This seems to be something most people agree on. I used to be mostly a dps main all throughout OW1 but since OW2 I played more and more support. To the point where I am now a support main. Support is just a more relaxing role and whenever I play dps it’s way more stressful. It’s not that I do worse. My typical dps are Echo and Sombra and I perform well on them but sometimes it can be really intense. On support I typically play Moira, Kiri and sometimes Ana and I rarely ever stress out. I don’t think it’s that support is that much easier. My ranks and winrate are pretty much the same for dps/support.
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Less pressure on you to secure kills, i guess. It’s why I find DPS the most difficult role.
But not to say playing support isn’t also stressful at times, like when you have flanking DPS on your butt all game that the rest of the team refuses to peel for.
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Take a drink every time you revive or heal a co-Damage-role and watch them perform the exact same mistake that got them killed in the first place.
And they do it again…
And again…
Already sloshed.
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Support has more “passive power” to carry a game. Most DPS require more “active power”
As a Support, you’re not supposed to be “in” the fight most of the time. Your primary goal is to stay someplace safe and swap between damage and healing as the situation dictates. Even an “active” character like Lucio or Kiriko isn’t really an exception to this, because both of them want to only take fights where the enemy team is unlikely to fight back.
As a DPS, your goal is to take position where you can deal the optimal damage to secure kills or build Ult charge. This inherently comes with substantial risk, as usually, the easier it is to deal damage, the easier it is for the enemy to deal damage to you. Exceptions to this are long-range snipers (especially Hanzo and Widow) who can pretty much chillax and wait for opportunities to come to them. Their jobs only really become stressful when they’re getting dove or have to face a counter-sniper.
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Not necessarily true when it comes to Overwatch. While Supports can be fairly reactive and succeed with limited success; Overwatch wants Supports to be actively doing something, whether that’s primarily triaging their team, or providing some kind of useful buff (mostly increasing damage outputs, or denying space/kills).
Most Supports take an artillery position, or are flexible enough to do so. Many will have to be in the thick of the engagement to keep their teams alive.
Farming an ultimate has never been a solid strategy at any point. You charge up your ultimate by making eliminations, failing to make eliminations means that the enemy team recovers their health, earns ultimate charge in the process, and will have the ability to defend against your ultimate.
When you make an elimination on that target, you deny them opportunity to charge up their ultimate. Even the time-based ultimate charges are halted while you are re-spawning. The most eliminations you make, the faster your ultimate charges up, and the more likely your ultimate will succeed against the enemy team’s, where they simply lack the ability to defend against it.
This isn’t really true, but from certain perspectives a lot of players can make these sorts of judgements without a more objective or experienced analysis.
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Most supports have self healing and immortality powers.
That kinda takes away the stress of duels.
What is more stressful to you? Baby sitting or having fun playing the video game? That’s why support is awful. Nobody wants to take care of these people’s kids.
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Don’t encounter directly on enemies, unless the enemy team goes full dive on you.
OW, imo, is a game that’s most fun when I’m playing well. Maybe that’s because of PvP, maybe it’s the expectation of my team to perform well that makes it stressful. Maybe I just don’t want to embarass myself in an online game.
it depends. against dive it becomes the most stressful role but the reason i picked support all these years ago was because it never felt like i had to be actively dictating the tempo of the game
Support is more relaxing because weak performance doesn’t show up on the scoreboard as much as the other two roles. It’s easy to rack up enough healing and damage numbers by picking the right supports to not stand out vs the other supports. If you’re not doing well on tank/DPS it really shows.
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That’s still more “passive power”. Even during everything you just said, a Support is supposed to be “out” of the fight, relatively speaking compared to a DPS and tank. Regardless of what the Support is doing, you don’t want them taking the same positioning as, say, a Ramm or a Reaper or a Soldier, unless it’s someplace like safe high ground.
Farming ult should not be the default strategy, but you’re absolutely wrong if you’re trying to argue that it’s never a secondary goal.
