooting fish in a barrel, supports were easy prey and once they were down everyone else followed.

The choices here are confusing as heck. This is the opposite of fixing queue times.

17 Likes
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just did a dps queue. i came in as close second last damage as pharah, barely got any heals, but had a bloody fun time. run off and find a health pack, stay in the air not getting targetted much, and get some kills. It’s a long time since I bothered do dps becasue support has been so enjoyable in OW, but in comparison being a terrible DPS is way more fun than being support right now for me.

2 Likes
12

Doesn’t all roles let you pick whatever if you’re quick enough?

edit: oh that’s open queue

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dps are ultra buffed and favoured in every possible aspect

I’m sorry, what?

  • Ana was already extremely strong, bordering overpowered.

  • Lucio has always been very strong.

  • Baptiste has 100hp burst healing now (+ 50 heal over time).

  • Zen now has 225hp and a personal lucio boop.

How are these changes bad at all? These changes have been extremely impactful, at least putting these four supports on par with most dps, if not stronger.

That leaves:

  • Brig, who is pretty good.
  • Moira, who has a low skill ceiling and low utility… and is pending a rework.
  • Mercy… who has been dumpstered by the Devs for no reason.

Brigitte a hybrid of support and tank

You actually think Brig is weaker in OW2? She definitely doesn’t have less survivability than a dps, unless you’re talking about Genji or Tracer. She heals passively when you put up her shield, she heals passively with rally, she has 215 eHp with armor and a 250hp shiield. Plus, she has a 12m dash every 5 seconds.

Her role has never been a frontline dps, and if you play her that way, you will constantly die. She exists as a backline protector, who will boop dive tanks with whipshot, heal your other support with packs/inspire and survive/escape any dives that do get through.

And no healing? She heals quite a bit if you consistently hit your whipshots. You have enough healing to play her as a MAIN SUPPORT with Zen, if your team has some self-sustain and engage quickly. (Ex. S76/Tracer/Ball).

I played a ton of Brig in the beta and she’s perfectly fine. Just like in OW1, nobody knows how to play Brig until like… Masters, because she’s very unintuitive to learn. But once you learn how to use her, she’s quite powerful.

She’s not exactly S-tier or A-tier, but she’s… pretty good. My only complaint is that rally is far weaker in OW2, due to the loss of armor. Otherwise, she’s solid.

dps are ultra buffed and favoured in every possible aspect

I’m not sure what you mean by “dps have been ultra buffed.” TANKS have been “ultra buffed” compared to OW1, but all 3 roles are stronger overall (and leans towards their niche).

Dps are more lethal, Supports have stronger utility and Tanks are far more tankier. Dps can have high impact by getting picks, while supports can have high impact by landing big utility.

For example, Ana can easily hard carry games with sleep and nade. Likewise, Zenyatta is a monster with discord and damage. Baptiste has impact by saving teammates with lamp and shift and carrying with his ult.

And let’s not even talk about the passive they have, passive regeneration in a game where all the dps are agile and do oneshot and the time to kill is minimal is literally spitting in their face to say that this passive is to improve their survival when all it does is reward them for playing like mercy.

Except you don’t use in INSIDE of duels (unless you’re lucio/brig/moira/mercy). You use it to take good positions, which were impossible to take in OW1 due to poke damage. And once you take these positions, you make it difficult for dps to engage onto you and gives you more time to react.

Secondly, most dps are agile? So are most supports! Moira is agile, Lucio is agile, Mercy is agile, new Brig is agile. Every other support, has strong utility (anti-nades/sleeps/immortality/burst heal/killing people as Zen) to fend off flankers. Hell, ALL supports are more agile in OW2 due to the points I mentioned above (freedom to position and rotate).

Sure, if you take a duel with a dps in a fair fight, you’re at a disadvantage. That’s why you never take a fair fight. You position and rotate well to give yourself a constant advantage vs. any dps who wants to challenge you. In addition, you save important utility for when you get flanked (since your team is likely to win the 4 v. 5 in the frontline).

Finally, as a support, we need to think one step ahead and play proactively rather than reactively. If a Genji walks into your face for free and you have no crucial CDs, then you’re already dead. The solution is to prevent that from putting yourself in that situation in the first place… Supports requires more positioning and game sense, whereas dps requires heavier mechanics. That seems fair to me.

even reverse the nerfing of zenyatta from his right click

You realize he’s very strong, right? Discord is INSANELY strong in Ow2, and he does very high levels of damage with good kill potential.

For the love of God, he does NOT need more buffs… and I’m saying that as someone who play a ton of Zen.

5 Likes
14

No? Works just like in live, puts you in whatever role needs players the most.

Which has obviously been Support all night.

1 Like
15

People keep sleeping on how mobile Brig is now. Bash also does the full 50 damage again, so anyone who isn’t a tank and gets in the way gets run over. It’s incredibly strong and Brig is almost as good at chasing down kills as Lucio despite being a melee range hero.

1 Like
16

With 5v5, fragging became more impactful now, since you just need to kill one less. And healing/keeping your teammatse alive became less impactful and harder because of less tank = you can only heal 1 beefy tank + 3 squishy allies which can instantly die to burst damage no matter how much you heal. Simple as that. Maybe baptiste might start becoming meta since he has Immortality Field, as long as he doesn’t keep getting nerfed.

1 Like
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Most of us in most ranks have never even witnessed an off tank peeling for us, let alone a dps.

We are used to fending for ourselves as supports. We are used to fighting for our lives while people spam ‘I need healing’. We are used to hiding in corners and trying to heal people who blame us for every loss.

What we are not used to is being the new focus of all the leftover damage that used to be funnelled into an off tank. We are not used to having to healbot into a single tank or lose the whole fight instantly, but we can’t even peak out for a half second without getting our heads blown off to do so.

If you play like a dps then it’s fine. You can do well. Stay alive in most situations and contribute. But unless your Ana you cant really heal. And if you can’t heal the tank won’t last long.

It’s not fun. I almost exclusively play supports. I only play comp. I play ten games a day minimum. I play every day. I play all supports.

It’s just my opinion but I’m clearly not alone. I’m their current state I will be playing DPS or tank in OW2. Only the supports with the strongest mental health routine will be able to play it. That ain’t me.

11 Likes
18

I don’t get why dps needs a movement buff. I don’t get why they need a keep 30% ult charge buff. Was there any shortage of people wanting to play deeps? Tanks and heals were always the roles suffering to fill spots. They solved the tank problem by removing a slot and turning them into utility deeps with health. Support is just lacking. Give them the 30% movement and 30% ult charge keep so switching support chars is not penalised. Do something.

1 Like
19

The Mercy thing is totally pathetic on the part of the devs and the OWL, killing a popular and iconic character, totally throwing it away, what company does this with a popular character that many people play? It doesn’t enter my head, they are a bunch of brainless chimpanzees.

It’s as if now Nintendo turned Mario into absolute garbage.

#SaveMercy
#MercyOWSave
#StopDestroyingMercy

20

Personally, supports feel worse to play not really because of peeling, but to me because tanks were so flippin large they actually blocked quite a bit of damage.

Having two tanks in your face is kind of hard to side step both of them to get to the supports in back. With only one tank its actually not that hard to get LoS to supports in the rear.

Especially of these skinny ones and the drastic reduction of shields. In a prolonged fight, Zarya’s shielding is actually worse now not having bubbles on two separate cooldowns. It means you have one bubble every like 10sec not 2 every 10sec. Orisa lost a shield and gained more damage. Reinhardt lost 400 shield strength.