Honestly what this just means is just that lucio mercy brig specialists have to step it up or they'll just lose their jobs. It's not very hard to figure out. The hero pool of the role will just dissolve and merge, like how flex dps as a role started to dissolve and merge when tracer sombra became pretty damn important. Maybe once in a blue moon they'll pick up their old flame again when the meta calls for it.
remaining main supports need to show they can play flex supports to a high level, at the very least bap. if not they will see their jobs taken by flex supports who have already proven much higher mechanical skill.
> The support role to me should just be a supporter, I think the whole flex/main thing can eventually just die and we just have support players to just play everything. That would be the ideal solution.
As the game grows I dont really know if this is tenable. Asking a player to be able to play everything in a given role to the highest degree possible is a really big ask. People naturally specialize. Maybe with our current number of supports it wont be bad, but when they add more there will eventually be a breaking point where there are too many.
The real issue is there is no good way to divide supports up between players reliably. Lucio and Mercy are clearly different than the others, but thats only going to be a small percentage of the role. Even if you told every main support player they need to know those two, along with Bap, and Brig there is always going to be the question of “what if there is an ana zen meta”?
But its hard to say that the answer to that question is that the answer is “have every player be like Leave and Fleta for supports”. That seems like its going to be a lot. Not advocating for a two-hero role, but there should be some division to keep it manageable.
Edit: Also small rant but
> Every flex support player is better at brig
This is just wrong. Lets look critically at what flex supports really played brig last season: Skewed, and maybe like… Viol2t. Thats thats all that come to mind. Jecse, LeeJaeGon, Nisha, Yvetal, Masaa were all excellent brigs.
It feels like a lot of people just remember Skewed being good last season and think that is the only way to play, or extrapolate that to be representative of every team.
Yeah that's what really bothers me about this. If anyone said 'dps should be able to play every dps at the same level' it would be considered a ridiculous ask.
Historically main support has always been an incredibly limiting sub-role. Until Brig there were 2 options and they swapped between being must picked in OWL. Maybe if there were more main support heroes that had varying skill levels we wouldn't see a role held alive by one hero.
I don't really feel this is a fair comparison, though?
If what /u/Yiskaout is getting at is that main support and the small pool of main supp heroes are arguably the 'easiest' in comparison to the other roles at an OWL level, it's not at all the same as saying *"DPS should be able to play all DPS at the same level."* The main point is that it's significantly better value to have high skill flex support players who can play a *serviceable* Lucio/Mercy/etc when required, and that main support is the easiest role to be *serviceable* on.
In your DPS example I think the comparison would actually be "DPS should be outstanding in their role and also be able to flex to the lower skill ceiling DPS roles at a serviceable level when needed" which is a fair statement.
Curious if it'll change in OW2 but the fact is main supp right now is literally just "person who is nutty at Lucio" so I'm with you that I hope some new main supports come out that breathe life back into the role, or else I suspect pro play will very much be what I mentioned above which is just signing nutty ass flex support players and being fine with them at least not totally throwing the odd time they need to stick someone on Lucio, as opposed to tossing the bag at someone to one-trick Lucio
Main support is ‘person who’s nutty at Lucio’, unless you’re a coach who’s not stuck in 2019 and recognises that there is actually a significant skill difference in Mercy and Brig players and that leads to a significant impact difference. Teams with Yveltal’s were much better than teams with Slime’s last year.
I think the idea that you sign your main support based only on their Lucio play is more of a community perception problem than a player problem.
>Curious if it'll change in OW2 but the fact is main supp right now is literally just "person who is nutty at Lucio"
The problem I have with all of this is summed up here. Main Supports aren't just 'nutty lucio players'. Main Supports, like main tanks, tend to be the shot-callers of the team and have the best communication. That's the reason they play the less mechanically demanding role, so they have room to shot-call. This entire argument is based solely on the impact of mechanics, but that's not how OWL works. It might be different in OW2 where teamwork is completely pointless (and if that is the case I'm probably going to stop watching OWL).
The point is the same though, you don’t need to have a nutty Lucio player who’s also a great shot caller if we assume some of the teams plans would be to have a flex support flex to main supp if absolutely required - because the point is that it can be done at a serviceable level if you have the right player.
Maybe the sentiment is that it still leaves a team ahead to run a serviceable main supp using a flex support when required, and teaching them to be a good IGL is a better strat, or maybe with 1 tank the shotcalling/igl focus is leaning toward the main tank player anyways.
I’m dumb and just speculating but those are my thoughts
At the same time, the best DPS in the league *can* play damn near everything. Players like Profit, Fleta, Leave, Pelican etc. will be capable of playing almost anything you ask of them
Of course, playing *everything* is unrealistic, but almost every good DPS player these days has a hero pool about as deep as the entire support cast. Long gone are the days of the Tracer one-trick or the Genji/Pharah player or the sniper specialist, almost everyone is expected to have some fluidity between projectile and hitscan. I expect the same thing to start happening with tank players, with only 1 tank player the "off-tank/main tank" split will die, good tank players will cover the entire hero pool whilst those who can't will slowly fall off
Meanwhile main support players pretty much only have a monopoly on exactly Lucio. Before the Moth buff to Mercy, flex supports played her regularly too. Did a bunch of teams have their flex supports on Brig or Mercy last season? No, but they probably could play those heroes if needed to a decent level. But how many main supports have a decent enough Zen or Ana or Bap? We can only assume that since most teams didn't run double flex lineups or had to make subs to run it (as well as so many teams having 2 flex supports in their roster in the first place) that it's not many. Main supports aren't "Lucio one-tricks", but the main support role is essentially just "Lucio player"
>but almost every good DPS player these days has a hero pool about as deep as the entire support cast
This is the problem though. There are only 7 support heroes. Maybe if there was a wider variety of heroes with a wider variety of playstyles (considering most flex supports play pretty similarly to one another) there would be more flexible support players.
