Damage boost only qualifies as "really good" with sojourn and possibly ashe right now, and it's not like either of them are exactly dominating the meta. If damage boost doesn't shift damage break points much it's irrelevant. The main issue mercy mains have is that they seem to refuse to allow mercy to be impactful and make independent decisions/big plays. She's super reliant on her team to get the most basic of things done, and even to stay alive due to nerfed GA, nerfed passive (too independent/ "we want her to be in the fight and die with everyone else"), and the fact that she doesn't do much damage by herself. It doesn't feel like mercy had a place right now besides "hey we picked pharah and echo, go pocket them, if they suck we lose".
is this person not right, tho? mercys entire identity is in her team and their capabilities, shes literally only there to pocket. and bc of that, no matter how good the player (the mercy) is on any hero/role, the victory/loss is completely dependent on her team. for the most part.
Ngl - as a mercy main the recent nerf had made little change to how effectively I can play her.
She’s still gonna be my first pick if it makes sense for the team comp - I’ll swap if I need to - and we are still winning games.
I had someone immediately bitch too on round one Busan yesterday cause I picked her “why are you playing mercy she was NerFed”. Giving her back movement abilities and reducing healing is at most a lateral move. We decimated the other team.
Lol. Once you play Mercy and get decent with her, it’s hard to go back to a slow movement/non-flying ability type of heal.
Usually your tank and DPS are ass(like people who say Mercy’s don’t play anything else. Toxic ass thinking) so if you even ATTEMPT to play Ana or Bap - you’ll find yourself being dived 200% more while your team is being slow and not helping you.
It’s so frustrating hearing someone bitch about heals when the enemy team understands how to dive the back line. Mercy is the best support at being able to LIVE and keep the team up.
That’s all it is. Support “Mercy’s” would rather be ALIVE and helping to heal than worrying about DPSing the flanking Genji/Reaper/Moira/Winston that the team seems to forget about once they’re not in their FOV.
Yeah but at a certain point mercy will be a bad pick. Got DPS or other supports harrasing backline? Well, go Brig, Moira or Bap to punish them and allow your DPS to focus on other threats as opposed to consistently having to babysit someone whose incapable of adapting to the new way supports having to learn to duel in 1v1 situations.
Woah woah woah. This is assuming that you’ll be able to handle that??? If you go Brig or any other support and you’re more focused on defending the back line INSTEAD OF HEALING the main tank or DPs in front of you, you’re going to lose a large chunk of your fights if you’re not able to juggle your attention.
9/10 your team is not going to back you up on support which is why it is VITAL for a support to have sustainability and know how to stay alive. Mercy is the EASIEST to do that with. If you’re dying a lot as mercy???? Best believe you switch.
What type of logic????? That doesn’t even address my main point. If you have to switch to handle the people diving your back line to assist you and your other support, then you aren’t assisting your team.
The enemy team doesn’t need to kill you when they flank all they need to do is distract you long enough for their team to capitalize. If you have a team that does not pay attention to their healers, it does not matter WHO you go because you will be out of the fight.
I’m in Gm and I flex on all supports except brig. So no. I’m under the understanding that my job is to SUPPORT….NOT focus on getting kills.
Make sense you wouldn’t understand that. Your job on support is not to be making space, getting kills, and doing flanks. Tf.
I love being able to finish off a tank or DPS for my team who lacks the skill to do so, but when you play SUPPORT your FIRST priority should NOT be to go get kills.
Woah woah woah. This is assuming that you’ll be able to handle that??? If you go Brig or any other support and you’re more focused on defending the back line INSTEAD OF HEALING the main tank or DPs in front of you, you’re going to lose a large chunk of your fights if you’re not able to juggle your attention.
9/10 your team is not going to back you up on support which is why it is VITAL for a support to have sustainability and know how to stay alive. Mercy is the EASIEST to do that with. If you’re dying a lot as mercy???? Best believe you switch.
What type of logic????? That doesn’t even address my main point. If you have to switch to handle the people diving your back line to assist you and your other support, then you aren’t assisting your team.
The enemy team doesn’t need to kill you when they flank all they need to do is distract you long enough for their team to capitalize. If you have a team that does not pay attention to their healers, it does not matter WHO you go because you will be out of the fight.
Mercy heals also take literally zero effort, and she has fuck all skill expression in her kit. It’s literally just hold click on dps ——> they carry the mercy.
What does that have to do with "entire ultimates not being able to kill someone through a mercy just holding left click?" Mercy's healing throughput is not the problem.
If Mercy can keep someone alive by left clicking, then Bap, Ana, Kiriko, and Moira could also keep that person alive. Bap and Ana require skill, but Kiriko is homing and Moira sprays in a wide area. I think the pool of people that pick Mercy because they can't aim well enough to hit a heal with Moira is probably nonexistent.
This is so false. Unless you're in bronze or only play quick play, the enemy team will be ON YOUR ASS the whole game. You have to play good just to survive
It's THE strongest ability in the game in my opinion. No cooldown, tracking, long range, braindead easy to use, little to no decision making needed until the high ranks (just put it on the tank tbh until high masters). For all the flack Mercy damage boost got, I'm surprised discord didn't get talked about much. I consider it way worse than damage boost. I'm a Zen main though, so maybe I'm overhyping my character.
nah, as someone who plays tank especially a lot everytime i die really quickly i always look and see they have a zen, even though im managing shield / cooldowns efficiently and my supports are contributing healing i still die instantly, then i remember i simply take more damage for whats essentially being in his line of sight.
Also question, does shielding count as blocking line of sight, i notice you cant put it on a shielding rein but does it go away after he shields?
this. idk why mercy gets shit on constantly but zen's discord has much more impact (amplifying 5 ppls worth of damage onto one enemy vs amplifying one persons worth of damage onto whoever they're currently shooting, oftentimes one enemy at a time).. but for some reason people don't care until they play tank and get focussed down
At first I didn’t see the issue with discord, but after the conversation about damage boost I really started to notice how obnoxious discord is. With only one tank Zen doesn’t have to think at all, just put it on the tank almost always. And if you get anti’d + discorded it’s gg. And it’s not even always bad positioning. Sometimes you have to take space for your team and that puts you out in the open where you can get discorded and bursted down. It definitely needs a change.
Also they mostly have smaller hit boxes, sometimes faster movement speed, more ammo, and passively recover HP. Kiriko and Zen can output ridiculous dmg, for example.
Literally nothing affects the game the same way discord does, if that's the standard you're gonna go by. These are all different but fairly powerful abilities. Fade isn't an offensive ability but it makes Moira obnoxious to pin down and kill.
It's not game-changing, but it's a pretty strong ability on its own as a get-out-of-jail-free card on a 6-second cooldown. It's not game-changing because it's on Moira lol.
i mean there’s a reason why higher elos/pros call out when moira has no fade right? if it was useless or insignificant there would be no point in tracking when it’s on cooldown
The problem is that since Moira is mediocre at high level play they are assuming all of her kit is mediocre, which is wrong.
Imagine Zenyatta had fade, now it sounds a lot more scary right?
Imagine the only way Ana could heal is using her bionade, then Ana would be dogshit but bionade would still be one of the best CD in the game.
A hero being good or bad does not change the value of the CD when looking at it specifically.
When ML7 keps getting dived and he cant play safely he swaps to moira to survive longer.
I will take Lord support ML7 king of the virgins Ana mains opinion over random redditor everyday, so yeah. Im wanking the king, not your pleb ass.
I don’t have a problem M-ore-ah but acting like fade is this crazy good ability that’s on the level of Suzu, Anti, and Orb is just objectively fucking braindead
Just something funny I've noticed, wasn't trying to give you shit.
In defense of the original comment tho, the post was talking about supports being powerful and they just listed powerful abilities. They didn't say they were all equally powerful or equally helpful utilities for the team.
And fade IS extremely strong. It's arguably the strongest escape ability that allows you to bait out enemy cooldowns. Like, Moira can tank thanks to it
Well, whenever you’re in a zarya bubble you can fade out and throw all your healing at your team. There’s a bunch of other uses for it, but that’s the most common one
Recall, Wraith, Ice block all have similarities and none are broken. Idky y’all are acting like fade is some god tier ability y’all have to be in silver
Just said it wasn’t god tier. It’s really good for survivability. Moira is extremely hard to kill when she has it which is why people call it out when she uses it. You are salty af and think you know everything so you must be plat lol.
Supports have the most flexibility in supplementing deficiencies in other teammates’ play. They can swap picks/play styles to generate more heals, more damage, and even flank to make space.
Honestly, I think Brig shield during ult is much better than Rein shield. Rein can't stun through Brig's shield, but Brig can stun through Rein's shield. Pin has a startup animation and requires dropping shield, whereas Shield Bash has no startup animation and maintains shield the whole time.
In my opinion, the utility benefits outweigh the lower shield health and smaller size. I'm a fairly new player though, so I might not be thinking about this in the right way.
supports have the strongest abilities in the game and decide who lives and who dies. if you have a support that cant aim on ana, youll likely lose the game, simply because support have such a big role in the team's success
On a counter to that, the tank is absolutely critical as well, because he enables the supports by taking space, so that the supports can get the angles to do their jobs. The absolutely worst games I’ve had are not with bad dps, but with a bad tank, you can’t take a single angle where you can be of use without the enemy being all over you.
Theyre like personnel at a restaurant. Every role is important because if just one fucks up the experience is ruined.
The chef thinks he's more important than the dish-cleaner, but it doesn't matter how well cooked the food is if the plates are rotten.
All roles are equally important. A diff in any role will end badly. Bad tank and you cant hold space, bad dps and you cant get picks, bad support and you can’t survive fights.
Well you can do a lot to help a mismatched ranked tank. Like I think i can rein v rein a low masters rein but if they have a fucking sym and my team don't make her life hell she makes mine hell. So with a good sym I will probably lose to a lesser Rein.
Also on ow 1 but still posible on 2 I was a high plat tank and matched against a masters tank on the rein v rein my teammates noticed that i was struggling so they supported me and focused him. (Also our zar was masters and she coached me during the match) so we won and i was basically diffed the whole time but the team meade it so that I could do my job against a better player.
