based on the space ranger art im hoping it's mobility based and what lifeweaver have been could be (allowing teammates to position better) OR something to rival Lucio's monopoly on speed utility so he's less hard meta maybe?
Pojnt blank single target mainly healing some damage with a bit of mobility, moira but you need to hit your shots and you dont have invuln. Imo no more immortality for the next few supports because they know we are sick of that crap
Yes. This is absolutely correct/the origin of the term. It then got extended (via metonymy, it's a common linguistic phenomenon) to also include the heroes played by those roles. E.g., MS plays Lucio, so people start saying "we need a MS in this comp" to mean "we need a Lucio in this comp". Over barely any time at all, MS and FS came to be used even more often to describe heroes than player roles/hero pools. Which is obviously confusing for many reasons, not least because some heroes can be played by either the FS or MS depending on the comp, for example. So now we got a big hot mess. But that's where it started from, and it does massively help to explain why exactly we split up MS/FS heroes the way we do, since all the other explanations "it's about mechanics/cooldowns/importance to the comp/peel/heal priority/etc." all have glaring flaws when you look at them too closely.
@@Nyxtia Yes. But please do not overlook this MS and FS thing, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a loop of confusion, denial or even obscurity, among other things.
In metal ranks, general perception is Main healer - heals more. Flex is utility/damage. People down here don't know what natural cover is so as soon as you lose 1-2 fights, you get "GET OFF LUCIO/ZEN/ILLARI WE NEED MORE HEALING"
@@nateg.6187 because they’re metal ranked. The cart is situationally good cover, but that’s not the point. Remember, you gotta control your own gameplay to truly climb, you’ll get good and bad teammates but you’ll always have yourself on your team, may as well ensure at least one person is reliably good.
@@nihili4196 a lot of the time illari outputting healing is more the enemy not knowing how to shoot a pylon. ive had games where i rack up crazy heals cause they never do and games where i heal nothing cause they hunt it like it owes them money. technically she can output main healer levels in the right situation, but as a different commenter put, she just doesnt have consistency, and most comps arent built to make her healing work so most players are used to her not having much healing
Interesting to see lifeweaver being played a bit at Dallas. The pharah synergy was pretty creative. Petal so pharah can stay in the air and life pull to get off safer barrages.
i was so confused seeing lf with pharah and was like "i guess it could work but wtf is this" and then the moment i saw a pharah on the platform i was sold on the idea. i still think it was a weak stratagy in this meta, but im really exited to see the lw cheese in different metas where they can get away with it more
@@Parakerusuufr I've seen amazing lifeweavers cancel flux, grav, barrage, shatter, orisa ult, even block dva bomb and stuff using their tree or petal. Like damn
I love when I'm playing Brig and someone on my team is like, "Can I get a main support?!" I'm like yeah you got one. Then dude commences to calling me an idiot 🤷♂️
@drabking9070 true. However, the op seems to be talking about the usual moron who asks for heals even if they get pocketed and complains they aren't being healed when they are being a bullet sponge lol. My understanding anyways since brig can put out a fair bit of healing whether she is the main support or not.
@@ianchambers37I hate the type of players to run in, not play cover, then spam I need healing then say support diff. They're 10-8 for a reason, and it's not my fault Tho instead of ignoring the person, I instead spend extra time trying to heal them to prove a point that I am trying my best and it's their fault they're dying
Someone tried to argue that ana is a main support. They then started to "correct" me, because its apparently "main healer" and "utility." I explained the difference I learned, which grouped them similar to your thumbnail. Honestly, I am tired of Overwatch terminology, so many people fail to understand what they mean. Even more people fail to explain their meanings, and even fewer accept being corrected.
90% of playerbase are casuals that are disconnected from the competitive scene. They don’t understand the things the come from that side or when they try to they get confused and start applying their own logic to fill holes that never existed. That then leads to misinformation spreading and further confusion so and so on which is what happened now and will continue to happen 😂
Ana is a main support for 99% of the ow playerbase, because what 99% of people mean is main healer but they got bitched at by redditors for saying healer. Main vs flex means nothing in ranked, so for ranked your "main" support (as in the one relied on to keep tank alive) is Ana.
It's because pro play doesn't translate to metal ranks. In metal rank terms Ana is main support because of her healing output. I doubt lucio comes under main support in metal ranks due to his low healing output. Building pro comps requires people to actually use a mic so it just does not translate to the majority of the playerbase
It’s because the terminology isn’t objective, it’s formed by opinions and sometimes the consensus of a very small portion of opinions. Essentially, the terminology isn’t helpful. People are allowed to have different opinions.
@@himlolo hahahahah yeah it’s basically a coin flip in QP at least if you’re gonna win. Between Mercy one tricks and Tank Diffs you’re cooked or youre dominating
@@deacon6221the amount of mercy’s I’ve seen who are ranked diamond and above that will routinely res a dps or tank well after a lost fight only to immediately die and feed the resd person to the enemy usually the tank, and they also treat her like the pinnacle of support characters and game design when she’s made to be THE most accessible low skill floor character in the game I’d argue lifeweaver is not that fair ahead but his ceiling is much higher in my experience and his version of res is much worse but much better with coordination and he has to have the awareness and reaction time.
Moira is a Support that only ever works with Lucio due to her range being so short that she needs the speed boost to be effective. Thus, she got stuck in the Flex Support camp. Then she got left out in the cold because Moira's niche of "Healing. Healing everywhere." got significantly weakened with only 1 tank in OW2 and also because Kiriko is just better at surviving and flanking. Moira's 3 strengths were either broken due to the change of concept with the game or supplanted by a new character, and now she's obsolete.
I think people also have a misunderstanding when they talk about high healing output. Most people say that ana does more healing than mercy but if you look at the stats, ana is good at burst healing not straight up healing output throughout a game. If you look at the stats on overbuff. Mercy has more healing per 10 than Bap, Kiriko and Ana in every single rank. The only healers that have more healing (on occasion) this season is Moira and Lifeweaver. This is another reason why looking at the scoreboard doesn't really show what value you gain out of every hero. I like that they added the scoreboard but at this point they might as well add an disclaimer on it that says "the stats may not fully reflect the value you get out of every hero" since noone seems to know what stats are normal for every hero. It's normal for ana to have less healing than mercy for example but she also needs to do some damage.
Diamond ranks and below play mercy wrong, they heal too much and not enough power boost. It's high because most players just heal bot as a mercy and get little value and there more players at diamond and below than above
@lukasg4807 I agree that's a norm at the lower ranks, but it's closer/lower deaths counts for anything past masters. I'm trying to say is that the mercy display of overhealing is presented in the stats by majority of the players
I’m genuinely asking this cause I’m pretty new to OW and never played OW1. Is there any use in looking at the scoreboard? And if so what information should I be trying to get from it? The scoreboard is really confusing to me lol
@deadlynn7774 scoreboard can be useful to determine how helpful someone is but there are moments where someone's stats may not represent their contributions well. For example Miora will always have very high stats but a lot of the time it's fairly meaningless. Her damage is to low to realistically consider her dps as meaningful past high Plat lobbies. Whereas a strong mercy player may not have high healing but she have high damage boost (not seen in scoreboard) with low death counts. Kiriko may also have low damage but her high burst heads hot damage is much better than miora low burst damage. Watch a streamer do a unranked to gm video, those will teach you everything you will ever know. I use mL7 for my supports
Honestly Kiri is strong not only as a flanker, but as a backline defender (peeler) because her suzu makes her really effective against Sombra / Tracer! I play Console and Sombra really takes advantage of no-mic usage, so having a hero who can quickly come to aid and can cleanse hack is a game-changer if you can play her like a teleporting brig.
as someone who put 100+hours on LW from drop putting in the time to learn him when Bogur did, I feel Lw is definitely a utility hero! Giving height is huge, gripping potential deaths, breaking armor with his thorns, he even (when you can aim his thorns) are great for controlling backlines! Paired well with ana/zen! (Play LW like Brigg w/o the shield and your value will sky rocket!)
I distinctly remember main support meaning high heals and flex support meaning supports focused on utility in 2020. I may be confusing the word support with healer, as in that’s main healer and flex healer but I remember hearing it in pro contexts like that. Am i experiencing the Mandela effect? Lol
@@jellybeatdown that’s what I think too, like, it doesn’t make sense… my friend who quit before ow2 literally agreed w me when I sent that thumbnail and said “isn’t most of this wrong, where X heroes should belong here?” like there’s no way
@@NotOki1 I figured it out, my definition is in fact correct but that’s for main healer and off healer, not flex healer. In ow1, the term support wasn’t nearly as common as now but it was there, but main support and flex support were terms that pro players used primarily, very few people that weren’t pros said main/flex support. It’s because people said “healer = support”, so people like me thought “ok, so a main healer is a main support, and a off healer is an off support”
@@ExpertCobra-tn1vt I think that's right. Those terms definitely existed in OW1. I played in a few grassroot leagues and "Main support-Flex support" were the categories our coaches had us use. Most people in comp matches didn't seem to know these terms tho.
having dipped a little into the splatoon competitive community where I dont believe this problem exists, it's interesting how this came about. Main describes the weapon(s) (kit) you're most proficient with and will generally use (and thus what you're going to join teams with), and flex will be any weapons you can sort of play/pick up at a good enough level that you'd consider it in matches (if the team you're in or considering want it). It can also refer to the role you occupy in the team (slayer, skirmisher, anchor, support), but these are more guidelines.
what annoys me is that there is different terninolgy for ranked and pro play. main and flex for pro play and main heal and off heal for ranked. I think the ranked way is easier to understand because the heros will very rarely change sub role but I do think that we need to just adopt one so that there is no confusion when talking about it.