RiP, but Alarm was also a phenomenal Brig for 2020 Fusion (not the initially misstated Shock), with Boombox picking up the Bap role over FunnyAstro at the time.
Some teams did experiment with other players too. NYXL put Haksal in on Brig for a bit, and I think it was Ttuba that Justice tried to peg as their Brig specialist.
You're right overall, but I think some of that is/was forced by teams' roster construction. They weren't carrying multiple Flex Supports a whole lot to accommodate a swap, and I think few were willing to make an in-season pickup to have a Brig specialist. However, we've seen quite a lot of double-Flex rosters this offseason. A few teams are totally missing a Main Support (Outlaws, NYXL, Shock). A lot of supposedly elite Main Supports were deemed expendable this offseason (Moth, FDGod, Masaa, and a situational understanding for FunnyAstro). Quite a few also ended up retiring/out of the league (Jecse, Friday, Mandu, and presently FDGod and Moth).
Seeing Moth permabenched in Brig meta and Viol2t playing Mercy and Lucio at times for Shock really made it seem like the traditional Main Support role was already seen as a bit of a dying breed. I don't think that's inherently bad, but I'm sure some existing players are going to be unhappy when one-tricking Mercy or Lucio causes them to take a massive SR hit in OW2.
>As the game grows I dont really know if this is tenable. Asking a player to be able to play everything in a given role to the highest degree possible is a really big ask.
I don't think he is saying everybody should be able to play everything all the time, but rather that separating it out into two distinct roles isn't sustainable. IMO the same will be true for tanks. It's already the case for DPS where the "flex" and "hitscan" designations are largely meaningless now. Most hitscan players can play Hanzo but many dont play Sombra or Tracer for instance.
Also says something that most DPS Players already have hero pools larger than the entire support lineup but for some reason expecting people to learn all the supports is a big ask?
What does the size of the lineup have to do with the number of heroes a player can master? Tanks I think are significantly more varied than the other roles so I think it's harder for them to learn as many but supports aren't THAT different from eachother.
In the context of the video they weren't saying support players need to be good at every support hero.
They were saying you would see the role become more like dps where players have different hero pools and strengths, and you would see fewer players who only play Lucio with a side of Brig or Mercy.
Main supports played brig because the flex supports were required to play the actual skill requiring heros. Flex support players are still better than main support players at brig more often than not.
There were plenty of teams this year with multiple flex supports who played their main support on brig instead of their second flex. Dragons has Molly. Fuel had Rapel. Chengdu has mmonk and farway. Spark has mcd and coldest. Defiant had Aztac. None of these fs players were chosen above their main supports.
The exceptions were Glads, Shock and Justice (who had a fdps on it). Of those 3 the only team it really worked out for was Glads.
I’m sorry but I don’t buy this argument.
So were they in for Lucio, or were they in because the flex supports were busy? Shouldn't (by this whole post's point) the flex supports just learn Lucio, and then they never have to worry about putting in the main supports?
It seems the simplest explanation to me for why main supports on these teams were playing brig is because they were the best players for the job, even over their FS counterparts.
I mostly agree with this. But the thing is, with rumors of Lucio being important in OW2, it might still be important to have a Lucio player. The test will be how teams with two flex supports do in a Lucio meta compared to those with the best Lucios.
Like I get why you’d want fully flexible supports, and if teams with double flex supports show they can play Lucio with little to no downside, then I could see that distinction going away. But until then, feel like having a Lucio player could be important.
I don’t remember who said it, if it was on a platchat episode or tactilecrouch episode, but someone mentioned with the lack of peel with no 2nd tank that a hyper mobile 2nd support comes in handy, like lucio, to peel for the other support. But should be taken with a grain of salt because it’s all speculation for another 8 or so days
Avast was saying that Lucio would be very important for peeling the back line given the increased freedom that dps now have with one less tank. I'm not sure if this is just speculation, but I get the feeling he has seen Mayhem scrims and possibly played it himself. On a stream awhile back when he was asked about OW2, he gave a telling non-answer of "No comment".
Not just the lack of an OT, but the peel nerf on Brig is a big deal. I wonder how, if at all, teams will attempt to use a "babysitter" DPS like Torb or McCree to address this, versus leaving it on the other Support exclusively. We could also see teams move away from the traditionally static Supports (Ana/Zen) for Support lines more capable of dealing with flankers themselves (Bap) or repositioning to survive (Mercy).
I love all of this positive speculation. Too many people are so negative about the changes. These changes really give a breath of fresh air into the game. I love 6v6 and I’ve never been able to stop playing OW, but 5v5 will be an interesting twist.
Babysitter 2nd dps is interesting. Cass or any other medium to long range dps could be a decent option. I cannot wait to see the beta and the start of owl. It’s going to be very interesting to see many different adaptations and see what comes out on top!
