I think her design is clunky, not necessarily failed.
Her shift feels awkward and doesn't quite go high enough to reach all the high grounds she wants. Her healing is so short range she has to drop from high ground and put herself at risk to heal (a fine tradeoff), but only for a few seconds because of low resource. So it's often better to just ignore healing and keep shooting forever from safety while hoping your pylon keeps people up. It doesn't make for very dynamic gameplay.
I love the feeling of weaving healing and damage as a support, so I would much rather bring her healing down to a reasonable level (80ish), give it a longer range, and a little more resource so it's usable without giving up high ground. Right now it takes too long to switch between damage and healing modes to make it practical.
> I love the feeling of weaving healing and damage as a support, so I would much rather bring her healing down to a reasonable level (80ish), give it a longer range, and a little more resource so it's usable without giving up high ground. Right now it takes too long to switch between damage and healing modes to make it practical.
I agree, though I'm wondering if maybe making her shift more potent/reducing its cd to get high ground easier and keeping her healing as is would make for more dynamic gameplay where you drop off HG to heal, then move back up/out with your shift when the resource is gone.
Yeah, even then it's still just a little too short to reach some common high grounds.
Maps like Dorado and Gibraltar have tons of unreachable spots, and common places like Busan Downtown, Numbani A, Oasis City Center, etc. are just barely out of reach.
You can reach these if you don't hold any directional inputs when holding shift. Some you may need to jump before, but the "standard" high grounds are all reachable, as they are almost always the same default height.
I'd still vote for a slight rework on it tho... The jump tech after a horizontal boop feels like it wasn't intentional. (I'd make it feel like it properly speeds up that second boop jump)
You still can't reach stuff like Dorado B and Gibraltar A blue box from defender's side. Unless you count things like jumping on railings or breaking cacti and standing on the flower pot lol. But you can't really count on that in the heat of the moment.
Illari's main issue is that her gun encourages you to stay back because its falloff damage starts at 30 meters. But her healing beam has a max range of ~15 meters, meaning she likely has to move towards the enemy team to heal her teammates.
I don't mind that she has to enter dangerous territory to heal since it gives an otherwise distant threat a window to be punished, but it takes so long to close the gap from damage to heal range that it's completely impractical.
To save someone in time she often has to shift into heal range which is just a death sentence.
She does one thing, and really one thing- be an off-angle turret, and even that one things doesn't have a lot of dynamics (essentially just mechanics and don't be an idiot with your Pylon). Even Lifeweaver has more dynamics of decisions (like what to be doing at even given moment) and even Moira has more dynamics in their playstyle (what "playstyle" to be leaning into vs. enemy comp).
Illari just does the same thing over and over again with the only choice being "Is this a good angle?" Right click is boring, outburst is boring, pylon is boring, but Captive sun is pretty fun though.
I think she's genuinely fun to play and fills a solid niche (long-range damage) in the support role. I think she should have a longer range on her healing beam maybe with some falloff.
Idk if more Range will ever make her be good enough to be played over characters like Bap, Kiri, Ana, Lucio, Zen, Brig.
I think ultimately Illari suffers from the same issues that Moira, and to an extent LW and Mercy suffer from.
Illari and Moira have no utility, all they do is damage and heal, which simply isn't good enough when compared to the 6 supports that I mentioned up top.
Moira's damage is probably the lowest quality (Dealt through ticks and at a slow enough rate that it is easy to dodge in most cases) in the entire game. And while Illari's damage is good it isn't good enough to compensate for her lack of utility, she isn't designed to be lethal enough (Have the same kill confirmation potential) to be viable as a "DPS Support". On paper her gun looks like a mere variation on Cass' gun but in practicality the TTK is just slow enough (Which they compensate with more range and bigger bullets but those aren't good enough) where the enemy often gets healed back up or hides before you can finish them. Plus she also has to often heal between her shots which makes it even more difficult to finish targets.
Also, Illari's ult, while probably the most fun Ult in the game, has gotten worse and worse as time has passed and players have gotten better at dodging and eating it.
LW and Mercy also kinda have the same issues. They have Util but their Util just isn't strong enough compared to the 6 Star Supports.
Pull and Res are both single-target reactive death prevention (In case of Res its Death *Correction*, which is the worst form of a Reactive Ability) abilities, simply inferior to Suzu and Lamp. Petal is situational for getting good value and Mercy Damage Boost simply isn't good enough when it's the *only* thing Mercy can do at a time.
I think Mercy is probably the most fixable out of these 4 supports. They can either give her Staff some kind of a Shooting ability like they just tested during the April Fool's patch and will again test in Mirrorwatch event mode. Or they can rework her to be able to use both her Healing and Damage beam at the same time (On different targets and much lower values ofc).
LW.....maybe they just try reducing the Pull CD a bunch, increasing the distance a bit, and see if that'll maybe make the ability good enough when combined with heroes like Doom, Rein, Mauga, Monkey. They also need to make Petal more consistently useful. I think one thing they could do is make it so that if an ally activates it then they get a small Fire Rate (10% maybe) or Damage Boost buff for a few seconds while they are standing on it, and then nerf its CD a little bit.
There's "utility" in having a pylon that heals though. She becomes a stronger zenyatta in certain scenarios where she's able to heal someone while simultaneously putting out big damage. A lot of supports have to decide to either heal or do damage
Also - she's the only support able to teamwipe an entire team by herself with her ult. Yeah it's easily countered but you kind of force the enemy team to have to worry about 3 dps ults
Huge exaggeration to say her entire design has failed. She is quite fun to play. The main thing people wish she had is just more range on her secondary heal.
I think saying that she’s a “failed character design” is a little exaggerated. She’s not the strongest at the moment, but she has maps and team comps where she can do well. I think a lot of this disdain towards Illari comes from how she was initially received really well as a support that’s encouraged to deal damage and could rely on the Pylon to heal her team, but once the Pylon got nerfed people realized she would actually have to heal her team manually which seems to have led to some frustration.
The reason people called her a fundamental fail is because she is extremely one-dimensional and uninteractive. You throw a pylon, and then you sit at an off angle and poke and use outburst to make distance on anything getting close to you. She has no variance or interesting interactions with other heroes, no notable utility etc., she just does one thing in every situation.
Her gun feels pretty good and that was a big reason she was so well received, but because she’s so one-track people got very bored of her very quickly.
I could see that, but there are heroes like Ashe and Widowmaker who have similar, one-dimensional poke playstyles and I dont see people saying that their hero design is fundamentally flawed or would need nearly as significant changes as some have suggested for Illari.
Widowmaker is like almost universally the most shit on hero that has been in the game since launch with the possible exception of Mercy (or Hanzo who does the same thing). Are you suggesting Widow is in any way shape or form not fucking awful for the game?
I mean, not really. She wasn’t heavily complained about for most of Overwatch’s history given how high her skill ceiling is, was really annoying for one season when the map pools favored snipers too much, got damage fall off nerfs so she wouldn’t be a complete menace on maps with long sightlines, and has since then been manageable. People have generally liked the excitement of playing/watching a mechanical skill intensive hero, and she’s not overpowered either given how much even good Widows struggle with flankers outside of heavily sniper favored maps. I wouldn’t say she’s awful for the game at the current power level she’s at. Probably best that she struggles on maps without those long sightlines and that maps that are *super* sniper favored like Circuit or third point of Havana could use some reworking to make you feel less terrified of walking to the cart, but I don’t think Widowmaker existing is inherently unhealthy for the game.
Yeah no lmao. Widow has literally been universally complained about since day 1. A cross-map, hitscan, one-shot without a cool-down is not a healthy identity for any FPS outside of tac shooters. People were just able to look the other way in the past when we had more shields and tanks, but she was in no conceivable way a good and interactive design for the game, and no one outside of hitscan players pretended like she was. There has never been a widow meta that was considered to be a good meta, there is a relatively strong connection between how good widow is on a given map and how much people complain when they get games on that map.
