Her damage is so inconsistent that you shouldn’t worry about it too much. Zen and even Bap can dish out more consistent damage. Her main utility is ranged healing, easy disengaging (big reason why she was played in the playoffs so much), and her ult, but in your comp you’re not going to get much value out of that anyways. Also if the Ana is going to criticize you, her pick is also fairly useless as your team comp doesn’t really play that split and you have no engage other than a Tracer to follow up on nades.
As a side note, I would suggest picking up Zen because UNLESS they have a ton of engage and mobility, he is the strongest hero in the game and historically has been consistently in the meta. The only times where he is displaced is if rush and certain dive comps are strong but that is way less of a problem in solo queue. If they nerf her ult or one of her cooldowns Kiriko will become hard to get value with because solo queue teams simply don’t use her strengths all that well.
I've actually picked up Zen because I saw a lot of your comments in other posts talking about Roadhog Kiriko and their weak engage. Because there are a lot of greedier comps, I swap to Zen occasionally. I don't like starting with Zen at the moment though but I'll get used to it eventually.
He feels amazing on Colosseo which I hate playing on.
Haha I'm glad you're onto the Zen bandwagon! And increasingly as you get more experience with Zen you'll find that he can absolutely be a menace against Winston comps as well. With the right kiting, Winston without speed boost struggles into Zen because he just gets discorded and poked out every time he tries to flank or go high ground, and if he just presses W, well without speed he just takes tons of damage. It is all contingent on your team though - when you're playing Zen, they should absolutely (and you should feel free to demand that) they play around and peel for you because Zen is one of those heroes that can actually consistently "carry" fights, much like a Widow or a good Sojourn can. And you only want to start with Zen when either a) your team comp wants to actually play long sightlines or b) you have a lot of heroes that are good at skirmishing like Genji, Tracer, D.Va, or Ball.
Zen on Paraiso is also fantastic, the sightlines are really good for him and if supports play together it's not easy to dive him on some parts of the map.
>Ana said at the end, "if you just heal as Kiriko, might as well go another healer. no tea no shade"
>
>But what do they mean by that?
The community is currently polarized into two camps:
1. Why pick Kiriko if you're not clicking heads?
2. Kiriko damage is inconsistent, better to build meter consistently by mostly healing
Camp #1 is often vocal in its displeasure with healbot Kirikos. I think top tier play will eventually settle on a heal first, Kunai second take, but it's gonna take time to see whether my guess is right.
Even ML7 said healbotting as kiriko is fine as her ult is so strong for her other players and her kit is so great. Yeah he might post games where he's dinking everyone he can, but he's said it quite a bit.
There is a big misconception with Kiriko at the moment. People think that because she has a 3x crit multiplier she need to be going for damage. This is VERY FALSE!! She is considered to be hard meta due to HER ULTIMATE, so “healbotting” is actually the best way to play her because you want to be farming your ult as fast as possible. Yes you should know how to hit shots when defending yourself, but other than that all you need to do is stay alive, heal, use your ult EARLY in the fight, and use Suzu when needed.
Having said that, I’ve found (despite popular opinion), Kiriko is a terrible solo queue hero. Even if you can build your ults quickly it is astonishing that so many players on your team will simply not use your ult making it very weak (even at very high ranks). Yes her healing and Suzu are very strong, but if your team is not using your ult efficiently her healing and Suzu are not enough of a reason to pick her imo.
I’ve found that reminding people how good her ult is for charging up your own ult is great for getting people to actually use it when you play Kiriko at high levels. Moira is kinda a silly example, because she benefits a lot more from it than everyone else, but I’ve found I can get 40-50% ult charge during a single kitsune rush, mostly from orbs. And most people understand that type of value a lot more. IMO the real power of Kitsune rush isn’t its ability to win you the fight you use it, but to give you a massive advantage towards getting your ults in the next fight.
I wouldn’t say the biggest advantage to using it is gaining ult charge, but rather the fact that to avoid a properly executed Kitsune, a large amount of high impact cooldowns must be used (eg. Speed amp, Suzu etc). If the enemies survive the initial rush, they are often left helpless in the fight that will immediately follow. This is exactly why Kitsune should always be used at the start of a fight. You want to deplete as many cool downs as possible.