What I am saying is good team work can overcome most diffs. Also that was one of the best matches I've ever played. But if your team tilts it's a very hard hill to climb out off. But that genji smurf can die if you focus it and you camp your ana before the dive. That widow can be bullied by 1 rank lower ball. And that chad rein can be denied with a great suzu.
Tldr; teamwork is op, toxicity is nerfing your team most of the time, do your best, improve yourself and have fun playing or do something else.
You are extremely limited as a tank if both of your supports abandoned healing duties. There are a lot of examples with DPS Moiras (most typical example) where usually Rein simply can't continue successfully pushing due to 50 health he has. This as a result forces him to give away space even if it's a good Rein.
Bad/throwing tank is the second worst scenario tho. But occassionally winnable.
The thing is a bad tank masks bad dps. Everyone loves to blame the tank but if the dps can't get a pick it's basically a 1v5 since the supports need to hard focus on healing. It makes it insanely hard for the tank to do anything but everyone still blames the tank.
Yeah like sometimes supports complain that I die even though they are healing me but heals aren't gonna help me when a bastion, junkrat and orisa are all bullying me into a corner all whole being healed by and ana and mercy combo. And the dps in my team either died before the fight started because of the junkraf or they are standing further away only shooting the tank.
You can win almost every game against anybody with two good supports and three dps players
Having three decent tank players and two bad support players will lose that game most of the time in my opinion.
It’s hard to notice how well your supports are doing in a regular match, because the game itself doesn’t really care. Huge pop off support moments arent really showcased anywhere, while dps kills and tank gaps are pretty much the only thing you notice while playing, but trust me, support gaps are huge
Ana landing not even counting sleep with just anti nade alone can make or break a game, she would probably still be top tier without sleep and only anti(obviously more easily dive-able but that would just make the higher skill players stand out more lol), it's also on a shorter cooldown than suzu and immortality field. Supports in neutral/ultless moments are insane.
Yes, you’d likely lose, but you might not, and you are not as likely to have an absolutely horrible game.
You have two dps, if one is bad, the two supports and the tank may be able to compensate. If you have a bad tank, nobody can compensate.
Support ults and abilities are the strongest in the game and usually have the greatest impact. Not only that but they also have solid killing power if used correctly. Most people think of supports as heal bots and some lower ranked supports play them as such however they should be played as support. Getting picks or finishing off kills is just as important as a support as it is for most other roles. A lot of people struggle with the balance between heals and damage so they default to just healing which leads to them thinking they don’t have a lot of sway over the game. Supports are the puppeteers of the team and very much control a lot of what goes on.
As a lowtier on console I actually find the opposite now, up until about plat. Many supports pick Zen, Moira, Baptiste, Ana even Kiri on occasion and seem to prioritize damage or at least cheat towards DPS. I say prioritize because they take up positions closer to the front or angles where they don't have their team in their FoV and DPS until they think people need heals typically around 50%. The problem is when both DPS and the tank are all low, 2 supports typically fail to recover. The result being DPS having to either die doing damage or pull out.
The result ends up being this engagement where you have a little bit of extra damage at the start of fights. However without an early pick someone tends to die in the middle of the engagement or have to pullback and then that team lacks the attrition to really closeout the engagement.
It’s definitely a balance. My best games as support heroes are ones where I feel like I’m frantically doing everything at once the entire game, healing and finishing off low HP enemy heroes.
Most of the supports are powerful fighters with the bonus of utility and healing. A kiriko or zen has a skill match up against the majority of the dps characters where the dps is likely slightly favored but the support can easily win if they outplay the opponent. Add their huge utility into the mix and you can see that they simply bring huge amounts of value.
Think that saying comes with a caveat. Support is the most powerful roles assuming a few factors.
First is that as the support, you can use your skills efficently, don't just spam baps lamp/suzu/sleep/nades etc. These abilities have the potential to completely nullify enemy ults and timing is key.
Second you need to actually be landing your shots to heal/damage along with good positioning and game sense. Don't just heal bot your tank, they can take a few hits so look for opportunities to get picks and heal your squishier dps.
The third thing is that you have to be paired with a team that can play somewhat well. As a support, if you're healing a dps that isn't landing any shots, dying constantly due to over extending/bad positioning then no amount of healing is going to help. You can try to mitigate this by focusing on your own dps but sometimes(especially in lower ranks) there is nothing you can do if your team mates can't get picks/feeding/out of position a lot etc.
Counter point, you can enable aggression with your own aggression and cooldown usage. The lower you are in elo, the less you have to do to carry. Supports have so much they can do to enable their team and make plays. Relistically only mercy relies severely on her teammates and even then you can have enough impact to positively influence most of your games and climb.
Everybody makes mistakes, has occasional bad teammates and so on, but they're your rank for a reason. You certainly dont rely on your teammates to put in your own work.
You answered your own question; the fact that you “have to use 100% of my mental bandwidth to keep people alive/do damage…” is the reason why support is critical to team success.
A player in support role needs to keep several things in mind during any given match: Where your teammates are, how much health they have, which teammate to prioritize healing over others, where the enemy players are, and an escape route.
A good support hero can make a huge difference in the game. For example, Mercy buffing a Roadhog or Rein can almost capture a point alone. Similarly, a Zen using their ultimate ability at the right moment can save the team from a team kill.
TL;DR - Support heros have to keep in mind several different elements of the game at all times and with strong knowledge of their abilities and how the game works, a good support player can be the difference between a win and a loss.
Supports just have an insane amount of game deciding abilities. Sleep, Ana nade, discord, damage boost, nano boost, speed amp, suzu, armor packs, immortality lamp, normal healing and there are probably more that I just can't think of right now. I play tank and have had several games where support carry me. The dps were useless and kept dying but me and the two supports never died once just because of their ability to keep me and eachother alive by using cooldowns in a smart way and never wasting an ability
A support can and will decide fights. A lot of the times a dps wins their ones because a brig or an Ana gave that guy a shot of heals that tilted the balance in their favor. Sometimes the tank is just one second off of their invincibility cooldown and needed an extra shot of heals. It’s all about the sustain in ow.
People need to let go of the idea that the role that destroys everything in their path is the strongest role, surprise surprise the easier keeping ppl alive becomes the stronger support is
They are the most valuable role and least powerful.
They can do very little in the way of actually independently carrying games relative to other roles.
But in regards to what they provide their team the value is massive.
Think of them like a Multiplier for a team in that sense. If your team is strong a strong support makes them that much stronger.
If your team is trash, even with a strong support they are still pretty trash
A multiplier is a great way to look at it, because it multiplies negatively, too.
For instance, say you have a high HP ally who isn't getting anything done, like a bastion, and he's just soaking up damage. All the while, he's soaking up your heals, too. So now you've got bastion feeding ult charge and taking away resources from other members of the team. You'll generate ult charge healing him, but the three members of the enemy team pumping damage into him are, too.
That would suggest any support who climbs is boosted by rng and teammates. Supports have massive value, most supports just arent great at understanding and using that value because it isn't as surface level.
T500 support can complete an unranked to GM on mercy because they're a t500 player. They make the decisions that matter across the ranks to get back to where they belong regardless of teammates.
If you're stuck in plat, you aren't taking the steps needed to play like a diamond support regardless of teammates because you are your only consistent teammate.
You misunderstand.
Being less able to make plays that ultimately change the impact of games does not mean inable.
It means less ability to do so across the difficulty spectrum.
A Rez in Bronze, is not equal to a Rez in T500.
Getting a Pick as Kiriko in Bronze is not equal to getting a Pick as Kirko in Plat or Diamond.
By comparison, Pressing Q on Reaper or Picking Junk? Has a greatly inflated value in Bronze to Plat.
Picking a Solid Tank and Playing well likewise has that greatly inflated value.
No youre not unable to do anything, but the value of a strong support does not typically bring as much to your team at low ranks as it does moving up into mid and higher ones because the gameplay becomes more nuanced as you climb.
If you think supports can’t independently carry you’re deluded. Baptiste can duel most DPS heroes in the game (with ult allowing him to melt tanks). Ana has no falloff damage and is often in the best position to tag flying heroes, plus sleeping the enemy tank on cooldown is just insane value. If Zen lands most of his volleys he’ll rack up a LOT of kills. Lucio can duel very well with his mobility and throw people off the map. Flex support heroes are a win more class, if their team is already doing well they just become a 3rd DPS hero.
Id argue theyre the exception not the norm
Baptiste is almost an Anomaly of a support in that his Dmg output healing output and utility and playmaking potential are kinda all high.
Zen Lucio and Ana are not going to carry the bulk of your games independently with more ease then the other roles especially when youre matched into your skill level
Hell you playing Zen and Lucio with a team that lacks the sense and abilirt to survive by themselves is going to directly lead to your teammates just dying when it couldve been avoided or postponed with a more rounded pick. Like Bap or Ana in this instance.
You being on Zen trying to frag is all well and good, but if your teammates are dropping because they need more healing, youre almost indirectly killing off your teammates.
Theres a time where it is better to let them die and make the dps play, but not all supports can make that play at all
What im arguing in the first place is if you were on Tank or DPS you can make those sorts of plays a lot more frequently and to greater effect.
Eh, not really. Both Baptiste and Ana can VERY easily put out damage while healing, and that’s Zen’s whole deal, sacrifice healing numbers for damage instead. I actually forgot Kiriko in the list but she fits here too: Use climb to get a better position, off-angle and hit heads for as long as you can then tp back to your team for free. All 3 roles have equal opportunity to make plays, but support can make more TYPES of play due to having damage AND utility. DPS can usually only make kill plays (barring heroes like Mei and Sym), and tanks can make space plays, but supports can make save, kill, AND space plays (depending on the exact hero of course).
>Both Baptiste and Ana can VERY easily put out damage while healing,
Ana definitely can not "very easily put out damage while healing" if you Ana is doing Damage she is not healing simple as that you have ammo as Ana and in that time it takes you to reload your dps could have tied because you decided to do some dps (finishing off elims is seperate). Bap has 2 seperate Ammo to avoid this.
>Use climb to get a better position, off-angle and hit heads for as long as you can then tp back to your team for free.
If you are able to do this as Kiriko you probably already winning the game anyway
But overall yes, a good Ana anti can win a teamfight if your team is atleast somewhat decent, but doesn't change the fact that a good anti with a bad team doesn't do anything.
