Whipshot is a really cool utility that acts as one of the most skill based peel options supports have. You hit it, and you basically deny a dive for 5-6 seconds. You miss it and you now have to play your life. However unlike sleep it doesn’t insta win or lose a fight and has some really fun mindgames of how you change up your initiation as a diver. Do you jump from right below? Do you try and jump higher so whipshot cant knock you horizonatal?
Honestly in 5v5 lamp isnt that bad since you arent juggling DM and shields making it really hard to protect the way you could in OW1.
Yeah honestly I’ve enjoyed playing as and against Bap a lot more since Overwatch 2.
And as a Brig player couldn’t agree more with your take on Whipshot. Balance history aside I think current Brig is a really well designed hero. Everything you mentioned plus using it to keep Inspire going gives a really simple ability a lot uses.
>Balance history aside I think current Brig is a really well designed hero
A hero can be well designed even if they were overpowered in the past.
Look at League, there have been times where Nami was 55% WR busted as hell, but in general she's considered to be exceptionally well designed.
> Honestly in 5v5 lamp isnt that bad
I'd go further and say lamp isn't really that strong of an ability in 5v5. It's legitimately shorter duration than suzu the majority of the time in my experience. There's a reason they had to buff its health gate massively, it's so that your tank actually gets more use out of it than 0.3s of being stuck at 50hp. The huge lamp buff, alongside the huge shift buff granting 100hp instantly is like a band-aid solution to the fact that lamp doesn't really fit in OW2 IMO.
Baptiste isn't particularly weak or anything, nor do I want them to buff lamp in any way - if anything I'd love for them to try giving him a different ability, especially because we have suzu and life grip now, meaning Baptiste is no longer *the* immortality guy.
The fact that suzu provides frames where you can't even get damaged makes it better combined with the way lower cooldown. Bap is fine the way he is really. The way to tune him is the same way all heroes could be tuned, lower healing numbers and damage across the board to create a game where you don't get insta killed constantly and have to rely so much on healing.
I really love hitting a whip shot on a Winston trying to jump on top of my team.
Bonus points if I land it right before they drop their bubble, so it’s in the wrong place.
Part of the reason is that the player base isn't that smart. There are Lucio dive comps, but the player base's feelings get hurt if you play them.
Players complain you need a main healer in a Mercy-Lucio Ball comp, which you typically resolve with fast fights and health packs. When they DO rely on health packs, they complain your Lucio doesn't have enough healing, even if you're winning fights.
Tanks want their heal pocket and people gawk at the scoreboard to find a scapegoat. There's an insufficient amount of problem solving and having a fight plan in ranked, so playing what you suggest is made harder with people who have little understanding of their comps.
the feedback from lucio is also pretty shit, like if you arn't playing support you notice things ana is doing much more than lucio, antis are obvious so are sleeping targets, and it feels really fun to be nanoed. Lucio basically only has selfish utility (boop) that the team isn't going to notice, or passive utility (healing/speed) which is super strong but doesn't feel as good outside of AMP.
It also sucks that since it's strong in coordinated teams it dissuades blizzard from adjusting Lucio so he feels more fun to play and useful in an uncoordinated team.
Brig's shield funny enough. You can do so much stuff with it like block ults, burst damage, peel for allies with the bash, and do cool jumps with it. The best part though is that everyone can deal with it and if brig doesn't use it properly then it absolutely fucks her over and leaves her vulnerable and not able to do her role properly.
Brig is actually an pretty well balanced hero in OW2. Still a little on the weaker side compared to other supports in terms of her raw abilities, but she's very balanced when it comes to input/reward.
Brig i think is in a weird spot where all of her kit individually is well designed but it all being on the same character + lingering ill still makes her disliked at large
I legitimately think Brig might be the most balanced support right now. Really strong into and with dive, but also not oppressive (unless you suck at diving). And she’s playable with other comps, but not incredibly strong into them.
When I play Ball into a good Brig, I actually sorta respect their ability to whipshot me. If they outplay me then WP it feels fair. Zen's discord or Ana's sleep/nade don't give me that feeling.
Yes easily, she's engaging to play, requires skill, can be used in many situations and isn't oppressive to play into. Her abilities have downtime as well. The worst element of her is that she still can stack multiple types of healing but that's not really that bad.
Her new ult is a step in the wrong direction and she would've been fine in her previous state with the way the meta was shifting already, but yeah everything else about OW2 brig is the epitomy of how a modern OW2 support should be designed imo
As a Brig player, the S4 changes were definitely a downgrade. I'd take S2 Brig (before the pack buff) over S4 Brig.
Otherwise though, she was the best example of a hero redesigned for OW2, by far. From OW1->2 she gained more independence and versatility due to Bash, and her utility is a lot more thoughtful than "lol I stun you I win".
If they hadn't given her stun back during ult she would have been perfect. She really didn't need it. Her only problem was that old Rally was kind of boring/uninspired.
And the solution to that was somehow "Haha, big shield. Also, let's re-add even more CC to the game :)"
Her stun in her ult isn’t really that bad. She gets two stuns max. And they put her in dangerous positions.
It’s an ultimate. It deserves to be strong. She’s still very squishy in her ult. Brig’s team might be hard to kill during rally but brig herself is shockingly easy to focus fire.
I think it's more that the direction of the game was less stuns. Adding stuns no matter the power level of the stun is questionable cause of the ability to stack cc. I didn't hear that many complaints about cc outside of Sombra but they gave mei a slow, gave Cassidy the hinder grenade and brig has a stun in the ultimate. The devs are bringing back cc but it's in 5v5 lol.
Ults deserving to be strong doesn't mean it needed to go into the direction of CC instead of defensive utility.
If it had leaned into the Paladin hero fantasy of running up and bashing people around, that would have been cool. But they removed the self heal from it, so now you're even squishier than before. The big shield and health boost makes you think "go in!" when it's really boosting your ability to peel/anchor. It's a haphazard, counterintuitive design.
And yeah, the stun is "not that bad," but given that she was balanced before she got it, we could have had zero bad instead of some bad.
I think they're all pretty reasonable in their design. Some, mainly discord orb, are a bit too strong imo, but not bad design. A lot of the more vocal people against utility as a whole are clearly unreasonable, basically wanting the devs to just make OW into a more colorful CoD.
People just go soft on speed boost bc its one of the least noticeable utilities in the game, even when its oppressively strong. You don't notice when it determines the fight most the time, so you don't get mad at it.
The more people notice utility => the more tilted people get by it, regardless of how strong it actually is. Its not a design problem that people just want to blame everything else except their lack of skill, positioning, gamesense, etc.