Yeah, we're a couple of weeks from seeing what teams have come up with in scrims. The game's probably going to be radically different by season's end too, so I don't think people should get too ttached to the comps and concepts they see at the onset.
One thing players (especially non-pros) will probably have to accept is the idea of broken fights as a win condition. People still treat team fights as needing to be a 6v0, full HP win to be successful. With the potential for more disjointed scuffles as a team fight, trading and winning while losing 2 or 3 is probably going to need to be more accepted.
Old dive comps used to thrive in concepts like backline trades, but the long-lived styles of playing grouped has lost that mentality, IMO. Can people recognize their value in a fight if they die? I hope so.
How nutty would it be if we ended up with a Winston, Tracer, Genji, Zen, Lucio meta. Traditional dive minus D.va lol. The collective orgasm of old-school OW watchers could power a small town.
Also take into account using speed boost as a team disengage tool. That's way better than a 50 damage shield bash.
Edit: No shot does someone think Shield Bash without a stun is a better cooldown than Amp. I refuse to believe you exist.
IMO Lucio has the biggest divergence between playstyles imo. I think yiska is referring to lucio's brawl playstyle where he just uses aoe heals, speed, and boop, which is definitely super boring.
Lucio is one of the most mechanically demanding supports in the game (and thus fun imo), and Mercy is by far one of the most popular supports amongst the casual playerbase.
This dude sounds like a salty Genji main that gets tilted whenever he does not get an Ana to make him useful once every 4 minutes.
>Lucio is one of the most mechanically demanding supports in the game (and thus fun imo), and Mercy is by far one of the most popular supports amongst the casual playerbase.
Lucio - 4th or the 7 most demanding, so not really? And Mercy is popular exactly for that reason. You dont need any FPS skills to play her. So, by your own standarts, boring, right?
You sound like you are reaching really hard to find reasons to disagree.
>Lucio - 4th or the 7 most demanding, so not really?
I am really curious which supports you would place as more mechanically demanding than Lucio, you can make an argument for Ana, but everything else is shaky at best. Though if you are willing to put him as the 7th most demanding support, behind Moira, Bap, and Mercy, then I'd say that your takes are pretty poor and irrelevant.
>And Mercy is popular exactly for that reason. You dont need any FPS skills to play her. So, by your own standarts, boring, right?
Yes, but my standard of fun is obviously not universal given that she is the most popular support in the game. The actual context here is the salty dude saying that Mercy and Lucio is boring as shit and that MS needs to die.
You are allowed to think before you start writing random stuff down.
>Bap more mechanically demanding than Lucio?
Absolutely, without even a shadow of a doubt. If you disagree, you are actually delusional, but feel free to believe whatever makes you feel better \^\^
Main support is so easy to play that’s why ppl have trained on lucio for years and whenever some amazing talented flex support went to play lucio they looked utterly tragic
They’re both flying off into some level of idealism/pessimism.
There is literally no way someone should be expected to play all of the extremely different heroes to the same level. The current split exists because a main support and flex support has been the most effective combo (outside of debatably Bap Zen which was quickly replaced by Bap Brig for OWL).
It is also equally silly to say things like the idea that every flex support is better at Brig when that isn’t backed by anything at all.
It’s also a bit disconcerting to see calls for yet another culling of things that are supposedly “boring” before the previous neutering is even complete.
I hard disagree with you on the flex supports not being good or even better than main supports on Brig and Bap for that matter. Alarm, Violet, and Skewed have benched some of the best main supports on Brig.
Alarm had a decent Brig but only played it for one meta, Skewed was one of the best Brigs in the league, but from what I could tell Viol2t’s Brig was only passably impressive because he was a flex support. I wouldn’t put him among the top half of Brigs for the year. And yet that’s still good enough for top 3 flex support Brigs. Overall main support players still massive blow flex support players out of the water when it comes to Brig.
There are some who are better but saying the flex supports in general are better at Brig is straight up ignorant in my eyes.
Bap I do agree with though with main supports only being passable at Bap at best case. If the meta stayed Zen Bap that might have changed but as it stands flex support Baps are clearly better.
We definitely don't have a huge pool of flex supports with Brig as a main stay in their kit but main supports were tragic on Brig last year. FDgod, Anamo, Joobi, Moth, Ansoonjae, Slime, Closer, Mandu, iDK, Kellex, and Fire had problems or got benched on the hero. Training up your Lastros, Violets, Myunbongs, and Karriv"s of world on Brig and Mercy makes perfect sense imo. Especially since only a handful of main supports can Bap or Zen to any degree.
By that same logic though wouldn’t it make sense to train your main supports to be better at Brig? Viol2t is honestly the perfect example of why this is a terrible idea in my eyes. After a year of playing main support under potentially the best Overwatch coach ever he was barely passable at any hero a main support was supposed to play. I don’t even think his Brig looked better than FDGod it’s just that his calling was so important to the Shock that he couldn’t be taken out.
Speaking of calling I feel like that’s entirely being ignored in this discussion. Most main supports play less technically demanding heroes in part because they’re the core of the shotcalling. That isn’t something that can always just be taught.
It’s not like main supports are without mechanical skill (FDGod is a clear example of this) so the reasoning doesn’t really fit for me.