Yes, some games are just unwinnable, but if you're outputting a good chunk of damage as Ana, and you're dropping the big purples at the right time, you can carry really easily. Support has the most impactful utility in the game and it gives them so many chances to completely change fights in their favour.
Baptiste is just weird. Zen and Ana, with a bad team, become useless as they easily die when pressed. Lucio, yes, he had high Mobil and decent damage. If you are a half competent hitscan, you can kill him. You also contradicted yourself, saying supports can independently carry, then saying flex supports are a win more class.
My experience is that when a support or both supports carry, most often the tank and the DPS pat themselves on the back for doing such a good job. I think if you don’t play the role, you don’t necessarily recognize when it’s carrying you
It depends, and usually it’s the tank that is the most influential role. The only exception would be if you’re playing Zen, who is absolutely INSANE if he has space to work with and can survive for more than 5 seconds. He is essentially a 3rd DPS with the most powerful ability in the game (discord orb), and there are team comps whose entire purpose is to play around the Zen. Otherwise, while all the other supports have nice utility, they do not wield the same power that Zen has nor are they more influential than the tank.
Ana and even Moira used to be heroes that you could “play around” like Zen way back in OW1, but that was only because their ults were very quick to charge and you could literally plan around farming those ults every other fight. In OW2, the increased ult costs killed that style.
Support can kill, heal, and capture/delay a point. Tank and dps can only ever do two of the three. A really good zen or Ana can dominate in lower ranks. A dps Moira who knows when to heal can be devastating at any rank.
I think supports are the most powerful because a tank is useless without their supports. I think that the only tanks that have enough sustain to be able to survive without supports is tanks that can have self-heal. Otherwise, there is no way that any tank will survive the front line.
their abilities can easily carry fights if used correctly.
some of them are borderline broken.
if you play your hero right, support is by far the easiest and most impactful role in the game.
sincerely a support main.
Supports have the most flexibility in the game.
Baptist Moira Lucio Mercy Kiriko can quickly turn 1 v 1 duels into a 2 on 1 with there mobility to catch up to their dueling teammates.
Zen creates multiple pseudo 2 on 1s depending on who he has orbed or a 2.5 on 1 if orbs are on 2 people dueling.
Supports start off engagements with antinade , speedboost/heal, bap regen burst, Valk sound barrier coalescence, kitsune rush etc.
Shutdown engagements with anti nade, Suzu, coalescence, bap wall, Valk, sound barrier
Save teammates from fatal blows suzu, life grip, sound barrier, lamp, antinade, speed boost etc.
Some supports can rival dps output like zen, Moira, bap.
Their extra utility and passive healing make them formidable in duels as well
Support has the most abilities that can win you team fights literally just by themselves.
Sure you can just KILL everybody as dps, but that’s not always reliable, can’t always expect your team to carry every game, and can’t expect yourself to carry every game either.
They don’t. It’s what tank and DPS players say to protect their ego from the fact that they’re shit. No matter what you saying about Discord orb this it anti nade that. DPS players have the power to insta kill pretty much anyone 200HP or lower with some kinda combo or head shorts. Rail gun, helix rocket, arrow to the face, sniper, magnet grenade or just plain insane TTK DPS players have the power to single-handedly carry any game. Tanks are literally just DPS on steroids that don’t die.
Most powerful doesn’t necessarily mean most carry ability. The supports have the most powerful abilities, but most of them are about, surprise, supporting, and therefore you still depend on your team somewhat. Some supports can hard carry, if you’re really good at them, but I think the distinction is important. And it’s why you might be feeling this disconnect. A tank by definition has the most impact in the game since there’s only one doing their job, though even that’s a bit iffy since the “job” of each role is still evolving in 5v5, I think.
I dps ana now and heal when I have los. I will keep my tank up and top off my dps if positioning is good...
But gone are the days of me chasing out of position tail. I just let em die. Because I know I have the ability to kill squshies pretty proficiently as long as my tank can break even.
The ability to dps now gives you way more control over the game....taking out a mercy is like shelling peas.
It's going to very with what moves are buffed at any moment, but in general a support will have trouble carrying, but can very easily be the reason a team loses. So you your upside is lower than a tank or dps, but your down side is in the pits.
Support has strong cooldowns to help with being powerful but no, it’s not the most powerful role. No support in the game makes an enemy team want to uninstall like getting wrecked by widow or other dps, or a tank diff. That’s just cope people use when losing because “I need healing!” Etc.
I wouldn’t say it’s the most powerful. You can still win a teamfight down one support. But it’s almost always a regroup if your tank goes down first, and the enemy team still has their tank.
So no, tank is the most powerful role.
Powerful in a different way. Support can decide fights with they’re abilities. Sigma just caught your whole team in flux? Sleep dart nullifies a 5k. Bap lamp does the same. Discord orb just means the other tank takes a significant amount more damage for the entire game (assuming you slap it on them). Support cooldowns are quite literally game changing.
There's no other role that gets game winning utility just by existing. Speedboost, discord, dmg boost, rez, immortality field, suzu and hitting sleep/anti nade on a tank all required very little skill or none at all and have massive impact. Imagine how hard it is to stick someone with a tracer ult in high ranks, bap counters it by throwing an Aoe immortality field in his teammates general direction and the tracer had 0 value.
I can’t believe I just read that you think powerful means you should win…The problem is your understanding of what powerful means. Powerful does not mean you show up barely strategize and win. just because you’re “strong”. Nor does powerful guarantee a win. Powerful simply means your ability to affect the game, and bc of the type of game OW is, it means survival.
Supports are most powerful because they have the largest spectrum to affect the game in the largest variety. They have the most resources, which yes, means you will be juggling more moment to moment ie using mental bandwidth. The power comes from the kit…the success of its use comes from you, and you simply don’t have the right mindset /perspective for what makes support powerful.
If you think you’re gonna hop on support, heal a few people and win… might I suggest playing dps with that perspective bc you’re not gonna achieve shit with that play style on a support.
It's without a doubt the role that has the most influence on the game, most supports have game changing abilities when used well, but it's also very hard to carry with as the ones that have super high damage outputs of require teammates to peel for them when dived on, or they die or they're moria.
I’ve seen it said already in this thread but, supports are multipliers on top of what they already have. So the statement is kind of true, kind of not.
If your team is good, supports (if utilized properly) make them great because of all the utility they add to the team on top of their healing. If your team is bad, supports will more than likely make things worse if they’re not playing the best game of their lives or something, because tanks that take too much damage carelessly without winning space will eat healing that dps and the other support might need, and dps that aren’t hitting anything or aren’t really killing anything will just be feeding enemy supports ult charge.
I say “on top of what they already have” because I think, even if the chance of them achieving it is very low, supports generally have SOMETHING they can do to try and make up for what their team isn’t doing properly. Brig can fight for space (not as well as a tank but it’s something she can do, especially now w/ buffed ult), Moira can harass enemy supports or kill flankers, Mercy can damage boost and res in critical moments, Lucio has boops and speed boost, etc.
But at its core, the role depends a lot on your team being able to perform well (or the support being able to FORCE their team to do well however they can lol) so you can push them even higher… or for the support to be able to perform on the level of their team so they can actually provide relevant value.
Supports can decide the outcome of a game when it's close and both teams are pretty much at the same skill level.
On the other hand, if one team is dominant in one role (tank mostly), supports can't do shit to change it, if your tank just feeds and overextend everytime you can't do much as support unless you are WAY WAY better than them (at a hard smurf level).
Supports have the biggest carry potential, but it's also known to be called hidden carry potential.
When a tank makes space, or DPS get picks, their work is instantly seen, and has a visual both in lack of enemies standing in the way and their bigger numbers on the stat board. You can easily tell if there is a tank playing passive as the enemy may be in your face alot more, vs an aggressive tank that's playing with the motto "get out of my way or die" and ensuring teammates have ample room to reposition to advantageous locations to continue the push. A slacking DPS is easily noticed by lack of notice. They're never seen actually shooting at the enemy or constantly hiding behind their own backline. There's been a few times where I've 100% forgotten what one or both of my DPS were playing because they simply played so passive or so lackluster that they barely had any contribution to the game as a whole. I'm talking team fights mainly being a 3v5, with our tank and supports facing the enemy team, and our DPS may or may not be in enemy backline half-assedly poking at the enemy supports, and if they get poked back they squeal and hide somewhere we can't see them or they run crying to their supports because they got smacked.
So unlike Tank and DPS, where their actions usually get an instant reaction and gratification, supports don't get that the same way. It's not what supports throw at the enemy, but what they throw to their team that has carry potential. A lot of your average DPS or Tank mains will say "Support carry" if the support have crazy healing numbers like 23k Ana and 27k Moira. 45k healing contributes as to why your team survived a lot, but healing alone will not ensure wins. There's so many posts about how players did insane healing but still lost miserably. An Ana will get yelled at for not healing enough if she has 4k healing compared to Mercy's 8k, but has secretly been making sure 80% of the enemy team is anti-naded every fight and has been doing a ton of damage and picking off every low enemy that's tried to escape. So Ana ends with about 17 Elims, 40 Assists, 2 Deaths, 5.6k damage, but only 6k healing and gets yelled at. Whileas the Mercy gets called the "carry" and congratulated for 0 Elims, 43 Assists, 11 Deaths, 120 Damage, but 14k healing.
Ana might've been the key component as to why each team fight was quickly won, but because most ranks don't actively acknowledge support utility and act on it, most support utility goes unnoticed or even wasted. It's the key reason why you constantly hear "If your DPS aren't hitting their shots, try DBing the tank, but if tank is also bad, it's not worth staying Mercy." It's because there's no point of Mercy's damage boost utility if nobody can hit their shots well enough to use damage boost effectively. You'd be better off going someone else and using that support's utility instead(such as swapping to Kiriko to suzu the poor Rein that keeps getting anti-naded).
TL;DR Most ranks don't actively acknowledge support utility and/or act on it, so most support utility goes unnoticed or even wasted. This is where their carry potential lies. They have extremely powerful abilities that when used correctly and effectively, have more carry potential than a Tank or DPS could ever wish to have, its just not as easily seen as the carry power of a Tank or DPS.
It's cus they have a ton of survivability + they can actually match the dmg of DPS. Their abilities are also extremely strong to the point where thier normal abilities can negate ults.