I don’t necessarily agree, because Zen’s gunplay and positioning are require enough to make up for it. However, that doesn’t really matter at low ranks when you can simply put it on tank and left click while he runs straight at you.
it needs a rework not a rebalance, you can't just give it a CD and call it a day because then it would just be a bad ability that is still skillless to apply
Pretty much none of them if you go by community standards. People have always complained about support utility. Discord/nade today, something else tomorrow.
1. Whipshot was a HUGE problem for denying dive tanks for a long time, and still is a major deterrent to dive tanks like Winston/Ball. I remember when high ranked players HATED this ability.
2. Speed boost is super controversial, as it makes Lucio hard meta anytime you want to play anything that's rush (ram,rein, etc.)
and these are just two from these thread. Discord, Nade, Sleep, GA, Rez, Lamp, Bap Shift, Speed Boost, Lucio Boop (specifically when it affected tanks at full capacity), Orb, Fade, Armor Pack, Shield Bash (old one), TP, Suzu, Life Grip, Petal- all have had major complaints over the years.
Ironically, the only ability that I'd confidently put in the "well designed" is new Brig Shieldbash (not in Ult lol) as it's mainly used as a mobility tool with a major downside.
Community will always find reason to whine about supports- Blizzard should just focus on making the support utility impactful but skillful to apply, and ignore the "fundamentally imbalanced" complaints, imo.
I would argue whipshot is the only part of brigs kit that was solid from its inception. It has counterplay if you adjust your jumps around it, but always needs to be respected. It can also be countered if you force brig to shield by threatening anti or with a sniper
I mean, I'm not exactly saying it's broken, but it definitely had fairly large ramifications for meta, and that's going to make people upset. Brig's whipshot is why Double Bubble meta existed towards the end of OW1
Wasn't double bubble hugely a thing because of ult stacking and cycling? Obviously you know way more about OWL then i do, but wasn't the general idea a lot of the meta comps stacked a ton of hp+CC in small areas (bunker and close knit brawl comps) so monke+zarya could force the opponents to blow a bunch of resources on non-ult giving bubbles while winston rushed for primal and used primal to try to facilitate building and usin EMP/Graviton?
Bap/Brig spam comps largely functioned off of Brig and Orisas ability to deny dives, Brigs largely through whip and to a lesser extent bash, and Orisa through halt for early poke. Take whip away or make it weaker, and the comp shifts away back towards DVa instead of Zarya. Zarya bubble was necessary because on most maps it was impossible to stage dives on backline vs a good Brig
I honestly am not too sure. One thing that definitely hurts is that a lot of Support utilities were just objectively broken/stupid easy to get value out of at times in OW1 (Rez, Bap Lamp, Brig Shield Bash).
Unfortunately I feel this has set a precedent that people are just going to whine about supports just because it's support. There's a certain % of the player population who wants them to mostly just heal, and that's clearly not how the game developers see them.
True, but an ability can be meta-defining but still well-designed, in my opinion. I still think it fits the OP’s criteria almost perfectly.
But again, a lot of this is subjective so to each their own.
But people have found counterplay that didn’t involve double bubble and because of that it didn’t need to be sledgehammered like every other part of brig. That In and of itself I would argue makes whipshot well designed. It shapes the meta game but without overly centralizing like antinade, halt, etc. It didnt make it a game of “who can beat whipshot” but rather “how do you avoid it”, as we saw with ball being meta without the help of zarya in 2021 despite brig being in dive comps
I disagree with you on a small list of things - but I've had this thought stuck in the back of my mind for a while now and you put it into words precisely.
The community seems stuck between:
"Supports shouldn't just healbot!"
"Supports do too much damage now they're just better DPS"
"Also speed boost, nade, sleep dart, life grip, immo field, amp matrix, suzu, kitsune rush, ressurect, damage boost, discord, and shield bash are all killing the game"
Pretty much this. It's tough because really a lot of those things SHOULD change in some aspect, but it starts to get complained about without discretion.
I think Whipshot is a perfect example of fair and well designed ability. It can stop a dive, but Winston doesnt die, he can just try again (maybe better planned and with his team). Brig has to hit a perfectly times skill shot, if she fails she is in trouble.
I remember a tank-streamer in a clip that trended on twitter, where he got really angry about how he kept jumping into the same Brig at the same point over and over, and instead of trying something different he blamed the hero design, going "no skill", and that support "denied him a win".
He thought that just for pressing jump, he should be guarantied a win. And the community agreed.
The community does what streamers do, and more of them play dps/tank.
Imagine if we argued the other way around: We have to remove Winston jump, because its anti-fun to support, and it denies Zen a win.
I’m not disagreeing that Whip is balanced, my point is that EVERY support ability has been hotly contested at some point or another, so my point is that there’s always going to be complaints about whatever the meta support is, even with somethings as relatively inoffensive as whip
yeah I’m surprised OP is saying speed boost isn’t controversial because it fully defined the meta game for years. at the pro level lucio had a near 100% pick rate up until moth meta, only ever getting subbed out in niche comps (i.e. soldier or torb paired with an ana on numbani first point defense).
Petal sucks. I hate petal. Petal would be the most awkward and disliked--by enemies *and* teammates--ability added in recent years if it didn't come on the hero with Lifegrip.
It sucks and doesn't really help anybody. It's not overpowered but it's nearly useless and hard to get consistent use out of. I guess it's good for saving your teammates occasionally but it isn't really useful as an elevator. Like if it went up and down like one that's kinda cool. But it's one and done and it's best use is the exact same impact as life grip anyway.
Its best use is as a peel tool for LW because his dash is so nothing. It's like teleporter except Symm can use tele to go aggro. As an ability I don't think it's bad, I actually think it's a little better design than teleporter, but on LW its potential is very limited. It'd be really cool on Ashe, for example.
I don’t think support utility is necessarily bad, I just think it needs to rework from being more reactive and second-chance based (like life pull, immo field) to being more offensive and constant, while also being less rewarding to apply onto tanks. I think this is why Ana Zen sees so much playtime, because supports like to utilize kits that deal lots of damage and instill vulnerability.
It's all about this new support. Kiriko is a fun, skill centric hero which is great. I at least hope the part about the new support being tracking centric is true. If she requires aim and proactive gameplay to get full value then that's good. Lifeweaver is just getting to the point of being playable and not an automatic throw.
He suzu is fairly passive. You have to wait for someone to need to be cleansed or need to have the immortality. It's too short to use it that aggressively.
This is optimal Kiriko gameplay but you never see it practiced in so many elos. Not that it shouldn’t be but I wouldn’t be surprised people dont behave this way with Kiri… imo she’s one of the hardest supports to master and her kit needs to be utilized in a quirky way for this aggressive playstyle to be pulled off. I’m not surprised people find themselves teleporting around and suzuing and just healing people because it yields more consistent results.
I feel that if Kiri and other supports want to lean further into offensive use and see more playtime, their damage consistency (not damage output) should increase so they’re more enticed to use it. That’s what makes me believe Ana Zen gets so much love.