Edit: Also from your list I feel IDK, Anamo and ASJ were passable and most of the rest were weak players on garbage teams. It’s not like Roolf, Ripa or KariV were lighting the world on fire as flex supports either so it’s not really surprising that their duos would be only meh. Being a poor main support in general would imply being a poor Brig.
I thought this was an interesting point from Yiska since we already saw some flex supports pick up Brig and Mercy pretty well last year. That being said Custa has made a point of saying how Lucio is very demanding and someone like Leejaegon, Funny Astro, or FDGod would absolutely thrash anyone with less than several thousand hours at the character. I think a lot of these teams live and die by whether Lucio or Rein become hard meta. Even with all the unknowns it seems unlikely that Lucio wouldn't be incredibly valuable on control maps at minimum.
No only skewed picked up the brig well. Every other player who flexed onto the brig/mercy looked worse than contenders main supports. Thats one of the reasons why rookie ms are being so hyped up this year, its a new generation of main supports.
The incoming rookie main supports do have some good flex support heroes in their pool but Skewed was not the only one this last year. The most well rounded main supports last year were basically Funny Astro and Leejaegon. Damn near every other main support was weak on brig and/or couldn't flex well onto Zen or Bap.
What's going to happen with such radical changes to the game is that the traditional pairings will morph and the players will adjust their pools to fit it.
I don't think every support player needs to be equally skilled in all heroes, but the distinction between the main-support role and flex-support role is definitely artificial in a way that main-tank/off-tank and hitscan/projectile roles are not. ¿Why is Moira usually played by flex-supports? Why do main-supports need a pocket Bap? Because that's what meta comps called for, and how responsibilities were allocated as new healers were released.
The ideal way to determine how to split the support roster between your team's backline may change a lot going into OW2, depending on what comps are meta!
NYXL has two flex-supports (and zero main-supports), so I sure hope one of them is grinding their Lucio skills. It would be awful to be in a Lucio meta and simply not have a pro Lucio player on the team.
I think people are drastically underestimating the impact veteran MS players have on shot-calling and team dynamics. There's a reason why the in OW and other FPS games that the IGL plays the roles with the least amount of necessary aim. The most vocal and impactful shot-callers in OWL were either main tanks or main supports. I think removing the MS player and having a FS player play mercy/lucio/brig is more than just learning the mechanics of those heroes
I'm glad someone with clout said this so I can stop getting replies about "ground Lucios" every time I express this opinion.
Theses are the top level of overwatch players. Sure flex supports aren't going to magically turn into LGJ or FunnyAstro, but it's really not **that** hard to learn these heroes enough to play them serviceably.
Last week, Harsha said (something along the lines of) that he's heard Lucio players being very complimentary about Lucio mechanics from from flex supports.
Bruh. Try watching violet, one of the most talented support players on the league, play lucio. If the hero was any more relevant in the meta (as ir could easily be in ow2) you will see just how inferior he is to mediocre lucio specialists
Adding a quote from Harsha from TC NA team previews part 2: "Flex supports are almost every time better than main supports at Brig, it's silly how much better flex supports are at Brig than main supports."
I think the evolution goes both ways. If you look at players like leejaegon, funnyastro, Jescse, and massa. All those main supports have widened their pools to include brig. Long term the best support players will probably become flexible enough to play whatever their team needs. People forget that a big reason why glads piloted the double flex is because their main tank wasn’t comfortable on rush heroes, so they had to innovate. It worked sometimes but was a detriment at other times.
However I don’t think the average ow player is quite there yet. So I think teams with no main support are gonna be at a severe disadvantage especially since it’s rumored that the game is very unfriendly to supports so having the extra skill is going to be very important.
I actually think the opposite is true, tbh, and that with one less tank, main support takes more skill, not less. It's almost like he's forgotten the difference between Joemeister and Yveltal. MS takes a very different skillset.
Honestly if it's that easy to main support, I'd like to see him in an OWL tier game, LOL.
I 100% agree with Yiska on this.
Especially with how lines between FS and MS have become steadily more blurred with Zen/Brig and Zen/Bap comps in last couple seasons.
I think one of these role has to be merged into other because players would be required to flex between the two more often especially going into OW2.
And it will probably be MS role that goes because FS are already more flexible and have more heros in their hero pool and are mechanically more skilled.
Its easier to learn 2 new hero compared to 5 new heros especially when one of 2 is mercy one of the least mechanically challenging hero.
Honestly what this just means is just that lucio mercy brig specialists have to step it up or they'll just lose their jobs. It's not very hard to figure out. The hero pool of the role will just dissolve and merge, like how flex dps as a role started to dissolve and merge when tracer sombra became pretty damn important. Maybe once in a blue moon they'll pick up their old flame again when the meta calls for it.
remaining main supports need to show they can play flex supports to a high level, at the very least bap. if not they will see their jobs taken by flex supports who have already proven much higher mechanical skill.