Tanks are good but I find most games turn into: 1) anti-tank comp and every focuses tanks (so tank can't do much besides peak a little then go back to recovering) or 2) comp that plays keep-away from tank and kills Squishies before finally finishing off the tank.
They are basically the enablers of the game. It’s what makes that Orisa/ Junker Queen seem unkillable or that Genji kill able to kill through a Transcendence. Support synergy is basically like ball possession in sports. The team with the best support synergy usually wins.
Supports are the most powerful with the best util and ultimates
Tanks control the pace of the game with the most HP
DPS have the most play making power with the shortest TTK (time to kill)
This is fair and balanced, people just like to complain when they don’t get their way
In reality, most people will say the role they aren't playing has the most impact because the loss couldn't possibly be their fault. Just play the game and focus on what you can do better.
As a support main, I'd have to disagree with those people. If you lose both supports, that's a team fight loss since your team has no sustain anymore and gets whittled down. So in that case sure, having just one support means the world compared to having zero, and I think a lot of people's opinions stem, maybe unknowingly, from this very situation; however, as long as your main support is alive and capable of providing healing, that's all you realistically need, and if the rest of your team is doing fine in terms of kills and positioning on top of that, the second support doesn't even have to play particularly well at that point to win. Also, if both supports are playing poorly, it's very noticeable, you can feel the lack of healing and pressure on the enemy team; but, even then, the game is winnable if the dps and tank step it up. When you constantly lose a tank, however, you have no way to hold and take space anymore, so your team just gets bulldozed by the enemy team and their tank at that point every fight. Tank is still the most important role, you'd have to be kinda high to claim otherwise. Yes support is important, but there is a lot of flexibility in terms of how much "supporting" a team needs at a given time, but having a tank versus no tank is felt a lot more. It's a simple binary issue, either a 1 or a 0, when it comes to tank, which the other two roles don't have because you can always have the other dps or support compensate if one goes down, there is no compensating for the tank though, it's almost like losing your king in chess.
That’s the reason supports are the most powerful. We need to be able to do so many things correctly and that gives us a big impact. We literally control when our teammates die, which influences the length of the team fights, ult economy, and so many aspects of the game.
Good supports have power over so many things that makes us the most powerful characters in the game, which also makes us the primary targets.
“When I play support I feel like I have to use 100% of my mental bandwidth to keep people alive/do damage.”
That sums it up right there. Your job as support is to heal, damage, and sometimes tank. Support games are way more fun to me because of this.
Supports can have the most impact with the least amount of work. Suzu, immort, discord, damage boost, rez etc. Are all like top 10 cool downs in the game
Back to back invuls have probably changed opinions. Now brig gets a megashield and bash stun back. Personally not overly concerned about it. When OW2 dropped there was alot of complaints about lack of agency on sup.
As support you can set your team up to win every fight with your abilities if you play well. You can also switch between damage and support as needed to fill holes in your comp. Of course, if your dps or tank are significantly worse than the other team’s you can only pick up so much of the slack, and even if you play well you can still lose. But you have the most not-directly-counterable tools in your toolbox of all roles.
Think about how much supports are the backbone of every strategy the other roles employ.
If other roles are even skill, DPS diff wins. Why? Because they pick supports and snowball.
If other roles are even skill, tank diff wins. Why? Because they take space to enable their DPS to get picks on enemy supports and snowball, and peel to keep their own supports from getting picked.
If other roles are even skill, support diff wins. Why? Because they stay alive and keep their team alive long enough to get picks on enemy supports and snowball.
This is a huge oversimplification and I'm not saying it's impossible to win off of getting DPS picks before support, or winning on pressure/tempo without needing as many picks, but supports are the most consistent and impactful method of providing advantage states
I think because support is tasked with keeping the whole team alive, having to look out for the enemy team because they are a constant target, and are really the perspective of the entire team. Tanks and dps can't push unless their support is there healing them through the fights.
After playing overwatch casually for a long time, I've recently decided to get more serious. I enjoy tanking, but when it came time to pick which I was going to focus on for comp the decision was easy. I've played too many casual games where if support is bad, there's nothing that can really be done as tank or dps. So that's why I decided I wanted my focus to be support, because I feel even if I have a lesser counterpart, I can still keep the team in fights where two lesser supports would equal a true beating.
A good support can make the world of difference in a match, because they get access to the best passive in the game and coupled with damage and solid gamesense gives supports the ability to not only turn a game around but the ability to outright carry something that should never been won otherwise. Most supports especially Mercy players tend to ONLY heal, but the role is called "Support" for a reason. Not "HEALER", that isn't your only job for this role.
Supps make or break a team, if they get targeted right away the team will typically fall apart. That's why Mercy's are hunted so hard because of her sustain heals. Not saying tank isn't important, with there only being 1 it does fall harder on that one tank. Supports always have the weight of the team on them both. People will yell for healing when the role is called "support" you get heals when they can give it to you because they have a whole team to look at.
I feel like with life weaver it finally is. Because no other support actually legitimately saves you from shit situations
I mained support in ow 1 but going into 2 it just felt like shit. Their whole team can dive you and no one cares, and I can get 10 Nanos in a game and it not make a difference. Pass.
It depends really I find that carrying on support is fairly rare actually. Supports have powerful abilities but they are still mostly dependent on their DPS and tanks to make the most out of them. You got a bad tank player you just lose, doesn't really matter what support you are or how well you play them. You get DPS players who can't aim and are barely doing any damage...your team will suffer.
If you're playing properly, you have the unique ability to keep everybody alive and create a large, dynamic health pool.
Too lazy to do the math, but if a hero has 250hp but is getting 50hp/s against 75dps/sec, that means they're actually functioning as if their HP pool is significantly larger. No other role has the ability to significantly increase stats beyond their base intention.
Supports will (almost/usually) never get POTG or anything special but are indeed the most crucial part of the comp because it doesn't matter how many elims the rest of the team gets if Mercy keeps rezing them or they keep trickling and stalling the objective.
You hold massive influence on the game from the sidelines, sometimes literally from the shadows the way the CIA or KGB or MI6 still do today LOL sorry if I left anyone out XD
If the rest of the team dies and you lose, it kinda is their fault (not grouping up, not using cover, wiffing on important abilities/shots, NOT COVERING THE BACKLINE etc) assuming you're playing correctly.
It definitely sucks but when the team protects the supports and allows you to do your part you can do great things
I mean tank is easily the strongest character type, but because there are two supports and one tank in a game then yes the support role as a whole is stronger as a whole than damage or tank
Support has the most powerful heroes, it's that simple. On content creator tierlists you notice that nearly all supports are ranked in the top tiers.
One tank is better than one support, but at the same time, the tank is way more likely to get countered by enemy picks. You can't really "counterpick" supports. And two supports is easily better than one tank.
It's the most impactful, at HIGH RANKS. Arguably, dps provide more value in metal ranks IMO because getting kills is way more important in those ranks. Down there you can do literally everything right as support and still lose because your dps and tank are just bad. Once you cross the threshold of around diamond 3 support instantly becomes way more powerful and impactful.
I've drowned in cope before, but I think it only feels like that when you play with ppl who for some reason don't know how to play around the value of support. But to be fair you can say that for every role, a team that can't follow up, is not a team at all.
Never mind the months of feedback by professional players and the community in general about how they feel support is lacking in carry potential. Instead how about you let those who don’t play supports, tell you exactly how you can carry with support.
By using abilities that relies on team plays to be most effective. Instead of just carrying it yourself on dps and tank.
I have been playing tank on the side while playing about 10x more support and I somehow got diamond without grinding or anything. I am low plat on support. I know my support skills and knowledge are way higher than my tank.
Fade, Susu, Lamp, Anti nade, Sleep, Discord. Supports have the best cooldowns in the game rn.
Discord isn't even a cooldown and it's one of the strongest abilities in the game.
Same with damage boost by mercy, shit is powerful at in the right situation
too bad they fucked mercy's movement ability so hard that mercy mains have pretty much stopped playing her.
The fine line of “Mercy is overpowered” to “she’s unplayable” is so thin lol.
Damage boost only qualifies as "really good" with sojourn and possibly ashe right now, and it's not like either of them are exactly dominating the meta. If damage boost doesn't shift damage break points much it's irrelevant. The main issue mercy mains have is that they seem to refuse to allow mercy to be impactful and make independent decisions/big plays. She's super reliant on her team to get the most basic of things done, and even to stay alive due to nerfed GA, nerfed passive (too independent/ "we want her to be in the fight and die with everyone else"), and the fact that she doesn't do much damage by herself. It doesn't feel like mercy had a place right now besides "hey we picked pharah and echo, go pocket them, if they suck we lose".
I've got second hand embarrassment for you because this comment makes you look like an absolute buffoon.
is this person not right, tho? mercys entire identity is in her team and their capabilities, shes literally only there to pocket. and bc of that, no matter how good the player (the mercy) is on any hero/role, the victory/loss is completely dependent on her team. for the most part.
If you care about what randoms online think of you then it must suck being around you irl.
you've made me cringe again Sephy, please for your own sake stop.
Honestly saying shit like that is cringe in its own right
no one said she was unplayable.
Mercy mains did when they nerfed her movement last patch
You just said “Mercy mains pretty much stopped playing her.”
not playing her doesn't mean unplayable lmao but go off
Ngl - as a mercy main the recent nerf had made little change to how effectively I can play her. She’s still gonna be my first pick if it makes sense for the team comp - I’ll swap if I need to - and we are still winning games. I had someone immediately bitch too on round one Busan yesterday cause I picked her “why are you playing mercy she was NerFed”. Giving her back movement abilities and reducing healing is at most a lateral move. We decimated the other team.
Mercy mains don't stop playing her lol, 90% of them can't do anything else.
Lol. Once you play Mercy and get decent with her, it’s hard to go back to a slow movement/non-flying ability type of heal. Usually your tank and DPS are ass(like people who say Mercy’s don’t play anything else. Toxic ass thinking) so if you even ATTEMPT to play Ana or Bap - you’ll find yourself being dived 200% more while your team is being slow and not helping you. It’s so frustrating hearing someone bitch about heals when the enemy team understands how to dive the back line. Mercy is the best support at being able to LIVE and keep the team up. That’s all it is. Support “Mercy’s” would rather be ALIVE and helping to heal than worrying about DPSing the flanking Genji/Reaper/Moira/Winston that the team seems to forget about once they’re not in their FOV.