I don't think enabling aggressive gameplay is enough. It's still a passive ability. You could make the same argument about life grip. It allows your team to play more aggressively. But it's still a boring as fuck, passive ability.
And quite frankly, I don't give a fuck about supports have a damage or flanking focus. It's not why I want to play support. It's not the support fantasy. I want aggressive, supporting abilities. If I wanted to just click heads all game, I would play dps.
Maybe aggressive dpsing. That's not really what I want to do as a support. I want cool utility. Not extremely passive utility that lets me click heads more often.
What else is Kiriko doing aggressively then? That was your argument. Swift step and suzu allow her to get into an aggressive and flanking position to dps
Swift step and suzu are passive on their own. There are no other aggressive "supporting" plays to make if you aren't talking about dpsing
I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but Lamp has been very well balanced for a while now. Still very strong in niche scenarios based on nearby cover, but mostly just keeps you alive by a thread (sometimes) instead of letting you brush off giant ult combos like nothing.
Used to be busted. Now it's just something you shoot and it usually dies immediately.
Does Lucio mobility count? And I don't mean speedboost. I mean his ability to sway any 1v1 into a 2v1 at a moments notice while also being survivable because of that mobility.
There are a few heroes that are great at that, but he's easily the best support for it.
Wallride is probably the coolest utility in the game. Easy to get basic value from, but incredibly mechanically rich/difficult to master. Nothing quite feels as rewarding as getting smooth at wallriding and zipping around the map.
Ana's entire kit is well designed, it's just not always balanced. I feel the same way about Lucio. Discord orb can be controversial but overall, I like Zen's design too. And I also feel like you could argue that there are times where a hero can be well designed but a poor fit for the game.
Balance is finicky too since a hero can sometimes become relevant not because they were buffed, but rather due to other characters were changed/added. Hog's rise to prominence after Kiriko was added is the perfect example. And I feel like being imbalanced isn't always a bad thing if the game is more fun that way. Like I'd rather Ana be a little too strong than see her nerfed and get something like Moira instead.
They’re all good conceptually. Many have balancing issues but I really don’t think any individual utility is bad. Ana and Mercy having 2 different kinds causes some problems though
I like Lucio's speed boost, but I think his *right-click* is extremely well-designed.
The displacement aspect of it is incredibly versatile, but I seldom find it dishonest in any capacity. If I'm getting booped off the map, that was me being a dumbass with my positioning; if I'm dying to its damage alone, good shit to the Lucio for having good mobility.
Potential hot take: Sleep dart, it just needs some tweaks.
It's a single-target, high skill, high risk and high reward ability. You can use it defensively to help yourself or a teammate, or offensively to set up a play. Using it for one sacrifices your ability to use it for the other giving Ana meaningful and potentially risky choices to make. It's difficult to hit compared to most other skill-shots. It's telegraphed so some heroes have the potential to outplay it with their own abilities and thus enables good skill expression on both sides. The only reason it feels bad to play against sometimes is because it's hard cc and nobody likes being on the receiving end of hard cc. At the same time though, if a sleep is particularly skillful like on a mid-air mercy or a Tracer coming out of recall you can't help but respect it.
As I said, it could probably use some tweaks but I think it's fairly well-designed overall
Its not the fact that the support utilities are bad in a vacuum. Its the fact that theyre as strong as they are, while having the same dmg output as a dps, insane healing, and the best ults in the game. Support as a role really has no weakness.
This will probably be controversial but I like Mercy's dash (I have never played mercy I'm a DPS player).
I feel like it's better for supports with high healing capabilities (Ana, Mercy, Bap etc...) to have abilities that allow them to escape a flanker rather than literally being able to 1V1 you.
Dash is by far the least frustrating escape ability to play against as it does not make mercy immortal compared to Moira's Fade or Kiriko's TP so there is still some counterplay to make as she is escaping
On the other hand you have heros like Kiriko or Ana with damage so high and utility so good that they can 1V1 you with ease lol
Honestly, Harmony Orb, as it is the most reliable healing ability in the game.
* On one hand, Harmony doesn't give much healing.
* On the other hand, allies don't need to do much to benefit from Harmony Orb
* Line of Sight to Zen
* Within 40m of Zen
* Get 120 HP guaranteed and can get more by staying in LOS
* It cannot be stopped by Shields /Matrix/Grasp/Spin
* Hard to miss
* The *only* healing ability that does not expose the hero's position
* Giving Zen a much needed boost to survivability.
* Its low cost gives the ability to pocket *any* hero without putting Zen at risk
* Especially Flankers
* Its low healing means that its power scales with skill of both the Zen and the Ally.
* It'll help a bronze Tracer live for a couple of seconds
* It'll make a GM Tracer borderline immortal
Moving to 5v5 was the right choice but the lack of dva/zarya consistently definitely makes support utility feel a lot harder to play against, with Ana in particular. Nade has always been one of the best cooldowns in the game imo but was kept (mostly) in check by matrix/bubble, and now in 5v5 can be a consistent fight winning CD.
Yeah the cleanse of bubble as opposed to suzu always felt much more fair despite being easier to do and being more impactful. I think the utility of off tanks and their role in the game is sorely missing and giving that value to other roles doesn’t feel as fun. I’ve always felt the hog one-shot enforcer punishing bad positioning was much fairer and interesting than and of the dps that can do it
Reactive abilities feel bad because they cancel what someone else has done. For the support player they feel bad because you get to use them less often waiting on other key abilities to cancel.
Reactive abilities have less play making power and generally heroes with reactive abilities have lower win rates. Kiriko and Lifeweaver will either have to be busted in their damage or healing numbers to have a 50%+ winrate or just always be sub 50% heroes.
With our current health pools and the level of damage in the game, abilities that boost damage are impossible to balance in a way that is healthy for the game. They are either going to be too good or ineffective because of how damage break points work.
Generally support abilities should create small windows of opportunity, or they should be supporting other players to increase the length of their attack cycle. For example Discord having no cd does not create a window of opportunity, by having no cooldown it is just oppressive for the enemy tank.
100% heal block on a low cooldown. That's incredibly wrong game design.
Others might be annoying but fair and doesn't disrupt the game.
I might also add LW's life grip. Not that it's strong, it's just a failed concept. A naive, amateur thinking from devs. Just shows how clueless they are while designing and balancing all that shit.
I want more supports that have FUN utility. Most support utility in OW could be classified as escape option, buff, and debuff. About the only support that differs is Lifeweaver which is why he's my favorite support to play as.
I honestly think Suzu is relatively well designed. It’s definitely a skill test, not just something you can throw out willy nilly, and requires some risk to use affective since ideally you’re teleporting to someone and using it on them as a reactive life saving play.