My brain has always tended to categorise supports into main and flex like this: Main supports are conductors that influence where your team plays from, or relative to other teammates: Lucio with close range AoE speed boost, spread out off angles with Mercy. The AoE splash healing of Bap. Petal platform angles with Lifeweaver. The anchor point the team revolves around as Brig. Flex supports are conductors who influence team focus. Sleep and anti-nade with Ana. Discord orb with Zen, an offensive Biotic orb to help chip down a target with Moira. Deadly burst poke from an off angle from Kiriko or Illari. The big outlier compared to who plays which category is Bap, but that’s mostly because Bap Brig or Bap Lucio or Bap Mercy putting the players with the most experience on Lucio Brig and Mercy on their heroes,
Illari has been used a decent bit over the last couple of seasons like season 6 obviously but also was used in season 8 in bap illari and has recently been used in lw illari
7:20 Now that the Dallas major happened, I think liveweaver would be main sup because team falcons used him with bap and chiyo (ms/lucio player) played w him
I tend to get teams that run into 3 separate directions and out of line of sight. Then usually the poor tank is trying to make space on point but getting run over by the majority of the enemy team that’s actually playing as a unit. Unless a single dps is really popping off. I keep my heals on the point.
main and off healer ARE useful labels tho, referring to raw healing output and utility rather than the types of players playing them in that any comp without a main healer will be significantly worse than any comp WITH one
@@whos.brooke. there are no such things as healers in this game. They are called support for a reason. If they were that the game would call them healers not support.
@@notmejustyou fun fact bestie if u press the "i need healing" button with noone that can heal alive, it says in chat "no healers nearby". healers are anyone that can heal. in the context of main/off healer, the main healer is the one doing the majority of the healing for your team, they are the MAIN source of HEALing. the OFF healers job is not to be the primary source of healing but to provide utility. those are useful terms
@@whos.brooke. hmmm so why don't they put 76, mauga or even JQ in the support category 🤔 see how quickly your argument falls apart (when I say argument im not trying to be toxic just a friendly debate between 2 passionate players with 2 diff ideologies). They're called main and flex supports for very great reasons. healing is a part of thier kit, yes, but it shouldn't be the focus. no one said supports dont or can't heal but to call them healers would be detrimental to your own expectations in game when they are trying to get their own value outside of healing. You would expect them to only heal labeling them "main healers" or not to heal calling them "off healers". I hope I that made sense to you. (Edit) Oh and all support provide utility outside of Moira matta fact all heros provide some sort of utility even the dps and tank roles outside of again Moira.
@@notmejustyou Soldiers ability to heal is a secondary cooldown not his primary way of playing the game. Mauga and JQ are overhealth so yeah, his argument still stands
best support comps for each scenario. rush | kiri lucio brawl/deathball | bap lucio or kiri lucio poke | zen bap dive | ana brig or lucio kiri and the tanks that pair with these comps are dive | winston dva ball doom zarya rush | junkerqueen ram brawl | rein ram mauga poke | sigma orisa zarya hog explanation of each comp dive | jump on they ass rush | aggressive walk towards they ass brawl | smack they ass a whole lot poke | kill they ass before they can walk/jump/ smack your ass I hope this helped someone!
People only care about what is most intuitive from the definition of the word itself. Dont care about the upper echlon jargon. Supports are naturally thought of as heals before anything else for players. That is their primary purpose for players, to heal the team. There is main support aka main heals and offsupport/flex. Low heals, primary gimmick/effect secondary. Lucio is speed. Brig is antiflanker/dive. Mercy is dmg bst buffer. Zen is big team dmg. These are the natural off/flex support. Main support ergo goes most healing are sources like Ana/Bap/kiriko
This is absolutely what it used to mean in OW1. If you tried out for a team position main would be bap, Ana, Moria, the big heal#s. Flex was your zen, lucio, brig, Mercy. Anyone trying out for a support role on a team knew the difference. If you were a flex you had to be good at all the flex support, if you were main you had to be good at all the mains. It definitely was not what this guy is saying, but I understand the it's changed. I don't think most people got to play tournament style OW1 so they don't understand why there is a discrepancy in flex definitions. Either way fun tourney play died with OW2 and 5v5 balance so the concept is pretty much out the window.
Weirdly enough, after watching so many of these videos, I kinda watch to see, from touch ups to complete reworks, which characters SHOULD better fit a role and how to change them if appliable. For example, Lucio and Brig are constantly stated to be main supports, but I would be interested in see what would need to be do to swap those roles. In addition, some would say that certain heroes should play a different role than they are now, and if so, what would need to be done to change them up
I think another reason why either Lucio/Brig are perma meta, is that they can both make individual plays proactively, without being largely reactive/passive like Weaver/Mercy. Additionally with the loss of the 2nd tank, you need your support line to be able to peel for themselves while also enabling the team. Lucio does both extremely well, and is the best tank enabler in the game. Brig on the other hand is arguably the best body guard another support could ask for, plus she helps enable DPS with packs. Mercy/Weaver can help only 1 person at a time usually, lack the ability to multitask, and are just fundamentally limited by their kits.
I always subscribed to the idea of main and off healer in supports when playing. My idea was just high healing output with aggressive ult and utility support with high survivable defensive ult. Heroes introduced in OW2 seem to be bucking the trend a little, but it also seems relative. Mercy is an off healer when with a true main healer but has to pull main healer duty more if the other support is an off healer. There are other things to consider for me, like healing range. If my team insists on Wrecking Ball, Widowmaker, and Cassidy, then I don't want to play Moira, who can't reach all three at once, maybe if Widow becomes Mei, and Ball switches to Junker Queen and the team is much closer together would she make sense.
Spilo could you make a video about Illari and her problems and maybe some solutions? She came out after the Support Rework Video so you never had it in a video.
How I always understood it, is that main support is the support that is doing the shot calling. For example, Lucio calling amp, zen calling discord. Flex support is more about healing and surviving. For longest time I thought it was about healing numbers but no it’s about who makes the calls!
Here’s my thought process behind it. Main Support = stays with tank and does greater than or equal to off support healing. Your job is to keep everyone alive. Off Support = enables DPS players, peels when needed, roams (mid, front, & back lines), protect main support. Happy medium between healing and DPS. Your job is to maximize your teams potential during fights.
Maybe you address this in more detail elsewhere, but mercy’s movement I think is tuned for lower elo play (myself). The hit scan aim is not there in low elo such that mercy is encouraged to fly around. That kinda hits a ceiling around plat/diamond ish
I sort of think of it nowadays as a flex support is still the aimer, and the main support is the support whos main job is peeling for the flex support So LW, Brig, Lucio, Mercy are main supports and Ana, Zen, Moira are flex supports Kiri and Bap can fit into both slots but I would say both trend toward flex support (given how good lucio is in OW2 rn) Idk where illari fits tbh
I think we need to just go back to OW1, and take what we know with OW2 and slowly add back hero's (comp wise) so that we can fix a lot of the issues past and present with the knowledge. Kinda just tired talking about this that the other issues because I think OW2 will constantly has lackluster gameplay meta's because of the way it's design philosophy caters continued bad design.
I main zenyatta and lifeweaver. I'll switch back and forth depending on my other supports choice. It's not hard to understand. You need one support to 100% heal the other needs to follow a dps and do majority dps over healing. It's simple math 3 dps beats 2 dps
I believe often people aren’t aware of the proper definitions of these terms because of long ago we termed them. Blizzard no longer is really advocating for pro Overwatch, so not enough people are learning about those definitions. It’s always interesting to see this conversation every year and I think new Overwatch 2 players have gotten confused due to it. Great video!!!
I was a weird combo support in the teams I played. I was the Zen in goats but in early double shield (before brig started to take over) I was turned into the Lucio player as my Bapt wasn't great. Which flexed onto Mercy for pharah maps. Then back to Zen during the very temporary Bapt/Zen double shield before finally settling on Brig at the end of double shield that was the long lasting meta people remember. Double shield didn't require Brig it did require Bapt.
