The logic of support sustain

General Discussion
141

Of course he is vulnerable, he can kill you almost as quickly as you can him, especially with prepared right click. I played a ton of Zen in my OW career, he can win his duels often as long there is any piece of cover to juggle around. He loses any 1v1 if caught in the open, but give me small object to hide my giant hitbox and just dance around it while i’m poking and I’m capable of surviving flankers without another support peeling for me. Hence why it’s interesting to fight good Zen - it’s more based on positioning that just having cooldowns that will save you no matter where you stay. Bap can do similar dance but you can’t kill him even in the open if he has cooldowns.

In early overwatch many things were played, no? From Rein Zarya comps, Hog one shotting tanks to dive. Dive is strong because it can avoid damage easily and collaps on one target. But it requires a lot off team coordination to do, it’s not a one man job, neither should one hero be so good at shutting down the effort of few people imo.

People will HATE flankers with support passive, I guarantee you. Hitscans as well, but flankers especially.

142

the problem is either everyone needs the support passive or no one needs it and im in the camp of no one needs it

143

Same. Damage received should be felt or poking just don’t matter outside of farming ult charge.

144

Try playing Tracer against Illari and Kiriko, you can bait as much as you want son, you get deleted in less time it takes to blink unless you play perfectly, I need to play like a diamond Tracer to kill a gold support

I completely agree, but OW1 no longer exists, with the support passive and the increased immo/tele abilities it is no longer a fair match outside of suprise one clips and the vast majority of the OW population doesn’t have the mechanics for this

145

Good point. Supports can 1v1 AND provide huge heals and utility. Meanwhile DPS are really only capable of doing DMG with small utility like Hanzo Arrow or Hack.

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146

I hear what you are saying, and I think the example you used really is pretty accurate. If an enemy player in general (DPS or otherwise) is going to duel the enemy support and bait out valuable CDs, that is a win in a lot of scenarios. It’s not always killing them. But the bigger issue is the kits of a lot of these supports are so bloated now, and their healing and damage (generally) are so high (often together), that you’re not soaking up enough value even trying to engage on the support.

If you were going to use that Genji/Ana argument in OW1, I would 100% agree with where you were coming from. In the first ~2 months of OW2, I would sort of agree with you. But once they removed the better DPS passive, and they really started bloating up the supports…the argument is moot now. Ana has become, by comparrison, a more moderate support as compared to Bap, Kiriko, Illari and even Lifeweaver in a lot of regards. Ana, who has been critically brought up constantly for over a year. And I am not saying she is still faultless, but in the face of the other support problems…she does seem tame.

If we are still looking at Ana here, and going along with your analogy with current balance…Ana is not getting run with Zen or Lucio or even Brig right now. Not as a general pick in nearly any SR if your team is trying to win. So any other support Ana is being played with, is able to both solo heal a team while Ana is using tremendously valuable CDs against the flanker, and has something in their kit to make that fight end. (Moira can throw an orb or flat out do damage, LW has pull/petal, Kiriko has tele/suzu, Illari has damage/pylon/knockback, Bap has damage and immo). What this has done over the life of OW2 is basically hard punish diving/flanking the supports so strongly that it is hardly considered a viable option at all anymore. It’s a bad play. And that is unhealthy for the game.

In OW1 terms, before healcreep got out of control, the option in that exact scenario was your team floundering a bit certainly because your main healing source is unable to heal for a few beats. Ana using such valuable CDs was much more potent in OW1 than OW2 (with the support passive and less overall healing, and more targets requiring healing). Your peel options to help Ana from the earlier list was, basically, Baptiste who might not be able to split his focus now, since there was a second tank health pool he had to keep up (and more reasons to save immo, with one more ult on the field), and Moira who could do the same as now, but was generally a less valuable pick (also, she was weaker in OW1).

Right now, and I say this as a support player, the DPS need to be much better overall players than the support players in any given game to generate any real value. And that’s a huge problem.

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147

and thats only a few. i main support and i think supports 1 to strong a 2 gotten too easy to use

148

Right. My point is that Zen is considered an extreme in vulnerability even at the top levels of play. Which is fine for his design, but is not something I would seek to emulate for the rest of the Support roster.

Early Overwatch was a completely different game than now, not only in terms of mechanics but player skill even at the top level. Widows are deadlier. Lucios are speedier. Bastion and Torb are just flat out better characters. Seven years of refinement have completely changed the game, so “this worked at launch” is not an argument I find really helpful whenever I see it.

shrug People will hate stuff, regardless.

