I’m not sure if anything changed, but Zen feels useless now. I use to carry games as him. Now it doesn’t feel like I get the kills I use too, and his low heal rate and mobility is turning into a team handy cap. I can’t even break barriers. What changed?
Usually when I’m forced to heal on a map I want to play other roles as, I just pick mercy and zen and DPS as well as I can. I don’t even bother healing, why should I.
With everyone dieing in one hit, Mercy feels more useful than Zen.
Zen is definitely more useful than mercy. With zen, sometimes I can get gold DPS. But with mercy, I can basically never get gold DPS.
He worked better in DPS heavy comps?
His ult is still one of the best in the game. I suck at zen and trans has won me a lot of hopeless team fights.
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I was just thinking this today, Zen needs a healing buff. His healing output is just so trash that it makes his damage hard to justify most of the time. Like I’ll end up with a damage medal but at what cost?
We’re in the shield meta mate. Zenyatta’s biggest weakness has always been shields that you couldn’t get around or through. This happened last summer as well where we had a shield meta. It was so bad that Jjonak (arguably greatest zen in the world) was forced to start playing roadhog in order to break said shields faster…
Only thing you can do is swap to ana or baptiste if the enemy runs double shields and your team can’t destroy them fast enough for zen to do anything. I loathe it, but history repeats itself 
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If getting gold damage is what you consider for how good a support is, that makes zero sense.
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The only thing that gets his healing numbers up is a good trance. Otherwise he does like 1/3 of the normal heal rate.
Well yeah thats the thing. Transce inflates his healing numbers to make it look like he’s healing a decent amount, but the reality is the 95% of the game where you’re not using transce his healing output is a joke. And the fact that they increased global ultimate charge really made zen even worse IMO
- He can’t outheal damage from many meta characters, and not even with trance in the case of the oneshots.
- Discord orb is borderline useless for allies playing those characters.
- He himself doesn’t do much shieldbreak and his pick potential is greatly limited by shields. With people playing double-shield more often, his individual damage goes down. His healing potential is also limited a bit by shields.
- Ana is growing in popularity, and anytime ana is popular I feel like zenyatta gets a bit worse (due to the anti nade/trance interaction). Especially because dva is so bad right now, it can’t be eaten as reliably.
He’s still good, but he has a ton of easily exploitable weaknesses.
I donno, I find him very boring to play.
Long time Zen main here.
The only issue I’m having since 2-2-2 is that I occasionally struggle to build transcendence quickly enough. Having a guaranteed two tanks per game can be a blessing or a curse. If it’s two shield tanks, I can help break shields, but shields don’t give ult charge. If it’s a Hog and Ball, that’s another story.
As for his harmony healing being low, I think some folks are being way too dismissive. 30HP/s might not sound like a lot for a tank sitting at 10/500 HP, but for a Genji diving in to the enemy backline, that harmony orb is a thing of beauty. It provides an extra layer of durability, and makes DPS (especially flankers like Genji) much more confident.
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What else is there to do with zen? Press ‘E’ every now and then, and float around? Besides, if I get stuck on support on a map I like to DPS at, why should I be forced to do anything I don’t want to do?
I can’t decide if this is an actual question or rhetorical, lol
if it’s actual, though, yeah, discord is great for high damage comps if they’re working together, Zen marks targets with discord, the team dives that target, instant death.
I actually prefer Zen on teams with low damage, though. That way he can contribute to DPS while healing, pair him with Baptiste or Moira for AoE heals and you’ve got a strong support combo imo.
In general, with all the barriers lately, I’m finding it very difficult to carry with any of the supports. It’s blocking my damage, it’s blocking my heals, Tanks are just shutting down Supports
First of all you shouldn’t be playing zen because you don’t want to wait for dps que or if you happen to get a map you like to dps on.
Secondly: just play baptiste?
Thirdly: This game needs more supports (and tanks). that’s not directed at you actually i’m just pointing out that supports are lacking for non support players and if you don’t want a long que time for dps Tank would be a far better solution until we get more options on the support line 
It’s all comp dependent now. But In general Mercy, Baptiste, and Lucio are the big winners for ranked Support play right now. Yes Bap healing gets block by shields but you can jump over them (albiet high risk if hitscan).
Zen’s lack of utility makes him an inferior pick to Lucio right now in most situations.
The reason is most likely due to double shield from the Orisa/Stigma combo.
You might want to consider going Lucio with Reinhardt/Zarya tank and push it to a close range battle, or with Winston/D.Va and dive them.
Other option is to have Symmetra as DPS to take down the shield while your team provide shield as well.