Surefour's thoughts on healing in OW

General Discussion
21

not completely untrue. bursting people down and burst damage aren’t one and the same. you can burst people down with a stream of sustained damage. when I say burst damage and sustained damage I am referring to individual heroes way of outputting damage. out of the 4 ranged hitscan heroes (excluding bastion bc he obviously has the highest damage output), mccree has the lowest average ttk with 0 healing (over different health pools). which is followed closely by soldier, then ashe, then widow. widow is only #1 on 200-250 hp targets. the reason why the sustained damage hitscan (soldier) is worse than those that he has a lower ttk than in actual games is because of healing and armor. armor hurts his damage more than the others and healing interacts with armor hit points the exact same as shield and health hitpoints. soldiers damage is nerfed for longer than every burst hitscans because of this.

its all relative. tracers guns are a sustained damage weapon relative to something like reapers, yet compared to soldiers its more of a burst. your example means nothing because you are effectively saying “this character killing faster is better than the same character killing slower, therefore sustained damage < burst”.

3 Likes
22

I don’t know how I feel about this.

If you are enabling Tracer, then you are improving the efficiency of dps. If you are providing sustain against dps, then you are hindering them. These two things should balance out, but single target healing is always going to improve efficiency more than AOE sustain. This seems like a win for dps.

In the end, isn’t the answer what it’s always been for every comp in history? Eliminate the supports first and the rest of the comp will fall. If you’re shooting a tank that’s getting pocketed by Ana, and not the Ana, you deserve to lose.

You don’t need to damage everyone on a team at once, so in a sense, AOE is wasted if you’re coordinated. If both DPS hit the same target, then Brig and Lucio are not going to save them with just AOE.

Why didn’t you bait out Moira’s orb, limiting her hps? Why didn’t you hit the supports first? These are questions I would ask before blaming supports as a whole.

That said, AOE is what made GOATS work, but without the third support, I don’t really see it. You can’t play Brig, Moira, and Baptiste at the same time.

I don’t know. This just seems like we’re talking about an ideal state for supports, not actual real world results. Things clearly die all the time in game, and most people choose one single target healer over double AOE…Isn’t this what supports are supposed to do?

I’m not saying it’s maybe not an issue, but the idea that spam damage should count for something seems wrong to me. If AOE was stopping focused team damage at this point, then yeah, that’s an issue.

6 Likes
23

Both Bap and Brig are better for being difficult to burst down and providing anti-burst to their team moreso than their sustain healing.

This game has never not revolved around burst.

24

Except Soldier’s shown to be able to get kills through even some of the highest healing combos currently available. It is not that he can’t do it, it is that his competition can do it better. Beyond that, Tracer is one of the best heroes in the game before Genji buffs, and she suffers a similar issue. Did not stop her from being A tier

16 DPS have to compete for a slot. And burst heroes (largely) have absolutely zero tradeoff for their burst, and most of the unique utility goes to supports. So why on Earth wouldn’t you pick a burst hero? Some sustained heroes offer unique things to their kit worth using (like Tracer) and so they can still be picked, but by and large that’s not the case and so burst is better.

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26

Symmetra was a support back then and she literally gave everyone 25 shields… that is a literal increase in effective healing.

Also torb used to give armor packs for 75 armor.

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27

Damage burst is effective.

Burst from snipers is effective and fast responsive.

To deny that value we use barriers (even double)

Well, when there’s too much sniper denial you could expect spam or flankers to be used, to deny the value barriers can offer.

But then there’s healing and CC, which tries to deny flanking and spamming.

We can also notice that burst is not restricted to snipers. It’s just more safe to kill from far away without getting close, but there are close range heroes that apply burst too, for those you expect CC to help counter and for spam you use massive AoE against it.

But there’s no denying that BARRIERS, AoE HEALING and CC will always be meta.

Unfortunately there’s some imbalances between heroes capabilities that makes some combinations better than others.

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28

this person… really came to this thread and said old sym and old torb were good heroes… when there was literally a whole movement to get every sym and torb main banned in ranked for “ruining games” with their pick…

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29

hopefully a big streamer/pro player

Surefour IS a pro player

30

If the sustained damage is faster than burst, then that damage isn’t “sustained” or the latter wasn’t burst

It’s just misusing the words

Anyways yes area healing was very sloppily added in the newest main healers outhealing Ana/Mercy’s peaks at their peaks. Only at Ana/Mercy’s peaks they were always single-target.

Moira/Bap have not been

There has also been a large of addition of area damage and damage in general

Healing creep isn’t the main problem here, it’s power creep in general with poor balance contributing to the game’s damage creep.

1 Like
31

If only we had cool and unique support heroes who aren’t fully focused on healing and rather team utility, something like providing small barriers or shield health while also defending areas. I wonder if that would be cool.

15 Likes
32

We’ve not had a dedicated utility support in OW since launch. Zen, Lúcio, Sym, and even Mercy had significantly more emphasis on their utility than their raw healing.

We never had any heroes like Moira or Bap in the game, where raw sustain WAS their utility. Brig has some utility in cc, but her healing is still very competitive.

But utility requires a good idea to start with, meanwhile healing is very easy to slap onto a hero.

6 Likes
33

and she literally gave everyone 25 shields

This was back when Symmetra herself was a wet noodle and her overheal was negligible.

also torb used to give armor packs for 75 armor

First you had to go get the scrap instead of having it come to you immediately. Second this method of overheal was extremely feast or famine and required Torb to actually get kills

2 Likes
34

I know. I’m just hoping Surefour saying this will actually get through the devs thick skulls because apparently everyone here saying it doesn’t.

3 Likes
35

This community can’t handle Mei or Sombra

A support that isn’t a healbot sounds like a field day for the nerf hammer

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36

Honestly, I wouldn’t cry if they took it away from Brig and Lucio, and I play some Brig. But it has to be both… not this age old Ana+Lucio favoritism at GM.

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37

Increase HP pools, decrease healing.

An increase to HP pools makes burst less effective and a decrease to healing means sustain is weaker.

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38

Lúcio’s healing is stronger than it used to be anyways. Would almost be a revert more than a nerf.

1 Like
39

Interesting exclusion of Ana from any burden when Biotic Grenade was the OG “too much darn AoE healing!” ability

Edit: and the fact that Nano is an instant massive heal that cannot miss nor be prevented without another Ana.

15 Likes
40

Brigg/lucio aren’t the problem imo

Moira + Bap have been toned down tremendously and rightfully so

Yet their area healing still provides more raw healing than single-target healing. It doesn’t make sense

In fact, all the strongest sources of healing in this game are multi-target if not a full-blown AoE

4 Likes
41

lucio is far from a healbot and people like him.

quit grouping up all supports on stuff like this to fit your narrative LOOL;