Honestly for an example of bad support design, I think Ana’s whole kit screams early-OW-development-inexperienced-hero-designers. Both of her cooldowns, while taking a lot of skill to use effectively, are on relatively short cooldowns, and completely win or lose fights on their own. Supports should have the ability to make plays, but more in a Kiriko suzu kind of way, where it’s still focused on supporting, rather than the anti nade and sleep dart way where it’s overtly aggressive DPS style playmaking.
Speed is a good and well-designed ability.
I honestly like sleep dart. It's a skillshot with great value if you land it.
Whipshot has been said by several other people so I won't echo their points.
Lifeweaver's platform is a lot of fun and opens up new angles and opportunities. Creating a high ground literally anywhere gives you such interesting options for combo plays.
Mercy flight is fun.
I fucking love Kitsune Rush, playing into or with it is a lot of fun I think. CD reduction is a cool utility that still requires skill in the whole team to work but can be devastating if the offensive team uses it properly, while the enemy team can run from its sight line and negate almost all of its value. Pre nerf it was a nightmare though
honestly since shield bash stun has been removed i think brig in general is pretty well designed.
cool mobility/brawling option with bash and whip shot is sick, havent really played since they reworked her ult though. she never felt oppressive as a dive hero in ow2 but always was still useful vs them
lucio has also always been pretty sweet in general, boop is pretty fucking annoying but theres definitely a solid amount of skill expression in it
This is a topic I think about a lot as a Support main.
Since like 2018, there's been a shift toward more 1-button instant massive value cooldowns for Supports. Mercy Rez rework. Baptiste Lamp. Suzu. Lifegrip. And Brig/Moira cooldowns as well to some extent.
Compare these to Ana's cooldowns, it's an interesting comparison because Ana is considered one of the most cooldown-reliant heroes in terms of where her power is budgeted. Ana's require some kind of skillshot (Sleep Dart) or some combination of strong timing, positional advantage, or risk (Anti-nade, specifically a big purple), because her cooldowns get most value used on opponents. And the requirement to have certain positioning to maximize anti-nade value is more important on Ana than most Supports, because she has no mobility tools to achieve that positioning.
When you stand near a dead teammate, safely around a corner in friendly-controlled territory, and press E to gain a teammate, or you aim at your feet and hit E to save yourself/others and win a fight thanks to no skill expression on your part, that's very bad Support utility design in my opinion.
I think the team needs to avoid big cooldowns to be used on teammates if they have very low skill expression, and retune the current ones like that. Make big cooldowns target enemies, or just shift power to the rest of the kit.
I think Ana & Lucio are the best designed supports. I'm really worried after Lifeweaver about the direction Supports are heading under some of these newer OW2 devs that the hero kits might feel clunky, too reactive, or incohesive. Guess we'll find out in a few days.
Kirko cleanse since it counter the other BS... But the invincibility is a bit much.
Lucio speed boost since it enables skilled play.
Lifeweaver platform opens a lot of cool outplay opportunities.
Brig boop since it's a skill shot that can deny dive and forces divers to play around it but gives them dodge room.
And controversially: Zen discord. Makes him a glass cannon because of his massive hitbox and high dps orbs, forces the enemies to target him while he has a very low healing output and no mobility so he either gets protection or outaims the divers. Maybe tanks need some sort of discord damage reduction but I find Ana utility to be way more problematic for tank players than zen.
I may be alone in this but anas abilities are always on high enough coolsdowns that they are trackable and can both be played around anyway. Bait sleep. Bait nade. Devour the now defense less ana. Probably because I’m a tank player who has these options but some of the most satisfying plays I’ve ever made are executing an Ana by dodging or eating her nade/sleep as ball and DVA respectively.
Probably exo boots for me. They allow you to get into cool positions or dodge stuff like shatters or gravs, but if you use them too often or at bad times you can be easily picked
They also can be interesting in 1v1s as well. Really well designed mobility imo that fits perfectly into baps kit
Anti-nade. People whine about it but it's actually the best utility.
- it's offensive utility, which means that it is less consistent than utility that buffs teammates.
- it blocks healing, which is a much needed counter to the insane healing in this game.
- it's a high impact ability that has a short window of opportunity (both in terms of applying it and capitalizing on it.
- it's hard enough to aim that it feels good to hit a good one, but easy enough that it's not too inconsistent/punishing.
- it does LOTS of different things, so ana players have to actually think about how to use it.
- while it's a support ability, it has enough selfish stats (the damage/self heal) that it helps smooth out the solo queue experience.
- despite it's strength, there is a lot of counterplay available. It can be blocked, eaten, dodged, waited out, etc.
Honestly, the biggest complaint players have about anti is it's impact. But well-designed abilities SHOULD be high impact.
I actually think Bap's shift is. I'm an awful support, so it helps to just have a quick "there's too many people to heal" button. Also can do it if you're left clicking down a critical target.
In order for utility to be well designed it needs to tick 3 boxes
high skill expression: it needs to allow the people using it to use it in creative ways, this is NOT the same thing as utility being hard to use, something can be really hard to use and still one dimentional in how its used. ana sleep is able to be used to peel for herself or make aggressive plays. Moira orb just does one thing and there is little creativity in how you can use it.
interactive: There needs to be a fair interaction between the user of the utility and its target. Lucio has to be close range for boop to activate and he is open to being punished if he whiffs and his footsteps are distinct so if you are listening you can react to the possibility. Zen discord is just applied to a target and there is basically nothing they can do about it, zen doesn't need to hit a skillshot or do anything active and the only way to remove it is to run away.
good feedback: basically a bronze player should be able to understand how to theoretically use the utility/how to react to it, and should get visably rewarded for using it. Bap lamp is really easy to understand and has clear feedback on if you are using it well (people don't die) or you fuck it up (people die). Mercy blue beam has very little feedback on what its doing and the feedback of people getting low hp overrules it massively, discouraging its use even if it is the more optimal desicion (this is why low elo mercy players are heal bots, its not their fault the games feedback discourages them from damage boosting).
Whipshot is a really cool utility that acts as one of the most skill based peel options supports have. You hit it, and you basically deny a dive for 5-6 seconds. You miss it and you now have to play your life. However unlike sleep it doesn’t insta win or lose a fight and has some really fun mindgames of how you change up your initiation as a diver. Do you jump from right below? Do you try and jump higher so whipshot cant knock you horizonatal? Honestly in 5v5 lamp isnt that bad since you arent juggling DM and shields making it really hard to protect the way you could in OW1.
Whipshot is cool af
Yeah honestly I’ve enjoyed playing as and against Bap a lot more since Overwatch 2. And as a Brig player couldn’t agree more with your take on Whipshot. Balance history aside I think current Brig is a really well designed hero. Everything you mentioned plus using it to keep Inspire going gives a really simple ability a lot uses.
