Terrible support changes (OW2)

As a support player, I never wanted to become a DPS! If you can’t heal, what’s the point of playing a healer? I would simply queue for DPS if I wanted to play DPS. When they’re just a weaker version of what they’re already doing to tanks, what’s the point of having a “healer”? The developers wanted tanks to be brawlers, and DPS to be more impactful, so why change supports into something that doesn’t even resemble the term?

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Why base your terms on MMORPGs/MOBAs, for a game that’s primarily a Shooter?

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Dude we still know nothing about supports besides Brig… or did I miss any other reveals?

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Less healing if they took damage in like the last 5 seconds. Basically better to just out dps the enemy vs heal your team.

They already said that this was to test how much they need to tweek the healing for all supports. It was easier to implement such a rule than to nerf every single heal in the game every time they wanted to test something… its already not in game anymore.

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When you engage that is, and when you have high health and can dual an enemy. When people pull back into cover, you might want to just heal your team, or if you are in danger. Mathematically it makes sense, but it won’t be in the game.

Watch broyouwacks exclusive support changes video

Honestly the more we see/hear about OW2 the worse it seems. Frankly I’m starting to doubt it will be any good

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Exactly. They never look at medic/support classes from other FPS shooters like Battlefield.
Still stuck on OW being a moba mindset or wanting to play healer by hiding behind their team, barriers or as passive as possible, non confrontational as possible.

This but the total opposite. OW2 cant come fast enough.

That would require a substantial reduction of healing for a substantial increase in damage. People may say they want that but look at the complaints about Zenyatta.

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So true. Imagine if supports can 2 tap dps. There would be so many complaints.

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It wouldn’t be an issue if the game started out like this because it would be normal. Now you have to convince your playerbase of something that basically changes their entire thought process in a role.

The only thing I could see is complaints > nerfs.

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False. As it is now some supports do as much damage as dps heroes.
They dont most of the time because they spend a lot of time healing their teammates not 100% focused on doing damage.
But when supports focus on doing damage they are almost equal and in some cases better than some dps heroes.

Even a Mercy or baby DVA that doesnt run away or hide can stand their ground and sometimes win vs a Tracer or Sombra harassing them.

Short answer, the Devs decided that they didn’t want to try to balance an FPS based around the classic MMO Triangle of Tank, DPS, and Healer anymore and instead just wanted DPS. So… from what I’ve heard, they’re making every source of defense and recovery suck.

If you liked Defense/Recovery based playstyle, it’s looking like OW2 isn’t for you and maybe don’t buy it.

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Yeah that is true, but we are where we are and it will be an uphill battle to convince the player base.

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I would like to see the math on this.

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Imagine all supports being on par to dps damage.

Ana with burst damage instead of damage over time
Moira with significantly more damage
Brig only taking 2 hits to kill a 200 hp target

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Many of the support changes that we’ve seen so far have mostly ranged from terrible to horrific, with some verging on being stomach churning.

The 25% in combat healing nerf is an utterly irredeemable abomination. The idea that that all healing needs a nerf is lazy and awful.

I watched Broyouwhack’s video that you referenced, and the support vision that he seems to be happy about sounds like a dystopian view of what Overwatch could become. The idea that supports should be happy to be weak because they’ll be less of a target is laughable.

I share a lot of your concerns here. That being said, I’m not entirely convinced that the devs are changing their view of the support class in general and going for a more dps heavy incarnation of the role. At least not for all of the supports. I think Broyouwhack’s take on this is just bad. He doesn’t necessarily know what he’s talking about. My sense is that what we’ve seen so far is more the result of bad balancing and bad ideas (or, if you’re inclined to be charitable - early stage experimentation) than of a change of ideology.

My hope is that they’ll get it right by the time the game comes out. Some sources of healing (high throughput and aoe healing in particular) probably need nerfs in the new environment. Some sources of healing should not be touched under any circumstances. Given what I’ve seen so far, I’m not entirely optimistic that the release version of the game will be reasonably balanced for supports, but I think it’s likely to be better than what we’ve seen so far and I think there’s a good chance they’ll fix it eventually. I’ll buy the game when the support balance looks good.

Overwatch is not a trivial game to classify. It draws influence from a lot a different games, and people like it for what it is. What you’re asking here is why is the OP basing their opinion of how the game should be on how it has been and how people have been enjoying it for the past six years, ever since its launch. This doesn’t seem like a bad basis for a view of the support role to me.

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No math required.
Supports dont have to do equal damage to dps heroes just close to them. Because if they were equally as effective in doing damage then there would be ZERO reasons to pick a dps hero vs a support.

All dps heroes have going for them is that they do a bit more damage than the other classes (not always).

If supports did the same damage, they also have better ultimates, better utility, self healing and can heal their teammates,

All DPS heroes have is a bit more damage. thats it.

It is relatively simple though.

It’s just a class based shooter with predefined loadouts.