So you could say I am a projectile support main. (I picked up Kiri on ow2 release) All my supports I am good with are all projectile weapon based. Hyper utility based player which is also why I hate Moira so damn much.
I was thinking about 2 things. Space ranger should be high mobility like offer speed outside of bs like (kiri Ult) that matches Lucio in utility that is “unique” but doesn’t output what makes him special. I was thinking of like a “boost pad” like a brimstone amp from Valorant that speeds ppl for a set time versus Lucio speed to amp out/in. Also I fully understand the old OW carbon series understanding of main/flex supp but I thought that you could maybe rationalize main supports where they’re the “main” healer that you play around. That is, if your MS is a Lucio then you are playing fast (rush, dive maybe) and for brig (defensive so like “sig brawl idk” or dive) but it’s the FS that can almost change to fulfill any situation around that. That is a rush comp with a Lucio could work with a bap OR a Ana
@nurikkulanbaev3628 @mannypacbeloud5786 Why are you booing them? They're right. The terms are completely useless for 99.5% of the player base, and only lead to more confusion
I hate that OW pro scene seems significantly different than OW ranked scene in the way the game is approached, and I think it plays a big role in the popularity of OW as an ESport. Most ranked players can’t understand Scrims/pro play because it’s just significantly different. I don’t think people can ever follow OW pro scene like it would need to be followed until there is a closer correlation between the two. Why is it that it’s impossible for someone to understand the support categories? Because Blizzard intentionally made it that way or it happened by chance, either way, it shouldn’t be this difficult to explain a seemingly simple topic. No other sport has that problem. Basketball for example has 5 positions and while players can flex positions, fans generally know what each position does. OW doesn’t seem to have that level of cohesiveness, hell it’s basically an entirely different game in ranked vs scrimmages, lol.
I usually go by fat healer and assist healer. Just plat-masters as reference, if we have illari zen, we will have trouble in neutral because healing will be low(different contexts etc.) ill ask for illari to go bap for higher heals in neutral and basically same if not higher damage. Something like that
Main and Flex support were terms to describe players, not characters. Then people caught on, but didn't fully understand the terms and thought it was similar to main and off-tanks in OW1, so started applying it incorrectly to supports.
14:46 answering before hearing your answer. is it because main supp + flex supp = good support comp. and mercy/ lifeweaver suck, and that leave your main support with just brig and lucio as options. most decent support comes are like lucio kiri or brig ana
I've just refused to use flex and main support. I like main and off healer. It's just way easier to see Lucio, brig, mercy, zen, they're all alike in healing strength.
@@DjNasteNot by itself, no. But there usually is an inverse correlation between the healing output of a hero and their utility. Higher healing output in most instances means less utility, and vice versa. So healing numbers are at least a decent initial approximation of whether a Support character is a "main healer" or a "utility support."
IMO, the best way to increase Mercy's skill ceiling is to rework rez so that it's her ultimate again. Back when rez was Mercy's ult in 2016-17, Mercy's skill ceiling was a lot higher... mostly because having a cool playmaker ult made it actually _worth the effort_ to put in 110% effort in order to farm ult charge as quickly as possible. Mercy was highly rewarded for healing/boosting her entire team, taking lots of calculated risks to grab extra scraps of ult charge, and mastering the strategy+gamesense side of the game in order to avoid wasting a single potentially game-changing rez (classic!rez could cancel out a lot of offensive ults, but those very same offensive ults could just as easily cancel out classic!rez depending on which order they're used in).
Thats why we no longer use main and flex. We use main and off support. That has been the case since prior to OWL. And Off support is the utility support whose abilities are more focused around healing: moira mercy lucio brig bap. And the. Off supports are the ones who’s utilities help more outside of healing. Zen Ana etc.
@@ELI-521utility is anything they can provide outside of damage and healing. Positioning tool, debuffs, immo, buffs. Moira and illari only has self sustain utility so it’s not super relevant therefore no utility.
Im relatively new to the game and main/flex support makes total sense to me. I really don't get the confusion? The grey area exists because the categories are loose, thats it🤷♂️
shouldnt it be that main support is the support that is critical for a composition, while the flex support is the support that can fit a variety of heroes into that composition based on situational elements?
I feel like you failed to mention the fact that Lucio and brig have AOE healing… which also is a big plus to the utility they have… it makes it easier to take and deny space when you the aoe healing is active thur inspire and Lucio healing with and without amp. Most of the other support combos struggle because they have limited aoe healing or only single target healing
If we were to get another aoe support it would open up the options and maybe even the meta to maneuver to different options depending on utility with that specific character… because so far we been getting a bunch of single target/ hybrid supports, not really anything aoe high healing supports…
Additionally on the part you were talking about the 3 healer roles I think a good classification would be single target healers (Ana or zen types), hybrid/ utilities (bap or kiri types) healers, and aoe healers (lucio or brig types)… - Single Target healers (STH ) mostly are heal 1 person at a time with some utility. They still have decent heal -Hybrid/Utility Healers (HUH) mostly are picked for their utility and can still do decent healing when need. Also good for flacky or off angles -Area Of Effect healers (AOE) healers are picked because they are the main source of constant healing, or the ability to heal multiple people in the near by proximity… plus they still have decent utility.
I disagree with the points on Moira's "utility". I don't see her as highly mobile. She's about middle mobility. Outclassed by lucio, kiriko, mercy. A little better than iliari and lifeweaver. I also don't see how healing orb is "burst" healing. It is a fast heal over time. When I think of burst, I think of bap grenade, ana grenade/nano, and lifeweaver heals. Are my definitions just out of whack?
Is Brig that high of utility? I haven't really thought of shield bash and whip shot as high utility abilities before; when I think of supp utility I usually think of anti-nade, sleep, suzu, immortality and even dmg beam (and lucio speed ofc but I'm not confused about lucio's utility). I am also guessing the brig in these situations is body guarding a vulnerable dps since lucio may not need it or be close enough to protect?
Man people can't even figure out how to properly pair 2 heros in the easiest role in the game but we have this mystical idea that tanks would always properly pair with each other
TBH I kind of like being bad at the game because I can play who I want to and it doesn't impact me as much. Being forced to choose something because it's the best thing just feels kind of sad, I don't think I'd enjoy the game as much if I was that good.
Sure but how about the interesting theory and analysis of character design. One is aim should be rewarded by higher numbers. This is rewarded in dmg or healing. Aim is an easy skill ceiling to implement, requires hours to hone the skill and should be rewarded. Its very simple reward with numbers. The cause and effect is that flex players *usually* needs aim. And the role in effect to the team is usually output of healing or damage. Suzu, immort and nade are all pretty much burst heals or saves. And all causes flex supports role to focus on tanks more due to tanks higher hp to fill character design ofc as a tank. Since flex requires aim and is rewarded consistent dmg through pure dmg through LoS and shooting. Usually their output as dmg gives the value of additional pressure in another angle is another cause and effect of what a flex support is. Character design is all about balance. And *usually* higher numbers like "snipers" are balanced in low mobility. If character designs are all balancing the stats of power, agility/mobility, tankiness/survivability. Naturally they should have less mobility. So in the opposite case you would have character design balance of high mobility but low power output. These are main supports. The key part is to provide a skill ceiling for these main supports. Usually mechanical skill in mobility, ability or tactics of their utility. Thats the cause of effect of main supports being more specialized in mechanics of wall riding, mercy movement, brig mechanics and tactics. And its all because aim is a skill that takes SO much hours to hone. Instead they are granted survivability and mobility which gives a cause and effect of the main support role to be able to peel for the *usually* immobile flex support. As well as their low healing usually makes their role to prioritize the squishies as character design to have lower hp. Of course as blizzard is designer its impossible to create a theory when blizzard can make a broken character that has mobility survivability like kiriko and is why kiriko is a problem. And all heroes are not perfect. But even in real life scientists observe patterns makes theories. Finds something new and adjust and put details to their theories. What comes up must come down but it doesnt work in space. They just further tuned the theory. We made theory of dive brawl poke, off tank main tank, angle, pressure etc. It would be sad if we stopped observing the pattern to composition theory and just concluded to "hero pools". The hero pools have a pattern. Observe and theorize it.
How wrong must I be playing Bap, if in situations where more healing is needed, I swap to Brig? It's working and I'm climbing just fine, but listening to you talk as if even Ana has more utility than Bap has my head hurting. I often beat the DPS for dam/elims as Bap.
Dmg and healing are not utility, utility is basically everything else BUT those 2. Ana and bap have similar utility, whereas brig has less healing/dmg (esp when played correctly in pro play) but ,due to her amazing zone control and damage mitigation she has more utility then both of those pics
@@rayrayy4 What are you replying to? If it wasn't for you mentioning the same heroes as me, I honestly would have thought you'd replied to my comment by mistake. What are you talking about?