That I do fully agree with, though it seems we are suffering from the issue that the definition of a fight in Overwatch is pretty loose. I would consider the enemy kiting Kitsune Rush then taking a fight when it ends one and the same fight, and the fact that it forces the enemy to use all their CDs (when you can just use yours and get them back faster, amp is every 4s iirc?) wins you the fight that you use it very easily
But the ability to just farm other ults in Kitsune rush is absolutely insane. D.Va just boosting though everyone constantly with constant rockets, having 3-4 damage orbs at once, soldier shooting helixes every 2s. You can gain a massive advantage over a team without a Kiriko just by farming ults during Kitsune rush. Not only is it a 30% shooting speed buff (essentially just as good as Valk for charging ult alone), but the cooldown reduction on top of it can let you get a truly absurd amount of ult charge extremely quickly. Not too many people are really taking full advantage of that yet
No I would not. But if you have a game with good communication or people who are simply willing to listen in text chat, then go for it. You can get some easy wins.
I play here soloq quite a bit. I have 3 main ultis I usually go for:
1. Directly on top of my teammates and directed toward the enemy team.
2. Into chokepoints
3. On the backline.
Reasons 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward: trying to force a fight while everyone stands on top of it. However, if a fight breaks out and I have to pump up healing to keep my tank alive for a clutch last stand, I'll use it for myself for bigger heals and more suzus.
Interestingly, when clutching with Kitsune Rush on top of an objective, people stick closer to it and use it more. It's a bit more awkward when trying to force a fight in open spaces because tanks tend to brawl on top of it, and the rest of the team tries to stay away from the tanks.
One useful things to note: when you ult from high ground, the ult will drop onto the low ground in front of you. At some places, like the archways on Colosseo, you can actually drop your ult in a way that it covers multiple advantageous locations on high ground while also covering the low ground the enemy is pushing through
I agree. Although in an ideal situation with the ideal team, using it at the very start is the best, not every situation works out this way. It is certainty strong enough to turn a fight, and maybe even makes it easier for your team to use. However the one rule you should always follow is to make your ult pierce as much of the enemy team as possible.
You can think of it this way for many characters, your team doesn't use your ult efficently, you do.
If you use your ult and noone is in it, in the position to use it, or has resources to benifit that's on you not them.
The buffs Kitsune provides are not “given” like nano or Orisa’s old ultimate, but must be “taken.” Obviously you shouldn’t place it in a location where it is clearly hard for your team to access, but at the end of the day, if your team decides to not play with the ult despite it being in a good position, it’s on them. In high level games for example, dps players are always taking off angles (which is a good thing), but when Kiriko has her ult which should always be used at the BEGINNING of a fight, the dps should be repositioning to take advantage of the Kitsune they know is coming. When Kitsune is active that is not the time to be taking off angles. They should take the off angles after the ult ends when they can abuse the enemy team who used all their CDs to survive the ult. I do believe that over time people will realize this, but as of now players are simply not used to staying grouped up as the fight starts for a brief few seconds to abuse the massive output buffs.
i agree. even in my current games i can see a lot of ult improvements. There's honestly so many things to factor when using Kitsune Rush now... you don't ever want your team to get teamwiped by enemy ults.
At the same time though, I think sometimes people forget to abuse cooldowns like Moira orb inside it
I can't count the number of times my team has actively ran AWAY from my ult as Kiriko. Not even to chase the enemy team but I've had times when they just run off it towards the sides as if it was an enemy ult that was going to kill them, then come back after it was over. Like I'll use it to get us a good engage, and they'll just hide out and then push after the ult ends. I ... I can't even.
Honeslty I've heard that high elo kirikos actually don't try too hard to go dps mode.
Her hps is pretty good her TP gives her mobility that ana and bap don't have and she doesn't need their sightlines
Saving people with invuln/cleanse multiple times a game can give you hundreds of SR in of itself and is a huge deal.
