You cannot be a successful “Mercy-like” support hero if your heals have any amount of jank or clunkiness. A big part of what makes Mercy so popular is that her healing feels so smooth and intuitive that you can slip into an uninterrupted, meditative Flow State while using it… Meanwhile, Lifeweaver’s primary heal has so many flow-breaking flaws that it feels like you’re fighting with your own kit to get anything done.
A list of Lifeweaver’s crimes:
1: LW’s blossoms have a low ammo limit & an absurdly long reload time for some reason. That makes it impossible for Lifeweaver to settle into a proper “Mercy-like” healing rhythm, due to his healing being constantly interrupted by a long, clunky reload animation.
2: If you release Lifeweaver’s heal button for any reason without a target selected, he immediately loses ALL of his charge & must start over from scratch (aka yet another thing that breaks his flow). Weaver even loses ammo, despite the fact that he didn’t actually fire his weapon. Other heroes with a charge-up mechanic have their charge decay over time, why is Lifeweaver an exception to the rule?
3: Only Lifeweaver’s high-charge blossoms deal any useful amount of healing… which feels clunky as hell when you’re in a situation where a teammate is on critical health and won’t survive the wait time for Lifeweaver to charge up a big blossom. You’d think that the solution to this dilemma would be to skip the charge-up time altogether, and instead quickly spam small, low-charge blossoms at your critically injured teammate (since they can be rapid-fired)… but Weaver’s small blossoms deal such miniscule healing that there’s realistically no reason to ever use them.
I still say that Blizzard should go full go mode on making LifeWeaver embodiment of a flower.
His heals has a small HoT
His damage has a small DoT
Dash (HoT)
Life Grip (HoT)
Petal Platform ( HoT for teammates and LW - DoT for enemies)
Tree of Life (Initial placement does a cleanse effect- for enemies does a knock back effect) For counterpleas measure- allow Sombra EMP to destroy it again.
They are converging on your location at this very moment, armed to the teeth with shop skins. They will surround you and spam their signature “someone call the whambulance” voice line until you repent
There’s a setting where you can turn the heal into toggle. One click starts the charge, and a second one releases the heal.
No need to keep buttons pressed to charge.
Is he? He’s just as defence oriented as zen is. Good damage, defensive ult, not very impactful heals in situations where a lot of healing is needed.
If this means the hps can be buffed to 65 or 70 hps, sign me up.
It’s the reload thing that makes him pretty bad. There’s also a lot of delay between the end of a reload and starting a charge. And if you use a platform at the same time, it delays the charge up. So, a lot of clunky mechanics and lots of downtime in some critical moments that can be extended when swapping between modes.
If I had to ask for some extreme change it would be have his thorns charge up the heals when dealing damage or something like Sojourn’s railgun.
I’ve tried that. I don’t like that setting bc it doesn’t feel intuitive… So I’m unhappy with the feel of Weaver’s healing no matter what settings I use.
He tries to be Mercy-like by doing that. But he fails due to his kit being so clunky and full of downtime holes that he’s simply not fun to play by the standards of most defensive-oriented players.
As outlined in the OP, his heals feel clunky as hell. Strike one.
Once his platform is set, he’s got nothing to do (other than shooting enemies) during the inevitable gaps of time where everyone’s health is full & no one needs saving at the moment. Strike two.
“Saving people” doesn’t even comfortably fit into Lifeweaver’s core gameplay loop. His heals are too clunky/inconsistent to be a reliable lifesaver, and his assigned “lifesaver” abilities (lifegrip and tree) have so much downtime that planning out their next use doesn’t normally factor into Lifeweaver’s moment-to-moment gameplay. Strike three.
The only reason Lifeweaver fails is because his utility is situational. When you make a support they need to bring healing and a mix of either utility or damage. Lifeweaver’s utility is only decent sometimes, no matter what comp, and his damage is unreliable and not baked into the rest of his kit, so what you’re left with is a “healbot” character who can’t be buffed into viability without number buffing him to be egregious or actual kit changes, like his passive charge speed on Healing Blossom.
I’d like them to make it so Lifeweaver can choose to detonate Petal Platform when its in its seed form when its in the air to deal damage and increase his passive charge rate based on how many enemies he hit. This would not only increase his damage output but also allow him to use it to weave in his primary fire more and capitalize off landing it by giving him more heals. All they have to do is make it so his previous platform isn’t destroyed until AFTER his new one lands on the ground.
What lifeweaver should do is automatically charge his flower if he has it out, and it not have ammo. Than you just click to heal and its less of a pain in the butt. Yes I know he does it already, but have it be the actual rate as if he’s charging it normally. Than just lose the charge if he pulls his thorns out.
He’s not a mercy-like support. Maybe that was the goal on release, but it’s not how it is anymore. So idgi. He’s only mercy-like in the sense that his primary heals are single-target, he’s evasive, and he generally needs a high-volume healer with him. He fits all of those.
Of course he “FAILS” at it. Because that’s not what his kit does anymore nor what his playstyle sets out to do.
I wouldn’t mind LW’s clunkiness as much (as a LW main) if and ONLY if Lifegrip was a cleanse.
It’s already a temporary invuln- and with all the DoTs and CC in the game- why ISN’T it a cleanse???
What’s the harm in having one extra cleanse that’s on a moderately long cooldown and only affects ONE person when there are 23498293 DoTs and CC in the game that can be spammed. Lol.
I still, to this day, have zero clue why Lifeweaver has to reload. It’s so pointless and was apparent to me like 5 minutes after he got released. Same with the need to switch weapons. Maybe there’s some reason to have either, idk I doubt it, but there’s definitely no reason to have both.
Sure, they changed a few things to make him much less clunky (which is a testament to how unbearable it was at release), but it’s still oh-so-bad and made even worse by the fact that it’s so easy to fix. But for some reason the devs either don’t know, don’t understand or don’t care. Or they think clunk feels good, hell if I know.