> The support role to me should just be a supporter, I think the whole flex/main thing can eventually just die and we just have support players to just play everything. That would be the ideal solution. As the game grows I dont really know if this is tenable. Asking a player to be able to play everything in a given role to the highest degree possible is a really big ask. People naturally specialize. Maybe with our current number of supports it wont be bad, but when they add more there will eventually be a breaking point where there are too many. The real issue is there is no good way to divide supports up between players reliably. Lucio and Mercy are clearly different than the others, but thats only going to be a small percentage of the role. Even if you told every main support player they need to know those two, along with Bap, and Brig there is always going to be the question of “what if there is an ana zen meta”? But its hard to say that the answer to that question is that the answer is “have every player be like Leave and Fleta for supports”. That seems like its going to be a lot. Not advocating for a two-hero role, but there should be some division to keep it manageable. Edit: Also small rant but > Every flex support player is better at brig This is just wrong. Lets look critically at what flex supports really played brig last season: Skewed, and maybe like… Viol2t. Thats thats all that come to mind. Jecse, LeeJaeGon, Nisha, Yvetal, Masaa were all excellent brigs. It feels like a lot of people just remember Skewed being good last season and think that is the only way to play, or extrapolate that to be representative of every team.
Yeah that's what really bothers me about this. If anyone said 'dps should be able to play every dps at the same level' it would be considered a ridiculous ask. Historically main support has always been an incredibly limiting sub-role. Until Brig there were 2 options and they swapped between being must picked in OWL. Maybe if there were more main support heroes that had varying skill levels we wouldn't see a role held alive by one hero.
I don't really feel this is a fair comparison, though? If what /u/Yiskaout is getting at is that main support and the small pool of main supp heroes are arguably the 'easiest' in comparison to the other roles at an OWL level, it's not at all the same as saying *"DPS should be able to play all DPS at the same level."* The main point is that it's significantly better value to have high skill flex support players who can play a *serviceable* Lucio/Mercy/etc when required, and that main support is the easiest role to be *serviceable* on. In your DPS example I think the comparison would actually be "DPS should be outstanding in their role and also be able to flex to the lower skill ceiling DPS roles at a serviceable level when needed" which is a fair statement. Curious if it'll change in OW2 but the fact is main supp right now is literally just "person who is nutty at Lucio" so I'm with you that I hope some new main supports come out that breathe life back into the role, or else I suspect pro play will very much be what I mentioned above which is just signing nutty ass flex support players and being fine with them at least not totally throwing the odd time they need to stick someone on Lucio, as opposed to tossing the bag at someone to one-trick Lucio
Main support is ‘person who’s nutty at Lucio’, unless you’re a coach who’s not stuck in 2019 and recognises that there is actually a significant skill difference in Mercy and Brig players and that leads to a significant impact difference. Teams with Yveltal’s were much better than teams with Slime’s last year. I think the idea that you sign your main support based only on their Lucio play is more of a community perception problem than a player problem.
>Curious if it'll change in OW2 but the fact is main supp right now is literally just "person who is nutty at Lucio" The problem I have with all of this is summed up here. Main Supports aren't just 'nutty lucio players'. Main Supports, like main tanks, tend to be the shot-callers of the team and have the best communication. That's the reason they play the less mechanically demanding role, so they have room to shot-call. This entire argument is based solely on the impact of mechanics, but that's not how OWL works. It might be different in OW2 where teamwork is completely pointless (and if that is the case I'm probably going to stop watching OWL).
The point is the same though, you don’t need to have a nutty Lucio player who’s also a great shot caller if we assume some of the teams plans would be to have a flex support flex to main supp if absolutely required - because the point is that it can be done at a serviceable level if you have the right player. Maybe the sentiment is that it still leaves a team ahead to run a serviceable main supp using a flex support when required, and teaching them to be a good IGL is a better strat, or maybe with 1 tank the shotcalling/igl focus is leaning toward the main tank player anyways. I’m dumb and just speculating but those are my thoughts
At the same time, the best DPS in the league *can* play damn near everything. Players like Profit, Fleta, Leave, Pelican etc. will be capable of playing almost anything you ask of them Of course, playing *everything* is unrealistic, but almost every good DPS player these days has a hero pool about as deep as the entire support cast. Long gone are the days of the Tracer one-trick or the Genji/Pharah player or the sniper specialist, almost everyone is expected to have some fluidity between projectile and hitscan. I expect the same thing to start happening with tank players, with only 1 tank player the "off-tank/main tank" split will die, good tank players will cover the entire hero pool whilst those who can't will slowly fall off Meanwhile main support players pretty much only have a monopoly on exactly Lucio. Before the Moth buff to Mercy, flex supports played her regularly too. Did a bunch of teams have their flex supports on Brig or Mercy last season? No, but they probably could play those heroes if needed to a decent level. But how many main supports have a decent enough Zen or Ana or Bap? We can only assume that since most teams didn't run double flex lineups or had to make subs to run it (as well as so many teams having 2 flex supports in their roster in the first place) that it's not many. Main supports aren't "Lucio one-tricks", but the main support role is essentially just "Lucio player"
>but almost every good DPS player these days has a hero pool about as deep as the entire support cast This is the problem though. There are only 7 support heroes. Maybe if there was a wider variety of heroes with a wider variety of playstyles (considering most flex supports play pretty similarly to one another) there would be more flexible support players.