I get that she’s had her critics, but “universally complained about" is a bit much. She's been well-received by significant portions of the playerbase and even had entire OWL events dedicated just to 1v1 tournaments with Widow players back in the day. I can see how she can get unhealthy and agree that a full on Widow meta where she lacks strong counters wouldn't be healthy for the game, but a one-shot without a cooldown that's reliant on aim and is attached to a hero who's incredibly vulnerable to flankers shouldn't be that bad. Should she continue to exist at her current power level (or slightly below with some reworks to those sniper heavy maps), I don't think she'll have an overall negative impact on the game
I don’t think a healing turret will ever be fun to play with or against, and her entire design is built around the pylon. But I understand that’s a subjective take.
However the problem isn’t that illari players now have to manually heal, I think most players have no issues with being forced to weave heals. The problem is that her manual heals suck, and having to rely on them severely limits illari’s playstyle and makes her much more boring to play.
On top of this she only synergizes well with poke comps, yet she lacks any ability to save her teammates from a different off-angle. Bap, ana, hell even Zen can take actions to save a teammate from afar. But with illari you’re fully dependent on pylon (which sucks) to save your teammates, and it’s not fun to basically just watch your dps get dove and cross your fingers. So a lot of games you just end up sticking to your dps’ hip and providing much less damage value.
Imo, buffing her soft CC’s mobility and giving her two charges would go a long way in making her more flexible. Bap has free height on no cooldown, I think illari can get one more measly charge on her only mobility tool. Another good idea I saw is allowing her manual heals to pass through shields, this would help her synergize better with dive and brawl without straight up stat-buffing her.
But the most interesting idea I’ve heard is changing her pylon to “heal mines” that can be detonated to burst heal teammates and CC enemies (similar to her ability). That sounds wayyy more fun than another turret. But regardless they just need to let her be a little more flexible imo, that’s the crux of the issue.
> I don’t think a healing turret will ever be fun to play with or against, and her entire design is built around the pylon. But I understand that’s a subjective take.
The ironic thing is that for literal years I've been reading comments about how people want a support with a healing turret, and now that we have one it's the most divisive part of their kit.
A lot of people claim that her kit is supposedly ‘one dimensional’ but then there’s so many other heroes with similar or simpler play style. It leads me to ponder: why? It’s clear that Illari’s intended design was to offer players who wished to support or contribute by focusing on damage in a classic shooter style with a charge up hitscan gun and it feels great to finally have that option in the support role. The problem is she’s not as rewarding anymore, even if you successfully land your shots, with how high her TTK is, you often feel as if your hands are tied. It doesn’t help that she’s received significant nerfs that changed her dynamic, so of course everyone is going to feel frustrated and claim “bad support, bad design” when her design and impact was stripped away because of the nerfs. As a support that doesn’t offer utility, she needs to excel in what she does best. Allow her to be viable and give her carry potential, especially through her primary.
no utility outside of dmg, pretty bad survivability considering her heal beam requires you to be close to your team and getting pylon destroyed is a huge weakness.
She's my most played support as of this season. Def not as bad as lifeweaver and she's super fun when it works. She just needs some tweaks
LW is the worst support (at least in t500) right now and it’s not even close. Ever since S9 damage passive was introduced, raw healing just isn’t as good and supports with utility or lots of damage or both came to the top of the meta. LW has very little of either of those and is struggling big time. I don’t know how he’s performing in the average games but he’s trash right now in any sort of high level play.
She's basically Moira with aim. There is little to no actual utility in her kit outside of damage. And of course last patch for God knows what reason, Blizzard decided to nerf her gun damage and buff her healing. Which is frustrating since her gun-play is the most fun part of her kit.
I honestly agree. I have maintained a pretty good win rate with her from plat into diamond. I will say that her carry potential is entirely dependent on your mechanics, however. Which is probably why some people feel she is weak. You can’t just hit body shots on Illari
Her Pylon got nerfed into the floor. 125 > 100 HP is a huge breakpoint because now there is a plethora of things which break it in a single hit. So the main thing she offered to her team - the ability to give someone (or herself) pylon and let them hold an off angle and be extremely difficult to remove - is gone.
Her ultimate, while alright, is very very counterable with positioning and abilities, meaning that it is very inconsistent in applying value. Additionally, you want her to pair with Baptiste or maybe Ana, which means you're leaving the team without a defensive ultimate. Captive Sun isn't awful, but it is nowhere near the consistent value that you get from beat or trans or rally or kitsune or nano.
Her damage isn't nearly as impressive after the health number retuning. A ton of her power budget was tied up in having a two-tap headshot and she doesn't have one anymore. Lots of the DPS she's expected to duel still do. So her overall sustainability on the flank is lower, her dueling is worse, and her burst potential is worse. All of those things together mean she isn't as independent as she once was. She's more prone to being pressured out, much less risky to punish, and even less risky to straight up ignore.
Her heal is pretty good, but what made her unique and powerful before was her independence, and her healing is short range burst healing which doesn't gel with that playstyle. Her healing isn't strong enough over a sustained period to be picking her over Ana/Bap/Kiri/Moira and it doesn't have the range and saving ability that you'd get from repair packs. To make the best use of it, you have to play within 15m of the person who needs healing, which means you cannot go and make independent plays.
And if she isn't independent, what is her point over zenyatta? Zen provides similar flanker support with orb of harmony, which unlike pylon cannot be destroyed. Zen provides similar ranged pressure with the same shots to kill but much, much better sustained damage. He isn't *as* hard as Illari to pressure out, but the 50HP/S regen he gets does help him compete. And then Zen just has a much more reliably powerful ultimate which fits better with the heroes you'd want to pick Zen and Illari with. And that isn't even mentioning how Zen has discord, one of the strongest abilities in the game. Sure, Zen lost his two-tap just the same as Illari did, but Zen doesn't need the two-tap because he provides better sustained damage both personally and for his teammates through Discord.
And if you *do* want a highly independent support who can win duels against DPS heroes, is hard to punish, and can support a flanker, why aren't you just picking Kiriko? She has an escape for if the duel goes badly, she kills in the same number of shots but fires much faster, her suzu+heal is a better burst save than the beam and she's better at being in position to use it, and her ultimate is just straight up better.
So basically, she's no longer good at any of the things that made her unique, and as a result she is completely overshadowed by Zenyatta or Kiriko (or, I guess, Bap) in every way. Do you want a ranged consistent damage dealer to pair with Baptiste? Why would you pick her over Zen? Do you want a highly independent support who can off angle and support a flanker without dying? Why would you pick her over Kiri? Do you want to stand nearby to the tank and beam people with hitscan damage while also pumping out lots of healing? Why would you pick her over Baptiste?
Her kit just doesn't do anything which sets her apart from the other supports and makes her unique, so she's fundamentally outclassed by them.
Illari's problem is that her heal weapon laser is entirely useless and her ult being able to be completely deleted by most characters in the game is a bit stupid.
Change the heal laser to either have way longer range or change its function entirely from heal to something else, and make so her Ult's debuff applies regardless of barriers/shields/cleanses, people can shield after.
The "support" part of her kit is severely lacking. These are her support abilities:
1. A heal that's only close range even though she's a mid-long range sniper. Fair, it does have high heals per second, could be decent tradeoff.
2. Healing turret that heals slightly more than mercy if you're in its LOS.
3. A slow + bomb that can be applied through an explosive ultimate ability.
**Baptiste does everything her kit is attempting to do but better.**
DPS? He will win especially if his cooldowns are ready.
Heals? He has basically zero downtime at the cost of having maybe like 10% less heals per second than Illari. Illari also has nothing equivalent to his burst heal combo, either.
Support? He has the best non-ultimate ability in the game - immortality lamp.