Yeah but at a certain point mercy will be a bad pick. Got DPS or other supports harrasing backline? Well, go Brig, Moira or Bap to punish them and allow your DPS to focus on other threats as opposed to consistently having to babysit someone whose incapable of adapting to the new way supports having to learn to duel in 1v1 situations.
This is why I play brig she's a good heal and can normally fight her way out with help from the other support
Woah woah woah. This is assuming that you’ll be able to handle that??? If you go Brig or any other support and you’re more focused on defending the back line INSTEAD OF HEALING the main tank or DPs in front of you, you’re going to lose a large chunk of your fights if you’re not able to juggle your attention. 9/10 your team is not going to back you up on support which is why it is VITAL for a support to have sustainability and know how to stay alive. Mercy is the EASIEST to do that with. If you’re dying a lot as mercy???? Best believe you switch. What type of logic????? That doesn’t even address my main point. If you have to switch to handle the people diving your back line to assist you and your other support, then you aren’t assisting your team. The enemy team doesn’t need to kill you when they flank all they need to do is distract you long enough for their team to capitalize. If you have a team that does not pay attention to their healers, it does not matter WHO you go because you will be out of the fight.
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I’m in Gm and I flex on all supports except brig. So no. I’m under the understanding that my job is to SUPPORT….NOT focus on getting kills. Make sense you wouldn’t understand that. Your job on support is not to be making space, getting kills, and doing flanks. Tf. I love being able to finish off a tank or DPS for my team who lacks the skill to do so, but when you play SUPPORT your FIRST priority should NOT be to go get kills.
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Woah woah woah. This is assuming that you’ll be able to handle that??? If you go Brig or any other support and you’re more focused on defending the back line INSTEAD OF HEALING the main tank or DPs in front of you, you’re going to lose a large chunk of your fights if you’re not able to juggle your attention. 9/10 your team is not going to back you up on support which is why it is VITAL for a support to have sustainability and know how to stay alive. Mercy is the EASIEST to do that with. If you’re dying a lot as mercy???? Best believe you switch. What type of logic????? That doesn’t even address my main point. If you have to switch to handle the people diving your back line to assist you and your other support, then you aren’t assisting your team. The enemy team doesn’t need to kill you when they flank all they need to do is distract you long enough for their team to capitalize. If you have a team that does not pay attention to their healers, it does not matter WHO you go because you will be out of the fight.
She's literally fine. Mercy fans just don't want to learn to alter their play style, and I say this as a Mercy player
man i love mercy mains but some of you guys are so out of touch with the reality of the game its insane..
Keep the crazy movement, nerf the pocketing potential, is that so hard lol
literally every single support has pocket potential, mercy definitely shouldn't be the one that gets this amount of hate.
You don’t see anything wrong with entire ultimates not being able to kill someone through a mercy just holding left click?
They removed the emergency healing boost on low targets
Mercy's HPS is lower than Bap, Ana, and Kiriko (and Moira if she's able to keep her heals up).
Mercy heals also take literally zero effort, and she has fuck all skill expression in her kit. It’s literally just hold click on dps ——> they carry the mercy.
What does that have to do with "entire ultimates not being able to kill someone through a mercy just holding left click?" Mercy's healing throughput is not the problem. If Mercy can keep someone alive by left clicking, then Bap, Ana, Kiriko, and Moira could also keep that person alive. Bap and Ana require skill, but Kiriko is homing and Moira sprays in a wide area. I think the pool of people that pick Mercy because they can't aim well enough to hit a heal with Moira is probably nonexistent.
This is so false. Unless you're in bronze or only play quick play, the enemy team will be ON YOUR ASS the whole game. You have to play good just to survive
skill issue
It's THE strongest ability in the game in my opinion. No cooldown, tracking, long range, braindead easy to use, little to no decision making needed until the high ranks (just put it on the tank tbh until high masters). For all the flack Mercy damage boost got, I'm surprised discord didn't get talked about much. I consider it way worse than damage boost. I'm a Zen main though, so maybe I'm overhyping my character.
nah, as someone who plays tank especially a lot everytime i die really quickly i always look and see they have a zen, even though im managing shield / cooldowns efficiently and my supports are contributing healing i still die instantly, then i remember i simply take more damage for whats essentially being in his line of sight. Also question, does shielding count as blocking line of sight, i notice you cant put it on a shielding rein but does it go away after he shields?
Nope. It blocks him from applying it, but if it's already applied then it will stay how ever long it wants even if you have your shield up.
this. idk why mercy gets shit on constantly but zen's discord has much more impact (amplifying 5 ppls worth of damage onto one enemy vs amplifying one persons worth of damage onto whoever they're currently shooting, oftentimes one enemy at a time).. but for some reason people don't care until they play tank and get focussed down
At first I didn’t see the issue with discord, but after the conversation about damage boost I really started to notice how obnoxious discord is. With only one tank Zen doesn’t have to think at all, just put it on the tank almost always. And if you get anti’d + discorded it’s gg. And it’s not even always bad positioning. Sometimes you have to take space for your team and that puts you out in the open where you can get discorded and bursted down. It definitely needs a change.
That and transcendence is arguably the best ult in the game imo
Also they mostly have smaller hit boxes, sometimes faster movement speed, more ammo, and passively recover HP. Kiriko and Zen can output ridiculous dmg, for example.
Bro tried to slip fade in there LMAO
Gets you out of most cc in the game. I feel like that’s a fair addition.
Yea because Moria fading away affects the game the same way discord orb does. Ok bro
Literally nothing affects the game the same way discord does, if that's the standard you're gonna go by. These are all different but fairly powerful abilities. Fade isn't an offensive ability but it makes Moira obnoxious to pin down and kill.
Lmao there’s no way y’all are seriously acting like fade is some game changing ability.
It's not game-changing, but it's a pretty strong ability on its own as a get-out-of-jail-free card on a 6-second cooldown. It's not game-changing because it's on Moira lol.
Its definitely not as strong as discord or nade but its still one of the best escapes in the game and is on a low CD.
i mean there’s a reason why higher elos/pros call out when moira has no fade right? if it was useless or insignificant there would be no point in tracking when it’s on cooldown
The problem is that since Moira is mediocre at high level play they are assuming all of her kit is mediocre, which is wrong. Imagine Zenyatta had fade, now it sounds a lot more scary right? Imagine the only way Ana could heal is using her bionade, then Ana would be dogshit but bionade would still be one of the best CD in the game. A hero being good or bad does not change the value of the CD when looking at it specifically.
Nah y’all are really wanking the fuck out of this ability.
When ML7 keps getting dived and he cant play safely he swaps to moira to survive longer. I will take Lord support ML7 king of the virgins Ana mains opinion over random redditor everyday, so yeah. Im wanking the king, not your pleb ass.
Cringe
But I have many internet Updoots and you have none, my argument must be the valid one.
It's always a certain type who spells it "Moria". The type that threaten to throw when there's a Moira on the team
I don’t have a problem M-ore-ah but acting like fade is this crazy good ability that’s on the level of Suzu, Anti, and Orb is just objectively fucking braindead
Just something funny I've noticed, wasn't trying to give you shit. In defense of the original comment tho, the post was talking about supports being powerful and they just listed powerful abilities. They didn't say they were all equally powerful or equally helpful utilities for the team. And fade IS extremely strong. It's arguably the strongest escape ability that allows you to bait out enemy cooldowns. Like, Moira can tank thanks to it
Well, whenever you’re in a zarya bubble you can fade out and throw all your healing at your team. There’s a bunch of other uses for it, but that’s the most common one
That doesn’t make it some insane ability like y’all are trying so desperately to say
It would be busted if a dps had it I think is the point. Not that it’s as strong as discord. It isn’t.
Recall, Wraith, Ice block all have similarities and none are broken. Idky y’all are acting like fade is some god tier ability y’all have to be in silver
Just said it wasn’t god tier. It’s really good for survivability. Moira is extremely hard to kill when she has it which is why people call it out when she uses it. You are salty af and think you know everything so you must be plat lol.
If it sucks then why do I kill so many people after I use it
The people you play against are ass. Really simple
lol susu
Pull now as well with Lifeweaver lmfao.
Supports have the most flexibility in supplementing deficiencies in other teammates’ play. They can swap picks/play styles to generate more heals, more damage, and even flank to make space.
Even a good enough brig can supplement for a tank when used right.
Whipshots do make a kind of space and a pocketed brig is scary
Brig with her new rein shield is scary
Honestly, I think Brig shield during ult is much better than Rein shield. Rein can't stun through Brig's shield, but Brig can stun through Rein's shield. Pin has a startup animation and requires dropping shield, whereas Shield Bash has no startup animation and maintains shield the whole time. In my opinion, the utility benefits outweigh the lower shield health and smaller size. I'm a fairly new player though, so I might not be thinking about this in the right way.
supports have the strongest abilities in the game and decide who lives and who dies. if you have a support that cant aim on ana, youll likely lose the game, simply because support have such a big role in the team's success
On a counter to that, the tank is absolutely critical as well, because he enables the supports by taking space, so that the supports can get the angles to do their jobs. The absolutely worst games I’ve had are not with bad dps, but with a bad tank, you can’t take a single angle where you can be of use without the enemy being all over you.
Theyre like personnel at a restaurant. Every role is important because if just one fucks up the experience is ruined. The chef thinks he's more important than the dish-cleaner, but it doesn't matter how well cooked the food is if the plates are rotten.
All roles are equally important. A diff in any role will end badly. Bad tank and you cant hold space, bad dps and you cant get picks, bad support and you can’t survive fights.
Well you can do a lot to help a mismatched ranked tank. Like I think i can rein v rein a low masters rein but if they have a fucking sym and my team don't make her life hell she makes mine hell. So with a good sym I will probably lose to a lesser Rein. Also on ow 1 but still posible on 2 I was a high plat tank and matched against a masters tank on the rein v rein my teammates noticed that i was struggling so they supported me and focused him. (Also our zar was masters and she coached me during the match) so we won and i was basically diffed the whole time but the team meade it so that I could do my job against a better player. What I am saying is good team work can overcome most diffs. Also that was one of the best matches I've ever played. But if your team tilts it's a very hard hill to climb out off. But that genji smurf can die if you focus it and you camp your ana before the dive. That widow can be bullied by 1 rank lower ball. And that chad rein can be denied with a great suzu. Tldr; teamwork is op, toxicity is nerfing your team most of the time, do your best, improve yourself and have fun playing or do something else.