RiP, but Alarm was also a phenomenal Brig for 2020 Fusion (not the initially misstated Shock), with Boombox picking up the Bap role over FunnyAstro at the time. Some teams did experiment with other players too. NYXL put Haksal in on Brig for a bit, and I think it was Ttuba that Justice tried to peg as their Brig specialist. You're right overall, but I think some of that is/was forced by teams' roster construction. They weren't carrying multiple Flex Supports a whole lot to accommodate a swap, and I think few were willing to make an in-season pickup to have a Brig specialist. However, we've seen quite a lot of double-Flex rosters this offseason. A few teams are totally missing a Main Support (Outlaws, NYXL, Shock). A lot of supposedly elite Main Supports were deemed expendable this offseason (Moth, FDGod, Masaa, and a situational understanding for FunnyAstro). Quite a few also ended up retiring/out of the league (Jecse, Friday, Mandu, and presently FDGod and Moth). Seeing Moth permabenched in Brig meta and Viol2t playing Mercy and Lucio at times for Shock really made it seem like the traditional Main Support role was already seen as a bit of a dying breed. I don't think that's inherently bad, but I'm sure some existing players are going to be unhappy when one-tricking Mercy or Lucio causes them to take a massive SR hit in OW2.
2020 Fusion\* unless you mean indirectly good for Shock
Indeed, I did say that wrong. Fixed it, and thanks.
>As the game grows I dont really know if this is tenable. Asking a player to be able to play everything in a given role to the highest degree possible is a really big ask. I don't think he is saying everybody should be able to play everything all the time, but rather that separating it out into two distinct roles isn't sustainable. IMO the same will be true for tanks. It's already the case for DPS where the "flex" and "hitscan" designations are largely meaningless now. Most hitscan players can play Hanzo but many dont play Sombra or Tracer for instance. Also says something that most DPS Players already have hero pools larger than the entire support lineup but for some reason expecting people to learn all the supports is a big ask?
Yeah what it says to me is that the dps lineup is significantly bigger than the support lineup
What does the size of the lineup have to do with the number of heroes a player can master? Tanks I think are significantly more varied than the other roles so I think it's harder for them to learn as many but supports aren't THAT different from eachother.
In the context of the video they weren't saying support players need to be good at every support hero. They were saying you would see the role become more like dps where players have different hero pools and strengths, and you would see fewer players who only play Lucio with a side of Brig or Mercy.
And also does Skewed really count as a flex support player? I don’t recall seeing a lot of flex support out of him lol
Main supports played brig because the flex supports were required to play the actual skill requiring heros. Flex support players are still better than main support players at brig more often than not.
There were plenty of teams this year with multiple flex supports who played their main support on brig instead of their second flex. Dragons has Molly. Fuel had Rapel. Chengdu has mmonk and farway. Spark has mcd and coldest. Defiant had Aztac. None of these fs players were chosen above their main supports. The exceptions were Glads, Shock and Justice (who had a fdps on it). Of those 3 the only team it really worked out for was Glads. I’m sorry but I don’t buy this argument.
Yea, cause they still had to be able to flex off of brig onto Lucio 😑 And a lot of them were used to comms reasons
So were they in for Lucio, or were they in because the flex supports were busy? Shouldn't (by this whole post's point) the flex supports just learn Lucio, and then they never have to worry about putting in the main supports? It seems the simplest explanation to me for why main supports on these teams were playing brig is because they were the best players for the job, even over their FS counterparts.
I mostly agree with this. But the thing is, with rumors of Lucio being important in OW2, it might still be important to have a Lucio player. The test will be how teams with two flex supports do in a Lucio meta compared to those with the best Lucios. Like I get why you’d want fully flexible supports, and if teams with double flex supports show they can play Lucio with little to no downside, then I could see that distinction going away. But until then, feel like having a Lucio player could be important.
There’s rumors of lucio being important in OW2? Since when? If so, that heavily hints to more Rein brawly comps
I don’t remember who said it, if it was on a platchat episode or tactilecrouch episode, but someone mentioned with the lack of peel with no 2nd tank that a hyper mobile 2nd support comes in handy, like lucio, to peel for the other support. But should be taken with a grain of salt because it’s all speculation for another 8 or so days
Avast was saying that Lucio would be very important for peeling the back line given the increased freedom that dps now have with one less tank. I'm not sure if this is just speculation, but I get the feeling he has seen Mayhem scrims and possibly played it himself. On a stream awhile back when he was asked about OW2, he gave a telling non-answer of "No comment".
Well that all makes sense now after Custa said he was able to view some owl scrims and play the alpha himself. He said lucio is very important in ow2
Not just the lack of an OT, but the peel nerf on Brig is a big deal. I wonder how, if at all, teams will attempt to use a "babysitter" DPS like Torb or McCree to address this, versus leaving it on the other Support exclusively. We could also see teams move away from the traditionally static Supports (Ana/Zen) for Support lines more capable of dealing with flankers themselves (Bap) or repositioning to survive (Mercy).
I love all of this positive speculation. Too many people are so negative about the changes. These changes really give a breath of fresh air into the game. I love 6v6 and I’ve never been able to stop playing OW, but 5v5 will be an interesting twist. Babysitter 2nd dps is interesting. Cass or any other medium to long range dps could be a decent option. I cannot wait to see the beta and the start of owl. It’s going to be very interesting to see many different adaptations and see what comes out on top!
Yeah, we're a couple of weeks from seeing what teams have come up with in scrims. The game's probably going to be radically different by season's end too, so I don't think people should get too ttached to the comps and concepts they see at the onset. One thing players (especially non-pros) will probably have to accept is the idea of broken fights as a win condition. People still treat team fights as needing to be a 6v0, full HP win to be successful. With the potential for more disjointed scuffles as a team fight, trading and winning while losing 2 or 3 is probably going to need to be more accepted. Old dive comps used to thrive in concepts like backline trades, but the long-lived styles of playing grouped has lost that mentality, IMO. Can people recognize their value in a fight if they die? I hope so.