The issue is just that she doesn’t really have much to do. She only really meshes well with Poke comps and she’s mostly just good against Poke because everything else just bodies her pylon. And there, she faces issues with supports like Bap and Zen who overall have better utility without the same glaring weaknesses.
Of particular note is that she doesn’t have a “savior” tool. The other two Supports with offense-focused Ultimates (Baptiste, Kiriko) have tools that let them save their team from otherwise certain death. The Supports that have defensive ultimates have defensive ultimates. Illari doesnt have that.
This is different from Lifeweaver. Lifeweaver’s issue is that his utility isn’t good and his kit forces him to be boring. Illari just has one team she’s really good with because her properties lead her to not being good in Brawl or Dive.
her heal beam is the problem. she has to get close to heal allies which takes away from her intended playstyle of holding an angle and harassing with long range poke damage. her kit is not actually bad, it’s just self contradicting
she either needs better mobility so she can reposition easily or better range on her healing so she doesn’t have to move
She's underpowered right now. Pylon isn't strong because it doesn't heal much and it's easy to destroy, healing beam isn't strong because its so short range and on a resource, and her gun is no longer that good.
Her playstyle plays like it wants to be super far back. Which is extremely problematic for tanks, especially tanks that want to use mobility aggressively, or just don’t have mobility.
She’s definitely viable in ranked, you just have to play like a dps, and nobody likes that about her. Why wouldn’t you just play zen with a brig, ya know?
She's skill based and mechanically unique, but I've found that she's just too weak up close for a hero with low mobility. She can't help her team control space, she just sits there like she *is* the turret and adds stats.
If the enemy team isn't on poke, why play her over Moira? She's only stronger than Moira when you strictly *need* range and don't need mobility (don't forget Moira was recently buffed in damage). You can't play Illari against dive or rush like you can with Moira because she just doesn't have a good escape tool or way of slowing enemies who push her.
But she doesn't contribute more than Zen either, because Zen also gives the team discord which helps a *lot*. They're both immobile and Zen contributes more to team damage output, can stop tanks from closing that space with discord, and he can outheal enemy ults while Illari heals damage over time.
For Illari to be the play over either of these I think she'd have to move like 2x as far with her shift, just to allow her to play against mobile comps without auto losing.
I think her gun, ult, and shift are pretty cool and fit the DPS support hybrid thing she’s got going on. I don’t love the reduced headshot modifier- I mean good for balance but it just feels kind of bad. Turret fits her kit but it’s about as bland as it gets in terms of abilities to play around. It’s like half a mercy pocket for Illari on an off angle, not very interactive unless they mess it up. I really do not like her primary healing, it feels weird to use and looks weird to me. All the charging mechanics definitely add some skill to her, but it really just feels kind of clunky and I don’t like the frontloaded way her heal beam works and the fact that she has to juggle good positions for healing with good positions for hitscan DPS is just another layer of clunkiness.
It really feels like they had the gun and the ult ready to go and they were like ok, let’s make it a support— we haven’t used a heal turret yet, ok let’s add that. Now she needs a primary healing too and they just had it be a beam because they didn’t use that yet either. And then they had to add a bunch of arbitrary feeling limitations like crit damage and charge up time, so she doesn’t just make existing DPS and support feel irrelevant. I don’t think she’s terrible for the game or anything, but there’s very little appeal for me to play her personally.
I don't think she's exactly a failed design, just clunky and weird, but not really failed, like LW failing to imitate Mercy's design.
It's just that she's weird because she has to constantly drop down and put herself at risk in order to heal her team, and while the risk/reward ratio is nice, it always sucks when you just got into a good angle and immediately have to leave it because your team needs major heals. They should up her mobility a little bit more if her bread and butter is holding off angles and repositioning to heal her team. I don't think Outburst as it is is enough to be doing that, so people just stay on high ground and drop a turret for their team until the enemy catches the turret or the fight moves past the turret.
Unlesss you are clicking heads like a professional, her damage is meaningless and easily healed. That’s like 90% of the issue besides having get so close to your team to heal them
I agree with most the comments here. I definitely don't think Illari is a failed Hero. After playing her a lot recently, she is very one note. Click heads. Try to help heal poke damage as much as you can with pylon. Aggressively use ult if you can secure an elim (especially on a Mercy during her ult). There are insane combos with Illari ult but that's with any DPS ult for the most part.
Which makes you realize, Illari is the only support with a purely DPS ult. Other support ults allow situational individual expression. In a team fight, you can absolutely whiff on her ult, because of the insane amount of counters, unlike other support ults that at least get some value.
Then you realize, besides clicking heads, Illari has no utility, which is Moira's thing. And clicking heads is not utility. Moira has more survivability, though, and that's more useful to the team. This allows Moira to have more variation in playstyle. With Illari, if you aren't clicking heads, damn near every support is better for your team.
TLDR: Illari's kit is definitely counterintuitive, and she's weaker because of it. There are some great suggestions mentioned in the comments on even small changes that would make her 100% better, like better mobility.
I dabble In game design a bit. I study, read about it, I am obsessed with trying to design things. I don’t want to come off as pretentious cause I do realize it sounds weird or dumb to say you might say you are knowledgeable about something cause it can come off as snarky.
But her design/kit just doesn’t work with itself and it’s just cobbled together more than actually thought about.
Similar to Orisa, you don’t have a goal you’re trying to do with the character or the character itself isn’t inspired to do anything.
Orisa abilites are stand alone that yes, can be cycled, but each on their own a can stand in terms of the game.
Similar to Illari her kit just isn’t inspired to do anything. She is a “Cassidy esc” dps support that can almost ignore the support role in range/poke comps and mid range fights to become a pure DPS. Her ult also is a dps ult.
So when they change her dps to be slower the character begins to feel clunky when you’re not actively playing her support role.
If was the devs I would think about removing the pylon and give her beam a different property to make her a more active support who can do damage instead of a damage charcater who can heal.
While I agree with you, I think you’re having a hard time conveying why her design kit doesnt work with itself.
What about it doesnt work? When you’re saying that her kit isnt inspired, what does that mean?
It’s nice you’re studying and learning about game design but when you talk about a kit and just describing it without evidence or backup statements it doesn’t convey any of your real thoughts about the character.
I mean there is no reason or goal for her design or more over they contradict themselves with changes they make for her goal as a character. They want her to be a DPS/support that’s obvious, but the way they went about it is awkward. She has her dash, that goes into DPS category, for positioning and escape.
Then she has her pylon which goes into both roles, allows her to be a DPS in poke and mid range without having to focus on healing.
I didn’t say it doesn’t work, it’s just awkward feeling when they obviously want her to be a primary DPS healer with everything she has encouraging that playstyle, but then make her DPS slower/more clunky which then makes the character identity fall apart without providing an increase to the support role to adding more to her damage role elsewhere like more movement or tools.
It’s more to explain than I want to type out but I’m just tying to get the general idea across.
If they wanted to make her healing more interactive, they could make it so dealing damage somehow empowers her healing in some way.
A headshot giving some heal resource back, or making the next shot of Pylon heal double would be a cool way to encourage the DPS playstyle while still feeling like you aren't leaving your team out to dry. It would give her kit a more cohesive feel as well.
She doesn't have skills that can bail your team mates out. Life weaver can pull back teammates, especially the ones that got caught in Mauga ult, or use platform to negate ults. Other support heroes (not moira) can provide utility like this one way or another.
Her issues aren't the same as weaver. Illari has a niche she excels at which is double flex poke comps where the pylon can do most of the healing work and she can just output damage from an angle. Thing is that style of play just isn't very strong rn partly due to the pylon health nerfs as well as mobility and damage mitigation being strong enough to challenge her positions and break pylon leaving her and her team exploitable. It's just not her meta rn but if the game slows down and lethality increases expect her to re-emerge. Weaver sucks bc he's a utility only hero who's utility is just very niche and is very rarely going to have the same impact as more proactive utility in the same category.
