Supports should be able to have a chance against dps

General Discussion
1

“dps should always win the 1v1 when fighting a support. theres no reason why a support should be able to escape or defend themselves-“

This is one of the most stupidest statements I have heard in these forums and that says a lot.

If supports never had a chance to escape the grasp of dps or even the means to damage and defend themselves , then the whole role would be dead.

Theres this common ideology that supports should be punching bags and only exist to heal the dps on the but not too much for the enemy team, and that supports should be defendless and have no way of fighting against a dps because it should be 70/30, effectively favoring the dps.

Part of the reason why Moira, Brig and Bap exist is because they are able to give the team and themselves a fighting chance against damage and were able to evade (at least when they were released) flankers and high burts of damage that have always negatively impacted the support role.

Point : A support should have a fair chance against a dps because they shouldn’t exist as punching bags.

65 Likes
2

A dps should have the advantage against a support this is true
a tracer should have the easier time killing a bap then the bap does killing her
or the Mercy or the ana or the zen
But the supports should have a chance and a decent one at that
currently not so much specifically against tracer and Doomfist
Doom can 1shot you and has another 1shot combo that are both very strong
yes I know he does suck in Masters and GM but I am not in those elos so I am just saying my platinum expirience
Tracer outclasses every flanker and is just a stronger version of them
she has so much mobility and range where supports dont even really have a chance against her
and she doesn’t really have a counter anymore
YES she has soft counters which I think is important but No strong counter
so many other heroes have one of these
Ball has sombra for example
Zenyatta has flankers
Tracer has nothing
Brig was so strong on launch because of Tracer
that is why she gave armor
not because of winston
because of Tracer
Winston and dva you can literally counter via brig by literally just giving her strong AOE heals that don’t get blocked by shields
but no
Brig had to be able to counter tracer to
so they gave her a 1shot combo for tracer
a strong shield
high Hp with armor and the ability to give armor

13 Likes
3

They should have a chance, but it shouldn’t be an equal duel.

50 Likes
4

Lucio, Ana, Bap and Zen have plenty of fire power to fight against a lot of DPS. Always has been and always will be.

OG Moira and OG Brig were just bad balancing.

14 Likes
5

Even in their current states, supports are at a general disadvantage against DPS. Supports don’t have kits designed for doing exclusively DPS, and their responsibilities make it unfeasible for them to play as a DPS without throwing the game by letting their teammates die. Some supports can’t heal and damage at the same time, and the ones that can need to use a cooldown for it, have poor damage output, or need to give up healing to commit to the fight.

It’s something that I see a lot of low/mid rank DPS players struggle with. They go in against a support head-on while they have the resources available to take the fight fairly and get surprised when said support uses their cooldowns to leverage the duel in their favor. If a DPS goes in on a support when they effectively have their pants down, they will win most of the time unless the support gets peel from their teammates.

And on the flipside, supports have game sense and mechanical skill to stand up to attacks from DPS. Certain supports like Lucio, Ana, Bap and Zen, can all duel through raw mechanics alone if the player has the skill. But one of the key aspects to playing support is playing in a way that makes it difficult for DPS heroes to get an opening on them. This is done through smart positioning, cooldown management, and maintaining awareness of what resources can be used against them and how they can survive a potential attack.

Overall, I think that the dynamic between supports and DPS is fine right now. It feels fairly even and is dependent on a combination of both game sense, awareness, and mechanical skill, which is how OW should be.

9 Likes
6

seeing this thread makes you wonder how bad low rank supports are

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7

Brig and Torb are still very strong against Tracer. As strong as a counter gets without being unhealthy

8

Why not?

20 characters

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9

no
not at all
Tracer outranges brig
and by allot

not really
kind of but at the same time no their not strong counters
their both soft

3 Likes
10

Tracer has always been able to outrange Brig, even the OG Brig. It didn’t stop Brig from being one of the best counters against Tracer.

All Brig has to do is to stop Tracer from doing her job of killing, or slow it down long enough to force Tracer to leave. Brig doesn’t need to chase down or take a duel with Tracer somewhere away from Brig’s team.

5 Likes
11

yea but then tracer had much less range
AND
brig could 1shot tracer

Brig get’s bullied by tracer in overwatch

5 Likes
12

The fighting chance is stupidly unequal even now unless I swap to brig. I want to play zen, but I get a hundred flankers shoved down my throat and I main off heals.

