With Lifeweaver being introduced to the game, we’ve seen a couple new style abilities introduced that capitalize on game-sense and map awareness, rather than the standard cookie-cutter “shoot a new type of damage dealer.”.
Life Grip introduced a whole new amazing mechanic that rewards good map positioning by your support team. We need more capabilities that aren’t all about twitch-reflexive shooting. Abilities that gain the most benefit for being aware of your team’s position and the enemy team’s position. A Shot-caller style hero if you will, whose abilities allow him to create or capitalize on good map awareness and game sense.
Life Grip and Petal Platform were a step in that direction, and I feel like we can take it further and really improve smart gameplay over reflexive gameplay.
That wouldn’t be terrible. A Tether ability to bring a Teammate with you when you make that push/dive. Imagine a Rien who can pull Teammates with him to capitalize on his charge rather than the whole team waiting in the back. Or a Winston who can carry people for his dive and reposition.
What’s wrong with just hitting the mark the first time? You’ll notice that Life Grip hasn’t needed to really be buffed at all. They nailed it with that ability, except for a couple of use-cases where it was interrupting Ultimates and, well, ultimately, got fixed.
They deliberately undertuned Life Weaver so that they could bring him up rather than have him dominate the ranks by making him too strong up front like some other heroes. That’s not the negative that people think it is.
I think you’re giving the devs waaaaaay too much credit here….cause they don’t have a clue as to how to address him atm…I would bet money they thought he was going to be good…and are struggling to figure out what to do after seeing the reception/data…they’re not trying to address specific issues with him, they’re just trying everything to see if it goes anywhere
That’s actually the correct way to do changes. Rather than do everything at once… start with something simple and see if it gets you to the desired location. Whether its Damage Output, Healing Output, survivability (in the form of movement, health, or armor), ability tweaking.
LifeWeaver is a good example of how Hero Tuning should be done. Otherwise, you risk a full rework every update trying to reach “perfection” right off the bat.
Future Heros should follow that style of updates. And if we can get more Heroes that reward good game sense and map awareness, it’ll be even easier to address their issues through the abilities rather than simply buffing damage output or healing output.
What’s punishing about it? In 99% of use cases where there was a negative outcome, it was an accidental grip. I’ve multiple times tried gripping a teammate who was about to die, only to grab the player who secret-serviced them and got grabbed instead.
A Target Lock option would solve that problem.
Otherwise, every hero has the ability to “punish their teammates”. Whether it’s a bad Ana Ult, a Mei Wall, Mercy Rez, Hog Ult pushing every enemy away, etc…
There have always been Heroes can negatively impact teammates. That’s no reason to shy away from the abilities that make the game fun and interesting.
It’s a matter of opinion, not fact. I think your basic “point and click” shooters are “boring and unfun” and games with depth and strategy are “fun and interesting”.
Oh, well, this isn’t about Life Grip itself. This is about creating abilities that operate similar to Life Grip which reward good game sense and create an interesting atmosphere. Abilities that take out the twitch-reflexives, and replaces them with the ability to out-think your opponent rather than simply twitch quicker into button presses.
I think we both can agree that adding abilities that utilize strategy is nothing but a net positive for the game.
Bad timing doesn’t sabotage a teammate, just has lower efficiency.
Can be instantly cancelled by the Mei, requires actually aiming in front of a teammate to sabotage them, can be walked around in most cases. Overall very difficult to “accidentally” sabotage someone.
At least it gives you agency by actually letting you do things after you get rez’d
Literally an ult that only happens 4? 5? times in a match and there’s a low chance of it being punishing towards teammates.
I can think of one reason: the massive backlash that this ability got. You need to waste a mobility cooldown in order to not be dragged around by a leash like a dog by LW.
If my positioning was bad and I died for it then it’s my fault. If my positioning was good and I got dragged out of it, ruining my entire play then is it my fault? If not then why am I being punished for playing right?
The backlash on the forums. Not everywhere else. Hence why it still exists.
A few more of these abilities would help them flesh out how to best utilize them. They’re part of the game afterall. A tether ability would be quite helpful. Maybe a tank that has it who can dive?
People freaking out over grip has to be one the more hilarious things I’ve seen around here. Like, bottom out, lose their minds, absolute tangents about agency… couldn’t be more 100/0.