I played fs since s26, never before have I heard my entire career and complaints heard before. Please blizzard listen to this man, support is far too bipolar of a role, when it works it works well when it doesn’t it’s awful. I hated playing support for my team when illiari came out, and when we’d queue after I couldn’t play my favorite dps heroes. This is a problem but it’s extremely fixable
As long as they don't have a day 1 Brigette, just play what you enjoy. These conversations are mostly for higher levels of play. If you don't want pressure then play quick play and turn the chat off.
Your comment about Mercy res not being viable in the pro environment...I've been stuck in gold forever as a Brig main, and I loathe the screams from random teams for a swap to Mercy because people are so convinced res is better than inspire...they don't understand not dying is better than getting res'd. Her res is insanely overrated even at that level. More often than not it gets her killed, and far too often it's just a second death for the res target AND she gets herself killed. I can't think of any other one button push that can charge the opponents ults faster. I wish they'd just get rid of it and add something else to her kit.
the first verse of John 2:2 (1 john 2:2) is, in context: "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin." It fits, like hardcore, to the point of this video. Good eye.
All players in diamond seem to value is healing output. If you don't have gold heals, you're throwing basically. Bothers me to no end that the majority of otherwise decent players still don't understand the game
While it makes sense how and why it's used in pro play good for them, these terms' unintuitiveness have made them lose their meaning as the community has continued to use and misunderstand them, to the point where they're borderline useless for 90% players IMO. (This might be hyperbolic, but still even if it isn't perfect we could absolutely do better than this). _I typed a lot more actually contributing to the discussion but youtube has no confirmation popup for canceling a comment so it's all gone and I'm so tired so I'll just elaborate if anyone wants to talk about it_
Main support is diff from main healer supp players need to learn that. Picking a healer before ur tank chooses is a sign of throwing means im playing who i want regardles of what what the team comp dictates
Isn't illari a stat character just like Moira. She has no utility, I think people mention "utility" alot but do they even know what it means or are they just parroting words. I mean what I understand as utility is any effect that's not raw healing/damage. Discord orb/ damage boost/ rez/ immortality/cleanse/petal/speedboost With that explanation what is brig's utility? Inspire/ the overhealth??
@@khaledm.1476she holds space so yes her boop along with her shield is great utility if brig didn’t have a shield her boop would be mid but she can also hold space relatively well bc of her shield
Im sorry but Im more confused after watching the video lol. It sounds like every support hero is both flex and main and nothing matters except who is playing them?
Yes, main support/flex support is just about hero pools. Main support tends to play main support heroes, flex support tends to play flex support heroes
7 minutes in, so you'll probably mention this, but another layer of confusion is when people started talking about main healers, and that main supports and main healers aren't necessarily the same thing. Incredibly awful terminology. Ana is a "flex support" but a main healer. Lucio is a main support, but not a main healer. I've always found these incredibly stupid though, even back in 2016. Same with flex dps at times just being a synonym for projectile dps, as if these players will NEVER touch a hitscan hero. The only role where this really should've applied is tank. Main tanks and off tanks had much more meaningfully different roles to play than the splits between DPS and supports.
Kiri soj Lucio tracer doom/monkey/ball are pretty common comps, Kiri soj orisa tracer Lucio was also played when orisa was meta. Kiri soj can fit into most comps
I'm not even a support and I've been wanting more supports, we have too small of a pool to choose from. Also make nade reduce healing, not stop it completely
I agree that there are too little options when it comes to supports, but changing nade from preventing healing to only reducing healing is not a good decision. Look at Ana's kit and compare her to the other supports, she is the only one without a movement ability. Also, think about Kiriko's cleanse, what difference would it make if Ana's nade reduced healing, when Kiriko would cleanse anyway? Considering Kiriko has been a must-pick for most of Overwatch 2, it's clear that the other supports need to be buffed, or left alone like in the case of Ana. This is just my opinion having played Overwatch since 2018 and having seen the game evolve. This is only what I believe would work for top 500, as that is my rank, so correct me if things are drastically different in any of the other ranks.
@@dilogy she's a must pick partly because of Ana, I honestly think cleanse is a bit strong too. I've been playing the game since it first released too, I don't like where it's at rn. I don't think it's as fun as it used to be :/
@@thelordofpie7157 Ana can be countered without Kiriko, though. I do agree that the game is in a worse state than before and Blizzard's attempt to shift from a team-oriented game to an individual-focused, traditional-style FPS has subtracted from the game's identity.
@@dilogy my thing is she's really the only character besides like Zarya that can counter the nade, and that's only on a single individual for Zarya, unless she wants to use both bubbles. And yeah, it's been kinda hard to bring myself to play sometimes. Ik a lot of people hate it, but I genuinely miss 6v6
@@thelordofpie7157 I won't continue talking about nade, but I agree that 6v6 had its charm and that despite its controversies, it was sometimes more fun. Overwatch 1 as a whole seemed more unique, to be honest.
My rule of thumb to differentiate between the two is using player role. I say that main support player will be playing the hero that has the abilities crucial for the current meta, regardless of who that is. Then the flex supprot responsibility is playing all other heroes within the meta that rotate from sitiation to situation. In that paradigm it doesnt matter who plays what, you just reassign player roles with no regard to the heroes they are currently playing
@@ELI-521 you are saying it as if current situation is any less confusing while my suggestion is objectively less confusing to apply in the current state of affairs
@@Anton_Jermakoŭthing is Main support and flex support distinctions aren’t complicated they’re just hero pools. By Adding other definitions in the mix you’re trying to explain logic that quite literally doesn’t exist
@@Anton_Jermakoŭyes they say it’s confusing for the vast majority of community who is 1. disconnected from the higher side of the community and 2. When trying to understand things coming from from that side overthink and complicate things for themselves which you’re literally doing rn
What are y'alls bets on the utility of future support heroes?
based on the space ranger art im hoping it's mobility based and what lifeweaver have been could be (allowing teammates to position better) OR something to rival Lucio's monopoly on speed utility so he's less hard meta maybe?
MORE IMMORTALITY!
Can't wait for the support that gives you 3 seconds of immunity while resurrecting your whole team and giving them all 100% more damage for 20 seconds
Pojnt blank single target mainly healing some damage with a bit of mobility, moira but you need to hit your shots and you dont have invuln. Imo no more immortality for the next few supports because they know we are sick of that crap
Click a button and suvive
Then there was that time when Flex Support Players would play the Sombra on 2CP because of EMP Charge Rate with Health Packs went crazy
They also would sometimes flex to soldier or Road in certain comps
@@TigerFeetMFG or bastion on junkertown attack
So main and flex support is a way of classifying players, not characters?
Basically. But by classifying top level players, it helps identify good team comps which then slowly turns into character classification.
Yes. This is absolutely correct/the origin of the term.
It then got extended (via metonymy, it's a common linguistic phenomenon) to also include the heroes played by those roles.
E.g., MS plays Lucio, so people start saying "we need a MS in this comp" to mean "we need a Lucio in this comp".
Over barely any time at all, MS and FS came to be used even more often to describe heroes than player roles/hero pools. Which is obviously confusing for many reasons, not least because some heroes can be played by either the FS or MS depending on the comp, for example.
So now we got a big hot mess. But that's where it started from, and it does massively help to explain why exactly we split up MS/FS heroes the way we do, since all the other explanations "it's about mechanics/cooldowns/importance to the comp/peel/heal priority/etc." all have glaring flaws when you look at them too closely.
@@Nyxtia
Yes. But please do not overlook this MS and FS thing, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a loop of confusion, denial or even obscurity, among other things.
its about players and meta patterns
This exactly
In metal ranks, general perception is Main healer - heals more. Flex is utility/damage. People down here don't know what natural cover is so as soon as you lose 1-2 fights, you get "GET OFF LUCIO/ZEN/ILLARI WE NEED MORE HEALING"
But iliari can output ridiculous amounts of healing. Sometimes I don't understand fellow metals
@@nihili4196 it’s a matter of consistency with illari, it’s not consistent enough to rely on her all the time
@@nateg.6187 because they’re metal ranked. The cart is situationally good cover, but that’s not the point. Remember, you gotta control your own gameplay to truly climb, you’ll get good and bad teammates but you’ll always have yourself on your team, may as well ensure at least one person is reliably good.
@@nihili4196 a lot of the time illari outputting healing is more the enemy not knowing how to shoot a pylon. ive had games where i rack up crazy heals cause they never do and games where i heal nothing cause they hunt it like it owes them money. technically she can output main healer levels in the right situation, but as a different commenter put, she just doesnt have consistency, and most comps arent built to make her healing work so most players are used to her not having much healing
Exactly you can have 48 assists as zen but if u have 3k less heals than everyone else it’s your fault😭
The real dilemma is Spilo's hair routine
ngl this comment trend is pretty funy
He has a hair routine?
I got the same one
Step 1: wake up
Step 2: sleep
Step 3: go back to step 1
@@CoachSpilo go bald
Interesting to see lifeweaver being played a bit at Dallas. The pharah synergy was pretty creative. Petal so pharah can stay in the air and life pull to get off safer barrages.
