I would have to agree with that, watching Neptune go to work with her and do that amazing stuff adds an entire new dimension to explore with supports, hopefully these type of dynamics get the spotlight more often, drawing attention to the actual potential a seasoned support pro can bring to the table.
IMO this is one of the things that sets really good Mercies apart from merely okay Mercies. You have to judge when to heal vs. damage boost, but you also have to judge when you will help your team more with your staff or your pistol. i.e. If you see a flanking Pharah lining up for Barrage, you can’t outheal that with anything (ult or otherwise) in your kit, so your best chance at making your team survive is to help gun her down. And maybe that means damage boosting your Widow, and maybe that means pulling out your own pistol.
I’m not sure the nerf alone will affect whether Mercy gets used in OWL, though, since pro players are consistent enough with their damage that 60HPS can’t reliably keep teammates alive for long, either. It seems to me that at the pro level, Mercy is mostly valued for her rez/damage boost, rather than her yellow beam, so I’m not sure how much is going to actually change (beyond Valk becoming even more underwhelming).
I have to roll my eyes at your analogy since I actually went to art an school and studied there. The teachers “learned/trained” for years to create a digital art piece in hours. I guess in a way I’m hard stuck about this “mechanics” thing because drawing requires people to study a whole range of subjects, and then practice the crap out of it.
I’m envious of the people with gifted mechanical skills in DOTA back then and I had to climb the ladder for years with a strategy that exploited numbers and tactics. In my eyes, supports execute the same general tactical ideas, which again, is not as difficult as having great mechanics.
Edit: Uhhhhhhhhhhhh. I suddenly realize why I think it’s easy. It’s because I have been doing it in DOTA for years and the transition is easy because of that? Mind blown. Maybe I have to back down on my words and support isn’t as easy as I thought. You have to do it for a long time?
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MOBAs (like DotA) have a big tracking complexity requirement; ie, lots of little details about the game state to keep in your head. Plus, range and cooldown management are really important. There’s a little bit more of those things in support play in Overwatch (relative to most dps heroes).
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I think this is the first time I’ve seen someone on forums change their mind about something during a discussion in a thread. Alsmost feels surreal.
To add to what you were saying, there is definitely that aspect of gaming - skill transfering. When I started playing OW I had never touched an FPS before. Now, after two years, I’m noticing how much playing OW affects my gameplay in other games. If you had spent a decent amount of time learning some skill in a different game and then are able to transfer that skill to OW, it would certainly feel as though you have it easy.
And on the subject at hand, I’d say every category has its challenges. I’d also say it depends very much on the person playing what they find comes naturally to them. And last but not least, each of us who is invested in a specific role spends a tad more time studying that role, its details and intricacies. Things that we learn and see about our role, but rarely get to when it comes to other roles. So maybe most of us are inclined to see what we do as more difficult and deep.
For example, I’m a pure blood support main, but I’ve been dps-ing a bit in comp lately and I’ve been climbing like crazy. I’ve left my comfy home at low gold and am now chasing plat. Dps feels almost easy, but that’s just a scewed and very personal perspective.
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Lots of skills transfer between games. A great example from my own experience is that having played BF4 before Overwatch, I got used to all weapons being projectile weapons, including sniper rifles. The result was that playing Hanzo came naturally to me, and my ability to land arrows despite his then slow projectile speed was far superior to my scoped hitscan accuracy. Because of experience in other games, the three-star hero was easier than the two-star hero to me even at long range where he was supposedly bad.
As another example, I put way, way too many hours into WoW, primarily as a disc priest. While I first developed the realtime multi-tasking required for healing by playing GW1, in WoW I pretty much treated it like a science and I have the Gladiator mount to prove it. Even though WoW is an MMO and not an FPS, line of sight still mattered and I got to practice pretty much all of the general skills required of Overwatch supports in WoW except for first-person aiming.
With all of these past experiences to help me understand triage, positioning, and long-range projectile aim, Reinhardt was harder for me to learn than Ana… but I’m pretty sure Ana is the harder of the two to actually play.
Whether it’s past experiences or talent, everyone brings their own set of skills to the table, and their own resulting perception on what is hard and what is easy.
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I come from Starcraft 2. Not much skill transfer can be directly applied, but I did get in the habit of watching my army’s flank. I was so afraid of zergling runby I checked my flanks every 5 seconds.
In OW I turn around almost that often when I play Soldier, Mercy, Moira, and Brig. When I tank, I’m so focused on the frontline I hardly ever watch flanking routes.
Threads like this; “Part of healing problem is that most requires no skill” have made this one relevant again so it could use a bump.
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5 MONTHS LATER… thread is indeed relevant again and the community does need to be reminded of its existence. I don’t think it ever stopped being relevant. Sigh.
There must be a better solution to the problem. Why doesn’t the game give tutorials on how to play each role, instead of covering only Soldier: 76? I can’t help but think that the continued problem of the community not understanding the skill involved in playing healers exists because the game does not push players enough to actually play them. I appreciate that the devs have allowed the game’s strategy to evolve within the community instead of forcing us to play the game any one specific way, but now that game strategy is already so well-established, it’s probably time for an update to the guidance offered to new players. If everyone was made to understand the roles from the get-go, it would save us all a lot of time and headache going over these skill vs no-skill topics again and again on the forums.
Even just implementing some kind of all-arounder achievement in-game to reward players who earn a certain number of wins with every hero could do wonders for the balance of perspectives here.
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I mean, Mercy can be considered short-range healing, even then, Lucio is short-range and Brigitte’s Inspire is also short-range.
Support mains unite ![:heart:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/heart.png?v=6" ":heart:")
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Support may not be “easy” but they for sure are easier to play than dps and tanks.
That statement lacks justification. Did you actually read the OP in detail before coming up with this incredibly short and shallow reply, or did you just get the gist of the message and suddenly feel the need to assert your own superiority as a player of heroes who in your mind require higher skill?
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Wrong. The target get healed and enemy team supports get ult charge for sure, as they are almost impossible to miss to land their healing abilities.
Wrong. The DPS from enemy team is far more likely to miss the hit. Check the most “not easy” support Ana’s weapon accuracy. Even in OP, it said:
Which demonstrates the circumstances well.
Wrong. Impact of the plays are irrelevant with the easiness of using them. “I feel W+M1 is not impactful enough” Sure, you can feel that way as your own opinion, and many others may disagree. However, claim “W+M1 is hard to use” is a different thing.
Incompetent teammates may result in harder to win the game. It doesn’t mean harder to use some characters. They are totally different concepts.
Example: someone do W+M1 for good teammates, also do W+M1 for bad teammates. Simple and Easy.
Exactly how do they gain ultimate charge for missing targets? For healers to gain ultimate charge via healing they need to heal damage, how can they heal damage if there is no damage to heal?
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Yes, i agree with you about the incorrectness of “nothing happens” in OP.
That’s exactly my point.
If you mean healers’ teammates will never be injured, in that case, Tank and DPS are still required to deliver the job. As for the supports… Auto Win, Easiest thing.
I did read the op. The part about Brigitte is particularly funny considering how much she’s been nerfed. It kind of tells me you don’t know what you are talking about.
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Everything that I said about Brigitte is still relevant now, even after her nerfs. You’re way off base.
I’m not really looking to argue whether supports are easy or not because that’s very subjective.
One of the roles has to be the easiest to play, I just think that’s support. And that’s speaking from my experience of having played all 3.
The role that is easiest to play really depends on the other players in the game. No role is consistently the easiest or the hardest role across all games.