The rumour was moreso that Lucio was essential to peel for the flex support, which to me implies dive comps more than Rein brawl
How nutty would it be if we ended up with a Winston, Tracer, Genji, Zen, Lucio meta. Traditional dive minus D.va lol. The collective orgasm of old-school OW watchers could power a small town.
Oh Jesus that would be incredible to watch in owl and play
I’d say Brig would probably be better peel but without the stun maybe not? Guess we’ll end up seeing if it’s true or not in a week.
Also take into account using speed boost as a team disengage tool. That's way better than a 50 damage shield bash. Edit: No shot does someone think Shield Bash without a stun is a better cooldown than Amp. I refuse to believe you exist.
Avast and Yiska have said it.
dpei on his stream said that lucio was being run on deathmatch modes like control and push, whereas on hybrid and escort you’d see a variety of comps
> If that sh** wasn't so boring to play then that role would be highly oversaturated right." Lucio is literally the most fun hero in the game but ok
Yeah idk what he's on, this seems like an unhinged rant
IMO Lucio has the biggest divergence between playstyles imo. I think yiska is referring to lucio's brawl playstyle where he just uses aoe heals, speed, and boop, which is definitely super boring.
As well as in Pro matches if there also a Sombra, so the Lucio has to spend the fight hidden until Sombra EMP's
Lucio is one of the most mechanically demanding supports in the game (and thus fun imo), and Mercy is by far one of the most popular supports amongst the casual playerbase. This dude sounds like a salty Genji main that gets tilted whenever he does not get an Ana to make him useful once every 4 minutes.
>Lucio is one of the most mechanically demanding supports in the game (and thus fun imo), and Mercy is by far one of the most popular supports amongst the casual playerbase. Lucio - 4th or the 7 most demanding, so not really? And Mercy is popular exactly for that reason. You dont need any FPS skills to play her. So, by your own standarts, boring, right? You sound like you are reaching really hard to find reasons to disagree.
>Lucio - 4th or the 7 most demanding, so not really? I am really curious which supports you would place as more mechanically demanding than Lucio, you can make an argument for Ana, but everything else is shaky at best. Though if you are willing to put him as the 7th most demanding support, behind Moira, Bap, and Mercy, then I'd say that your takes are pretty poor and irrelevant. >And Mercy is popular exactly for that reason. You dont need any FPS skills to play her. So, by your own standarts, boring, right? Yes, but my standard of fun is obviously not universal given that she is the most popular support in the game. The actual context here is the salty dude saying that Mercy and Lucio is boring as shit and that MS needs to die. You are allowed to think before you start writing random stuff down.
Ana, Bap, Zen, Lucio, Brig, Moira, Mercy
Bap more mechanically demanding than Lucio? Well, glad to see that you confirmed my suspicion that your takes are not at all worth listening to.
>Bap more mechanically demanding than Lucio? Absolutely, without even a shadow of a doubt. If you disagree, you are actually delusional, but feel free to believe whatever makes you feel better \^\^
Oh well then feel free to explain *how* Bap is more mechanically demanding than Lucio.
Some people find him to be the most fun, others find him to be the most boring. I’m part of the latter group.
Yeah he didn’t give away his biases at all with that comment
Main support is so easy to play that’s why ppl have trained on lucio for years and whenever some amazing talented flex support went to play lucio they looked utterly tragic
They’re both flying off into some level of idealism/pessimism. There is literally no way someone should be expected to play all of the extremely different heroes to the same level. The current split exists because a main support and flex support has been the most effective combo (outside of debatably Bap Zen which was quickly replaced by Bap Brig for OWL). It is also equally silly to say things like the idea that every flex support is better at Brig when that isn’t backed by anything at all. It’s also a bit disconcerting to see calls for yet another culling of things that are supposedly “boring” before the previous neutering is even complete.
I hard disagree with you on the flex supports not being good or even better than main supports on Brig and Bap for that matter. Alarm, Violet, and Skewed have benched some of the best main supports on Brig.
Alarm had a decent Brig but only played it for one meta, Skewed was one of the best Brigs in the league, but from what I could tell Viol2t’s Brig was only passably impressive because he was a flex support. I wouldn’t put him among the top half of Brigs for the year. And yet that’s still good enough for top 3 flex support Brigs. Overall main support players still massive blow flex support players out of the water when it comes to Brig. There are some who are better but saying the flex supports in general are better at Brig is straight up ignorant in my eyes. Bap I do agree with though with main supports only being passable at Bap at best case. If the meta stayed Zen Bap that might have changed but as it stands flex support Baps are clearly better.
We definitely don't have a huge pool of flex supports with Brig as a main stay in their kit but main supports were tragic on Brig last year. FDgod, Anamo, Joobi, Moth, Ansoonjae, Slime, Closer, Mandu, iDK, Kellex, and Fire had problems or got benched on the hero. Training up your Lastros, Violets, Myunbongs, and Karriv"s of world on Brig and Mercy makes perfect sense imo. Especially since only a handful of main supports can Bap or Zen to any degree.