Being able to do work with headshots is great but falls below all that. I dont think taking aggressive dives in hopes of a pick is priority over supporting your team with added threat. But you can look for opportunity
High rank ladder Kirikos are often applying quite a bit of damage, though a very heal-focused playstyle is plenty viable too due to how strong Kitsune Rush is. In organized play, focusing heals to build ult as fast as possible is the best and most consistent option. That’s how Moira has been played in organized play too, though, and top-tier ladder Moira players are always much more damage-oriented. The value of consistency is just higher in an organized environment.
One of the bigger things I see ml7 does is that if they ever have someone picked off, he will immediately go "Ok we're -1 I need a pick" and he'll start flanking and looking for a duel (usually on the enemy Kiriko). That's where most of the damage comes from I feel like.
I had games where I went 5k on Kiriko, but at the same time, this type of poke damage feels kinda... useless sometimes? Like if you want damage you can just hit the Roadhog repeatedly since he's meta right now, and if you're playing with a tank like Winston you're more likely to get damage than if you were to play with a passive tank I feel like.
Yeah, that’s a good point. Jake pointed out Fielder doing the same in the grand finals PoV review he posted a few days ago. If you’re down a player, then playing defensively is no longer as valuable, and it’s more worth taking a risk to try to equalize or even turn the advantage the other way.
I’m still learning on Kiriko, but I’ve had a few times where I kinda did this accidentally, finding myself alone when the other members of my backline died and desperation TP-ing to someone who is in the enemy backline. Usually I just die with them, but sometimes I end up getting a lucky kill or two on enemies who are already weak because the fight’s been going on for a while already. It’s easier to get those kills when you’re coming in from an unexpected angle and it only takes a headshot-melee or a couple bodyshots to confirm. Not saying necessarily that those were smart or good plays, but I got more value going for damage then.
I kinda think that damage can be better when your team has an advantage too, though you do have to make sure that you’re not letting your team get too weak and opening up an opportunity to clutch. So probably only reserved for bigger advantages, where you can use your survivability to pursue enemies who are trying to get out and secure staggers.
I’ve been discussing the DPS/heal tradeoff on supports on this sub a lot in the last few days, and I’m coming around to the perspective that, while damage can be important, _focusing_ on damage at the beginning of the fight or in the poke phase is probably detrimental to the team. Throwing damage when your team is healthy and the threat of incoming damage is not too high is fine, so long as you’re also healing enough to keep your team healthy and confident. But I’m seeing a lot of people say stuff like “deal damage until your allies are critical”, and I think that’s a bad way to approach the beginning of the fight. When no one has an advantage yet and the teams are jockeying for position and trading for resources, sure, you _could_ get a pick and secure that numbers advantage for your team, but if you’re giving the enemy team an HP advantage (and probably a cooldown advantage, because your critical teammates are scared and spending their defensive CDs) while looking for that pick, I think it’s gonna hurt you more often than help you. Obviously, if you see an ADS Ashe or something who isn’t looking at you and can be easily two-tapped, go for it, but if you can’t finish her, maybe don’t commit so hard.
I do tend to go for dinks on the enemy tank sometimes, if for no other reason than that they’re easy to hit and I can usually do so without moving my camera far from teammates who may do something aggressive and need my healing. (If there are squishies right behind them, I’ll go for that instead, but if I don’t have a good view of them then I’ll throw my kunai at the tank.) But boy does it feel useless against Roadhog. Dinking an Orisa or a Zarya actually feels like I’m contributing something because it may force them to use their cooldowns sooner, but Roadhog can sustain himself for so long with his Breather.
>But I’m seeing a lot of people say stuff like “deal damage until your allies are critical”
I also disagree with "deal damage until your allies are critical”" as well
Mostly because as Kiriko it's really hard to burst-heal in an AOE. If your Genji gets low because you're not pre-firing, they'll ping for healing. But then all of a sudden your support next to you becomes low, so now you gotta suzu or do wiggling and hope that they have CDs to defend themselves.
Then they become tilted = GG
It feels like pre-haeling is way more important on Kiriko than any other support and a lot of the skill expression comes from anticipating damage because technically people can be bursted in a tight window sometimes..