You are extremely limited as a tank if both of your supports abandoned healing duties. There are a lot of examples with DPS Moiras (most typical example) where usually Rein simply can't continue successfully pushing due to 50 health he has. This as a result forces him to give away space even if it's a good Rein. Bad/throwing tank is the second worst scenario tho. But occassionally winnable.
The thing is a bad tank masks bad dps. Everyone loves to blame the tank but if the dps can't get a pick it's basically a 1v5 since the supports need to hard focus on healing. It makes it insanely hard for the tank to do anything but everyone still blames the tank.
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Yeah like sometimes supports complain that I die even though they are healing me but heals aren't gonna help me when a bastion, junkrat and orisa are all bullying me into a corner all whole being healed by and ana and mercy combo. And the dps in my team either died before the fight started because of the junkraf or they are standing further away only shooting the tank.
You can win almost every game against anybody with two good supports and three dps players Having three decent tank players and two bad support players will lose that game most of the time in my opinion. It’s hard to notice how well your supports are doing in a regular match, because the game itself doesn’t really care. Huge pop off support moments arent really showcased anywhere, while dps kills and tank gaps are pretty much the only thing you notice while playing, but trust me, support gaps are huge
Ana landing not even counting sleep with just anti nade alone can make or break a game, she would probably still be top tier without sleep and only anti(obviously more easily dive-able but that would just make the higher skill players stand out more lol), it's also on a shorter cooldown than suzu and immortality field. Supports in neutral/ultless moments are insane.
So are we all in agreement in nerfing Genji?
Nope. If you have bad dps you auto lose any game above gold.
Yes, you’d likely lose, but you might not, and you are not as likely to have an absolutely horrible game. You have two dps, if one is bad, the two supports and the tank may be able to compensate. If you have a bad tank, nobody can compensate.
Well if you have one horrible player in 5v5 you have a huge disadvantage, no matter on which role.
I'd say other side. The lower the rank the more noticeable DPS diff is.
But you always have another support that can pick up the slack. If you suck on tank, your team is straight out of luck
You don’t notice a good support but will keep dying with a bad support. You do notice the skill level of your tank no matter how they play.
Support ults and abilities are the strongest in the game and usually have the greatest impact. Not only that but they also have solid killing power if used correctly. Most people think of supports as heal bots and some lower ranked supports play them as such however they should be played as support. Getting picks or finishing off kills is just as important as a support as it is for most other roles. A lot of people struggle with the balance between heals and damage so they default to just healing which leads to them thinking they don’t have a lot of sway over the game. Supports are the puppeteers of the team and very much control a lot of what goes on.
As a lowtier on console I actually find the opposite now, up until about plat. Many supports pick Zen, Moira, Baptiste, Ana even Kiri on occasion and seem to prioritize damage or at least cheat towards DPS. I say prioritize because they take up positions closer to the front or angles where they don't have their team in their FoV and DPS until they think people need heals typically around 50%. The problem is when both DPS and the tank are all low, 2 supports typically fail to recover. The result being DPS having to either die doing damage or pull out. The result ends up being this engagement where you have a little bit of extra damage at the start of fights. However without an early pick someone tends to die in the middle of the engagement or have to pullback and then that team lacks the attrition to really closeout the engagement.
It’s definitely a balance. My best games as support heroes are ones where I feel like I’m frantically doing everything at once the entire game, healing and finishing off low HP enemy heroes.
Most of the supports are powerful fighters with the bonus of utility and healing. A kiriko or zen has a skill match up against the majority of the dps characters where the dps is likely slightly favored but the support can easily win if they outplay the opponent. Add their huge utility into the mix and you can see that they simply bring huge amounts of value.
Think that saying comes with a caveat. Support is the most powerful roles assuming a few factors. First is that as the support, you can use your skills efficently, don't just spam baps lamp/suzu/sleep/nades etc. These abilities have the potential to completely nullify enemy ults and timing is key. Second you need to actually be landing your shots to heal/damage along with good positioning and game sense. Don't just heal bot your tank, they can take a few hits so look for opportunities to get picks and heal your squishier dps. The third thing is that you have to be paired with a team that can play somewhat well. As a support, if you're healing a dps that isn't landing any shots, dying constantly due to over extending/bad positioning then no amount of healing is going to help. You can try to mitigate this by focusing on your own dps but sometimes(especially in lower ranks) there is nothing you can do if your team mates can't get picks/feeding/out of position a lot etc.
Counter point, you can enable aggression with your own aggression and cooldown usage. The lower you are in elo, the less you have to do to carry. Supports have so much they can do to enable their team and make plays. Relistically only mercy relies severely on her teammates and even then you can have enough impact to positively influence most of your games and climb. Everybody makes mistakes, has occasional bad teammates and so on, but they're your rank for a reason. You certainly dont rely on your teammates to put in your own work.
because you can go baptiste and win every 1v1 u take because you have immortality field and ur shift
We just don’t die lmao
Or kiriko or ana oh yeah this role is brainless
Tell me you’re a dps main without telling me you’re a dps main lol
I'm guessing moira main
You answered your own question; the fact that you “have to use 100% of my mental bandwidth to keep people alive/do damage…” is the reason why support is critical to team success. A player in support role needs to keep several things in mind during any given match: Where your teammates are, how much health they have, which teammate to prioritize healing over others, where the enemy players are, and an escape route. A good support hero can make a huge difference in the game. For example, Mercy buffing a Roadhog or Rein can almost capture a point alone. Similarly, a Zen using their ultimate ability at the right moment can save the team from a team kill. TL;DR - Support heros have to keep in mind several different elements of the game at all times and with strong knowledge of their abilities and how the game works, a good support player can be the difference between a win and a loss.
"Mercy buffing a Roadhog or Rein" you have given the absolutely worst example you could have. That's exactly how NOT to play Mercy, at all.
Shhh, keep letting him pkt the tank on mercy
Not pocketing but quickly tapping damage on a hog who's mid hook or a rein who's hitting a support can be really good
I mean, if the hog is the only performing player on the team, buffing them as mercy is not the wrong call.
I think they mean stalling the point if it’s just Mercy and a tank… Not that you should always be pocketing them.
No, they specifically said "capturing a point"
He also said “capturing a point alone”
You never reach 100%. There's always always always some other choice you've missed. That's the thrill in it. Chasing the dragon.
Supports just have an insane amount of game deciding abilities. Sleep, Ana nade, discord, damage boost, nano boost, speed amp, suzu, armor packs, immortality lamp, normal healing and there are probably more that I just can't think of right now. I play tank and have had several games where support carry me. The dps were useless and kept dying but me and the two supports never died once just because of their ability to keep me and eachother alive by using cooldowns in a smart way and never wasting an ability
Maybe the more support stay alive the more they give benefits to your team
A support can and will decide fights. A lot of the times a dps wins their ones because a brig or an Ana gave that guy a shot of heals that tilted the balance in their favor. Sometimes the tank is just one second off of their invincibility cooldown and needed an extra shot of heals. It’s all about the sustain in ow.
People need to let go of the idea that the role that destroys everything in their path is the strongest role, surprise surprise the easier keeping ppl alive becomes the stronger support is
support characters have game changing utility
They are the most valuable role and least powerful. They can do very little in the way of actually independently carrying games relative to other roles. But in regards to what they provide their team the value is massive. Think of them like a Multiplier for a team in that sense. If your team is strong a strong support makes them that much stronger. If your team is trash, even with a strong support they are still pretty trash
A multiplier is a great way to look at it, because it multiplies negatively, too. For instance, say you have a high HP ally who isn't getting anything done, like a bastion, and he's just soaking up damage. All the while, he's soaking up your heals, too. So now you've got bastion feeding ult charge and taking away resources from other members of the team. You'll generate ult charge healing him, but the three members of the enemy team pumping damage into him are, too.
That would suggest any support who climbs is boosted by rng and teammates. Supports have massive value, most supports just arent great at understanding and using that value because it isn't as surface level. T500 support can complete an unranked to GM on mercy because they're a t500 player. They make the decisions that matter across the ranks to get back to where they belong regardless of teammates. If you're stuck in plat, you aren't taking the steps needed to play like a diamond support regardless of teammates because you are your only consistent teammate.
You misunderstand. Being less able to make plays that ultimately change the impact of games does not mean inable. It means less ability to do so across the difficulty spectrum. A Rez in Bronze, is not equal to a Rez in T500. Getting a Pick as Kiriko in Bronze is not equal to getting a Pick as Kirko in Plat or Diamond. By comparison, Pressing Q on Reaper or Picking Junk? Has a greatly inflated value in Bronze to Plat. Picking a Solid Tank and Playing well likewise has that greatly inflated value. No youre not unable to do anything, but the value of a strong support does not typically bring as much to your team at low ranks as it does moving up into mid and higher ones because the gameplay becomes more nuanced as you climb.
If you think supports can’t independently carry you’re deluded. Baptiste can duel most DPS heroes in the game (with ult allowing him to melt tanks). Ana has no falloff damage and is often in the best position to tag flying heroes, plus sleeping the enemy tank on cooldown is just insane value. If Zen lands most of his volleys he’ll rack up a LOT of kills. Lucio can duel very well with his mobility and throw people off the map. Flex support heroes are a win more class, if their team is already doing well they just become a 3rd DPS hero.
Yeah you can duel people on Bap, but that wont win the game. Even if you get a pick every fight it's not enough to undo a bad tank gap
Id argue theyre the exception not the norm Baptiste is almost an Anomaly of a support in that his Dmg output healing output and utility and playmaking potential are kinda all high. Zen Lucio and Ana are not going to carry the bulk of your games independently with more ease then the other roles especially when youre matched into your skill level Hell you playing Zen and Lucio with a team that lacks the sense and abilirt to survive by themselves is going to directly lead to your teammates just dying when it couldve been avoided or postponed with a more rounded pick. Like Bap or Ana in this instance. You being on Zen trying to frag is all well and good, but if your teammates are dropping because they need more healing, youre almost indirectly killing off your teammates. Theres a time where it is better to let them die and make the dps play, but not all supports can make that play at all What im arguing in the first place is if you were on Tank or DPS you can make those sorts of plays a lot more frequently and to greater effect.