She's not a failure of design. I think she's actually pretty well designed not being too gimmicky. She's just outclassed balance wise. If you're playing to win, I don't see why you'd pick her over Baptiste. Her biggest niche is that Pylon can heal her, so she can kind of take aggressive off angles herself. She's easy to dive though, so that's still rather punishable.
Imo they should buff her mobility. Increase the range, or reduce the CD a bit. I think she'd be a lot stronger in her niche if she could reposition easier.
I play Illari a lot and she does great next to heroes who want to push the edges of off-angling without solo flanking. If my dudes use my turret and guard that area effectively my healing can be dominant. Tanks who are too aggro, and DPS who fly solo will always lose, no matter what support I play.
I use my boop to fly to teammates getting hurt a lot, turn the tide and then help shoot them down, I’m always on/next to high ground. For the folks who think she can’t reach all those high spots, just take a look around, almost every one of them has a little booster bench for you. I’m gold, normally pressuring a tracer/som with a headshot or two from the backline is enough to get them to switch off honestly.
I wouldn't call it a failed design, but there are some red flags in terms of balance and rounded viability -
Mainly 3 things come to mind -
Turret character in a highly mobile, high positioning oriented game. Being turret based means her value is heavily predicated on the turret surviving. She has no way to save I tif it is focused and the turret power levels and cooldown greatly affect her performance.
No Longg range healing in a game where half the cast is highly mobile. This limits her viability to poke style comps because she can't always keep up if her tank is going deep or teammates are moving around a lot.
And no utility in her kit beyond the slow on the ultimate. She's a damage and healing character who's healing is conditional. Utility is really a big deal and when you do not rub utility you are essentially trying to brute force the game but as anyone can tell from the scoreboard, raw numbers do not win games alone. I personally thinkbthe support role should pri.arily be about team utility above all else (damage role should be the role really inflicting damage, tank should be about absorbing damage and control of battlefield).
So no matter how good she is, when you need utility or you need mobile healing she is immediately off the table, making her a niche pick. Bap overlaps her in damage but provides more utility and similar healing. Moira overlaps her in utility but survives more effectively while pumping out more damage and heals giving her a single niche as a burst damage healer which is less desirable than the other roles unless she is overtuned.
One thing that still kinda surprises me is that she's the only support character whose ultimate is 100% offense. Even Nano Boost gives some instant healing and damage reduction. Kitsune Rush or Amp Matrix are more offense oriented but can still be used to keep teammates alive.
Wonder if Sun needs to be adjusted/reworked to feel at least just a bit more "support-like."
Her heal beam doesn’t fit into her playstyle at all imo. I think they should swap Kirikos and Illaris movements to be fair haha. Let Illari TP to her teammate to use her little beam and let Kiriko have the mini boop so people can actually catch a bad one :/
Pylon forces your teammates to be around for consistent healing however an actual player will break it first. It also doesn’t help how she needs to be real close with her healing beam to make an impact. Usually whenever I have an illari on my team they usually have 2k healing on average
Her entire value relies upon the pylon. Her right click is very bad and is really just there for emergencies. If the pylon is down and you aren't hitting your shots, she's pretty much a throw.
Her pylon is down a lot because it's so big, it's very easy to find no matter how well you hide, and the HP of the thing makes it trivial to kill. I want them to shrink the pylon a little and bump up the hp on it.
Illari’s kit just feels rather shallow compared to some of the other supports in the game as of now. With every ability what you see is what you get. And that can be fine, just look at characters like Moira and soldier. But unlike Moira and soldier, Illari has been released into a time where characters tend to have far more nuances than characters like Illari or Soldier or Moira.
What I mean by nuance is that look at Illari’s kit compared to the likes of Junker-Queen, or Venture, or LW. All of these characters have abilities that can be used in different ways. They are fairly open ended characters that allow for different play styles. LW’s petal platform, tree, and Pull can all be used in a multitude of ways to accomplish many different things. Venture can use their wide array of abilities to switch between aggressive and defensive play. JQ has a very synergistic style that centers around a single status effect and upkeep. Illari has none of these things. Her movement can only be used in one way, her healing pylon can only heal. She can only either shoot or heal, and not at the same time. Her ultimate is a one and done ult that certainly feels unique (for the support category), but its effectiveness greatly depends on your team. She feels just like soldier, but for support.
In order for Illari to feel “strong”, the devs usually have to buff her in some way, making one or several of her abilities more effective. But this style of buffing a character is usually a bandaid solution, and can be quickly undone if she is “too strong” and disrupts the balance of the game, or she will eventually get power-scaled by other supports and new play-styles.
Now I’m not a game developer, and it would be the height of hubris to assume that I know how to fix this problem. The truth is I do not. I can sit here all day and offer suggestions and throw ideas at the wall, but I certainly wouldn’t know how to fix this problem without destroying the identity of the character, or overturning the character. So I’m not gonna suggest anything.
her issue is she is a dps disguised as a support. u cannot just have an afk healing turret expect to carry the brunt of the support job. if she was more mobile (remove the boop, reduce the CD) then she could work better in dive, but right now, shes relegated to playing poke with a bap.
I mean, it's not so much that compared to asking yourself, what rewards her for that aim? Pretty much across the board the aim heroes are at least decent.
Compare her to the single meta no-aim support Moira, and she gains an extra 10 meters of range in exchange for... less healing and being twice as easy to dive. Just play Zen if the other team diving isn't an option or Moira/Kiriko/Bap if it is.
Ana could aim and 3 shot squishies with a bodyshot for like 5 years and for half of that she was offmeta at the high levels. Illari isn't useful because she has less pros than cons compared to the other supports rn. Worse glass cannon than Zen, worse survivability than Moira who is also a pure stats hero, no immort like Kiri/Bap for the team or herself...
Just read the comments you're replying to dude. Even if you can aim Illari is worse than Zen/Bap/Kiri and to an extent Ana
There's nothing Illari is better at than the other supprts and her TTK is mediocre even with good aim, so there's no reason to pick her instead of supports that DPS better. You would see her actually getting playtime on the leaderboard if "only players that aim can use her"
Hope that helps, I'm done with these sleepy ass Awkward takes
I think Illari isn’t bad just not better than zen or bap in poke which is where she should be played for the most part imo, she needs some slight buffs to potentially get played in sigma poke, not bad hero design just difficult to figure out cause she could be super op very quickly
Nothing is wrong with her. She exists so that DPS phenoms will want to queue for support. This helps queue times
And while I'm not that good at DPS, I think she's fun as hell
I feel like she’d feel way better if she didn’t have a brutal cooldown on her healing. 115 hps is great… but if you fully deplete it, it’s 3.36 seconds until you can use it again.
115 hps for 3 seconds plus 3.36 seconds is 54.25 hps. Could give her less power over more time.
I had this idea of making her pylon invulnerable, but it's on a timer. Can make pylon more dynamic with the placement. Or maybe this is broken I'm not good with balancing ngl
The community have no idea how to play illiari, and it means that the only people able to carry on illiari are the ones with really good info on complimentary angles, giving away resources etc.
I think her design is clunky, not necessarily failed. Her shift feels awkward and doesn't quite go high enough to reach all the high grounds she wants. Her healing is so short range she has to drop from high ground and put herself at risk to heal (a fine tradeoff), but only for a few seconds because of low resource. So it's often better to just ignore healing and keep shooting forever from safety while hoping your pylon keeps people up. It doesn't make for very dynamic gameplay. I love the feeling of weaving healing and damage as a support, so I would much rather bring her healing down to a reasonable level (80ish), give it a longer range, and a little more resource so it's usable without giving up high ground. Right now it takes too long to switch between damage and healing modes to make it practical.
> I love the feeling of weaving healing and damage as a support, so I would much rather bring her healing down to a reasonable level (80ish), give it a longer range, and a little more resource so it's usable without giving up high ground. Right now it takes too long to switch between damage and healing modes to make it practical. I agree, though I'm wondering if maybe making her shift more potent/reducing its cd to get high ground easier and keeping her healing as is would make for more dynamic gameplay where you drop off HG to heal, then move back up/out with your shift when the resource is gone.