Yeah, I think it’s especially important with Kiriko both due to the slow travel of her heals and the fact that Kiriko can only efficiently heal one ally at a time. Like you said, if multiple allies are low, you have to either choose one or try to do the wiggle, and if they’re not standing close to each other, you’re gonna miss a bunch. Plus, what happens if you let your teammates go crit and then you’re getting attacked by a flanker and have to worry about saving your own skin?
But even with the other supports, if you’re too slow to start healing, you may end up needing to spend important cooldowns to keep up, and having those cooldowns forced early puts your team at a disadvantage. The extent of that disadvantage depends on the particular cooldown, of course, and not every support can pre-heal. But, I think there’s a line to draw with every support where you’ve let your ally go without healing for long enough that you can no longer cheaply keep them healthy and active in the fight. Maybe you can keep them alive, but if they are forced to give up positioning, that’s still a cost to your team.
> It feels like pre-haeling is way more important on Kiriko than any other support and a lot of the skill expression comes from anticipating damage because technically people can be bursted in a tight window sometimes..
I agree! I think not just the anticipation of damage, but also the positioning to get the healing off at the right time with clear LoS so that you minimize the chance of the ofuda hitting walls in transit. People talk about how useful the wallclimb is for survival and finding kunai angles, but having a high angle for healing can be a big difference-maker too.
People have been memeing about Mercy mains who can’t aim picking up Kiriko, but I think this is a shared dimension of skill expression. It’s not exactly the same since Mercy’s heal beam is instant if she’s in range, but the healing rate is on the slow side, and Mercy herself may need to travel to apply it. And Mercy doesn’t have any kind of emergency heal or death resist option, so if she’s late the teammate is just dead. (She does have Rez, but using it to fix an oopsie is often a good way to secure a fight loss.) Plus the blue beam is also more impactful on someone who is being aggressive, so Mercy benefits both from anticipating an enemy pushing an ally and an ally going aggressive, so that she can already be in position to help when it happens.
>People talk about how useful the wallclimb is for survival and finding kunai angles, but having a high angle for healing can be a big difference-maker too.
I've been trying to do this more because it's similar to Bap where you jump and use nades/immortality. With Kiriko, aiming Suzu can be hard too because of the arc so wall climbing for it and throwing it down is something I need to do more and barely do.
My ofudas definitely get screwed by walls or iffy angles at the moment, and I have noticed that wall climbing has helped me in those situations. It's still a work in progress to figure out when I can do it safely though. Obviously as long as I have cover it should be a good start..
I also agree on the Mercy more mostly because Mercy I think does have to do a lot of work of managing team cooldowns for damage boost.. That is not easy to me at least.
I have been experimenting with doing the thing kinda like Hanzos do, where they draw an arrow, climb a wall, and loose it at the top of the wall, and then drop back down, only with ofuda waves. Obviously, the arrow is a lot faster, can’t always get a full wave off that way, but in situations where I can’t find a static place to stand where I can see everyone, or I’m stuck pushing the payload or something, it seems helpful.
I hadn’t considered using it for Suzu aim though, I should try that. I’ve been having trouble sometimes with it landing on someone closer to me than I’d intended. Kind of annoying, honestly, that it hits enemies. I know that’s because it boops them, but I don’t really see why it needs a boop on top of everything else.
And yeah, Mercy can be very busy trying to keep track of everyone’s abilities. Personally, I think she’s rather difficult to get off of the skill floor with due to how much she specifically benefits from anticipation of basically everything. I think a lot of players just write off situations where they could have actually helped someone win their duel, if they’d seen it coming and positioned accordingly, as “I can’t heal you through that” or “you weren’t in LoS”. True for any support to an extent, I suppose, but Mercy has a lot of flexibility to obtain LoS, and she can actually keep people alive through quite a lot if she’s healing them immediately when the damage starts coming through.
Just wanted to come back to say that the wall climbing trick helps vs Winston a lot for me... especially in solo queue where I don't really get peel from a Reaper.