149

flanking heros need a reason to go back to their team or completely disengage

150

I don’t expect that huge of a vulnerability on other supports if they aren’t as lethal. But currently they have too much sustain for their offensive/defensive output imo. The broken supports that is, not Moira and stuff.

Sure. Then why assume that people will just dive 24/7 if sustain gets nerfed? Poking is more reliable as well if you can’t super quickly replenish your health, If you take 150 dmg from Soldier poke and you have Ana it takes her only 2 shots to negate that. But for Zen or Lucio it’s a good couple of seconds to restore it.

I think it would be understandable hate to be honest. Me Wraithing out on Reaper would be enough time to start passively healing. Is it really what you want? Imo downtime is very important part of healthy game. Right now the downtime is too low for support. Part of the reason why Winston is generally deemed as a very fair tank is because he can only engage on you safely with a bubble which has pretty lengthy cooldown. He has clear spikes of strength and vulnerability. Supports not really.

151

Nade, sleep and nano are all S tier.

Ana isn’t balanced, nor are any of the supports really besides Moira. Their damage isn’t a problem, it’s their broken utility/ ultimate’s/ sustain/ broken hitboxes along with the support health regen passive.

152

Do they, though?

The only Support I think is really egregious in this regard is Bap. I think Kiriko could probably use more downtime on her TP, and (only if extremely necessary) removal of the TP locking on through walls.

I just used Dive as an example. My point was that Burst damage will be much more attractive with lower healing – not less. Even in poke, it’ll be the case; this also happened with the low-healing Double Shield variants. Teams opted for compositions that had quicker burst potential. This was around the time everybody started complaining about “Tanks exploding” towards the end of OW1’s lifespan.

The idea that people will start playing sustain damage like Soldier because it’s harder to heal up is a myth, because even if it takes longer for the DPS to heal up from that, the same is true of the opposite DPS as well. If two Soldiers shoot each other and one is close to death and the other is as well, then you’re gonna have a fight where both just choose to sit and do nothing. It’ll only be a matter of time before people get sick of that and just start picking Tracer since all she’ll need to do is Recall, find her own health pack, or just blink and melee the other person before they shoot back.

Why not? You Wraith and heal up and then, what, reengage without Wraith? I don’t see a problem with that.

No, that’s not strictly true. If we’re comparing vulnerability periods by cooldowns, Baptiste (the Support I think we all agree is too survivable) has one of the longest vulnerability periods in the game. Likewise, it’s not like high level Anas are going to be holding on to her grenade instead of using it offensively (unless she KNOWS the enemy DPS are coming for her), so her vulnerability period is usually measured by her sleep. But there’s the problem: you can’t directly compare Support vulnerability in this manner because their positioning is generally going to be the main method they stay safe. Winston has no choice but to dive in to get value, so judging his vulnerability by cooldowns is all you can go by.

Like I said before, Support cooldowns are a dance between team utility and self-sustain and baiting them out consistently to play the law of averages so that the one time the support’s team needs them, they’re not available.

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153

yes they do need a reason to play with their team

154

I don’t agree whatsoever.

155

yes and no.

to hard carry a match you need to kill everyone and you cannot do that when you need to first engage, force CDs then back out, hope your team doesnt die, re-engage then kill someone.

the longer it takes to kill a target the harder it becomes to carry but on the opposite end the supports dont have that problem. they dont have to leave the fight because you engaged on them, for them nothing changed. so they have no down time and can do their job the entire time you are “forcing cds” and then they will just wipe your team.

if both teams are completely even, then forcing out CDs can be helpful because someone on your team will follow up BUT that isnt common until much later on the ladder.

overwatch is a team based game that you have to play like its a single player + bots experience otherwise you cant climb.

you can never rely on your teammates and so you need to kill the enemy faster then they can kill your team.

your line of thinking will not end well for supports because eventually they’ll just keep buffing and releasing dps heroes that are in the style of widow/sojourn (high burst) and we will start the power creep cycle all over again.

156

The only problem I have is people moaning about all supports when it’s just 2-3 heroes that need adjustment. I’m a tank/support main and I think Bap, Illari and Ana need slight nerfs.

157

the need major nerfs

kiriko needs slight nerfs

weaver needs a small nerf

zen and moira need soft reworks

ana need a new ability sleep should never have been brought to ow2

lucio mercy brig are fine

158

They aren’t even a lot of those extremists. To pretend they are a significant number is simply arguing in bad faith.

159

Nowhere did I say they were significant in number. I pointed out that it is, genuinely, what some people want.

160

No but it serves as a distraction meant to delegitimize the complaints of dps.

And the “supports should be free kills” or any variation of that nonsense has always come from supports who think that’s what dps want, not what dps actually want.