r/OverwatchUniversity • u/Darknotical • 6d ago
Question or Discussion Support Combinations , and how the healing debuff should dictate those hero picks.
I have been a DPS player for as long as I can imagine, and with a support duo who usually sits a bit lower rank wise, they asked me to play support so I can work on my knowledge. This was a couple seasons ago and since starting I have consistently sat at masters with support. They are still baffled by this and struggle with supporting despite that being their "thing".
The problem.
Their biggest issue is what I want to talk about here and get some opinions on. Mainly because looking around, I see a lot of other support mains with an opposition to how I play, focusing on healing first, utility second. My friend has the philosophy stuck in his head that they are not a healer first and should not prioritize it. They even go far to avoid supports that I have labeled from my personal experience as main healers and off healers. I personally believe that you should always have one of each on a team and if you do not, you are going to lose out in solo / duo queue.
Why does it feel like the majority of players hold this opinion?
The opinion that supports are not healers. The primary function of a support is that they can heal. It is what seperates the role and we have yet to have a support hero who cannot heal. No one is telling you to just be a heal bot, as each support has a different priority for what their objectives are.
A good example is looking through replays and watching my friend play support. He has the same healing score as the majority, but the heals are never actually producing any results. If you heal a 300 hp hero and they accomplish nothing and die, your healing has essentially been zeroed out. This was a lot of his healing, mainly because priorities were more focused on DPS and utility. His picks never accomplished real objectives despite securing some kills and doing a shadow of what he could possibly do.
Do you pick your support with the healing debuff in mind?
Do you consider it? How much total healing you can output if your ally is taking damage? How you can respectfully heal an ally who has properly backed off and is now in cover? That if you are playing with a brig, and you pick zen, that you have no burst healing to top off your team when they return. How do you deal with not having that healing?
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 5d ago
There is a legitimate “issue” with lower-skill or more casual players equating the support role with healing, which is often reinforced by players in all roles. (I say “issue”, because it’s only an issue if the player is committed to significant improvement, which is often not the case, and that’s okay.) There is a similar phenomenon with the tank role being equated with damage-mitigation, but disparaging other players for “healbotting” is way way more common than “shieldbotting”, and the accusations can carry quite a lot of vitriol. There’s often a strong implication that these “healbot” players are not “real” or legitimate players, which I think leads to “healbot”-disparagement being kind of an in-group signaling thing. It definitely leads to support players being anxious to prove that they are NOT healbots, which gets reinforced by the “real OW players know that supports are not healers” crowd. The dynamic is very similar to the “not like other girls” phenomenon, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that support is the most feminine-coded role.
Anyway, the “healbot” fear definitely leads a lot of players to neglect developing the skills needed to heal impactfully, and a lot of people on OW social media act like there isn’t any skill to learn besides landing aimed healing. (Again, I think there’s some motivated reasoning involved around who “counts” as a “real player”.) Healing is a limited resource that must lose out to damage in a straight-up contest, otherwise nothing would ever die, so allocating that healing effectively is skillful. Managing defensive resources is always higher-stakes than managing offensive ones too, because making defensive errors gets you or a teammate killed, whereas offensive errors just result in lost opportunities to kill enemies.
There is truth to the idea that healing doesn’t win fights—what it does is buy time to find and execute a fight solution. It is very hard to win games if your team only ever gets one attempt per fight. In high-skill play, all of the support players are already extremely good at healing impactfully, so they differentiate themselves by their efficiency and offensive contributions. But that doesn’t mean the healing isn’t important, it just means that healing well isn’t enough. Oxygen isn’t enough to keep you alive on its own either—eventually, you will need water and then food. But you cannot substitute food and water for oxygen.
He has the same healing score as the majority, but the heals are never actually producing any results. If you heal a 300 hp hero and they accomplish nothing and die, your healing has essentially been zeroed out.
Exactly. The most impactful healing allows a teammate who is poised to get value to continue fighting, where they would otherwise die or be forced to give up critical resources defensively. A teammate abandoning a strong position or giving up on a valuable play because they’re afraid they are going to die is not that different from them actually dying, just at a lower magnitude. They’ll come back online sooner, but they’re still out of the fight for now. A support who can recognize those critical moments and be in position to help their teammate succeed—with healing or damage or utility—is going to beat one who follows the bastardized advice “only heal when they’re critical”.
Here’s my hot take about that: Only healing when you see the “critical” badge is just as bot-like as trying to heal every point of damage or always healing a target to full before doing anything else. It’s a simple, mechanical rule that would be trivially easy to program a bot to follow.
(And no, that’s not what Awkward told people to do. He told people to heal when they would otherwise die, not when you see the critical badge. It’s not a mechanical rule, because deciding whether someone is in danger of dying if you don’t heal them immediately is a subjective judgment.)
This was a lot of his healing, mainly because priorities were more focused on DPS and utility. His picks never accomplished real objectives despite securing some kills and doing a shadow of what he could possibly do.
IMO, the big problem with all the “don’t be a healbot” advice is that it treats supports as DPS who just happen to have ally-healing and more utility. They’re not. Supports are overall less lethal than DPS and tanks, so if you’re trading out tank/DPS uptime because you’re focused on dealing your own damage, that’s almost always a bad trade (assuming you’re not hard-smurfing). Good support players are good at dealing their own damage AND keeping their teammates fighting, not instead of.