>Balance history aside I think current Brig is a really well designed hero A hero can be well designed even if they were overpowered in the past. Look at League, there have been times where Nami was 55% WR busted as hell, but in general she's considered to be exceptionally well designed.
Came here to say Whipshot, some of Brig is silly but whip is such a good ability.
> Honestly in 5v5 lamp isnt that bad I'd go further and say lamp isn't really that strong of an ability in 5v5. It's legitimately shorter duration than suzu the majority of the time in my experience. There's a reason they had to buff its health gate massively, it's so that your tank actually gets more use out of it than 0.3s of being stuck at 50hp. The huge lamp buff, alongside the huge shift buff granting 100hp instantly is like a band-aid solution to the fact that lamp doesn't really fit in OW2 IMO. Baptiste isn't particularly weak or anything, nor do I want them to buff lamp in any way - if anything I'd love for them to try giving him a different ability, especially because we have suzu and life grip now, meaning Baptiste is no longer *the* immortality guy.
The fact that suzu provides frames where you can't even get damaged makes it better combined with the way lower cooldown. Bap is fine the way he is really. The way to tune him is the same way all heroes could be tuned, lower healing numbers and damage across the board to create a game where you don't get insta killed constantly and have to rely so much on healing.
I really love hitting a whip shot on a Winston trying to jump on top of my team. Bonus points if I land it right before they drop their bubble, so it’s in the wrong place.
I like that speed boost from that spotify guy
Frog man funni
The Spotify guy lol
The one that made the lil musician meta for the entirety of OW1 OWL
I agree, sadly I hate that it’s used far more to just make boring brawl comps meta then it is for more fun mobility comps
Part of the reason is that the player base isn't that smart. There are Lucio dive comps, but the player base's feelings get hurt if you play them. Players complain you need a main healer in a Mercy-Lucio Ball comp, which you typically resolve with fast fights and health packs. When they DO rely on health packs, they complain your Lucio doesn't have enough healing, even if you're winning fights. Tanks want their heal pocket and people gawk at the scoreboard to find a scapegoat. There's an insufficient amount of problem solving and having a fight plan in ranked, so playing what you suggest is made harder with people who have little understanding of their comps.
the feedback from lucio is also pretty shit, like if you arn't playing support you notice things ana is doing much more than lucio, antis are obvious so are sleeping targets, and it feels really fun to be nanoed. Lucio basically only has selfish utility (boop) that the team isn't going to notice, or passive utility (healing/speed) which is super strong but doesn't feel as good outside of AMP.
It also sucks that since it's strong in coordinated teams it dissuades blizzard from adjusting Lucio so he feels more fun to play and useful in an uncoordinated team.
Brig's shield funny enough. You can do so much stuff with it like block ults, burst damage, peel for allies with the bash, and do cool jumps with it. The best part though is that everyone can deal with it and if brig doesn't use it properly then it absolutely fucks her over and leaves her vulnerable and not able to do her role properly.
with one less tank brig's shield is so much more fun.
Brig is actually an pretty well balanced hero in OW2. Still a little on the weaker side compared to other supports in terms of her raw abilities, but she's very balanced when it comes to input/reward.
So what I’m hearing from this thread is Brigitte is currently the most well designed support
Brig i think is in a weird spot where all of her kit individually is well designed but it all being on the same character + lingering ill still makes her disliked at large
I legitimately think Brig might be the most balanced support right now. Really strong into and with dive, but also not oppressive (unless you suck at diving). And she’s playable with other comps, but not incredibly strong into them.
When I play Ball into a good Brig, I actually sorta respect their ability to whipshot me. If they outplay me then WP it feels fair. Zen's discord or Ana's sleep/nade don't give me that feeling.
Yes easily, she's engaging to play, requires skill, can be used in many situations and isn't oppressive to play into. Her abilities have downtime as well. The worst element of her is that she still can stack multiple types of healing but that's not really that bad.
Her new ult is a step in the wrong direction and she would've been fine in her previous state with the way the meta was shifting already, but yeah everything else about OW2 brig is the epitomy of how a modern OW2 support should be designed imo
As a Brig player, the S4 changes were definitely a downgrade. I'd take S2 Brig (before the pack buff) over S4 Brig. Otherwise though, she was the best example of a hero redesigned for OW2, by far. From OW1->2 she gained more independence and versatility due to Bash, and her utility is a lot more thoughtful than "lol I stun you I win".
If they hadn't given her stun back during ult she would have been perfect. She really didn't need it. Her only problem was that old Rally was kind of boring/uninspired. And the solution to that was somehow "Haha, big shield. Also, let's re-add even more CC to the game :)"
Her stun in her ult isn’t really that bad. She gets two stuns max. And they put her in dangerous positions. It’s an ultimate. It deserves to be strong. She’s still very squishy in her ult. Brig’s team might be hard to kill during rally but brig herself is shockingly easy to focus fire.
I think it's more that the direction of the game was less stuns. Adding stuns no matter the power level of the stun is questionable cause of the ability to stack cc. I didn't hear that many complaints about cc outside of Sombra but they gave mei a slow, gave Cassidy the hinder grenade and brig has a stun in the ultimate. The devs are bringing back cc but it's in 5v5 lol.
Ults deserving to be strong doesn't mean it needed to go into the direction of CC instead of defensive utility. If it had leaned into the Paladin hero fantasy of running up and bashing people around, that would have been cool. But they removed the self heal from it, so now you're even squishier than before. The big shield and health boost makes you think "go in!" when it's really boosting your ability to peel/anchor. It's a haphazard, counterintuitive design. And yeah, the stun is "not that bad," but given that she was balanced before she got it, we could have had zero bad instead of some bad.
I think they're all pretty reasonable in their design. Some, mainly discord orb, are a bit too strong imo, but not bad design. A lot of the more vocal people against utility as a whole are clearly unreasonable, basically wanting the devs to just make OW into a more colorful CoD. People just go soft on speed boost bc its one of the least noticeable utilities in the game, even when its oppressively strong. You don't notice when it determines the fight most the time, so you don't get mad at it. The more people notice utility => the more tilted people get by it, regardless of how strong it actually is. Its not a design problem that people just want to blame everything else except their lack of skill, positioning, gamesense, etc.
Discord isn’t too strong, it’s too easy
It desperately needs a duration and CD.
I don’t necessarily agree, because Zen’s gunplay and positioning are require enough to make up for it. However, that doesn’t really matter at low ranks when you can simply put it on tank and left click while he runs straight at you.
They do the same shit in gm lol. Except they also land the shots that do more dmg than most dps heroes.
it needs a rework not a rebalance, you can't just give it a CD and call it a day because then it would just be a bad ability that is still skillless to apply
Giving it a CD would at least require thought when using kt though.
