What are those lifeweaver changes?

General Discussion
1

You had an entire season to fix the characters core problems and the best you could do was some irrelevant, frankly incomprehensibly nonsensical number changes. None of these changes fix the issues with the hero nor make him feel any better to play

Petal size reduced
His Back Petal size is only part of his size issue. Even without the petals he is as tall and as wide as many of the tank characters. He needs a complete model reduction like bastion had going into ow2. Take his entire character model and start by shrinking it by 10% then you might actually get somewhere. Shrinking his back petals does virtually nothing he is still the size of a tank

Heal increased
It was already confirmed by all metrics and data, even by the developers themselves, his healing was not the issue. He already had the highest healing numbers in the game by far. The stupid charge mechanic is still the issue.

If You heal a teammate and then swap to damage and your teammate then drops low you have no way to immediately heal them. You have to swap back and then charge up the heals first. This is why the only viable way to play him since launch has just been to stand charging heals all game so if someone does take damage you have it ready to go. You have no time to damage because his healing is too clunky and punishing to ever swap off of it

thorn volley buffs
Non changes. See above. You will still never get kills with this hero unless that is the only thing you intend to do. It is physically impossible with the way his kit interacts to be able to flow between damage and heals.

Heroes like kiri and bap have a rhythm where they can heal and between each round of heals they can damage. LW cannot do this at all. You either swap damage and say screw your teammates because you are never going to be able to swap back and charge a heal fast enough, or you never swap off heals which has been the best way to play him

Petal changes
Still doesnt stop people waking on your platform and wasting it. Still doesnt help your team all coordinate to get on it together with no communication. Still doesnt provide lifeweaver any agency over his OWN ABILITIES

speaking of lack of agency
life grip
You actually reduced the cd to already one of the most troll abilities in the game :clown_face: and ooh it heals 50 health :open_mouth: great. It still gets cancelled because your mccree decided to roll at the same time. It still gets blocked and cancelled by cars and walls. Its still a garbage design ability for both lifeweaver, cus it never works, and the person he pulls

tree
You nerfed by far the worst support ult, good job. It already did nothing, people still died through it. It never saves anyone or feels impactful. The only saving grace of it was you got it super fast.

What tf have you been doing? You had 2 whole months to rework him and the best you come up with is some small number tweaks. Bruhhhhhhhh!!!

This hero needs a full rework. A Complete redesign. He is the most low impact passive handhold hero ever released. It’s embarrassing. Whoever designed his kit is garbage at hero design. End of story. Guess its another 2 months with no new support to play. Season 6 support will be playable before lifeweaver enters the game

34 Likes
2

I agree the charge mechanic for a freaking support is tedious. My hand hurts after awhile when playing him. But at least with buffing his healing number, you will likely charge less. But still, wish the charge time was reduced.

9 Likes
3

Yes he has one of the best healing, but he had to healbot to do it. This should make it so he doesnt have to healbot as much now.

Um… Mei wall? Mei wall is way more trolly then Grip, it can effect multiple people for a decent amount of time and its on a lower cooldown.

1 Like
4

These “buffs” are ignorant and a complete spit in the face for all the people who were hoping he would become a decent pick.

I havent seen ANYONE complain about the size of his healing bursts. Literally only the charging time making it feel clunky and horrible to use. Weapon buffed? What does it matter? You cant swap to it and then swap back and charge healing up in time to save any 200 hp hero.

I love this game so much but the balancing team are on crack. And not the good kind.

9 Likes
5

His numbers are not the issue and never have been the issue. His healing numbers were already fine. He was already outhealing most if not all other supports. The problem is that healing is the only thing he is good at which isnt enough to win games. Everything else in his kit is so badly designed he wont be playable until they accept they have created a bad hero.

They need to remove the charge mechanic so he can swap freely between healing and damage without punishment, that way you can actually contribute damage to the fight without removing your ability to heal. His healing numbers are not the problem. He simply cannot sacrifice swapping to damage because its too punishing if you then need to swap back to heal someone. You are better off just staying on healing and healbotting all game.

