I loved the defensive brilliance of Overwatch, especially for the golden era. Overwatch was a unicorn in the sense that a team shooter had the motor skills of a twitchshooter, but the cerebral aspects of Mobas/chess.
There will be, we will practically be able to forensically deconstruct how much time they had to change supports for OW2 by what we will see in the OWL teasers.
If they really needed more time, then we will see more offensive changes to support like Ana doing 110dmg. This is a feasible solution to the peeling issue, but it isn’t the best solution for most support players ideally. We don’t want to be dps-lites, we want strong defensive options for player agency. But giving us great defensive options in the 5v5 environment will take more time imo.
This is a very scary time for PvP players who have enjoyed the fine balance of offense and defense OW1 has offered. After the honeymoon period is over, quite a few supports will feel alienated if they go the offensive route for supports.
I wish they were more transparent for support changes like they were for damage and tanks. Our feedback would be very important.
I imagine support-only playstyles will still exist, but there will be more required to make them as viable as they once were.
Such as bodyblocking damage for a critical teammate with your own self-heal to do-so reliably (Like Brig+) or creating self-healing distractions for your teammates to exploit (Like Lúcio+).
Supports will need to be more disciplined and more active, but I don’t think that necessarily means they need to be chasing kills to be effective.
I feel like supports should focus more on utility rather than just healing their team. So like symm’s teleport for rush comp, sombra’s hack for health pack denial, mei’s ice wall for singling out enemies, zarya like bubble for temporarly protection etc. They will all still have the ability to heal, but these utilities will be given to each support varying the playstyle.
From what I gather from Andy’s posts, it will be more flanker oriented making the passive pretty worthless. You’ll also have to hard pocket the tank due to more brawling but less defense. No word on changes to long range burst damage. So sounds like complete hell for supports in general and even worse for low mobility supports.
Probably more towards the Angels Of Death side of things from what we’ve seen so far.
Edit: makes perfect sense. Without the extra tank soaking up heals, the rest of the team gets big spilllover.
I’ve been seeing this question pop up quite a bit since our post last week, so I grabbed some time with Geoff and Josh from the Hero design and balance team this afternoon. Here’s what they had to say;
So far, we’ve not made a ton of changes to how the Support role works in OW2. There are some meaningful changes, such as removing the stun from Brigitte (more on her specific rebalancing efforts in the future), however for the most part the playstyle of your favorite support heroes should feel familiar and similar to retail.
As of now, we have no plans to remove self-healing from these heroes. Abilities like Regenerative Burst and Biotic Grenade remain a powerful part of their respective hero’s identities, and will be tuned to account for the passive self-healing abilities also available.
In our playtests, having one less tank made it clear to us that tanks generally contribute much more damage than they mitigate, even on retail. Because of the drop in overall damage being dealt out, Supports were actually too effective at keeping the entire team alive, so we’re testing a tuned down healing output across the board to ensure that teamfights still resolve in a way that doesn’t feel drawn out or frustrating to play against.
Thank you for taking the time to communicating for us!
During the PvP stream back in May I had the feeling that Zen and Mercy were played very often, due to damage boost and discord orb. Is there a chance that these abilities are getting slightly nerfed? It was crazy to see how a Winston or Reinhardt got melted from a Reaper + discord orb on him.
Isn’t this kinda based on the hero you play? Like I’m not sure you can pin the current batch as a whole into either/or…you get varying amounts of both depending who you play….not sure why that would change come OW2….it’s not like tanks where they’re kinda redoing the role
You understand that even with less damage, mercy’s healing for example, feels very anemic and bad at 50hps? Same for bap, unloading an entire clip into someone’s back in exchange for middling healing feels bad. It makes you feel impotent and unimpactful because the health values are the same.
It doesn’t make supports feel like active and powerful participants. Hopefully their utility will be buffed to compensate.
Idk but for me, longer more drawn out team fights are kind of fun. It feels more intense and gives more time to think about what to do and where I need to be going, rather than fast team fights where one side gets rolled over immediately and has to wait to regroup for another push. Time to kill needs to be increased imo.
Andy, thank you so much for going out of your way for transparency. You have soared so far past the community’s expectations that you’re hitting the stratosphere.
Same, speaking as a Brig main. I want her to be this Paladin, tanky support. I never wanted her to be a main healer or have tons of CC to begin with. Make her more tanky again and I’ll be fine.
I would have loved her to get a damage resist passive for X allies in a certain radius and lower her hps. Brig should have staying power on the battlefield.
I never liked your ideas for Brig balance (lol), but I play Brig and support for the Utility, if it’s more defensive, that’s cool if she has something that gives that to the team.
But if it’s “DPS” that heals on the side, I’m done with this game. (and I’ll save 60 bucks, win win situation lol)
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