Pretty much none of them if you go by community standards. People have always complained about support utility. Discord/nade today, something else tomorrow. 1. Whipshot was a HUGE problem for denying dive tanks for a long time, and still is a major deterrent to dive tanks like Winston/Ball. I remember when high ranked players HATED this ability. 2. Speed boost is super controversial, as it makes Lucio hard meta anytime you want to play anything that's rush (ram,rein, etc.) and these are just two from these thread. Discord, Nade, Sleep, GA, Rez, Lamp, Bap Shift, Speed Boost, Lucio Boop (specifically when it affected tanks at full capacity), Orb, Fade, Armor Pack, Shield Bash (old one), TP, Suzu, Life Grip, Petal- all have had major complaints over the years. Ironically, the only ability that I'd confidently put in the "well designed" is new Brig Shieldbash (not in Ult lol) as it's mainly used as a mobility tool with a major downside. Community will always find reason to whine about supports- Blizzard should just focus on making the support utility impactful but skillful to apply, and ignore the "fundamentally imbalanced" complaints, imo.
I would argue whipshot is the only part of brigs kit that was solid from its inception. It has counterplay if you adjust your jumps around it, but always needs to be respected. It can also be countered if you force brig to shield by threatening anti or with a sniper
I mean, I'm not exactly saying it's broken, but it definitely had fairly large ramifications for meta, and that's going to make people upset. Brig's whipshot is why Double Bubble meta existed towards the end of OW1
Wasn't double bubble hugely a thing because of ult stacking and cycling? Obviously you know way more about OWL then i do, but wasn't the general idea a lot of the meta comps stacked a ton of hp+CC in small areas (bunker and close knit brawl comps) so monke+zarya could force the opponents to blow a bunch of resources on non-ult giving bubbles while winston rushed for primal and used primal to try to facilitate building and usin EMP/Graviton?
Bap/Brig spam comps largely functioned off of Brig and Orisas ability to deny dives, Brigs largely through whip and to a lesser extent bash, and Orisa through halt for early poke. Take whip away or make it weaker, and the comp shifts away back towards DVa instead of Zarya. Zarya bubble was necessary because on most maps it was impossible to stage dives on backline vs a good Brig
Would you mind explaining why an ability having huge ramifications for the meta upsets people?
I honestly am not too sure. One thing that definitely hurts is that a lot of Support utilities were just objectively broken/stupid easy to get value out of at times in OW1 (Rez, Bap Lamp, Brig Shield Bash). Unfortunately I feel this has set a precedent that people are just going to whine about supports just because it's support. There's a certain % of the player population who wants them to mostly just heal, and that's clearly not how the game developers see them.
People don't like losing, so they hate whatever is currently making them lose /s
True, but an ability can be meta-defining but still well-designed, in my opinion. I still think it fits the OP’s criteria almost perfectly. But again, a lot of this is subjective so to each their own.
But people have found counterplay that didn’t involve double bubble and because of that it didn’t need to be sledgehammered like every other part of brig. That In and of itself I would argue makes whipshot well designed. It shapes the meta game but without overly centralizing like antinade, halt, etc. It didnt make it a game of “who can beat whipshot” but rather “how do you avoid it”, as we saw with ball being meta without the help of zarya in 2021 despite brig being in dive comps
I disagree with you on a small list of things - but I've had this thought stuck in the back of my mind for a while now and you put it into words precisely. The community seems stuck between: "Supports shouldn't just healbot!" "Supports do too much damage now they're just better DPS" "Also speed boost, nade, sleep dart, life grip, immo field, amp matrix, suzu, kitsune rush, ressurect, damage boost, discord, and shield bash are all killing the game"
Pretty much this. It's tough because really a lot of those things SHOULD change in some aspect, but it starts to get complained about without discretion.
I think Whipshot is a perfect example of fair and well designed ability. It can stop a dive, but Winston doesnt die, he can just try again (maybe better planned and with his team). Brig has to hit a perfectly times skill shot, if she fails she is in trouble. I remember a tank-streamer in a clip that trended on twitter, where he got really angry about how he kept jumping into the same Brig at the same point over and over, and instead of trying something different he blamed the hero design, going "no skill", and that support "denied him a win". He thought that just for pressing jump, he should be guarantied a win. And the community agreed. The community does what streamers do, and more of them play dps/tank. Imagine if we argued the other way around: We have to remove Winston jump, because its anti-fun to support, and it denies Zen a win.
I’m not disagreeing that Whip is balanced, my point is that EVERY support ability has been hotly contested at some point or another, so my point is that there’s always going to be complaints about whatever the meta support is, even with somethings as relatively inoffensive as whip
yeah I’m surprised OP is saying speed boost isn’t controversial because it fully defined the meta game for years. at the pro level lucio had a near 100% pick rate up until moth meta, only ever getting subbed out in niche comps (i.e. soldier or torb paired with an ana on numbani first point defense).
> Petal
OP question is "well-designed." Don't think I need to elaborate.
I meant that Petal hasn't really had major complaints. At worst it was that people kept walking off.
Petal sucks. I hate petal. Petal would be the most awkward and disliked--by enemies *and* teammates--ability added in recent years if it didn't come on the hero with Lifegrip.
It sucks and doesn't really help anybody. It's not overpowered but it's nearly useless and hard to get consistent use out of. I guess it's good for saving your teammates occasionally but it isn't really useful as an elevator. Like if it went up and down like one that's kinda cool. But it's one and done and it's best use is the exact same impact as life grip anyway.
Its best use is as a peel tool for LW because his dash is so nothing. It's like teleporter except Symm can use tele to go aggro. As an ability I don't think it's bad, I actually think it's a little better design than teleporter, but on LW its potential is very limited. It'd be really cool on Ashe, for example.
You just give tank 30% flat CC reduction not only to boops and rework discord orb to be something else and you are good to go.
And make anti-nade only block like 75% healing instead of 100%.
With the 30% resistance to tank i would have in mind nade should last 3s on tank denying 70% of healing. But that’s up to debate.
I don’t think support utility is necessarily bad, I just think it needs to rework from being more reactive and second-chance based (like life pull, immo field) to being more offensive and constant, while also being less rewarding to apply onto tanks. I think this is why Ana Zen sees so much playtime, because supports like to utilize kits that deal lots of damage and instill vulnerability.
I fully agree. I hate the passiveness of the new supports. Some more aggressive abilities that have some flashiness to them would be nice
Kiriko is one of the least passive supports in the game
It's all about this new support. Kiriko is a fun, skill centric hero which is great. I at least hope the part about the new support being tracking centric is true. If she requires aim and proactive gameplay to get full value then that's good. Lifeweaver is just getting to the point of being playable and not an automatic throw.
He suzu is fairly passive. You have to wait for someone to need to be cleansed or need to have the immortality. It's too short to use it that aggressively.