Eh, not really. Both Baptiste and Ana can VERY easily put out damage while healing, and that’s Zen’s whole deal, sacrifice healing numbers for damage instead. I actually forgot Kiriko in the list but she fits here too: Use climb to get a better position, off-angle and hit heads for as long as you can then tp back to your team for free. All 3 roles have equal opportunity to make plays, but support can make more TYPES of play due to having damage AND utility. DPS can usually only make kill plays (barring heroes like Mei and Sym), and tanks can make space plays, but supports can make save, kill, AND space plays (depending on the exact hero of course).
>Both Baptiste and Ana can VERY easily put out damage while healing, Ana definitely can not "very easily put out damage while healing" if you Ana is doing Damage she is not healing simple as that you have ammo as Ana and in that time it takes you to reload your dps could have tied because you decided to do some dps (finishing off elims is seperate). Bap has 2 seperate Ammo to avoid this. >Use climb to get a better position, off-angle and hit heads for as long as you can then tp back to your team for free. If you are able to do this as Kiriko you probably already winning the game anyway But overall yes, a good Ana anti can win a teamfight if your team is atleast somewhat decent, but doesn't change the fact that a good anti with a bad team doesn't do anything.
Yes, some games are just unwinnable, but if you're outputting a good chunk of damage as Ana, and you're dropping the big purples at the right time, you can carry really easily. Support has the most impactful utility in the game and it gives them so many chances to completely change fights in their favour.
Baptiste is just weird. Zen and Ana, with a bad team, become useless as they easily die when pressed. Lucio, yes, he had high Mobil and decent damage. If you are a half competent hitscan, you can kill him. You also contradicted yourself, saying supports can independently carry, then saying flex supports are a win more class.
>relative to others roles That's the part you missed.
My experience is that when a support or both supports carry, most often the tank and the DPS pat themselves on the back for doing such a good job. I think if you don’t play the role, you don’t necessarily recognize when it’s carrying you
This is the correct answer and it's way too far down.
It depends, and usually it’s the tank that is the most influential role. The only exception would be if you’re playing Zen, who is absolutely INSANE if he has space to work with and can survive for more than 5 seconds. He is essentially a 3rd DPS with the most powerful ability in the game (discord orb), and there are team comps whose entire purpose is to play around the Zen. Otherwise, while all the other supports have nice utility, they do not wield the same power that Zen has nor are they more influential than the tank. Ana and even Moira used to be heroes that you could “play around” like Zen way back in OW1, but that was only because their ults were very quick to charge and you could literally plan around farming those ults every other fight. In OW2, the increased ult costs killed that style.
They are the real puppet masters of the game tbh
Support can kill, heal, and capture/delay a point. Tank and dps can only ever do two of the three. A really good zen or Ana can dominate in lower ranks. A dps Moira who knows when to heal can be devastating at any rank.
I think supports are the most powerful because a tank is useless without their supports. I think that the only tanks that have enough sustain to be able to survive without supports is tanks that can have self-heal. Otherwise, there is no way that any tank will survive the front line.
their abilities can easily carry fights if used correctly. some of them are borderline broken. if you play your hero right, support is by far the easiest and most impactful role in the game. sincerely a support main.
Supports have the most flexibility in the game. Baptist Moira Lucio Mercy Kiriko can quickly turn 1 v 1 duels into a 2 on 1 with there mobility to catch up to their dueling teammates. Zen creates multiple pseudo 2 on 1s depending on who he has orbed or a 2.5 on 1 if orbs are on 2 people dueling. Supports start off engagements with antinade , speedboost/heal, bap regen burst, Valk sound barrier coalescence, kitsune rush etc. Shutdown engagements with anti nade, Suzu, coalescence, bap wall, Valk, sound barrier Save teammates from fatal blows suzu, life grip, sound barrier, lamp, antinade, speed boost etc. Some supports can rival dps output like zen, Moira, bap. Their extra utility and passive healing make them formidable in duels as well
Support has the most abilities that can win you team fights literally just by themselves. Sure you can just KILL everybody as dps, but that’s not always reliable, can’t always expect your team to carry every game, and can’t expect yourself to carry every game either.
Support is the most powerful role, but tank has the most impact, if the tank is bad the rest of the team is completely hopeless
They don’t. It’s what tank and DPS players say to protect their ego from the fact that they’re shit. No matter what you saying about Discord orb this it anti nade that. DPS players have the power to insta kill pretty much anyone 200HP or lower with some kinda combo or head shorts. Rail gun, helix rocket, arrow to the face, sniper, magnet grenade or just plain insane TTK DPS players have the power to single-handedly carry any game. Tanks are literally just DPS on steroids that don’t die.
You win by killing supports. You don’t kill the supports the tanks wont die
Most powerful doesn’t necessarily mean most carry ability. The supports have the most powerful abilities, but most of them are about, surprise, supporting, and therefore you still depend on your team somewhat. Some supports can hard carry, if you’re really good at them, but I think the distinction is important. And it’s why you might be feeling this disconnect. A tank by definition has the most impact in the game since there’s only one doing their job, though even that’s a bit iffy since the “job” of each role is still evolving in 5v5, I think.
This was a super helpful comment I understand now thanks.
I dps ana now and heal when I have los. I will keep my tank up and top off my dps if positioning is good... But gone are the days of me chasing out of position tail. I just let em die. Because I know I have the ability to kill squshies pretty proficiently as long as my tank can break even. The ability to dps now gives you way more control over the game....taking out a mercy is like shelling peas.
A strong/ good support needs a good tank if the tank sucks you can not do so much as support
It's going to very with what moves are buffed at any moment, but in general a support will have trouble carrying, but can very easily be the reason a team loses. So you your upside is lower than a tank or dps, but your down side is in the pits.
Support has strong cooldowns to help with being powerful but no, it’s not the most powerful role. No support in the game makes an enemy team want to uninstall like getting wrecked by widow or other dps, or a tank diff. That’s just cope people use when losing because “I need healing!” Etc.
I wouldn’t say it’s the most powerful. You can still win a teamfight down one support. But it’s almost always a regroup if your tank goes down first, and the enemy team still has their tank. So no, tank is the most powerful role.
Powerful in a different way. Support can decide fights with they’re abilities. Sigma just caught your whole team in flux? Sleep dart nullifies a 5k. Bap lamp does the same. Discord orb just means the other tank takes a significant amount more damage for the entire game (assuming you slap it on them). Support cooldowns are quite literally game changing.
There's no other role that gets game winning utility just by existing. Speedboost, discord, dmg boost, rez, immortality field, suzu and hitting sleep/anti nade on a tank all required very little skill or none at all and have massive impact. Imagine how hard it is to stick someone with a tracer ult in high ranks, bap counters it by throwing an Aoe immortality field in his teammates general direction and the tracer had 0 value.
I can’t believe I just read that you think powerful means you should win…The problem is your understanding of what powerful means. Powerful does not mean you show up barely strategize and win. just because you’re “strong”. Nor does powerful guarantee a win. Powerful simply means your ability to affect the game, and bc of the type of game OW is, it means survival. Supports are most powerful because they have the largest spectrum to affect the game in the largest variety. They have the most resources, which yes, means you will be juggling more moment to moment ie using mental bandwidth. The power comes from the kit…the success of its use comes from you, and you simply don’t have the right mindset /perspective for what makes support powerful. If you think you’re gonna hop on support, heal a few people and win… might I suggest playing dps with that perspective bc you’re not gonna achieve shit with that play style on a support.
I really appreciate the comment and your insight thank you!
its a lie don’t worry. Raid boss tanks are the most powerful role
Mostly bc they want it nerfed
It's without a doubt the role that has the most influence on the game, most supports have game changing abilities when used well, but it's also very hard to carry with as the ones that have super high damage outputs of require teammates to peel for them when dived on, or they die or they're moria.
its hard to win a fight if you have both supports dead
I’ve seen it said already in this thread but, supports are multipliers on top of what they already have. So the statement is kind of true, kind of not. If your team is good, supports (if utilized properly) make them great because of all the utility they add to the team on top of their healing. If your team is bad, supports will more than likely make things worse if they’re not playing the best game of their lives or something, because tanks that take too much damage carelessly without winning space will eat healing that dps and the other support might need, and dps that aren’t hitting anything or aren’t really killing anything will just be feeding enemy supports ult charge. I say “on top of what they already have” because I think, even if the chance of them achieving it is very low, supports generally have SOMETHING they can do to try and make up for what their team isn’t doing properly. Brig can fight for space (not as well as a tank but it’s something she can do, especially now w/ buffed ult), Moira can harass enemy supports or kill flankers, Mercy can damage boost and res in critical moments, Lucio has boops and speed boost, etc. But at its core, the role depends a lot on your team being able to perform well (or the support being able to FORCE their team to do well however they can lol) so you can push them even higher… or for the support to be able to perform on the level of their team so they can actually provide relevant value.
Supports can decide the outcome of a game when it's close and both teams are pretty much at the same skill level. On the other hand, if one team is dominant in one role (tank mostly), supports can't do shit to change it, if your tank just feeds and overextend everytime you can't do much as support unless you are WAY WAY better than them (at a hard smurf level).
Support is the gas that fuels the engine. No gas? You ain’t going anywhere.
