This role could have been so much more than being a healbot. We had heroes like Symmetra and Sombra (yes Sombra, her damage was never her selling point) who could have been untraditional Support heroes. You can say they were bad, but they never actually bothered to buff them so you don’t really know that for sure.
It made the role more interesting, now it’s so black and white and every Support has basically the same functionality and job to fill. I’m just saying, this role could have been great and it’s just not. It’s boring. That’s why no one plays it.
Zenyatta is not used for his crappy healing and he’s still the strongest Support in the game, for the pure utility that he brings. This is in-game proof that non-healing centric Supports can work.
8 Likes
Go lucio zen and see for yourself better yet play tank with lucio zen and tell us how much fun you had
31 Likes
The problem is that sustain provides more and easier value than any other utility. If you use Zen, then your other Support needs to have an excess of healing. In order to balance for non-healing supports, healing numbers would have to be massively nerfed.
6 Likes
Brig and Zen is the strongest Support combo right now. Neither heroes are known for their healing output.
Go play main tank and have Lucio/Zen as your healers and then come back to this post and ask yourself why you asked that question.
2 Likes
Supports need to heal because teams need healing to stay alive
2 Likes
Ana and Bap are more than capable of solo healing
If you’re constantly dying that’s on you
1 Like
It can work though. You could for instance, Take Rein, Speed boost in and get smashing. Sure you won’t get much healing but you are likely to take out a couple of them first, and that is still a win. It depends on the rank really.
Ball + Hog + Mei + S76 means the supports can be whatever they like really. It isn’t even a bad team composition.
It is crazy frustrating to play against that is for sure 
Zen might not have that raw HPS but I like having a Zen co-support because Harmony is the most reliable healing in the game. Obviously Discord and personal damage are a bigger deal, but calling Zen a non-healing support seems off to me.
4 Likes
There are other ways to keep heroes alive. Damage mitigation, danamge transfer, additional health, barriers, dare I say CC, the list goes on.
If other games similar to overwatch can have support roles where flat out healing is rare, there’s no reason why Overwatch can’t have less of an emphasis on healing
I think you underestimate the functional heal output of brig zen, but also remember that brig zen is almost always played with ball or hog neither of which demand much healing but put brig zen on a winston while doable it aint fun or easy.
1 Like
The problem is that non healing support powers REALLY get people complaining.
Having them mitigate the damage is more annoying that healing it.
From a balance point of view, there is no reason why you couldn’t just swap healing for mitigation, but in practice damage boost, rez and lamp are some of the most complained about abilities in the game.
7 Likes
But then people also complain when we get a hero who’s focus is all healing and offers no utility.
So we really can’t win
4 Likes
This only true for double shield really where the shield rotation and Orisa’s fortify provide enough sustain to offset the low healing output of the support lineup. Try playing brig/zen with a rein/zarya comp.
1 Like
You are NOT wrong there.
You can Hog / Ball / S76 with Zen / Brig just fine.
Hog is self healing, Ball can health pack it up, S76 is self healing, you don’t need shields for self sustain, there are other ways up that mountain.
1 Like
Not really
Its best comp would prob be ball dive
They don’t. They are supports not healers. Healing is just one of their abilities they can use to support the team.
she isn’t known for it but I would like for more people to understand that she does 70 hps
moira has the most at 135 hps with orb ana does 70 every 0.6 seconds and bap does 70 every 0.9 so brig beats mercy (55hps) zen (30) and lucio ( 16.25, 46.8 every twelve seconds for 3 seconds)
Because healing is essential for winning matches. It doesn’t help that the game doesn’t have out of combat recovery like Paladins.
2 Likes
- team sustain in this game is scarce. esp in-combat sustain. literally the most available source is support healing.
- we started off with 3 supports that had spammable 0 down time heal methods.
when you consider 1. for 2., it means that a support that doesn’t also have a spammable low down time heal method to heal whenever wherever on demand is a big value deficiency. esp now when we have 2-2-2 (soon to be 1-2-2) i.e. fixed number of supports.