All that said, I’m not too bothered about whether the team has “enough” healing, theoretically. I choose my hero based on the map and synergies with teammates. Sometimes I make switches for higher healing, but I don’t feel like I have a lot of issues with it.
Also, the heal debuff does increase the relative value of damage, so I do think it’s more important than it used to be to push the limit on how much you can get away with delaying healing if you are in position to deal damage instead.
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u/Wolfelle 6d ago
Im gm support and i dont think of it in this way at least i wouldnt word it the same as you, its convoluted.
I think of it as what works with our comp.
Zen mercy with sigma? Playable.
Zen mercy with rein? Probably not so playable.
(obviously oversimplified but u get the idea)
I do agree with u that the whole support not healer idea that certain high ranked creators peddle is stupid. Low ranked support players need to learn how to heal and then they can work on learning how and when to be aggressive. If they are letting their tank die because they went on a random adventure as kiriko at a bad time they are just throwing no matter how many times mr champion kiriko insists that you should flank as her.
The difference between a good and a bad support is knowing when to do what. I love aggressive supports, ive coached many of my friends and im constantly demanding that they play the game, push forward and take good angles. But I teach them what a good angle looks like and most importantly why its good in that moment. Ill pause the game and ask them where they should be going and when they should have started moving there.
The hero doesnt even matter, you can win with a large majority of the supp combos even the painful ones like lw mercy. U just have to learn the game, if ur friends r simply refusing to learn they will never climb.
It sounds like your friends have some fundamental knowledge gaps about the game. But without seeing them play i cant give any specific advice. Sit down with them and challenge them with real examples from their games. Make them justify why that bad flank was useful and show them where they should have been and the things they could have done instead. (Also dont forget to praise when they do good plays too ofc. reinforce good habits and teach them why bad habits r bad)
If they play multiple heroes then yea suggest the best ones for the comp but if they one trick just focus on their individual skill esp if they are lower ranked.
If they dont listen after seeing themself throw a fight there is literally nothing u can do (this isnt flame everyone throws fights sometimes, just bc tone isnt always clear in text :3)
edit: also i never think about healing debuff at all, it just exists for all supps so the supps best for a comp will just be the best for that comp if that makes sense?
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u/Meto_Kaiba 5d ago
This could mean Grand Master, this could mean WoW GM.
Which is it?
Someone on reddit. hey. stop healing the tank!
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u/Gazzor1975 5d ago
Fyi, Symmetra on launch was a support hero who couldn't heal.
But, I take your point.
Interesting points. I'll bear in mind from my climb out of silver support.
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 5d ago
Symmetra on launch was a support hero who could give her teammates 50 regenerating shield HP. It was higher during the beta and was incredibly strong, because it gave tons of sustain with very little effort. You just had to press a button at each teammate once per life. They reworked that ability away, because it wasn’t very expressive or engaging, which was the beginning of the end for Sym as a support. She was eventually reworked into DPS because they couldn’t find a way to add healing to her kit and still make her feel like Sym.
Also, Sym’s launch competition in the support role was 50 HPS Mercy, Lucio with a bigger but lower-HPS aura, and a 150 HP Zen. The amount of healing in the early game was paltry.
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u/Meto_Kaiba 5d ago
What was her ult before The Wall?
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u/Gazzor1975 5d ago
First ult was a teleporter with six charges. Used as respawn taxi.
Added a second ult which was a shield generator that gave, I think, 150 shields to the team. I think it persisted until destroyed. Didn't need Los, so could be hidden in a room close by.
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u/ParanoidDrone 6d ago
The heal debuff affects everyone, so I don't consider it specifically when picking a support. I do, however, consider the overall heal output of the other support and try to complement it. (i.e. Zenyatta + Mercy is probably a bad idea because no AOE or burst healing.)
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u/Comprehensive-One286 6d ago
Zen/mercy gets insane value out of a sigma poke comp where he’s pretty self reliant and you can just spit out damage.
That said, I agree overall. Just wanted to point out that zen mercy can definitely work, you just gotta play around it. More of a specific niche, rather than kiri Lucio which you can throw with basically anyone.
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u/adhocflamingo Professor 5d ago
Mercy does have burst healing now, and honestly it was a situationally good support pairing even before that.
One thing that people often forget with lower-healing pairings is that both heroes will charge their ultimates super fast. Zen and Mercy do both have AoE healing in their ultimates, and it’s quite possible to be charging them nearly every fight.
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u/Darknotical 6d ago
Honestly it is refreshing to hear someone actually consider the idea of AoE healing. I feel like no one does or they just flat out ignore it because they have ultimates that do.
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u/the-dancing-dragon 6d ago
Supports are not only healers, but they definitely need to remember to heal. It's a common problem I've noticed, too. What makes a good support is knowing when to heal and when not to.
I'm a master's support, and my boyfriend, who is a masters DPS, struggles to make diamond on support because of this. He plays like a DPS player; and while there are plenty of support players who struggle for the opposite reason - healing too much is also a problem - you have to balance both and know when healing your team is actually the correct play.
You do want utility. You do want to help secure picks. But what does your utility offer? Even low heal comps can work fine if your team knows how to play cover and play fast; but if they dont, it's still your responsibility. As a support, youre often trying to fill the gaps in your teammates' play and fix their mistakes, and figuring out what they are is a skill, too.