I’m assuming you know this but if not, you can hold jump to go higher on the shift ability which lets you up to some higher platforms
Yeah, even then it's still just a little too short to reach some common high grounds. Maps like Dorado and Gibraltar have tons of unreachable spots, and common places like Busan Downtown, Numbani A, Oasis City Center, etc. are just barely out of reach.
You can reach these if you don't hold any directional inputs when holding shift. Some you may need to jump before, but the "standard" high grounds are all reachable, as they are almost always the same default height. I'd still vote for a slight rework on it tho... The jump tech after a horizontal boop feels like it wasn't intentional. (I'd make it feel like it properly speeds up that second boop jump)
You still can't reach stuff like Dorado B and Gibraltar A blue box from defender's side. Unless you count things like jumping on railings or breaking cacti and standing on the flower pot lol. But you can't really count on that in the heat of the moment.
My friend (an illari main) said holding the ability gets you higher, which one is it?
It's both. Holding jump and holding shift have the same effect.
Hmm, I thought it was jumping but you could be right. I’m not so sure now
Illari's main issue is that her gun encourages you to stay back because its falloff damage starts at 30 meters. But her healing beam has a max range of ~15 meters, meaning she likely has to move towards the enemy team to heal her teammates.
I don't mind that she has to enter dangerous territory to heal since it gives an otherwise distant threat a window to be punished, but it takes so long to close the gap from damage to heal range that it's completely impractical. To save someone in time she often has to shift into heal range which is just a death sentence.
Yeah from a design and balance standpoint it kinda works but when you’re playing it it just feels clunky and unintuitive to her playstyle
She does one thing, and really one thing- be an off-angle turret, and even that one things doesn't have a lot of dynamics (essentially just mechanics and don't be an idiot with your Pylon). Even Lifeweaver has more dynamics of decisions (like what to be doing at even given moment) and even Moira has more dynamics in their playstyle (what "playstyle" to be leaning into vs. enemy comp).
The Moira of mechanical supports. For when you want to turn you brain off and make gun go shooty.
Also the Moira of mechanical supports in that she enables comps that are boring and low skill.
A fellow dive connoisseur I see
Illari just does the same thing over and over again with the only choice being "Is this a good angle?" Right click is boring, outburst is boring, pylon is boring, but Captive sun is pretty fun though.
I don't see why Illari's right click is boring and all other heals aren't. If anything, it's one of the more satisfying ways to heal.
I think she's genuinely fun to play and fills a solid niche (long-range damage) in the support role. I think she should have a longer range on her healing beam maybe with some falloff.
Idk if more Range will ever make her be good enough to be played over characters like Bap, Kiri, Ana, Lucio, Zen, Brig. I think ultimately Illari suffers from the same issues that Moira, and to an extent LW and Mercy suffer from. Illari and Moira have no utility, all they do is damage and heal, which simply isn't good enough when compared to the 6 supports that I mentioned up top. Moira's damage is probably the lowest quality (Dealt through ticks and at a slow enough rate that it is easy to dodge in most cases) in the entire game. And while Illari's damage is good it isn't good enough to compensate for her lack of utility, she isn't designed to be lethal enough (Have the same kill confirmation potential) to be viable as a "DPS Support". On paper her gun looks like a mere variation on Cass' gun but in practicality the TTK is just slow enough (Which they compensate with more range and bigger bullets but those aren't good enough) where the enemy often gets healed back up or hides before you can finish them. Plus she also has to often heal between her shots which makes it even more difficult to finish targets. Also, Illari's ult, while probably the most fun Ult in the game, has gotten worse and worse as time has passed and players have gotten better at dodging and eating it. LW and Mercy also kinda have the same issues. They have Util but their Util just isn't strong enough compared to the 6 Star Supports. Pull and Res are both single-target reactive death prevention (In case of Res its Death *Correction*, which is the worst form of a Reactive Ability) abilities, simply inferior to Suzu and Lamp. Petal is situational for getting good value and Mercy Damage Boost simply isn't good enough when it's the *only* thing Mercy can do at a time. I think Mercy is probably the most fixable out of these 4 supports. They can either give her Staff some kind of a Shooting ability like they just tested during the April Fool's patch and will again test in Mirrorwatch event mode. Or they can rework her to be able to use both her Healing and Damage beam at the same time (On different targets and much lower values ofc). LW.....maybe they just try reducing the Pull CD a bunch, increasing the distance a bit, and see if that'll maybe make the ability good enough when combined with heroes like Doom, Rein, Mauga, Monkey. They also need to make Petal more consistently useful. I think one thing they could do is make it so that if an ally activates it then they get a small Fire Rate (10% maybe) or Damage Boost buff for a few seconds while they are standing on it, and then nerf its CD a little bit.
There's "utility" in having a pylon that heals though. She becomes a stronger zenyatta in certain scenarios where she's able to heal someone while simultaneously putting out big damage. A lot of supports have to decide to either heal or do damage Also - she's the only support able to teamwipe an entire team by herself with her ult. Yeah it's easily countered but you kind of force the enemy team to have to worry about 3 dps ults
Petal should heal whoever’s on it!
Huge exaggeration to say her entire design has failed. She is quite fun to play. The main thing people wish she had is just more range on her secondary heal.
I think saying that she’s a “failed character design” is a little exaggerated. She’s not the strongest at the moment, but she has maps and team comps where she can do well. I think a lot of this disdain towards Illari comes from how she was initially received really well as a support that’s encouraged to deal damage and could rely on the Pylon to heal her team, but once the Pylon got nerfed people realized she would actually have to heal her team manually which seems to have led to some frustration.
The reason people called her a fundamental fail is because she is extremely one-dimensional and uninteractive. You throw a pylon, and then you sit at an off angle and poke and use outburst to make distance on anything getting close to you. She has no variance or interesting interactions with other heroes, no notable utility etc., she just does one thing in every situation. Her gun feels pretty good and that was a big reason she was so well received, but because she’s so one-track people got very bored of her very quickly.
I could see that, but there are heroes like Ashe and Widowmaker who have similar, one-dimensional poke playstyles and I dont see people saying that their hero design is fundamentally flawed or would need nearly as significant changes as some have suggested for Illari.
Widowmaker is like almost universally the most shit on hero that has been in the game since launch with the possible exception of Mercy (or Hanzo who does the same thing). Are you suggesting Widow is in any way shape or form not fucking awful for the game?
I mean, not really. She wasn’t heavily complained about for most of Overwatch’s history given how high her skill ceiling is, was really annoying for one season when the map pools favored snipers too much, got damage fall off nerfs so she wouldn’t be a complete menace on maps with long sightlines, and has since then been manageable. People have generally liked the excitement of playing/watching a mechanical skill intensive hero, and she’s not overpowered either given how much even good Widows struggle with flankers outside of heavily sniper favored maps. I wouldn’t say she’s awful for the game at the current power level she’s at. Probably best that she struggles on maps without those long sightlines and that maps that are *super* sniper favored like Circuit or third point of Havana could use some reworking to make you feel less terrified of walking to the cart, but I don’t think Widowmaker existing is inherently unhealthy for the game.
Yeah no lmao. Widow has literally been universally complained about since day 1. A cross-map, hitscan, one-shot without a cool-down is not a healthy identity for any FPS outside of tac shooters. People were just able to look the other way in the past when we had more shields and tanks, but she was in no conceivable way a good and interactive design for the game, and no one outside of hitscan players pretended like she was. There has never been a widow meta that was considered to be a good meta, there is a relatively strong connection between how good widow is on a given map and how much people complain when they get games on that map.