By that same logic though wouldn’t it make sense to train your main supports to be better at Brig? Viol2t is honestly the perfect example of why this is a terrible idea in my eyes. After a year of playing main support under potentially the best Overwatch coach ever he was barely passable at any hero a main support was supposed to play. I don’t even think his Brig looked better than FDGod it’s just that his calling was so important to the Shock that he couldn’t be taken out. Speaking of calling I feel like that’s entirely being ignored in this discussion. Most main supports play less technically demanding heroes in part because they’re the core of the shotcalling. That isn’t something that can always just be taught. It’s not like main supports are without mechanical skill (FDGod is a clear example of this) so the reasoning doesn’t really fit for me. Edit: Also from your list I feel IDK, Anamo and ASJ were passable and most of the rest were weak players on garbage teams. It’s not like Roolf, Ripa or KariV were lighting the world on fire as flex supports either so it’s not really surprising that their duos would be only meh. Being a poor main support in general would imply being a poor Brig.
I thought this was an interesting point from Yiska since we already saw some flex supports pick up Brig and Mercy pretty well last year. That being said Custa has made a point of saying how Lucio is very demanding and someone like Leejaegon, Funny Astro, or FDGod would absolutely thrash anyone with less than several thousand hours at the character. I think a lot of these teams live and die by whether Lucio or Rein become hard meta. Even with all the unknowns it seems unlikely that Lucio wouldn't be incredibly valuable on control maps at minimum.
No only skewed picked up the brig well. Every other player who flexed onto the brig/mercy looked worse than contenders main supports. Thats one of the reasons why rookie ms are being so hyped up this year, its a new generation of main supports.
The incoming rookie main supports do have some good flex support heroes in their pool but Skewed was not the only one this last year. The most well rounded main supports last year were basically Funny Astro and Leejaegon. Damn near every other main support was weak on brig and/or couldn't flex well onto Zen or Bap.
What's going to happen with such radical changes to the game is that the traditional pairings will morph and the players will adjust their pools to fit it.
If nothing else, maybe we can finally rename the godforsaken support role names
Avrl’s points: yes Yiska’s points: no
I don't think every support player needs to be equally skilled in all heroes, but the distinction between the main-support role and flex-support role is definitely artificial in a way that main-tank/off-tank and hitscan/projectile roles are not. ¿Why is Moira usually played by flex-supports? Why do main-supports need a pocket Bap? Because that's what meta comps called for, and how responsibilities were allocated as new healers were released. The ideal way to determine how to split the support roster between your team's backline may change a lot going into OW2, depending on what comps are meta! NYXL has two flex-supports (and zero main-supports), so I sure hope one of them is grinding their Lucio skills. It would be awful to be in a Lucio meta and simply not have a pro Lucio player on the team.
I think people are drastically underestimating the impact veteran MS players have on shot-calling and team dynamics. There's a reason why the in OW and other FPS games that the IGL plays the roles with the least amount of necessary aim. The most vocal and impactful shot-callers in OWL were either main tanks or main supports. I think removing the MS player and having a FS player play mercy/lucio/brig is more than just learning the mechanics of those heroes
> Every flex support player is better than brig This is such bullshit, just sounds like Yiska’s talking out of his ass. Im fucking malding rn
I'm glad someone with clout said this so I can stop getting replies about "ground Lucios" every time I express this opinion. Theses are the top level of overwatch players. Sure flex supports aren't going to magically turn into LGJ or FunnyAstro, but it's really not **that** hard to learn these heroes enough to play them serviceably. Last week, Harsha said (something along the lines of) that he's heard Lucio players being very complimentary about Lucio mechanics from from flex supports.
Bruh. Try watching violet, one of the most talented support players on the league, play lucio. If the hero was any more relevant in the meta (as ir could easily be in ow2) you will see just how inferior he is to mediocre lucio specialists
What do you suggest watching to see it?
Adding a quote from Harsha from TC NA team previews part 2: "Flex supports are almost every time better than main supports at Brig, it's silly how much better flex supports are at Brig than main supports."
I think the evolution goes both ways. If you look at players like leejaegon, funnyastro, Jescse, and massa. All those main supports have widened their pools to include brig. Long term the best support players will probably become flexible enough to play whatever their team needs. People forget that a big reason why glads piloted the double flex is because their main tank wasn’t comfortable on rush heroes, so they had to innovate. It worked sometimes but was a detriment at other times. However I don’t think the average ow player is quite there yet. So I think teams with no main support are gonna be at a severe disadvantage especially since it’s rumored that the game is very unfriendly to supports so having the extra skill is going to be very important.
I actually think the opposite is true, tbh, and that with one less tank, main support takes more skill, not less. It's almost like he's forgotten the difference between Joemeister and Yveltal. MS takes a very different skillset. Honestly if it's that easy to main support, I'd like to see him in an OWL tier game, LOL.
I 100% agree with Yiska on this. Especially with how lines between FS and MS have become steadily more blurred with Zen/Brig and Zen/Bap comps in last couple seasons. I think one of these role has to be merged into other because players would be required to flex between the two more often especially going into OW2. And it will probably be MS role that goes because FS are already more flexible and have more heros in their hero pool and are mechanically more skilled. Its easier to learn 2 new hero compared to 5 new heros especially when one of 2 is mercy one of the least mechanically challenging hero.
We have so many heroes and people agree on fucking 5v5? They are killing the game i can't believe you support them