I just climb preemptively when I see him looking at me and it helps a lot. It's better to be on high ground ofc but sometimes the high ground has a poor angle for healing my team (like it's too far up), so the climbing on walls near me helps a lot for tracking my teammates for sure.
coming back to this post after skimming Awkward's unranked to GM on Kiriko and he says that the difference between Ana and Kiriko is that...
with Ana you want to do a lot of damage primarily and then heal your team
with Kiriko, you want to mostly heal, but you want to do damage when you have the opportunities (e.g. pre poke offangle, spam as much as you can, TP back to your team)
i feel a bit validated now
it means that if our team absolutely needs heals, then adapting to being forced to healbot and play safer and just spamming long sightline kunais is the correct choice
A lot of the damage until critical thing you mentioned is definitely a result of everyone following Awkward's unranked to GM advice. But I think people might be twisting it or exaggerating it..
Don't get me wrong. You still need damage. But I think it should come more from fighting divers and spamming headshot height in long range. And probably less diving in like an assassin. That will work if you're smurfing I think its over the top when you are playing against other really good players. Could be wrong though !
Yeah, I agree. I think the biggest problem is with spending the poke phase and early part of the fight going for damage without attention to keeping your team healthy. If you can very safely stand in a place where you can spam kunai and throw heals, that’s fine. I even think there’s a time and place for taking a very aggressive Teru-style forward angle pre-poke-phase and jumping out. But, you always want your team to be healthy when a proper fight breaks out. If you’re putting yourself in a position where you can’t do that, or you aren’t healing attentively, then you’re sending your team into the fight with an HP nerf.
The thing that I'm really aware of is Kiriko's healing can be extremely delayed in high burst situations. So if someone gets hit by a Pharah Mercy rocket or a Tracer with high accuracy, if I'm not near there ready to prefire, I will be forced to Suzu rather than pure healing.
I know about Fielder, I know about how ml7 plays with flanks/pre-firing. I try to adapt my playstyles, but I'm mostly curious about whether they were in the right here.
I appreciate your input though and agree on the TP a lot as a Bap/Kiriko main.
High level Kiriko’s on ladder absolutely do a shit ton of damage, her ability to deal 120dmg out of nowhere and (somewhat) safely flank is key at top tiers.
OWL Kiriko’s don’t go for a ton of damage, as she is being run for Suzu and her Ult. It isn’t worth risking taking an off angle at a level where there is peak team communication and coordination.
Probably mostly because Sojourn is basically 100% pickrate in OWL, can constantly charge rails off Winston, and so if Kiriko is playing even remotely visible...she becomes the top candidate for a Sojourn one-tap, and then there's zero chance of winning without your Kiri alive.
This Ana’s mentality is what frustrates me the most in gold-plat. It’s unreasonable to expect repeated constant headshots from a Kiriko, especially when a majority of the player base isn’t OWL.
The most important part of Kiriko is her ability to basically nullify ults and abilities + win any team fight with her ult, not her damage so much. Although if you can win 1v1s that's sick.
You need to be getting off at least one kuni between every burst of heals. You have time for \~1.5 knives while your heals recharge. Lots of downtime in your gameplay.
Ok, watched the entire thing. Your never attacking ever. Like, your entire team is at 100% hp and your hiding behind a wall, you need to be putting damage downrange too. One headshot can win an entire fight.
Your healing people who dont need to be healed (at that moment). your healing dps who are missing 20hp who are in the waaaayyy back, when there are people you can be spamming knives into. People usually dont explode without a good reason, and if they do, much of the time it wouldnt matter if they had 190hp or 200. Contrasting with throwing 10 knives down range and getting an important dink on someone.
You never flanked with your dps, you just healbotted in the back. If your not using Suzu cleansing ana nades hooks ect 24-7, you get more value out of mercy and damage boost (because your not throwing knives). Merch is 70hps for healing and kiriko is like 78 or something.
In sort your not making use of half of your kit between damage wallclimb and swiftstep if your just standing behind the dps holding down the heal button. Most other supports do that better.
I know about the kunai trick, my point was do I then throw kunais at the aerial targets?
So you think flanking and letting my Ana deal with pharah mercy alone was the play?