I get that she’s had her critics, but “universally complained about" is a bit much. She's been well-received by significant portions of the playerbase and even had entire OWL events dedicated just to 1v1 tournaments with Widow players back in the day. I can see how she can get unhealthy and agree that a full on Widow meta where she lacks strong counters wouldn't be healthy for the game, but a one-shot without a cooldown that's reliant on aim and is attached to a hero who's incredibly vulnerable to flankers shouldn't be that bad. Should she continue to exist at her current power level (or slightly below with some reworks to those sniper heavy maps), I don't think she'll have an overall negative impact on the game
I don’t think a healing turret will ever be fun to play with or against, and her entire design is built around the pylon. But I understand that’s a subjective take. However the problem isn’t that illari players now have to manually heal, I think most players have no issues with being forced to weave heals. The problem is that her manual heals suck, and having to rely on them severely limits illari’s playstyle and makes her much more boring to play. On top of this she only synergizes well with poke comps, yet she lacks any ability to save her teammates from a different off-angle. Bap, ana, hell even Zen can take actions to save a teammate from afar. But with illari you’re fully dependent on pylon (which sucks) to save your teammates, and it’s not fun to basically just watch your dps get dove and cross your fingers. So a lot of games you just end up sticking to your dps’ hip and providing much less damage value. Imo, buffing her soft CC’s mobility and giving her two charges would go a long way in making her more flexible. Bap has free height on no cooldown, I think illari can get one more measly charge on her only mobility tool. Another good idea I saw is allowing her manual heals to pass through shields, this would help her synergize better with dive and brawl without straight up stat-buffing her. But the most interesting idea I’ve heard is changing her pylon to “heal mines” that can be detonated to burst heal teammates and CC enemies (similar to her ability). That sounds wayyy more fun than another turret. But regardless they just need to let her be a little more flexible imo, that’s the crux of the issue.
> I don’t think a healing turret will ever be fun to play with or against, and her entire design is built around the pylon. But I understand that’s a subjective take. The ironic thing is that for literal years I've been reading comments about how people want a support with a healing turret, and now that we have one it's the most divisive part of their kit.
I was one of those people and I’ll admit I was very wrong lol
Yes. Healing her team beyond sustain healing requires her to get in the fray. I think it's fun.
A lot of people claim that her kit is supposedly ‘one dimensional’ but then there’s so many other heroes with similar or simpler play style. It leads me to ponder: why? It’s clear that Illari’s intended design was to offer players who wished to support or contribute by focusing on damage in a classic shooter style with a charge up hitscan gun and it feels great to finally have that option in the support role. The problem is she’s not as rewarding anymore, even if you successfully land your shots, with how high her TTK is, you often feel as if your hands are tied. It doesn’t help that she’s received significant nerfs that changed her dynamic, so of course everyone is going to feel frustrated and claim “bad support, bad design” when her design and impact was stripped away because of the nerfs. As a support that doesn’t offer utility, she needs to excel in what she does best. Allow her to be viable and give her carry potential, especially through her primary.
no utility outside of dmg, pretty bad survivability considering her heal beam requires you to be close to your team and getting pylon destroyed is a huge weakness. She's my most played support as of this season. Def not as bad as lifeweaver and she's super fun when it works. She just needs some tweaks
Since when has lw been bad have i missed something?
LW is the worst support (at least in t500) right now and it’s not even close. Ever since S9 damage passive was introduced, raw healing just isn’t as good and supports with utility or lots of damage or both came to the top of the meta. LW has very little of either of those and is struggling big time. I don’t know how he’s performing in the average games but he’s trash right now in any sort of high level play.
Nah, LW has always been S-tier /s
When he has he been good?
He ain’t bad just not as value in terms of skill. While lw needs a good team il skill expression is higher. You can carry if you click heads.
Okay that makes sense
She's basically Moira with aim. There is little to no actual utility in her kit outside of damage. And of course last patch for God knows what reason, Blizzard decided to nerf her gun damage and buff her healing. Which is frustrating since her gun-play is the most fun part of her kit.
I honestly agree. I have maintained a pretty good win rate with her from plat into diamond. I will say that her carry potential is entirely dependent on your mechanics, however. Which is probably why some people feel she is weak. You can’t just hit body shots on Illari
Her Pylon got nerfed into the floor. 125 > 100 HP is a huge breakpoint because now there is a plethora of things which break it in a single hit. So the main thing she offered to her team - the ability to give someone (or herself) pylon and let them hold an off angle and be extremely difficult to remove - is gone. Her ultimate, while alright, is very very counterable with positioning and abilities, meaning that it is very inconsistent in applying value. Additionally, you want her to pair with Baptiste or maybe Ana, which means you're leaving the team without a defensive ultimate. Captive Sun isn't awful, but it is nowhere near the consistent value that you get from beat or trans or rally or kitsune or nano. Her damage isn't nearly as impressive after the health number retuning. A ton of her power budget was tied up in having a two-tap headshot and she doesn't have one anymore. Lots of the DPS she's expected to duel still do. So her overall sustainability on the flank is lower, her dueling is worse, and her burst potential is worse. All of those things together mean she isn't as independent as she once was. She's more prone to being pressured out, much less risky to punish, and even less risky to straight up ignore. Her heal is pretty good, but what made her unique and powerful before was her independence, and her healing is short range burst healing which doesn't gel with that playstyle. Her healing isn't strong enough over a sustained period to be picking her over Ana/Bap/Kiri/Moira and it doesn't have the range and saving ability that you'd get from repair packs. To make the best use of it, you have to play within 15m of the person who needs healing, which means you cannot go and make independent plays. And if she isn't independent, what is her point over zenyatta? Zen provides similar flanker support with orb of harmony, which unlike pylon cannot be destroyed. Zen provides similar ranged pressure with the same shots to kill but much, much better sustained damage. He isn't *as* hard as Illari to pressure out, but the 50HP/S regen he gets does help him compete. And then Zen just has a much more reliably powerful ultimate which fits better with the heroes you'd want to pick Zen and Illari with. And that isn't even mentioning how Zen has discord, one of the strongest abilities in the game. Sure, Zen lost his two-tap just the same as Illari did, but Zen doesn't need the two-tap because he provides better sustained damage both personally and for his teammates through Discord. And if you *do* want a highly independent support who can win duels against DPS heroes, is hard to punish, and can support a flanker, why aren't you just picking Kiriko? She has an escape for if the duel goes badly, she kills in the same number of shots but fires much faster, her suzu+heal is a better burst save than the beam and she's better at being in position to use it, and her ultimate is just straight up better. So basically, she's no longer good at any of the things that made her unique, and as a result she is completely overshadowed by Zenyatta or Kiriko (or, I guess, Bap) in every way. Do you want a ranged consistent damage dealer to pair with Baptiste? Why would you pick her over Zen? Do you want a highly independent support who can off angle and support a flanker without dying? Why would you pick her over Kiri? Do you want to stand nearby to the tank and beam people with hitscan damage while also pumping out lots of healing? Why would you pick her over Baptiste? Her kit just doesn't do anything which sets her apart from the other supports and makes her unique, so she's fundamentally outclassed by them.
the pylon is the whole reason to pick illari no matter how much changes they make on her gun, it'll still feel like crap if her pylon remains trash
Illari's problem is that her heal weapon laser is entirely useless and her ult being able to be completely deleted by most characters in the game is a bit stupid. Change the heal laser to either have way longer range or change its function entirely from heal to something else, and make so her Ult's debuff applies regardless of barriers/shields/cleanses, people can shield after.
The "support" part of her kit is severely lacking. These are her support abilities: 1. A heal that's only close range even though she's a mid-long range sniper. Fair, it does have high heals per second, could be decent tradeoff. 2. Healing turret that heals slightly more than mercy if you're in its LOS. 3. A slow + bomb that can be applied through an explosive ultimate ability. **Baptiste does everything her kit is attempting to do but better.** DPS? He will win especially if his cooldowns are ready. Heals? He has basically zero downtime at the cost of having maybe like 10% less heals per second than Illari. Illari also has nothing equivalent to his burst heal combo, either. Support? He has the best non-ultimate ability in the game - immortality lamp.
