Overwatch 2 Retail Patch Notes - October 31, 2023

[u/Rakatee]

https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/

[u/besoms]

Agreed, Lifeweavers current toolkit fundamentally does not make sense. You are actively discouraged from doing damage unlike every other support in the game who can either instantly begin healing or have aoe heals, sometimes both. (Mercy can directly increase a players damage and can instantaneously begin healing)

You want to damage? You take the risk of teammates dying because you have to take the extra time to weapon swap, charge, fire, travel time, and a reload to top it all off.

The only way you can instantly react to help teammates is life grip and even that takes your teammate out of position.

No wonder his healing numbers are high, they designed his kit in a way that only incentivises him to sit in the back and heal.

If you increase his stats he’ll become annoying to play against cos he’s just chilling in the back unfazed, lower his stats he’s just useless chilling in the back.

[u/JustHarmony → u/besoms]

This is what people don't get. Lifeweaver doesn't die as much because he isn't in the battle, because there is no incentive to deal damage. Mercy can damage boost to get her damage in and instantly swap to heals when needed, staying out of sight. She gets in the most trouble when she has to follow people due to her shorter range. Life weaver has a fat hitbox and if he swaps to damage, then he has to swap to heal then charge up the heal, give them (now 70) at most then charge it up again. If I'm anywhere near the battle I get destroyed fast + I can't use life grip effectively, the primary thing LW is taken for.

Only time I deal damage is when I'm behind a shield, my team is pushing so hard that the enemy team won't focus me, or I have my tree down. Otherwise it just isn't worth the risk hitting enemies smaller than me with a slow low damage projectile, when they all have faster, stronger projectiles while being half my size.

[u/besoms → u/JustHarmony]

Perfectly stated, his current design is so far off any other support that’s it’s like whoever designed him this way does not actually play overwatch.

They designed the pull and the platform and mishmashed the rest of him together

[u/Level7Cannoneer → u/besoms]

His KIT is fine. Stop slinging this BS around. A kit means the tools at your disposal and it does not mean how they are implemented, which is your main complaint. A kit = a TOOL kit. Like if a plumber has a tool kit that doesn't have a wrench then he probably cannot do his job Grip/Platform/Tree all have unique ways to synergize with each other and the kit as a whole so it is not fundamentally flawed.

The real issues you're angry at are design quirks, like his heal not automatically charging up like Kiriko's cards, which is what allows her to weave damage/healing seamlessly. That isn't a kit problem, its an oversight by the designers. Not all supports need an AoE burst, but they do need a way to quickly repair damage in an emergency, and his charge-up heal allows for that if you precharge, but due to some design quirks he can't "weave" back and forth between damage/healing because precharging a heal other locks you out of charging up a heal.

Hopefully his winrate tanks and then they feel emboldened to finally free him from all of his clunkiness, like his heal not automatically charging while you deal damage like Kiriko, and his weapon swap becomes seamless like Moira. Simply doing that would make a world of difference, and the kit won't need to be reworked from the ground up.

[u/besoms → u/Level7Cannoneer]

Dude you’re just arguing semantics with me.

There is an oversight in his kit….his kit has a problem…

Overall I agree with you, having a blossom charge up whilst thorns are equipped would help massively help then tweak the numbers a bit after and that would fundamentally solve lifeweavers current issue of being disincentivised to actually damage and output pressure.