Don't get me wrong the "senient illari pylon" jokes are funny, but this just goes to show a good lifeweaver can truly help out a team
i was so confused seeing lf with pharah and was like "i guess it could work but wtf is this" and then the moment i saw a pharah on the platform i was sold on the idea. i still think it was a weak stratagy in this meta, but im really exited to see the lw cheese in different metas where they can get away with it more
@@Parakerusuufr I've seen amazing lifeweavers cancel flux, grav, barrage, shatter, orisa ult, even block dva bomb and stuff using their tree or petal. Like damn
society if people watched the whole video before commenting
When you mentioned Lucio and Brig being played together, I had flashbacks to JOATS (iykyk)
I love when I'm playing Brig and someone on my team is like, "Can I get a main support?!" I'm like yeah you got one. Then dude commences to calling me an idiot 🤷♂️
Fellow brig main. 😂 I get the annoyance
@@ianchambers37 yeah....I think a lot of people still don't understand how she works or how useful she is.
She’s a main healer based on your teams composition
@drabking9070 true. However, the op seems to be talking about the usual moron who asks for heals even if they get pocketed and complains they aren't being healed when they are being a bullet sponge lol. My understanding anyways since brig can put out a fair bit of healing whether she is the main support or not.
@@ianchambers37I hate the type of players to run in, not play cover, then spam I need healing then say support diff. They're 10-8 for a reason, and it's not my fault
Tho instead of ignoring the person, I instead spend extra time trying to heal them to prove a point that I am trying my best and it's their fault they're dying
Someone tried to argue that ana is a main support. They then started to "correct" me, because its apparently "main healer" and "utility."
I explained the difference I learned, which grouped them similar to your thumbnail.
Honestly, I am tired of Overwatch terminology, so many people fail to understand what they mean. Even more people fail to explain their meanings, and even fewer accept being corrected.
90% of playerbase are casuals that are disconnected from the competitive scene. They don’t understand the things the come from that side or when they try to they get confused and start applying their own logic to fill holes that never existed. That then leads to misinformation spreading and further confusion so and so on which is what happened now and will continue to happen 😂
@@ELI-52199% tbh
Ana is a main support for 99% of the ow playerbase, because what 99% of people mean is main healer but they got bitched at by redditors for saying healer.
Main vs flex means nothing in ranked, so for ranked your "main" support (as in the one relied on to keep tank alive) is Ana.
It's because pro play doesn't translate to metal ranks. In metal rank terms Ana is main support because of her healing output. I doubt lucio comes under main support in metal ranks due to his low healing output. Building pro comps requires people to actually use a mic so it just does not translate to the majority of the playerbase
It’s because the terminology isn’t objective, it’s formed by opinions and sometimes the consensus of a very small portion of opinions. Essentially, the terminology isn’t helpful. People are allowed to have different opinions.
Born to reddit lucio, forced to flex because of the mercy one tricks :(
There’s way too many Mercy one tricks and they don’t even try to use her beams or RES optimally.
@@deacon6221I love mercy one tricks! They give me so many free wins (except when they’re on my on team)
@@himlolo hahahahah yeah it’s basically a coin flip in QP at least if you’re gonna win. Between Mercy one tricks and Tank Diffs you’re cooked or youre dominating
YOU DISGRACE THE LUCIO MAFIA. THOSE USELESS MOTHS SHOULD MEAN NOTHING TO YOUR AWESOME FROG DEMEANOR
@@deacon6221the amount of mercy’s I’ve seen who are ranked diamond and above that will routinely res a dps or tank well after a lost fight only to immediately die and feed the resd person to the enemy usually the tank, and they also treat her like the pinnacle of support characters and game design when she’s made to be THE most accessible low skill floor character in the game I’d argue lifeweaver is not that fair ahead but his ceiling is much higher in my experience and his version of res is much worse but much better with coordination and he has to have the awareness and reaction time.
marking my calendrer for june 4th 2025 for the next spilo "THe overwatch 2 support Dilemma" by then it might be Overwatch 3
Ow3 where you must pay an entry fee before every game
@@AletheSnail7 the culling 2 type shenanigans
10:43
"Moira... almost never seen paired with another support" - Spilo, 2024
He’s talking about at the time lol
Moira is a Support that only ever works with Lucio due to her range being so short that she needs the speed boost to be effective. Thus, she got stuck in the Flex Support camp.
Then she got left out in the cold because Moira's niche of "Healing. Healing everywhere." got significantly weakened with only 1 tank in OW2 and also because Kiriko is just better at surviving and flanking. Moira's 3 strengths were either broken due to the change of concept with the game or supplanted by a new character, and now she's obsolete.
Im really hyped for space ranger just by her design she looks like shes going to be like tracer with high mobility but designed as a support.
Same really hoping she will motivate me to grind again
Omfg I'm a support main but I love playing tracer so I can't wait
I think people also have a misunderstanding when they talk about high healing output. Most people say that ana does more healing than mercy but if you look at the stats, ana is good at burst healing not straight up healing output throughout a game. If you look at the stats on overbuff. Mercy has more healing per 10 than Bap, Kiriko and Ana in every single rank. The only healers that have more healing (on occasion) this season is Moira and Lifeweaver. This is another reason why looking at the scoreboard doesn't really show what value you gain out of every hero. I like that they added the scoreboard but at this point they might as well add an disclaimer on it that says "the stats may not fully reflect the value you get out of every hero" since noone seems to know what stats are normal for every hero. It's normal for ana to have less healing than mercy for example but she also needs to do some damage.
Diamond ranks and below play mercy wrong, they heal too much and not enough power boost. It's high because most players just heal bot as a mercy and get little value and there more players at diamond and below than above
@lukasg4807 I agree that's a norm at the lower ranks, but it's closer/lower deaths counts for anything past masters. I'm trying to say is that the mercy display of overhealing is presented in the stats by majority of the players
I’m genuinely asking this cause I’m pretty new to OW and never played OW1. Is there any use in looking at the scoreboard? And if so what information should I be trying to get from it? The scoreboard is really confusing to me lol
@deadlynn7774 scoreboard can be useful to determine how helpful someone is but there are moments where someone's stats may not represent their contributions well. For example Miora will always have very high stats but a lot of the time it's fairly meaningless. Her damage is to low to realistically consider her dps as meaningful past high Plat lobbies. Whereas a strong mercy player may not have high healing but she have high damage boost (not seen in scoreboard) with low death counts. Kiriko may also have low damage but her high burst heads hot damage is much better than miora low burst damage. Watch a streamer do a unranked to gm video, those will teach you everything you will ever know. I use mL7 for my supports
@@drsuikoden3850 thank you this was a very detailed and helpful response!
I'm really excited to see what Space Ranger (or whatever their final name will be) does... if they'll shake things up.
Honestly Kiri is strong not only as a flanker, but as a backline defender (peeler) because her suzu makes her really effective against Sombra / Tracer!
I play Console and Sombra really takes advantage of no-mic usage, so having a hero who can quickly come to aid and can cleanse hack is a game-changer if you can play her like a teleporting brig.
as someone who put 100+hours on LW from drop putting in the time to learn him when Bogur did, I feel Lw is definitely a utility hero! Giving height is huge, gripping potential deaths, breaking armor with his thorns, he even (when you can aim his thorns) are great for controlling backlines! Paired well with ana/zen! (Play LW like Brigg w/o the shield and your value will sky rocket!)
I distinctly remember main support meaning high heals and flex support meaning supports focused on utility in 2020. I may be confusing the word support with healer, as in that’s main healer and flex healer but I remember hearing it in pro contexts like that. Am i experiencing the Mandela effect? Lol
No you aren’t it was a hold over from ow1 we are getting gaslit by the new gen of ow players lmaoo
@@jellybeatdown that’s what I think too, like, it doesn’t make sense… my friend who quit before ow2 literally agreed w me when I sent that thumbnail and said “isn’t most of this wrong, where X heroes should belong here?” like there’s no way
@@ExpertCobra-tn1vt no this has been stapled in it was never main healer or flex healer because its support
@@NotOki1 I figured it out, my definition is in fact correct but that’s for main healer and off healer, not flex healer. In ow1, the term support wasn’t nearly as common as now but it was there, but main support and flex support were terms that pro players used primarily, very few people that weren’t pros said main/flex support. It’s because people said “healer = support”, so people like me thought “ok, so a main healer is a main support, and a off healer is an off support”
@@ExpertCobra-tn1vt I think that's right. Those terms definitely existed in OW1. I played in a few grassroot leagues and "Main support-Flex support" were the categories our coaches had us use.