Secondly, at least 1 if not both of his abilities need a complete overhaul to give him a way to play more aggressively and proactively. You cant have 2 passive defensive, reactionary abilities (grip and petal) on an already healbot support who also has a passive reactionary ult. You are stacking passive on top of passive on top of passive on top of passive which just results in a hero that cannot do anything himself.

He needs ways in his kit to playmake. Right now you just heal and wait for someone else to do something. They keep trying to sell to us that lifegrip is a playmaking ability except it isnt, its a purely reactionary ability that you have to wait until the right moment to use. Its the same level of playmaking as necrotic/enfeeble orb

Lifeweaver is what enfeebling orb moira was. A useless passive support who has no solo impact and your entire gameplay revolves around 1 singular cooldown. Misuse that cooldown and you provide nothing of value to your team. Then even if you hit the cooldown correctly you did nothing in the meantime and it may not even be enough to make a difference

6 Likes
6

The buff to lifegrip is annoying, it’s one of the worst abilities to have used on you and they gave more incentive to spam it on people. The devs don’t actually play this game and see how people are using these, they probably just watch streamers and play on the internal test client only.

I will never get their obsession with this ability needing to exist like this, why a support should have complete, uncancellable access to taking control of my character every 16 seconds. It sucks, it sucks to have used on you period, it feels awful. It needs to go back to the design stage to be completely reworked to not feel like complete trash to have used on you, and give people at least some options to mitigate it when there’s a troll on their team or someone bad at lifeweaver who abuses it.

7 Likes
7

I would argue grip is more trolly because with mei wall you can only really troll your teammates but with grip you can also troll yourself with how inconsistent it is

I think only about 40% of my lifegrips actually work. The other 60% get cancelled either by the teammate overlapping a movement ability thus cancelling it or because it gets stuck on a car or lampost or wall or hydrant or phonebox

8

I think you’re overly underestimating Lifeweaver’s new numbers.

  • I quite agree with decreasing the petals which were mostly those that create a huge target compared to other heroes that have equally big hitboxes. Moira technically has the highest hitboxsupport of all the other healers despite also being the skinniest, while lifeweaver without the petals reaches normal character size like baptiste.
  • you’re totally forgetting that lifeweaver’s heals are the equivalent of brigitte’s original armor pack 1.0: an almost instantaneous healing from a projectile fired quickly and automatically from a distance without needing aim. if it becomes too accessible it can cause serious problems for the healing bot that must be killed even before a mercy which grants the possibility of ressing on killed enemies. you have to consider that with the increased maximum cures they have proportionally increased the speed with which it reaches the previous cure (65 healing). developers are right to remain cautious about those numbers.
  • I can’t say much about the weapon, I would first like to judge it in game if it’s a much better modification. but at the very least we’ll see decent damage output for him.
  • I would like to point out that central platform activation can already be a good way to describe it as improved. I think though that it should have a more mei wall-like summon mode instead of throwing it like a torbjorn turret. but still, I think he had some very honest buffs.
  • lifegrip: so far this is the ability that has given lifeweaver meaning when used well. we can only ask for more security for the ultimate as was the case recently for reinhardt’s, but I completely disagree with this point of yours. sorry for you that you found some bad LW but i actually saw many which saved my life at the right time. the possibility that it now gives a little healing is a major plus.
  • the ultimate is the only point on which I give you full reason: in my opinion it would need at least more transparency for teammates to be able to see the opponents better through it and therefore a greater tactical advantage on the battlefield compared to that of the others opponents.

for me the only ability that needs serious help is the ultimate, but otherwise… they made some really remarkable considerations for this hero that maybe needed to be presented in the middle of season 4, not in season 5.

2 Likes
9

We can agree to disagree

Imo he went from an F tier hero to a D-, the only thing blizz can congratulate themselves on is that he isn’t literally failing class anymore

A D- is still classified as a fail in most academics tho so while not being an abject failure, it is still not enough for him to graduate

10

Exactly what I’ve been saying all season,not only should the petals not be part of the hitbox at all,his entire model should be smaller.Kiriko for example is a needle compared to him,the new sun lady looks small too.
Not even gonna comment on Lifegrip since that ability is always gonna be too niche for the average player.