I’m sick of it, to be honest, and I’m glad mcree is meta because it feels like I have an actual solid fighting chance against him, rather than relying on having my whole team peel for me, or force me to swap to brig.

9 Likes
13

Personally, I think its BS that any particular role should have some innate advantage over another across the entire spectrum. It should never be some other roles duty to rock paper scissors for another.

Instead what should be happening is that every role can have a particular main duty with other side traits that let them counter other characters from different roles.

As it is right now, DPS and Support have all of the anti-air in the game. Tanks have very little in the way of strong anti-air. Dva’s probably the most consistent anti-air in the game because she has thrusters to get into the flying targets face. However, its not the safest method. Units with hitscan like bap, ana, ashe, mccree, s76 are better anti-air. It would be nice for their to be stronger hitscan range option as a tank someday to anti-air units like mercy and echo/pharah from the tank category.

Now, in terms of anti-dive Brigitte is pretty good in that department overall. She’s really strong against dive tanks. Neutral or better on dive DPS. However, I think she’s pretty weak to ranged DPS. Units like Pharah, S76, Ashe, McCree, Hanzo, etc.

I prefer the idea that if DPS vs Support its like some DPS have advantage over some support and some support have advantage over some DPS. Mercy + Widowmaker is a weird duality. On one point Mercy has lots of evasion making her preferred target if she goes into the air, but resurrection is a really good counter against Widowmaker’s early KO methods as usually a far ranged KO can be completely reversed with resurrection. This makes some situations kind of neutral against each other.

Personally, I really like Mei as a character in the DPS category because many times I have been able to play Mei and act as our teams space taker in a way much like a tank when tanks are not playing the space taking game that well. They keep holding the S key. WIth Mei, suddenly the enemy team is holding the S key and we have some semblance of a frontline conflicting with another front line. There are probably more tank like DPS that could be added, but units like doomfist, reaper, and torbjorn fight that bill well enough so far.

IN the end, DPS is incredibly versatile and various support/tank can counter them, but they still have a ton of good tools for various characters. Tanks/supports I’d like to see get more variety. Though so far they have been making all tank/supports pretty generalists rather than going all in on another design like Zenyatta. Light healing, lots of damage.

1 Like
14

There should be counters to specific DPS I’m the support lineup.

In general supports should lose the matchup.

But there should be swap targets which let them do well against specific hero types.

Most supports should lose to flankers.

But there should be at least one which has the upper hand vs them.

7 Likes
15

Err… Yes…? But I feel like the devs did it wrong.

The fighting chance against flankers is pathetically low. You have like, 0 chance on zen against even 1 FLANKER unless you are much, much better than them, but you are the same rank.

But then again, swapping to a brig pick easily counters the flankers. I just feel like they needed to make a middle ground. I.e brig SLIGHTLYY less anti dive, and heroes like zen SLIGHTLY more anti dive, imo.

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16

One word. Positioning.

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17

its come to a point where even brig doesnt stand much of a chance against them tbh. she definitely has a better chance of surviving but the way she works now…yeah no

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This is a magic word on the forum because it means everything and nothing at the sametime.

A good position can turn into a bad one in the span of a second. A good position against one character is a horrible one on another. Some characters need to be risky in certain situations to contribute while others have to risk in other ways.
Some characters have tools to offset the risk of bad Positioning while others can’t make a single mistake without blowing up.

Positioning means nothing and everything at the same time. It’s all context.

5 Likes
19

I think the current designs explain it fairly well.

A support has a survive ability tool to let it escape considering most supports do less damage than a dps then with damage alone a dps would win.
Although, if a support fights something its playstyle counters he will be good against it as well like Zen being strong on Mccree or Lucio being strong on Widowmaker.

Lucio got speed+wall ride+boops, Ana got sleep dart with long duration, Moira got fade, Mercy got guardian angel and so on…
Every support can get out when needed.
Supports power comes from avoiding rather than damage with the exception of Zenyatta who has less survive ability but more damage and Brigitte who’s a hybrid with tank- tanks survive ability comes from high hp, and a lot of protection.

1 Like
20

wow so support heroes should just be DPS heroes which can also heal so aka you just want DPS role to suck when they are supposed to do damage and then you are asking to do the same damage as a support what is the use of title DPS then it should be called “DPS which cannot heal”

2 Likes