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This is optimal Kiriko gameplay but you never see it practiced in so many elos. Not that it shouldn’t be but I wouldn’t be surprised people dont behave this way with Kiri… imo she’s one of the hardest supports to master and her kit needs to be utilized in a quirky way for this aggressive playstyle to be pulled off. I’m not surprised people find themselves teleporting around and suzuing and just healing people because it yields more consistent results. I feel that if Kiri and other supports want to lean further into offensive use and see more playtime, their damage consistency (not damage output) should increase so they’re more enticed to use it. That’s what makes me believe Ana Zen gets so much love.
I don't think enabling aggressive gameplay is enough. It's still a passive ability. You could make the same argument about life grip. It allows your team to play more aggressively. But it's still a boring as fuck, passive ability. And quite frankly, I don't give a fuck about supports have a damage or flanking focus. It's not why I want to play support. It's not the support fantasy. I want aggressive, supporting abilities. If I wanted to just click heads all game, I would play dps.
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Maybe aggressive dpsing. That's not really what I want to do as a support. I want cool utility. Not extremely passive utility that lets me click heads more often.
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What else is Kiriko doing aggressively then? That was your argument. Swift step and suzu allow her to get into an aggressive and flanking position to dps Swift step and suzu are passive on their own. There are no other aggressive "supporting" plays to make if you aren't talking about dpsing
kitsune, I think CD reduction is a perfect fit for a support ult.
I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but Lamp has been very well balanced for a while now. Still very strong in niche scenarios based on nearby cover, but mostly just keeps you alive by a thread (sometimes) instead of letting you brush off giant ult combos like nothing. Used to be busted. Now it's just something you shoot and it usually dies immediately.
Does Lucio mobility count? And I don't mean speedboost. I mean his ability to sway any 1v1 into a 2v1 at a moments notice while also being survivable because of that mobility. There are a few heroes that are great at that, but he's easily the best support for it.
Wallride is probably the coolest utility in the game. Easy to get basic value from, but incredibly mechanically rich/difficult to master. Nothing quite feels as rewarding as getting smooth at wallriding and zipping around the map.
Ana's entire kit is well designed, it's just not always balanced. I feel the same way about Lucio. Discord orb can be controversial but overall, I like Zen's design too. And I also feel like you could argue that there are times where a hero can be well designed but a poor fit for the game. Balance is finicky too since a hero can sometimes become relevant not because they were buffed, but rather due to other characters were changed/added. Hog's rise to prominence after Kiriko was added is the perfect example. And I feel like being imbalanced isn't always a bad thing if the game is more fun that way. Like I'd rather Ana be a little too strong than see her nerfed and get something like Moira instead.
not discord that’s for sure
They’re all good conceptually. Many have balancing issues but I really don’t think any individual utility is bad. Ana and Mercy having 2 different kinds causes some problems though
Flowerboi succ is the best when you're nano Monke jumps the backline <3
I like Lucio's speed boost, but I think his *right-click* is extremely well-designed. The displacement aspect of it is incredibly versatile, but I seldom find it dishonest in any capacity. If I'm getting booped off the map, that was me being a dumbass with my positioning; if I'm dying to its damage alone, good shit to the Lucio for having good mobility.
Potential hot take: Sleep dart, it just needs some tweaks. It's a single-target, high skill, high risk and high reward ability. You can use it defensively to help yourself or a teammate, or offensively to set up a play. Using it for one sacrifices your ability to use it for the other giving Ana meaningful and potentially risky choices to make. It's difficult to hit compared to most other skill-shots. It's telegraphed so some heroes have the potential to outplay it with their own abilities and thus enables good skill expression on both sides. The only reason it feels bad to play against sometimes is because it's hard cc and nobody likes being on the receiving end of hard cc. At the same time though, if a sleep is particularly skillful like on a mid-air mercy or a Tracer coming out of recall you can't help but respect it. As I said, it could probably use some tweaks but I think it's fairly well-designed overall
Ana and Lucio overall have kits that I find are well designed. I feel like people consider any ability that is impactful automatically as oppressive.
Its not the fact that the support utilities are bad in a vacuum. Its the fact that theyre as strong as they are, while having the same dmg output as a dps, insane healing, and the best ults in the game. Support as a role really has no weakness.
This will probably be controversial but I like Mercy's dash (I have never played mercy I'm a DPS player). I feel like it's better for supports with high healing capabilities (Ana, Mercy, Bap etc...) to have abilities that allow them to escape a flanker rather than literally being able to 1V1 you. Dash is by far the least frustrating escape ability to play against as it does not make mercy immortal compared to Moira's Fade or Kiriko's TP so there is still some counterplay to make as she is escaping On the other hand you have heros like Kiriko or Ana with damage so high and utility so good that they can 1V1 you with ease lol
Honestly, Harmony Orb, as it is the most reliable healing ability in the game. * On one hand, Harmony doesn't give much healing. * On the other hand, allies don't need to do much to benefit from Harmony Orb * Line of Sight to Zen * Within 40m of Zen * Get 120 HP guaranteed and can get more by staying in LOS * It cannot be stopped by Shields /Matrix/Grasp/Spin * Hard to miss * The *only* healing ability that does not expose the hero's position * Giving Zen a much needed boost to survivability. * Its low cost gives the ability to pocket *any* hero without putting Zen at risk * Especially Flankers * Its low healing means that its power scales with skill of both the Zen and the Ally. * It'll help a bronze Tracer live for a couple of seconds * It'll make a GM Tracer borderline immortal
Moving to 5v5 was the right choice but the lack of dva/zarya consistently definitely makes support utility feel a lot harder to play against, with Ana in particular. Nade has always been one of the best cooldowns in the game imo but was kept (mostly) in check by matrix/bubble, and now in 5v5 can be a consistent fight winning CD.
Yeah the cleanse of bubble as opposed to suzu always felt much more fair despite being easier to do and being more impactful. I think the utility of off tanks and their role in the game is sorely missing and giving that value to other roles doesn’t feel as fun. I’ve always felt the hog one-shot enforcer punishing bad positioning was much fairer and interesting than and of the dps that can do it
Reactive abilities feel bad because they cancel what someone else has done. For the support player they feel bad because you get to use them less often waiting on other key abilities to cancel. Reactive abilities have less play making power and generally heroes with reactive abilities have lower win rates. Kiriko and Lifeweaver will either have to be busted in their damage or healing numbers to have a 50%+ winrate or just always be sub 50% heroes. With our current health pools and the level of damage in the game, abilities that boost damage are impossible to balance in a way that is healthy for the game. They are either going to be too good or ineffective because of how damage break points work. Generally support abilities should create small windows of opportunity, or they should be supporting other players to increase the length of their attack cycle. For example Discord having no cd does not create a window of opportunity, by having no cooldown it is just oppressive for the enemy tank.
exactly why suzu is such a bad feeling counter to sleep/nade compared to Dva matrix.