3 Likes
11

i know for a fact, that i will heal 1 health tanks to 126 now, which is great

12

Agreed. Lifeweaver is still a slave to charging those damn flowers. Every once in a while I’ll be able to do things like launch ulting Orisa up with the petal but it feels very color by the numbers.

Agree to an extent. I’ve had games where I’ve had 8 prevented death with life grip. I don’t use it liberally, but I use it regularly if it’s called for. It’s basically a zarya bubble with some 911 style repositioning. I use it proactively too.

These Lifeweaver changes though are the most conservative and underwhelming. THIS is what we waited for? I feel insulted. I’m not even going to look at the next battle pass.

There is so little accomplished with these changes

  • Randos will continue to not use petals and have no reason to
  • Minimum charged blossom is still 10hp (WHO DOES THIS HELP?)
  • Weapon swap penalty still exists
  • Gun is still in Mercy category (ie don’t use it unless desperate) and doesn’t do anything interesting

Why are there no new mechanics? Why is there no creativity? You know who balances like this? Bean counters. Cliche 80s accountants. Middle age, balding, “nerd” style/no style, base their decisions strictly on statistics. There is no other explanation. It looks underwhelming and it will feel it too, because nothing is really changing.

13

It’s really pathetic it took them more than half of a season and ended up just tweaking some numbers for Lifeweaver. Why didn’t do these during the mid-season patch and get more data to see whether these changes are enough? Now how many seasons we have to wait for a proper update on his kit? Until the next Support hero comes out? LOL…

14

Okay first off, WHAT?!

That’s the entire point of Lifeweaver. He heals and provides “unique” untility in the form of repositioning and positional advantages. He’s flat out a healbot.

Secondly…Mei has one troll ability. Lifegreifers have three…case in point provided.

2 Likes
15

The only way to fix the character’s core problems is by literally removing it from the game and re-designing the whole thing. And I mean the whole thing. Every ability → :wastebasket:

The worst part about LW is not that he’s not fun to play, it’s that he’s not fun to play with. 90% of times when I’m getting pulled somewhere or get a petal platform thrown under my feet I’m a confused 60-yo grandma forgetting where the hell I am and how I got there. Ironic for an Ana main like me.
Idk, am I too old for the game by now? Is it just me?

3 Likes
16

What they should have done is make platform useable for your own team only.

It should lower when not used. Health of the platform should be lower, BUT…while on the platform it should give you regen like maybe 50% of soldier heal.

This way people would seek the safety of platform and actually look for it when low on health.

Hitscan would love platform as they get heal while shooting at range.

There fixed the useless platform for you.

Also get rid of primary fire and make him shoot up to 5 sticky bombs like demo man from TF2. Much more fun.

17

This is exactly the problem they needed to fix, but didn’t. Lifeweaver is the only character in the game that doesn’t properly contribute offensively. The changes will make him stronger, given enough healing he won’t even need offensive value, but it’s not healthy or interactive.

His core gameplay loop will involve standing 30m away floating on a leaf and spamming heals and pulling if someone gets low. We can do better than that.

7 Likes
18

I would agree, the damage buff feels good, but I think my teammates will suffer for it. Why not be more like moira and have both hands up, thorns on right and healing on left so you could charge the healing while firing? I’m sure that possible, and it’d give him a bit more of a unique feel too while maintaining the charge mechanic as no other support can do both at the same time.

19

Im ok with the one arm switch, wished it was a bit faster, but we already have 2 supports with the 2 arms mechanics, moria and kiriko. While its not a bad idea, it would make them a bit to similar

1 Like
20

He’s horrible to play, charging primary is just trash, he’s also very annoying for teamates if someone use grip badly, his tree sometimes get deleted instantly, just bad overall

1 Like