Most people in comp matches didn't seem to know these terms tho.
having dipped a little into the splatoon competitive community where I dont believe this problem exists, it's interesting how this came about. Main describes the weapon(s) (kit) you're most proficient with and will generally use (and thus what you're going to join teams with), and flex will be any weapons you can sort of play/pick up at a good enough level that you'd consider it in matches (if the team you're in or considering want it). It can also refer to the role you occupy in the team (slayer, skirmisher, anchor, support), but these are more guidelines.
what annoys me is that there is different terninolgy for ranked and pro play. main and flex for pro play and main heal and off heal for ranked. I think the ranked way is easier to understand because the heros will very rarely change sub role but I do think that we need to just adopt one so that there is no confusion when talking about it.
My brain has always tended to categorise supports into main and flex like this:
Main supports are conductors that influence where your team plays from, or relative to other teammates: Lucio with close range AoE speed boost, spread out off angles with Mercy. The AoE splash healing of Bap. Petal platform angles with Lifeweaver. The anchor point the team revolves around as Brig.
Flex supports are conductors who influence team focus. Sleep and anti-nade with Ana. Discord orb with Zen, an offensive Biotic orb to help chip down a target with Moira. Deadly burst poke from an off angle from Kiriko or Illari.
The big outlier compared to who plays which category is Bap, but that’s mostly because Bap Brig or Bap Lucio or Bap Mercy putting the players with the most experience on Lucio Brig and Mercy on their heroes,
Just noticed
Illari has been used a decent bit over the last couple of seasons like season 6 obviously but also was used in season 8 in bap illari and has recently been used in lw illari
7:20 Now that the Dallas major happened, I think liveweaver would be main sup because team falcons used him with bap and chiyo (ms/lucio player) played w him
I tend to get teams that run into 3 separate directions and out of line of sight. Then usually the poor tank is trying to make space on point but getting run over by the majority of the enemy team that’s actually playing as a unit.
Unless a single dps is really popping off. I keep my heals on the point.
7:27 then comes dreamhack dallas
I hate hearing "main heal" or "off heal" ingame, that ish grinds my gears
main and off healer ARE useful labels tho, referring to raw healing output and utility rather than the types of players playing them in that any comp without a main healer will be significantly worse than any comp WITH one
@@whos.brooke. there are no such things as healers in this game. They are called support for a reason. If they were that the game would call them healers not support.
@@notmejustyou fun fact bestie if u press the "i need healing" button with noone that can heal alive, it says in chat "no healers nearby". healers are anyone that can heal. in the context of main/off healer, the main healer is the one doing the majority of the healing for your team, they are the MAIN source of HEALing. the OFF healers job is not to be the primary source of healing but to provide utility. those are useful terms
@@whos.brooke. hmmm so why don't they put 76, mauga or even JQ in the support category 🤔 see how quickly your argument falls apart (when I say argument im not trying to be toxic just a friendly debate between 2 passionate players with 2 diff ideologies). They're called main and flex supports for very great reasons. healing is a part of thier kit, yes, but it shouldn't be the focus. no one said supports dont or can't heal but to call them healers would be detrimental to your own expectations in game when they are trying to get their own value outside of healing. You would expect them to only heal labeling them "main healers" or not to heal calling them "off healers". I hope I that made sense to you. (Edit) Oh and all support provide utility outside of Moira matta fact all heros provide some sort of utility even the dps and tank roles outside of again Moira.
@@notmejustyou Soldiers ability to heal is a secondary cooldown not his primary way of playing the game. Mauga and JQ are overhealth so yeah, his argument still stands
best support comps for each scenario.
rush | kiri lucio
brawl/deathball | bap lucio or kiri lucio
poke | zen bap
dive | ana brig or lucio kiri
and the tanks that pair with these comps are
dive | winston dva ball doom zarya
rush | junkerqueen ram
brawl | rein ram mauga
poke | sigma orisa zarya hog
explanation of each comp
dive | jump on they ass
rush | aggressive walk towards they ass
brawl | smack they ass a whole lot
poke | kill they ass before they can walk/jump/ smack your ass
I hope this helped someone!
People only care about what is most intuitive from the definition of the word itself. Dont care about the upper echlon jargon.
Supports are naturally thought of as heals before anything else for players. That is their primary purpose for players, to heal the team. There is main support aka main heals and offsupport/flex. Low heals, primary gimmick/effect secondary.
Lucio is speed. Brig is antiflanker/dive. Mercy is dmg bst buffer. Zen is big team dmg. These are the natural off/flex support.
Main support ergo goes most healing are sources like Ana/Bap/kiriko
This is absolutely what it used to mean in OW1. If you tried out for a team position main would be bap, Ana, Moria, the big heal#s. Flex was your zen, lucio, brig, Mercy. Anyone trying out for a support role on a team knew the difference. If you were a flex you had to be good at all the flex support, if you were main you had to be good at all the mains. It definitely was not what this guy is saying, but I understand the it's changed. I don't think most people got to play tournament style OW1 so they don't understand why there is a discrepancy in flex definitions. Either way fun tourney play died with OW2 and 5v5 balance so the concept is pretty much out the window.
you just called bap a main support. i pray for your teammates if you play bap.
Weirdly enough, after watching so many of these videos, I kinda watch to see, from touch ups to complete reworks, which characters SHOULD better fit a role and how to change them if appliable.
For example, Lucio and Brig are constantly stated to be main supports, but I would be interested in see what would need to be do to swap those roles. In addition, some would say that certain heroes should play a different role than they are now, and if so, what would need to be done to change them up
Listening to this like a podcast felt like taking a college level course on Overwatch 🗿
I think another reason why either Lucio/Brig are perma meta, is that they can both make individual plays proactively, without being largely reactive/passive like Weaver/Mercy. Additionally with the loss of the 2nd tank, you need your support line to be able to peel for themselves while also enabling the team. Lucio does both extremely well, and is the best tank enabler in the game. Brig on the other hand is arguably the best body guard another support could ask for, plus she helps enable DPS with packs. Mercy/Weaver can help only 1 person at a time usually, lack the ability to multitask, and are just fundamentally limited by their kits.
I always subscribed to the idea of main and off healer in supports when playing. My idea was just high healing output with aggressive ult and utility support with high survivable defensive ult. Heroes introduced in OW2 seem to be bucking the trend a little, but it also seems relative. Mercy is an off healer when with a true main healer but has to pull main healer duty more if the other support is an off healer. There are other things to consider for me, like healing range. If my team insists on Wrecking Ball, Widowmaker, and Cassidy, then I don't want to play Moira, who can't reach all three at once, maybe if Widow becomes Mei, and Ball switches to Junker Queen and the team is much closer together would she make sense.
Spilo could you make a video about Illari and her problems and maybe some solutions? She came out after the Support Rework Video so you never had it in a video.
huh, I kinda knew what was what back in dive meta, but now i lost track. so i just learn that im a flex support
How I always understood it, is that main support is the support that is doing the shot calling. For example, Lucio calling amp, zen calling discord. Flex support is more about healing and surviving. For longest time I thought it was about healing numbers but no it’s about who makes the calls!
Here’s my thought process behind it.
Main Support = stays with tank and does greater than or equal to off support healing. Your job is to keep everyone alive.
Off Support = enables DPS players, peels when needed, roams (mid, front, & back lines), protect main support. Happy medium between healing and DPS. Your job is to maximize your teams potential during fights.
Maybe you address this in more detail elsewhere, but mercy’s movement I think is tuned for lower elo play (myself). The hit scan aim is not there in low elo such that mercy is encouraged to fly around. That kinda hits a ceiling around plat/diamond ish
I sort of think of it nowadays as a flex support is still the aimer, and the main support is the support whos main job is peeling for the flex support
So LW, Brig, Lucio, Mercy are main supports and Ana, Zen, Moira are flex supports
Kiri and Bap can fit into both slots but I would say both trend toward flex support (given how good lucio is in OW2 rn)
Idk where illari fits tbh
I think we need to just go back to OW1, and take what we know with OW2 and slowly add back hero's (comp wise) so that we can fix a lot of the issues past and present with the knowledge. Kinda just tired talking about this that the other issues because I think OW2 will constantly has lackluster gameplay meta's because of the way it's design philosophy caters continued bad design.
I main zenyatta and lifeweaver. I'll switch back and forth depending on my other supports choice. It's not hard to understand. You need one support to 100% heal the other needs to follow a dps and do majority dps over healing. It's simple math 3 dps beats 2 dps
I believe often people aren’t aware of the proper definitions of these terms because of long ago we termed them. Blizzard no longer is really advocating for pro Overwatch, so not enough people are learning about those definitions. It’s always interesting to see this conversation every year and I think new Overwatch 2 players have gotten confused due to it. Great video!!!
I was a weird combo support in the teams I played. I was the Zen in goats but in early double shield (before brig started to take over) I was turned into the Lucio player as my Bapt wasn't great. Which flexed onto Mercy for pharah maps. Then back to Zen during the very temporary Bapt/Zen double shield before finally settling on Brig at the end of double shield that was the long lasting meta people remember. Double shield didn't require Brig it did require Bapt.