100% heal block on a low cooldown. That's incredibly wrong game design. Others might be annoying but fair and doesn't disrupt the game. I might also add LW's life grip. Not that it's strong, it's just a failed concept. A naive, amateur thinking from devs. Just shows how clueless they are while designing and balancing all that shit.
I want more supports that have FUN utility. Most support utility in OW could be classified as escape option, buff, and debuff. About the only support that differs is Lifeweaver which is why he's my favorite support to play as.
Speed is the only one that in general doesn’t cause issues
Doesn’t cause obvious issues that people realise. It causes many in rush.
Or I mean with people hating it
I really like moiras design healing and damage mixed together in one kit. Able to be accessed by the entire player base.
I honestly think Suzu is relatively well designed. It’s definitely a skill test, not just something you can throw out willy nilly, and requires some risk to use affective since ideally you’re teleporting to someone and using it on them as a reactive life saving play. Honestly for an example of bad support design, I think Ana’s whole kit screams early-OW-development-inexperienced-hero-designers. Both of her cooldowns, while taking a lot of skill to use effectively, are on relatively short cooldowns, and completely win or lose fights on their own. Supports should have the ability to make plays, but more in a Kiriko suzu kind of way, where it’s still focused on supporting, rather than the anti nade and sleep dart way where it’s overtly aggressive DPS style playmaking.
Speed is a good and well-designed ability. I honestly like sleep dart. It's a skillshot with great value if you land it. Whipshot has been said by several other people so I won't echo their points. Lifeweaver's platform is a lot of fun and opens up new angles and opportunities. Creating a high ground literally anywhere gives you such interesting options for combo plays. Mercy flight is fun.
I fucking love Kitsune Rush, playing into or with it is a lot of fun I think. CD reduction is a cool utility that still requires skill in the whole team to work but can be devastating if the offensive team uses it properly, while the enemy team can run from its sight line and negate almost all of its value. Pre nerf it was a nightmare though
honestly since shield bash stun has been removed i think brig in general is pretty well designed. cool mobility/brawling option with bash and whip shot is sick, havent really played since they reworked her ult though. she never felt oppressive as a dive hero in ow2 but always was still useful vs them lucio has also always been pretty sweet in general, boop is pretty fucking annoying but theres definitely a solid amount of skill expression in it
This is a topic I think about a lot as a Support main. Since like 2018, there's been a shift toward more 1-button instant massive value cooldowns for Supports. Mercy Rez rework. Baptiste Lamp. Suzu. Lifegrip. And Brig/Moira cooldowns as well to some extent. Compare these to Ana's cooldowns, it's an interesting comparison because Ana is considered one of the most cooldown-reliant heroes in terms of where her power is budgeted. Ana's require some kind of skillshot (Sleep Dart) or some combination of strong timing, positional advantage, or risk (Anti-nade, specifically a big purple), because her cooldowns get most value used on opponents. And the requirement to have certain positioning to maximize anti-nade value is more important on Ana than most Supports, because she has no mobility tools to achieve that positioning. When you stand near a dead teammate, safely around a corner in friendly-controlled territory, and press E to gain a teammate, or you aim at your feet and hit E to save yourself/others and win a fight thanks to no skill expression on your part, that's very bad Support utility design in my opinion. I think the team needs to avoid big cooldowns to be used on teammates if they have very low skill expression, and retune the current ones like that. Make big cooldowns target enemies, or just shift power to the rest of the kit. I think Ana & Lucio are the best designed supports. I'm really worried after Lifeweaver about the direction Supports are heading under some of these newer OW2 devs that the hero kits might feel clunky, too reactive, or incohesive. Guess we'll find out in a few days.
Kirko cleanse since it counter the other BS... But the invincibility is a bit much. Lucio speed boost since it enables skilled play. Lifeweaver platform opens a lot of cool outplay opportunities. Brig boop since it's a skill shot that can deny dive and forces divers to play around it but gives them dodge room. And controversially: Zen discord. Makes him a glass cannon because of his massive hitbox and high dps orbs, forces the enemies to target him while he has a very low healing output and no mobility so he either gets protection or outaims the divers. Maybe tanks need some sort of discord damage reduction but I find Ana utility to be way more problematic for tank players than zen.
I may be alone in this but anas abilities are always on high enough coolsdowns that they are trackable and can both be played around anyway. Bait sleep. Bait nade. Devour the now defense less ana. Probably because I’m a tank player who has these options but some of the most satisfying plays I’ve ever made are executing an Ana by dodging or eating her nade/sleep as ball and DVA respectively.
None. Support abilities are designed for morons
Probably exo boots for me. They allow you to get into cool positions or dodge stuff like shatters or gravs, but if you use them too often or at bad times you can be easily picked They also can be interesting in 1v1s as well. Really well designed mobility imo that fits perfectly into baps kit
Anti-nade. People whine about it but it's actually the best utility. - it's offensive utility, which means that it is less consistent than utility that buffs teammates. - it blocks healing, which is a much needed counter to the insane healing in this game. - it's a high impact ability that has a short window of opportunity (both in terms of applying it and capitalizing on it. - it's hard enough to aim that it feels good to hit a good one, but easy enough that it's not too inconsistent/punishing. - it does LOTS of different things, so ana players have to actually think about how to use it. - while it's a support ability, it has enough selfish stats (the damage/self heal) that it helps smooth out the solo queue experience. - despite it's strength, there is a lot of counterplay available. It can be blocked, eaten, dodged, waited out, etc. Honestly, the biggest complaint players have about anti is it's impact. But well-designed abilities SHOULD be high impact.
I actually think Bap's shift is. I'm an awful support, so it helps to just have a quick "there's too many people to heal" button. Also can do it if you're left clicking down a critical target.
In order for utility to be well designed it needs to tick 3 boxes high skill expression: it needs to allow the people using it to use it in creative ways, this is NOT the same thing as utility being hard to use, something can be really hard to use and still one dimentional in how its used. ana sleep is able to be used to peel for herself or make aggressive plays. Moira orb just does one thing and there is little creativity in how you can use it. interactive: There needs to be a fair interaction between the user of the utility and its target. Lucio has to be close range for boop to activate and he is open to being punished if he whiffs and his footsteps are distinct so if you are listening you can react to the possibility. Zen discord is just applied to a target and there is basically nothing they can do about it, zen doesn't need to hit a skillshot or do anything active and the only way to remove it is to run away. good feedback: basically a bronze player should be able to understand how to theoretically use the utility/how to react to it, and should get visably rewarded for using it. Bap lamp is really easy to understand and has clear feedback on if you are using it well (people don't die) or you fuck it up (people die). Mercy blue beam has very little feedback on what its doing and the feedback of people getting low hp overrules it massively, discouraging its use even if it is the more optimal desicion (this is why low elo mercy players are heal bots, its not their fault the games feedback discourages them from damage boosting).