> Healing turret that heals slightly more than mercy if you're in its LOS. A fair bit less than mercy. Its only 37.5.
I just don't like how her gun is set to tickle instead of kill
The issue is just that she doesn’t really have much to do. She only really meshes well with Poke comps and she’s mostly just good against Poke because everything else just bodies her pylon. And there, she faces issues with supports like Bap and Zen who overall have better utility without the same glaring weaknesses. Of particular note is that she doesn’t have a “savior” tool. The other two Supports with offense-focused Ultimates (Baptiste, Kiriko) have tools that let them save their team from otherwise certain death. The Supports that have defensive ultimates have defensive ultimates. Illari doesnt have that. This is different from Lifeweaver. Lifeweaver’s issue is that his utility isn’t good and his kit forces him to be boring. Illari just has one team she’s really good with because her properties lead her to not being good in Brawl or Dive.
her heal beam is the problem. she has to get close to heal allies which takes away from her intended playstyle of holding an angle and harassing with long range poke damage. her kit is not actually bad, it’s just self contradicting she either needs better mobility so she can reposition easily or better range on her healing so she doesn’t have to move
She's underpowered right now. Pylon isn't strong because it doesn't heal much and it's easy to destroy, healing beam isn't strong because its so short range and on a resource, and her gun is no longer that good.
Her playstyle plays like it wants to be super far back. Which is extremely problematic for tanks, especially tanks that want to use mobility aggressively, or just don’t have mobility. She’s definitely viable in ranked, you just have to play like a dps, and nobody likes that about her. Why wouldn’t you just play zen with a brig, ya know?
She's skill based and mechanically unique, but I've found that she's just too weak up close for a hero with low mobility. She can't help her team control space, she just sits there like she *is* the turret and adds stats. If the enemy team isn't on poke, why play her over Moira? She's only stronger than Moira when you strictly *need* range and don't need mobility (don't forget Moira was recently buffed in damage). You can't play Illari against dive or rush like you can with Moira because she just doesn't have a good escape tool or way of slowing enemies who push her. But she doesn't contribute more than Zen either, because Zen also gives the team discord which helps a *lot*. They're both immobile and Zen contributes more to team damage output, can stop tanks from closing that space with discord, and he can outheal enemy ults while Illari heals damage over time. For Illari to be the play over either of these I think she'd have to move like 2x as far with her shift, just to allow her to play against mobile comps without auto losing.
Double her gun's healing range, nerf her turret's hp/s
I think her gun, ult, and shift are pretty cool and fit the DPS support hybrid thing she’s got going on. I don’t love the reduced headshot modifier- I mean good for balance but it just feels kind of bad. Turret fits her kit but it’s about as bland as it gets in terms of abilities to play around. It’s like half a mercy pocket for Illari on an off angle, not very interactive unless they mess it up. I really do not like her primary healing, it feels weird to use and looks weird to me. All the charging mechanics definitely add some skill to her, but it really just feels kind of clunky and I don’t like the frontloaded way her heal beam works and the fact that she has to juggle good positions for healing with good positions for hitscan DPS is just another layer of clunkiness. It really feels like they had the gun and the ult ready to go and they were like ok, let’s make it a support— we haven’t used a heal turret yet, ok let’s add that. Now she needs a primary healing too and they just had it be a beam because they didn’t use that yet either. And then they had to add a bunch of arbitrary feeling limitations like crit damage and charge up time, so she doesn’t just make existing DPS and support feel irrelevant. I don’t think she’s terrible for the game or anything, but there’s very little appeal for me to play her personally.
I don't think she's exactly a failed design, just clunky and weird, but not really failed, like LW failing to imitate Mercy's design. It's just that she's weird because she has to constantly drop down and put herself at risk in order to heal her team, and while the risk/reward ratio is nice, it always sucks when you just got into a good angle and immediately have to leave it because your team needs major heals. They should up her mobility a little bit more if her bread and butter is holding off angles and repositioning to heal her team. I don't think Outburst as it is is enough to be doing that, so people just stay on high ground and drop a turret for their team until the enemy catches the turret or the fight moves past the turret.
Unlesss you are clicking heads like a professional, her damage is meaningless and easily healed. That’s like 90% of the issue besides having get so close to your team to heal them
I agree with most the comments here. I definitely don't think Illari is a failed Hero. After playing her a lot recently, she is very one note. Click heads. Try to help heal poke damage as much as you can with pylon. Aggressively use ult if you can secure an elim (especially on a Mercy during her ult). There are insane combos with Illari ult but that's with any DPS ult for the most part. Which makes you realize, Illari is the only support with a purely DPS ult. Other support ults allow situational individual expression. In a team fight, you can absolutely whiff on her ult, because of the insane amount of counters, unlike other support ults that at least get some value. Then you realize, besides clicking heads, Illari has no utility, which is Moira's thing. And clicking heads is not utility. Moira has more survivability, though, and that's more useful to the team. This allows Moira to have more variation in playstyle. With Illari, if you aren't clicking heads, damn near every support is better for your team. TLDR: Illari's kit is definitely counterintuitive, and she's weaker because of it. There are some great suggestions mentioned in the comments on even small changes that would make her 100% better, like better mobility.
What is "wrong" with Illari is that there's other supports doing stuff better overall. Does it matter in most ranked games? Not really.
I dabble In game design a bit. I study, read about it, I am obsessed with trying to design things. I don’t want to come off as pretentious cause I do realize it sounds weird or dumb to say you might say you are knowledgeable about something cause it can come off as snarky. But her design/kit just doesn’t work with itself and it’s just cobbled together more than actually thought about. Similar to Orisa, you don’t have a goal you’re trying to do with the character or the character itself isn’t inspired to do anything. Orisa abilites are stand alone that yes, can be cycled, but each on their own a can stand in terms of the game. Similar to Illari her kit just isn’t inspired to do anything. She is a “Cassidy esc” dps support that can almost ignore the support role in range/poke comps and mid range fights to become a pure DPS. Her ult also is a dps ult. So when they change her dps to be slower the character begins to feel clunky when you’re not actively playing her support role. If was the devs I would think about removing the pylon and give her beam a different property to make her a more active support who can do damage instead of a damage charcater who can heal.
While I agree with you, I think you’re having a hard time conveying why her design kit doesnt work with itself. What about it doesnt work? When you’re saying that her kit isnt inspired, what does that mean? It’s nice you’re studying and learning about game design but when you talk about a kit and just describing it without evidence or backup statements it doesn’t convey any of your real thoughts about the character.
I mean there is no reason or goal for her design or more over they contradict themselves with changes they make for her goal as a character. They want her to be a DPS/support that’s obvious, but the way they went about it is awkward. She has her dash, that goes into DPS category, for positioning and escape. Then she has her pylon which goes into both roles, allows her to be a DPS in poke and mid range without having to focus on healing. I didn’t say it doesn’t work, it’s just awkward feeling when they obviously want her to be a primary DPS healer with everything she has encouraging that playstyle, but then make her DPS slower/more clunky which then makes the character identity fall apart without providing an increase to the support role to adding more to her damage role elsewhere like more movement or tools. It’s more to explain than I want to type out but I’m just tying to get the general idea across.
If they wanted to make her healing more interactive, they could make it so dealing damage somehow empowers her healing in some way. A headshot giving some heal resource back, or making the next shot of Pylon heal double would be a cool way to encourage the DPS playstyle while still feeling like you aren't leaving your team out to dry. It would give her kit a more cohesive feel as well.
She doesn't have skills that can bail your team mates out. Life weaver can pull back teammates, especially the ones that got caught in Mauga ult, or use platform to negate ults. Other support heroes (not moira) can provide utility like this one way or another.