So you could say I am a projectile support main. (I picked up Kiri on ow2 release) All my supports I am good with are all projectile weapon based. Hyper utility based player which is also why I hate Moira so damn much.
I was thinking about 2 things.
Space ranger should be high mobility like offer speed outside of bs like (kiri
Ult) that matches Lucio in utility that is “unique” but doesn’t output what makes him special. I was thinking of like a “boost pad” like a brimstone amp from Valorant that speeds ppl for a set time versus Lucio speed to amp out/in.
Also I fully understand the old OW carbon series understanding of main/flex supp but I thought that you could maybe rationalize main supports where they’re the “main” healer that you play around. That is, if your MS is a Lucio then you are playing fast (rush, dive maybe) and for brig (defensive so like “sig brawl idk” or dive) but it’s the FS that can almost change to fulfill any situation around that. That is a rush comp with a Lucio could work with a bap OR a Ana
so bassicly it doesn't mean anything anymore
Watch the video. Then comment
@@nurikkulanbaev3628 lowkey they should make it where it shows in the comment how long they watched
I mean dead game is dead so...
@@nurikkulanbaev3628Spilo literally said it was an outdated term so he’s not wrong.
@nurikkulanbaev3628 @mannypacbeloud5786 Why are you booing them? They're right. The terms are completely useless for 99.5% of the player base, and only lead to more confusion
I hate that OW pro scene seems significantly different than OW ranked scene in the way the game is approached, and I think it plays a big role in the popularity of OW as an ESport. Most ranked players can’t understand Scrims/pro play because it’s just significantly different. I don’t think people can ever follow OW pro scene like it would need to be followed until there is a closer correlation between the two. Why is it that it’s impossible for someone to understand the support categories? Because Blizzard intentionally made it that way or it happened by chance, either way, it shouldn’t be this difficult to explain a seemingly simple topic. No other sport has that problem. Basketball for example has 5 positions and while players can flex positions, fans generally know what each position does. OW doesn’t seem to have that level of cohesiveness, hell it’s basically an entirely different game in ranked vs scrimmages, lol.
I usually go by fat healer and assist healer. Just plat-masters as reference, if we have illari zen, we will have trouble in neutral because healing will be low(different contexts etc.) ill ask for illari to go bap for higher heals in neutral and basically same if not higher damage. Something like that
Main and Flex support were terms to describe players, not characters. Then people caught on, but didn't fully understand the terms and thought it was similar to main and off-tanks in OW1, so started applying it incorrectly to supports.
Another appearance of the "value ceiling" term. I love it.
what if they gave lifeweaver more fluidity through some sort of speed/ground gliding, and also made any mouse 1 oveheal cleave to nearby allies ?
14:46 answering before hearing your answer. is it because main supp + flex supp = good support comp. and mercy/ lifeweaver suck, and that leave your main support with just brig and lucio as options. most decent support comes are like lucio kiri or brig ana
comps not comes*
I've just refused to use flex and main support. I like main and off healer. It's just way easier to see Lucio, brig, mercy, zen, they're all alike in healing strength.
"Healing strength" is not a good way to classify the supports.
They all heal completely differently and require different strategies to make full advantage of them
@@DjNasteNot by itself, no.
But there usually is an inverse correlation between the healing output of a hero and their utility.
Higher healing output in most instances means less utility, and vice versa.
So healing numbers are at least a decent initial approximation of whether a Support character is a "main healer" or a "utility support."
@@untapped8776 Not even remotely true. Lucio is a main support, but will almost always heal less than the flex support he is played with.
@@DjNaste you literally stated his point. Lucio has high utility, low healing output, and is not a main healer, again main healer not main support.
IMO, the best way to increase Mercy's skill ceiling is to rework rez so that it's her ultimate again. Back when rez was Mercy's ult in 2016-17, Mercy's skill ceiling was a lot higher... mostly because having a cool playmaker ult made it actually _worth the effort_ to put in 110% effort in order to farm ult charge as quickly as possible. Mercy was highly rewarded for healing/boosting her entire team, taking lots of calculated risks to grab extra scraps of ult charge, and mastering the strategy+gamesense side of the game in order to avoid wasting a single potentially game-changing rez (classic!rez could cancel out a lot of offensive ults, but those very same offensive ults could just as easily cancel out classic!rez depending on which order they're used in).
Thats why we no longer use main and flex. We use main and off support. That has been the case since prior to OWL. And Off support is the utility support whose abilities are more focused around healing: moira mercy lucio brig bap. And the. Off supports are the ones who’s utilities help more outside of healing. Zen Ana etc.
Oh is that why orisa ult and stuff was disconnecting me and even gave me leaver penalty
2:50 Spilo gonna feel the wrath of the mercy mains 🤣
Wouldn't it make sense to class them via utility and no utility?
Every support has utility in some form. The only two supports with no utility are Illari and Moira.
@@LeSobaMask their kits is their utility a hero’s utility is their uniqueness and what they bring to the table
coz everyone that needs to know the difference between main and flex are pros that already know
@@ELI-521for sure. There’s an argument to be made that illari and moira’s util is their damage capability.
@@ELI-521utility is anything they can provide outside of damage and healing. Positioning tool, debuffs, immo, buffs. Moira and illari only has self sustain utility so it’s not super relevant therefore no utility.
you dont wanna see *says all my mains* metas
Im relatively new to the game and main/flex support makes total sense to me. I really don't get the confusion? The grey area exists because the categories are loose, thats it🤷♂️
shouldnt it be that main support is the support that is critical for a composition, while the flex support is the support that can fit a variety of heroes into that composition based on situational elements?
With the release of Juno, where does that put her?
I feel like you failed to mention the fact that Lucio and brig have AOE healing… which also is a big plus to the utility they have… it makes it easier to take and deny space when you the aoe healing is active thur inspire and Lucio healing with and without amp. Most of the other support combos struggle because they have limited aoe healing or only single target healing
If we were to get another aoe support it would open up the options and maybe even the meta to maneuver to different options depending on utility with that specific character… because so far we been getting a bunch of single target/ hybrid supports, not really anything aoe high healing supports…
Additionally on the part you were talking about the 3 healer roles I think a good classification would be single target healers (Ana or zen types), hybrid/ utilities (bap or kiri types) healers, and aoe healers (lucio or brig types)…
- Single Target healers (STH ) mostly are heal 1 person at a time with some utility. They still have decent heal
-Hybrid/Utility Healers (HUH) mostly are picked for their utility and can still do decent healing when need. Also good for flacky or off angles
-Area Of Effect healers (AOE) healers are picked because they are the main source of constant healing, or the ability to heal multiple people in the near by proximity… plus they still have decent utility.
I disagree with the points on Moira's "utility". I don't see her as highly mobile. She's about middle mobility. Outclassed by lucio, kiriko, mercy. A little better than iliari and lifeweaver. I also don't see how healing orb is "burst" healing. It is a fast heal over time. When I think of burst, I think of bap grenade, ana grenade/nano, and lifeweaver heals. Are my definitions just out of whack?
Is Brig that high of utility? I haven't really thought of shield bash and whip shot as high utility abilities before; when I think of supp utility I usually think of anti-nade, sleep, suzu, immortality and even dmg beam (and lucio speed ofc but I'm not confused about lucio's utility).
I am also guessing the brig in these situations is body guarding a vulnerable dps since lucio may not need it or be close enough to protect?
Damage mitigation, whipshot being a knockback and her ult adds utility (stuns, larger shield and overhealth)
@extofer I follow but is that higher utility than anti nade or suzu on cool down? Kiriko's ult is also high team utility.
I dig the spaghetti strap shirt
You have the main and flex healers backwards in your thumbnail.
Man people can't even figure out how to properly pair 2 heros in the easiest role in the game but we have this mystical idea that tanks would always properly pair with each other
TBH I kind of like being bad at the game because I can play who I want to and it doesn't impact me as much. Being forced to choose something because it's the best thing just feels kind of sad, I don't think I'd enjoy the game as much if I was that good.
Sure but how about the interesting theory and analysis of character design. One is aim should be rewarded by higher numbers. This is rewarded in dmg or healing. Aim is an easy skill ceiling to implement, requires hours to hone the skill and should be rewarded. Its very simple reward with numbers.
The cause and effect is that flex players *usually* needs aim. And the role in effect to the team is usually output of healing or damage. Suzu, immort and nade are all pretty much burst heals or saves. And all causes flex supports role to focus on tanks more due to tanks higher hp to fill character design ofc as a tank.
Since flex requires aim and is rewarded consistent dmg through pure dmg through LoS and shooting. Usually their output as dmg gives the value of additional pressure in another angle is another cause and effect of what a flex support is.
Character design is all about balance. And *usually* higher numbers like "snipers" are balanced in low mobility. If character designs are all balancing the stats of power, agility/mobility, tankiness/survivability. Naturally they should have less mobility.