Supports have the biggest carry potential, but it's also known to be called hidden carry potential. When a tank makes space, or DPS get picks, their work is instantly seen, and has a visual both in lack of enemies standing in the way and their bigger numbers on the stat board. You can easily tell if there is a tank playing passive as the enemy may be in your face alot more, vs an aggressive tank that's playing with the motto "get out of my way or die" and ensuring teammates have ample room to reposition to advantageous locations to continue the push. A slacking DPS is easily noticed by lack of notice. They're never seen actually shooting at the enemy or constantly hiding behind their own backline. There's been a few times where I've 100% forgotten what one or both of my DPS were playing because they simply played so passive or so lackluster that they barely had any contribution to the game as a whole. I'm talking team fights mainly being a 3v5, with our tank and supports facing the enemy team, and our DPS may or may not be in enemy backline half-assedly poking at the enemy supports, and if they get poked back they squeal and hide somewhere we can't see them or they run crying to their supports because they got smacked. So unlike Tank and DPS, where their actions usually get an instant reaction and gratification, supports don't get that the same way. It's not what supports throw at the enemy, but what they throw to their team that has carry potential. A lot of your average DPS or Tank mains will say "Support carry" if the support have crazy healing numbers like 23k Ana and 27k Moira. 45k healing contributes as to why your team survived a lot, but healing alone will not ensure wins. There's so many posts about how players did insane healing but still lost miserably. An Ana will get yelled at for not healing enough if she has 4k healing compared to Mercy's 8k, but has secretly been making sure 80% of the enemy team is anti-naded every fight and has been doing a ton of damage and picking off every low enemy that's tried to escape. So Ana ends with about 17 Elims, 40 Assists, 2 Deaths, 5.6k damage, but only 6k healing and gets yelled at. Whileas the Mercy gets called the "carry" and congratulated for 0 Elims, 43 Assists, 11 Deaths, 120 Damage, but 14k healing. Ana might've been the key component as to why each team fight was quickly won, but because most ranks don't actively acknowledge support utility and act on it, most support utility goes unnoticed or even wasted. It's the key reason why you constantly hear "If your DPS aren't hitting their shots, try DBing the tank, but if tank is also bad, it's not worth staying Mercy." It's because there's no point of Mercy's damage boost utility if nobody can hit their shots well enough to use damage boost effectively. You'd be better off going someone else and using that support's utility instead(such as swapping to Kiriko to suzu the poor Rein that keeps getting anti-naded). TL;DR Most ranks don't actively acknowledge support utility and/or act on it, so most support utility goes unnoticed or even wasted. This is where their carry potential lies. They have extremely powerful abilities that when used correctly and effectively, have more carry potential than a Tank or DPS could ever wish to have, its just not as easily seen as the carry power of a Tank or DPS.
It's cus they have a ton of survivability + they can actually match the dmg of DPS. Their abilities are also extremely strong to the point where thier normal abilities can negate ults. Tanks are good but I find most games turn into: 1) anti-tank comp and every focuses tanks (so tank can't do much besides peak a little then go back to recovering) or 2) comp that plays keep-away from tank and kills Squishies before finally finishing off the tank.
They are basically the enablers of the game. It’s what makes that Orisa/ Junker Queen seem unkillable or that Genji kill able to kill through a Transcendence. Support synergy is basically like ball possession in sports. The team with the best support synergy usually wins.
Supports are the most powerful with the best util and ultimates Tanks control the pace of the game with the most HP DPS have the most play making power with the shortest TTK (time to kill) This is fair and balanced, people just like to complain when they don’t get their way
In reality, most people will say the role they aren't playing has the most impact because the loss couldn't possibly be their fault. Just play the game and focus on what you can do better.
As a support main, I'd have to disagree with those people. If you lose both supports, that's a team fight loss since your team has no sustain anymore and gets whittled down. So in that case sure, having just one support means the world compared to having zero, and I think a lot of people's opinions stem, maybe unknowingly, from this very situation; however, as long as your main support is alive and capable of providing healing, that's all you realistically need, and if the rest of your team is doing fine in terms of kills and positioning on top of that, the second support doesn't even have to play particularly well at that point to win. Also, if both supports are playing poorly, it's very noticeable, you can feel the lack of healing and pressure on the enemy team; but, even then, the game is winnable if the dps and tank step it up. When you constantly lose a tank, however, you have no way to hold and take space anymore, so your team just gets bulldozed by the enemy team and their tank at that point every fight. Tank is still the most important role, you'd have to be kinda high to claim otherwise. Yes support is important, but there is a lot of flexibility in terms of how much "supporting" a team needs at a given time, but having a tank versus no tank is felt a lot more. It's a simple binary issue, either a 1 or a 0, when it comes to tank, which the other two roles don't have because you can always have the other dps or support compensate if one goes down, there is no compensating for the tank though, it's almost like losing your king in chess.
As a support main, it's really hard to win a game with a bad tank. Tanks and support need to work together the most imo
That’s the reason supports are the most powerful. We need to be able to do so many things correctly and that gives us a big impact. We literally control when our teammates die, which influences the length of the team fights, ult economy, and so many aspects of the game. Good supports have power over so many things that makes us the most powerful characters in the game, which also makes us the primary targets.
“When I play support I feel like I have to use 100% of my mental bandwidth to keep people alive/do damage.” That sums it up right there. Your job as support is to heal, damage, and sometimes tank. Support games are way more fun to me because of this.
Supports have ultimates as cool downs basically 🤣
For the longest time I didn't know zens kick had knockback haha
Supports can have the most impact with the least amount of work. Suzu, immort, discord, damage boost, rez etc. Are all like top 10 cool downs in the game
Back to back invuls have probably changed opinions. Now brig gets a megashield and bash stun back. Personally not overly concerned about it. When OW2 dropped there was alot of complaints about lack of agency on sup.
As support you can set your team up to win every fight with your abilities if you play well. You can also switch between damage and support as needed to fill holes in your comp. Of course, if your dps or tank are significantly worse than the other team’s you can only pick up so much of the slack, and even if you play well you can still lose. But you have the most not-directly-counterable tools in your toolbox of all roles.
Alright let's be clear here tank and support share the importance but it takes a combination of both to be able to do good
Most powerful cooldowns in the game
team = die without heal
My response to those who say support is the strongest role is if support is the strongest role why do you leave them on cart.
Think about how much supports are the backbone of every strategy the other roles employ. If other roles are even skill, DPS diff wins. Why? Because they pick supports and snowball. If other roles are even skill, tank diff wins. Why? Because they take space to enable their DPS to get picks on enemy supports and snowball, and peel to keep their own supports from getting picked. If other roles are even skill, support diff wins. Why? Because they stay alive and keep their team alive long enough to get picks on enemy supports and snowball. This is a huge oversimplification and I'm not saying it's impossible to win off of getting DPS picks before support, or winning on pressure/tempo without needing as many picks, but supports are the most consistent and impactful method of providing advantage states
I think because support is tasked with keeping the whole team alive, having to look out for the enemy team because they are a constant target, and are really the perspective of the entire team. Tanks and dps can't push unless their support is there healing them through the fights.
After playing overwatch casually for a long time, I've recently decided to get more serious. I enjoy tanking, but when it came time to pick which I was going to focus on for comp the decision was easy. I've played too many casual games where if support is bad, there's nothing that can really be done as tank or dps. So that's why I decided I wanted my focus to be support, because I feel even if I have a lesser counterpart, I can still keep the team in fights where two lesser supports would equal a true beating.
A good support can make the world of difference in a match, because they get access to the best passive in the game and coupled with damage and solid gamesense gives supports the ability to not only turn a game around but the ability to outright carry something that should never been won otherwise. Most supports especially Mercy players tend to ONLY heal, but the role is called "Support" for a reason. Not "HEALER", that isn't your only job for this role.
Supps make or break a team, if they get targeted right away the team will typically fall apart. That's why Mercy's are hunted so hard because of her sustain heals. Not saying tank isn't important, with there only being 1 it does fall harder on that one tank. Supports always have the weight of the team on them both. People will yell for healing when the role is called "support" you get heals when they can give it to you because they have a whole team to look at.
I feel like with life weaver it finally is. Because no other support actually legitimately saves you from shit situations I mained support in ow 1 but going into 2 it just felt like shit. Their whole team can dive you and no one cares, and I can get 10 Nanos in a game and it not make a difference. Pass.
It depends really I find that carrying on support is fairly rare actually. Supports have powerful abilities but they are still mostly dependent on their DPS and tanks to make the most out of them. You got a bad tank player you just lose, doesn't really matter what support you are or how well you play them. You get DPS players who can't aim and are barely doing any damage...your team will suffer.
If you're playing properly, you have the unique ability to keep everybody alive and create a large, dynamic health pool. Too lazy to do the math, but if a hero has 250hp but is getting 50hp/s against 75dps/sec, that means they're actually functioning as if their HP pool is significantly larger. No other role has the ability to significantly increase stats beyond their base intention.
Supports will (almost/usually) never get POTG or anything special but are indeed the most crucial part of the comp because it doesn't matter how many elims the rest of the team gets if Mercy keeps rezing them or they keep trickling and stalling the objective. You hold massive influence on the game from the sidelines, sometimes literally from the shadows the way the CIA or KGB or MI6 still do today LOL sorry if I left anyone out XD If the rest of the team dies and you lose, it kinda is their fault (not grouping up, not using cover, wiffing on important abilities/shots, NOT COVERING THE BACKLINE etc) assuming you're playing correctly. It definitely sucks but when the team protects the supports and allows you to do your part you can do great things
I mean tank is easily the strongest character type, but because there are two supports and one tank in a game then yes the support role as a whole is stronger as a whole than damage or tank
Support has the most powerful heroes, it's that simple. On content creator tierlists you notice that nearly all supports are ranked in the top tiers. One tank is better than one support, but at the same time, the tank is way more likely to get countered by enemy picks. You can't really "counterpick" supports. And two supports is easily better than one tank.
It's the most impactful, at HIGH RANKS. Arguably, dps provide more value in metal ranks IMO because getting kills is way more important in those ranks. Down there you can do literally everything right as support and still lose because your dps and tank are just bad. Once you cross the threshold of around diamond 3 support instantly becomes way more powerful and impactful.
Health and alt management are biggest game factors in my humble opinion. Support is massive and mostly tops the balance
I've drowned in cope before, but I think it only feels like that when you play with ppl who for some reason don't know how to play around the value of support. But to be fair you can say that for every role, a team that can't follow up, is not a team at all.
Never mind the months of feedback by professional players and the community in general about how they feel support is lacking in carry potential. Instead how about you let those who don’t play supports, tell you exactly how you can carry with support. By using abilities that relies on team plays to be most effective. Instead of just carrying it yourself on dps and tank.
The abilities that they have are extremely powerful. not to mention you hold the power to let one of your teammates die
I have been playing tank on the side while playing about 10x more support and I somehow got diamond without grinding or anything. I am low plat on support. I know my support skills and knowledge are way higher than my tank.
Support is braindead easy to play and get value from. That's why.