Hello Overwatcher!
I know the game is fictional but just to speculate and have fun:
With what and/or how do you think our support heroes can heal? 
DNA adjusting liquid?
Nano technology/science?
Lemon juice?
just Nano machines son
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Ziegler rose to become the head of surgery at a prominent Swiss hospital before pioneering a breakthrough in the field of applied nanobiology that radically improved the treatment of life-threatening illnesses and injuries. It was this expertise that attracted the attention of Overwatch.
Since Ana, Mercy and Moira’s healing all work using Mercy’s tech, the three of them use nanobiotics (not nanomachines), which is actually a thing that exists today: nanobiotics are currently being studied as a an alternative to traditional antibiotics that could combat the growing cases of antibacterial resistance.
For the other support heroes, the healing is a little less literal - Lucio makes people feel better with his music by inspiring them, Brigitte inspires with enthusiasm (and heals with the occasional first-aid kit), Zenyatta’s orbs are infused with “omnic energy” that heals somehow.
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I was actually thinking Brigitte was just armour as an engineer and as mentioned, inspired with a war cry.
I never really stopped to think about Mercy but this makes sense; I guess it’s like antibiotics, bacteria and/or biological membrane tissues repairing.
The inspire passive and Rally ultimate are mostly just symbolic that she is inspiring/rallying her allies. Unless we see something in the lore that shows otherwise, these are probably just gameplay mechanics.
Her armor pack ability is her giving an armor pack, kind of like Torb’s old packs. She is a mechanic after all, but this wont heal your wounds like it does in game. She is also well trained in first aid, however, and has helped stitch up Reinhardt after many a battle.
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i’m pretty sure lucio’s and brigitte’s healing is canon. brigitte has a flag that shoots up when she uses “Rally” that gives allies armour. and overwatch takes place in the future. saying “music can’t heal people literally now” isn’t a good argument considering noone can currently, turn into smoke, or time travel, or summon dragons out of their bodies.
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Gameplay kits are gameplay kits, and are not canon until proven otherwise. The devs design for gameplay first and lore second, and there are many inconic abilities that are core to a character’s identity like Discord which are not canon.
And some of the abilities seen in gameplay function differently in the lore than their in-game counterparts:
- Infrasight gives the used 360-degree vision
- Tactical Visor can lock on to multiple targets at once
- Pharah’s rockets are target-seeking
- Widowmaker can hang from her grappling line and shoot while suspended upside-down
- Ana’s sleep dart has no effect on Reaper
- Sombra’s hacking works mostly on computers and technology, and is never used on ordinary people like Zarya
Um where exactly has that been said? where has it been said that discord orb is not canon? its sounds like your just making that up
and hanzo and genji can some spirit dragons with no scientific reason given
Yeah but all those abilites are canon, there function slightly differently but they still exist. Your saying lucio’s healing music can’t be canon because that doesn’t exist currently, but hanzo and genji can summon dragons for no explained reason and thats fine.
Don’t remember the timestamp.
I’ll make it easy for you. Have we seen something happen in the lore? If yes, it’s canon. If no, it’s not canon. If we see something happen in new lore, it then becomes canon.
The question about Zenyatta’s orbs is at 7:40 in the video.
not needing to be supported by lore, doesn’t mean not canon at all. just because they don’t have a reason for discord orb, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist at all. it just means they made the ability first without coming up with a reason. if zenyatta does get a comic/cinematic then they could probably give a reason on why the ability exists. the overwatch team has done retcons before (the whole dva is a starcraft pro thing) the deadlock gang also had 1976 on their logo, but then ashe’s short revealed that she helped start the deadlock gang? so like Zenyatta not have a lore reason doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist at all.
You were given a source, as well as a timestamp. If you’re going to talk about the canonity of Discord, please refer to the most recent and relevant thing we have, which is Jeff Kaplan saying its not canon.
He said “there’s isn’t an explain lore reason on how it works” not “discord orb doesn’t exist at all”
He said:
In some cases, we just want things to exist for gameplay reasons, that don’t necessarily need to be supported by lore in the game. So not everything is explained as canon lore when you play 6v6 Overwatch, that might happen in the game. That’s why you can have a Tracer and Widowmaker on the same team even though they don’t like each other and they are fighting against another Tracer and Widowmaker.
With the reply tweet reading:
Some things in Overwatch exist for gameplay reasons and aren’t supported by lore.
He didn’t say the lore needs to explain how it works. He said some things exist only for gameplay reasons.
He said “not supported by lore” not “discord orb doesn’t exist”
He indirectly said it twice, using an impersonal “things”
Yes indirectly , he hasn’t directly said discord orb doesn’t exist at all