So in the opposite case you would have character design balance of high mobility but low power output. These are main supports. The key part is to provide a skill ceiling for these main supports. Usually mechanical skill in mobility, ability or tactics of their utility.
Thats the cause of effect of main supports being more specialized in mechanics of wall riding, mercy movement, brig mechanics and tactics. And its all because aim is a skill that takes SO much hours to hone.
Instead they are granted survivability and mobility which gives a cause and effect of the main support role to be able to peel for the *usually* immobile flex support. As well as their low healing usually makes their role to prioritize the squishies as character design to have lower hp.
Of course as blizzard is designer its impossible to create a theory when blizzard can make a broken character that has mobility survivability like kiriko and is why kiriko is a problem. And all heroes are not perfect.
But even in real life scientists observe patterns makes theories. Finds something new and adjust and put details to their theories. What comes up must come down but it doesnt work in space. They just further tuned the theory.
We made theory of dive brawl poke, off tank main tank, angle, pressure etc.
It would be sad if we stopped observing the pattern to composition theory and just concluded to "hero pools".
The hero pools have a pattern. Observe and theorize it.
How wrong must I be playing Bap, if in situations where more healing is needed, I swap to Brig? It's working and I'm climbing just fine, but listening to you talk as if even Ana has more utility than Bap has my head hurting. I often beat the DPS for dam/elims as Bap.
Dmg and healing are not utility, utility is basically everything else BUT those 2. Ana and bap have similar utility, whereas brig has less healing/dmg (esp when played correctly in pro play) but ,due to her amazing zone control and damage mitigation she has more utility then both of those pics
@@rayrayy4 What are you replying to? If it wasn't for you mentioning the same heroes as me, I honestly would have thought you'd replied to my comment by mistake. What are you talking about?
So its more job title rather than hero categorization
23:40 you think you do but you dont
I played fs since s26, never before have I heard my entire career and complaints heard before. Please blizzard listen to this man, support is far too bipolar of a role, when it works it works well when it doesn’t it’s awful. I hated playing support for my team when illiari came out, and when we’d queue after I couldn’t play my favorite dps heroes. This is a problem but it’s extremely fixable
As long as they don't have a day 1 Brigette, just play what you enjoy. These conversations are mostly for higher levels of play. If you don't want pressure then play quick play and turn the chat off.
Spilo knocks on wood 0:41
@Spilo how would you rework illiari to make her work more in OW2?
The only people that actually know are players from OW1 that have kinda followed the pro scene dating back to the APEX days
Your comment about Mercy res not being viable in the pro environment...I've been stuck in gold forever as a Brig main, and I loathe the screams from random teams for a swap to Mercy because people are so convinced res is better than inspire...they don't understand not dying is better than getting res'd. Her res is insanely overrated even at that level. More often than not it gets her killed, and far too often it's just a second death for the res target AND she gets herself killed. I can't think of any other one button push that can charge the opponents ults faster. I wish they'd just get rid of it and add something else to her kit.
the first verse of John 2:2 (1 john 2:2) is, in context: "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin."
It fits, like hardcore, to the point of this video. Good eye.
All players in diamond seem to value is healing output. If you don't have gold heals, you're throwing basically. Bothers me to no end that the majority of otherwise decent players still don't understand the game
While it makes sense how and why it's used in pro play good for them, these terms' unintuitiveness have made them lose their meaning as the community has continued to use and misunderstand them, to the point where they're borderline useless for 90% players IMO. (This might be hyperbolic, but still even if it isn't perfect we could absolutely do better than this).
_I typed a lot more actually contributing to the discussion but youtube has no confirmation popup for canceling a comment so it's all gone and I'm so tired so I'll just elaborate if anyone wants to talk about it_
Main support is diff from main healer supp players need to learn that. Picking a healer before ur tank chooses is a sign of throwing means im playing who i want regardles of what what the team comp dictates
Is Spilo only wearing an apron??!
Isn't illari a stat character just like Moira. She has no utility, I think people mention "utility" alot but do they even know what it means or are they just parroting words.
I mean what I understand as utility is any effect that's not raw healing/damage. Discord orb/ damage boost/ rez/ immortality/cleanse/petal/speedboost
With that explanation what is brig's utility? Inspire/ the overhealth??
Whip knock back and shield bash stun in ult
@@CaseyGumball That's like saying lucio's utility is boop and while yes a part of his kit. Is that all brig provides a boop?
@@khaledm.1476she holds space so yes her boop along with her shield is great utility if brig didn’t have a shield her boop would be mid but she can also hold space relatively well bc of her shield
Manes me sad that liveweaver just ends up as a stronger illiari pylon most the time
Im sorry but Im more confused after watching the video lol. It sounds like every support hero is both flex and main and nothing matters except who is playing them?
Yes, main support/flex support is just about hero pools. Main support tends to play main support heroes, flex support tends to play flex support heroes
bastion double shield peak ow gameplay
7 minutes in, so you'll probably mention this, but another layer of confusion is when people started talking about main healers, and that main supports and main healers aren't necessarily the same thing. Incredibly awful terminology. Ana is a "flex support" but a main healer. Lucio is a main support, but not a main healer.
I've always found these incredibly stupid though, even back in 2016. Same with flex dps at times just being a synonym for projectile dps, as if these players will NEVER touch a hitscan hero. The only role where this really should've applied is tank. Main tanks and off tanks had much more meaningfully different roles to play than the splits between DPS and supports.
petition to have spilo wear a tank top in every video 😳
Banana rush was so much fun
You dont have to yell bro. I hear you. Its a microphone. Not me across the room.
These are not the traditional definitions. This might confuse some players.
💎💎💎Can we get a video on Support combinations and what they provide (healing/ utility)💎💎💎
What is a kiriko sojourn healing comp ? Genuine question
Kiri soj Lucio tracer doom/monkey/ball are pretty common comps, Kiri soj orisa tracer Lucio was also played when orisa was meta. Kiri soj can fit into most comps
Kiri lucio soj tracer was played with quite litterally every single tank almost, with exception of mabye rein and sig
Kiriko is a flex and a main honestly way overload kit.
I'm not even a support and I've been wanting more supports, we have too small of a pool to choose from. Also make nade reduce healing, not stop it completely
I agree that there are too little options when it comes to supports, but changing nade from preventing healing to only reducing healing is not a good decision. Look at Ana's kit and compare her to the other supports, she is the only one without a movement ability. Also, think about Kiriko's cleanse, what difference would it make if Ana's nade reduced healing, when Kiriko would cleanse anyway? Considering Kiriko has been a must-pick for most of Overwatch 2, it's clear that the other supports need to be buffed, or left alone like in the case of Ana. This is just my opinion having played Overwatch since 2018 and having seen the game evolve. This is only what I believe would work for top 500, as that is my rank, so correct me if things are drastically different in any of the other ranks.
@@dilogy she's a must pick partly because of Ana, I honestly think cleanse is a bit strong too. I've been playing the game since it first released too, I don't like where it's at rn. I don't think it's as fun as it used to be :/
@@thelordofpie7157 Ana can be countered without Kiriko, though. I do agree that the game is in a worse state than before and Blizzard's attempt to shift from a team-oriented game to an individual-focused, traditional-style FPS has subtracted from the game's identity.
@@dilogy my thing is she's really the only character besides like Zarya that can counter the nade, and that's only on a single individual for Zarya, unless she wants to use both bubbles. And yeah, it's been kinda hard to bring myself to play sometimes. Ik a lot of people hate it, but I genuinely miss 6v6
@@thelordofpie7157 I won't continue talking about nade, but I agree that 6v6 had its charm and that despite its controversies, it was sometimes more fun. Overwatch 1 as a whole seemed more unique, to be honest.
I miss GOATS that was so fun.
Why does he only add the accent on brigitte and illari lol
All I know is that Lucio is a DPS
My rule of thumb to differentiate between the two is using player role. I say that main support player will be playing the hero that has the abilities crucial for the current meta, regardless of who that is.
Then the flex supprot responsibility is playing all other heroes within the meta that rotate from sitiation to situation. In that paradigm it doesnt matter who plays what, you just reassign player roles with no regard to the heroes they are currently playing
You’re applying your own headcanon into classifications which leads many to be confused abt the very topic
@@ELI-521 you are saying it as if current situation is any less confusing while my suggestion is objectively less confusing to apply in the current state of affairs
@@Anton_Jermakoŭthing is Main support and flex support distinctions aren’t complicated they’re just hero pools. By Adding other definitions in the mix you’re trying to explain logic that quite literally doesn’t exist
@@ELI-521 did we watch the same video? It's so not complicated professional coaches say it's confusing
@@Anton_Jermakoŭyes they say it’s confusing for the vast majority of community who is 1. disconnected from the higher side of the community and 2. When trying to understand things coming from from that side overthink and complicate things for themselves which you’re literally doing rn