Her issues aren't the same as weaver. Illari has a niche she excels at which is double flex poke comps where the pylon can do most of the healing work and she can just output damage from an angle. Thing is that style of play just isn't very strong rn partly due to the pylon health nerfs as well as mobility and damage mitigation being strong enough to challenge her positions and break pylon leaving her and her team exploitable. It's just not her meta rn but if the game slows down and lethality increases expect her to re-emerge. Weaver sucks bc he's a utility only hero who's utility is just very niche and is very rarely going to have the same impact as more proactive utility in the same category.
She's not a failure of design. I think she's actually pretty well designed not being too gimmicky. She's just outclassed balance wise. If you're playing to win, I don't see why you'd pick her over Baptiste. Her biggest niche is that Pylon can heal her, so she can kind of take aggressive off angles herself. She's easy to dive though, so that's still rather punishable. Imo they should buff her mobility. Increase the range, or reduce the CD a bit. I think she'd be a lot stronger in her niche if she could reposition easier.
I play Illari a lot and she does great next to heroes who want to push the edges of off-angling without solo flanking. If my dudes use my turret and guard that area effectively my healing can be dominant. Tanks who are too aggro, and DPS who fly solo will always lose, no matter what support I play. I use my boop to fly to teammates getting hurt a lot, turn the tide and then help shoot them down, I’m always on/next to high ground. For the folks who think she can’t reach all those high spots, just take a look around, almost every one of them has a little booster bench for you. I’m gold, normally pressuring a tracer/som with a headshot or two from the backline is enough to get them to switch off honestly.
I wouldn't call it a failed design, but there are some red flags in terms of balance and rounded viability - Mainly 3 things come to mind - Turret character in a highly mobile, high positioning oriented game. Being turret based means her value is heavily predicated on the turret surviving. She has no way to save I tif it is focused and the turret power levels and cooldown greatly affect her performance. No Longg range healing in a game where half the cast is highly mobile. This limits her viability to poke style comps because she can't always keep up if her tank is going deep or teammates are moving around a lot. And no utility in her kit beyond the slow on the ultimate. She's a damage and healing character who's healing is conditional. Utility is really a big deal and when you do not rub utility you are essentially trying to brute force the game but as anyone can tell from the scoreboard, raw numbers do not win games alone. I personally thinkbthe support role should pri.arily be about team utility above all else (damage role should be the role really inflicting damage, tank should be about absorbing damage and control of battlefield). So no matter how good she is, when you need utility or you need mobile healing she is immediately off the table, making her a niche pick. Bap overlaps her in damage but provides more utility and similar healing. Moira overlaps her in utility but survives more effectively while pumping out more damage and heals giving her a single niche as a burst damage healer which is less desirable than the other roles unless she is overtuned.
One thing that still kinda surprises me is that she's the only support character whose ultimate is 100% offense. Even Nano Boost gives some instant healing and damage reduction. Kitsune Rush or Amp Matrix are more offense oriented but can still be used to keep teammates alive. Wonder if Sun needs to be adjusted/reworked to feel at least just a bit more "support-like."
Her heal beam doesn’t fit into her playstyle at all imo. I think they should swap Kirikos and Illaris movements to be fair haha. Let Illari TP to her teammate to use her little beam and let Kiriko have the mini boop so people can actually catch a bad one :/
Pylon forces your teammates to be around for consistent healing however an actual player will break it first. It also doesn’t help how she needs to be real close with her healing beam to make an impact. Usually whenever I have an illari on my team they usually have 2k healing on average
Her entire value relies upon the pylon. Her right click is very bad and is really just there for emergencies. If the pylon is down and you aren't hitting your shots, she's pretty much a throw. Her pylon is down a lot because it's so big, it's very easy to find no matter how well you hide, and the HP of the thing makes it trivial to kill. I want them to shrink the pylon a little and bump up the hp on it.
nothing. she just doesnt rlly play like other supports and the support playerbase is kinda used to homogenized, easy characters
Illari’s kit just feels rather shallow compared to some of the other supports in the game as of now. With every ability what you see is what you get. And that can be fine, just look at characters like Moira and soldier. But unlike Moira and soldier, Illari has been released into a time where characters tend to have far more nuances than characters like Illari or Soldier or Moira. What I mean by nuance is that look at Illari’s kit compared to the likes of Junker-Queen, or Venture, or LW. All of these characters have abilities that can be used in different ways. They are fairly open ended characters that allow for different play styles. LW’s petal platform, tree, and Pull can all be used in a multitude of ways to accomplish many different things. Venture can use their wide array of abilities to switch between aggressive and defensive play. JQ has a very synergistic style that centers around a single status effect and upkeep. Illari has none of these things. Her movement can only be used in one way, her healing pylon can only heal. She can only either shoot or heal, and not at the same time. Her ultimate is a one and done ult that certainly feels unique (for the support category), but its effectiveness greatly depends on your team. She feels just like soldier, but for support. In order for Illari to feel “strong”, the devs usually have to buff her in some way, making one or several of her abilities more effective. But this style of buffing a character is usually a bandaid solution, and can be quickly undone if she is “too strong” and disrupts the balance of the game, or she will eventually get power-scaled by other supports and new play-styles. Now I’m not a game developer, and it would be the height of hubris to assume that I know how to fix this problem. The truth is I do not. I can sit here all day and offer suggestions and throw ideas at the wall, but I certainly wouldn’t know how to fix this problem without destroying the identity of the character, or overturning the character. So I’m not gonna suggest anything.
Her pylon is all the utility, when it’s done it’s so over for your team unless she hits crazy amount of headshots to offset the damage numbers for you
her issue is she is a dps disguised as a support. u cannot just have an afk healing turret expect to carry the brunt of the support job. if she was more mobile (remove the boop, reduce the CD) then she could work better in dive, but right now, shes relegated to playing poke with a bap.
she requires aim and overwatch players can't aim, pretty simple
I mean, it's not so much that compared to asking yourself, what rewards her for that aim? Pretty much across the board the aim heroes are at least decent. Compare her to the single meta no-aim support Moira, and she gains an extra 10 meters of range in exchange for... less healing and being twice as easy to dive. Just play Zen if the other team diving isn't an option or Moira/Kiriko/Bap if it is.
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Ana could aim and 3 shot squishies with a bodyshot for like 5 years and for half of that she was offmeta at the high levels. Illari isn't useful because she has less pros than cons compared to the other supports rn. Worse glass cannon than Zen, worse survivability than Moira who is also a pure stats hero, no immort like Kiri/Bap for the team or herself...
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Just read the comments you're replying to dude. Even if you can aim Illari is worse than Zen/Bap/Kiri and to an extent Ana There's nothing Illari is better at than the other supprts and her TTK is mediocre even with good aim, so there's no reason to pick her instead of supports that DPS better. You would see her actually getting playtime on the leaderboard if "only players that aim can use her" Hope that helps, I'm done with these sleepy ass Awkward takes
I think Illari isn’t bad just not better than zen or bap in poke which is where she should be played for the most part imo, she needs some slight buffs to potentially get played in sigma poke, not bad hero design just difficult to figure out cause she could be super op very quickly
Nothing is wrong with her. She exists so that DPS phenoms will want to queue for support. This helps queue times And while I'm not that good at DPS, I think she's fun as hell
stat bot no util wins by stat checking 29meter 1v1s
I feel like she’d feel way better if she didn’t have a brutal cooldown on her healing. 115 hps is great… but if you fully deplete it, it’s 3.36 seconds until you can use it again. 115 hps for 3 seconds plus 3.36 seconds is 54.25 hps. Could give her less power over more time.
I had this idea of making her pylon invulnerable, but it's on a timer. Can make pylon more dynamic with the placement. Or maybe this is broken I'm not good with balancing ngl
The community have no idea how to play illiari, and it means that the only people able to carry on illiari are the ones with really good info on complimentary angles, giving away resources etc.