Unless you actually try to make a point here, this talk about “objective or experienced analysis” means nothing.
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It doesn’t if you are good support, next question
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This is a team game. Duels are going to get screwed over the moment it goes on for more than 2 seconds. The real reason is simply that supports are not the initiators. They generally lacks the tools to do it.
Nothing like shooting nuts at my enemies isn’t more relaxing than going through severe depression playing Mei trying to figure out what is my purpose anymore. Wonder why I find gaming not enjoyable right now.
For me it’s psychological. The easiest way to explain it is to compare it to tank.
When I play tank, I’m stressed because of expectations. I’m probably going to get blamed if things don’t go well regardless of how I do. It doesn’t matter if I’m feeding or playing like a god, if we lose someone is typing tank diff in chat.
When I play support, I’m much more likely to be appreciated. I’m probably getting an endorsement. Even if I have a sub par game, I won’t necessarily be called out if I’m trying. Now sometimes I get attacked but usually that’s just someone who is trying to deflect from their poor performance and it’s not every game like with tank.
And let’s face it, DPS isn’t appreciated often either. They may not have it as rough as tank, but they certainly don’t get as much appreciation as support.
For me, as someone who words matter to, that somewhat frequent recognition makes support more relaxing for me.
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Mercy is more likely to get an endorsement than Widow, that’s for sure. As widow, there are times i don’t feel appreciated when I play well. And Mercy? Who doesn’t like free heals?
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Less being in the middle of the fight generally.
Oh no it is not.
If you really want to optimize your support play (not talking Mercy/Moira level of play ofc) you have to take risks and get the fingers out of your noze. Stop being passive while praying you got your DPS intentions right, do not miss the pace to be behind or extended.
Example, if one in your team play good, do not do terrible errors but failed then you also failed somewhere.
Yes you can play chill passive but that just mediocrity.
interesting perspective! I actually think the opposite. I started off a DPS main and i find it boring honestly… DPS i feel like only has 1 job and thats to score elims. the only time I ever see DPS being pressured is when they have significantly less kills than their counterparts on the enemy team… which any role would get, it’s not special for DPS. Most of the hate/flack I see is for supports and tanks, tanks being the worst.
support is so much more fun (IMO) because I’m expected to heal, dive, still DPS enough to secure elims with the team, play objective while still doing my other jobs (escorting cart / be the guy capping point while team pokes ahead etc) AND I’m expected to be self sufficient while doing all that and survive 1v1’s being dived in the back or expected to be able to escape multiple dives AND still keep healing the team… Also watching out for when to use my imortalities / ults to help the team…
IDK man as support I feel like i have 8 jobs to do simultaneously and every time I can still score an elim WHILE doing all that feels so much sweeter. I suppose some DPS have extra utility in their kits which I do find fun but it’s just doesn’t match supports. IDK how you ‘relax’ on support unless you are playing mercy only or something idk - I have a lot of fun with support. I suppose if your team loses and all you did was spam heals on your team its easier to cope and tell yourself it was cuz your team couldn’t pull it off - not you cuz you healed… There’s a lot more to support than healing (not that you implied that)
tank tho I think has to be the most stressful… I feel like tanks constantly have to swap cuz they get countered and ones that don’t have to deal with complaints - they have the same pressures I mentioned before on support where they are expected to play the objective / protect and peel all the way back to the backline to protect the team while also being on the front line to make space and they HAVE to ‘diff’ the enemy tank or it’s just a “GG tank gap” to everyone in the lobby. 1 tank just sucks i loved 2 tanks so much more back in the day. I think currently for a lot of people tanks are expected to play every single role all at the same time, support your back line AND front line at same time WHILE making space and getting elims AND on and on and on. I don’t play tank anymore, I liked it a lot back when it was 2 tanks because I liked to synergize off what ever my partner picked but w/e thats gone now.