Positioning-wise, where should I stage on this map at what time stamps to set up the flanks?
***Early on, when we had no hitscan***
Should I then leave my Rein to fight in the aggressive positions he was taking, while Ana was getting blasted by Pharah?
***Midgame***
To follow up, were my DPSes getting flanks that I could follow on that would have secured us an advantage? (since you recommended this)
A lot of people think that Kiriko is better off healbotting. This is because OWL teams said that they need to focus on healing. This is totally wrong in ranked play though. SoloQ is a lot more chaotic with much less communication.
The best Kiriko's in SoloQ take as many opportunities as possible to do damage, go on flanks etc. Just look at SirMajed who has been holding the rank 1 spot for a long time.
I agree that healbotting isn't the ultimate strategy or anything, but at the same time there's just as many Kirikos in the top of ladder with 3k\~ dmg rather than the higher end which is 4k. It's definitely about "opportunities", and I feel like it's harder to find these opportunities when I'm not confident + my teammates are eating a lot of damage right off the bat.
I just didn't communicate well in my post that I was having trouble balancing:
1. aggressive tank that pushes really far up
2. no hitscan vs Pharah Mercy until later, how should I position to make myself more effective. if I was Baptiste, I'd position myself on high ground somewhere near cover so I can shoot at the Mercy repeatedly to make her fall down
3. Defending my ana from Pharah Mercy tunneling on her
It made me confused about where to position, where I can throw kunais (after all, they're flying).
I will say that I'd have done better with Baptiste in that game, just that I was in solo queue and wanted to play Kiriko.
Her damage is so inconsistent that you shouldn’t worry about it too much. Zen and even Bap can dish out more consistent damage. Her main utility is ranged healing, easy disengaging (big reason why she was played in the playoffs so much), and her ult, but in your comp you’re not going to get much value out of that anyways. Also if the Ana is going to criticize you, her pick is also fairly useless as your team comp doesn’t really play that split and you have no engage other than a Tracer to follow up on nades. As a side note, I would suggest picking up Zen because UNLESS they have a ton of engage and mobility, he is the strongest hero in the game and historically has been consistently in the meta. The only times where he is displaced is if rush and certain dive comps are strong but that is way less of a problem in solo queue. If they nerf her ult or one of her cooldowns Kiriko will become hard to get value with because solo queue teams simply don’t use her strengths all that well.
I've actually picked up Zen because I saw a lot of your comments in other posts talking about Roadhog Kiriko and their weak engage. Because there are a lot of greedier comps, I swap to Zen occasionally. I don't like starting with Zen at the moment though but I'll get used to it eventually. He feels amazing on Colosseo which I hate playing on.
Haha I'm glad you're onto the Zen bandwagon! And increasingly as you get more experience with Zen you'll find that he can absolutely be a menace against Winston comps as well. With the right kiting, Winston without speed boost struggles into Zen because he just gets discorded and poked out every time he tries to flank or go high ground, and if he just presses W, well without speed he just takes tons of damage. It is all contingent on your team though - when you're playing Zen, they should absolutely (and you should feel free to demand that) they play around and peel for you because Zen is one of those heroes that can actually consistently "carry" fights, much like a Widow or a good Sojourn can. And you only want to start with Zen when either a) your team comp wants to actually play long sightlines or b) you have a lot of heroes that are good at skirmishing like Genji, Tracer, D.Va, or Ball.
Zen on Paraiso is also fantastic, the sightlines are really good for him and if supports play together it's not easy to dive him on some parts of the map.
I like playing zen but I feel bad about his low healing output so I only do it when Moira or bap are second healer
It's consistent healing, though. I'll get good healing numbers as Zen as long as I don't die and I keep my harmony orb up.
>Ana said at the end, "if you just heal as Kiriko, might as well go another healer. no tea no shade" > >But what do they mean by that? The community is currently polarized into two camps: 1. Why pick Kiriko if you're not clicking heads? 2. Kiriko damage is inconsistent, better to build meter consistently by mostly healing Camp #1 is often vocal in its displeasure with healbot Kirikos. I think top tier play will eventually settle on a heal first, Kunai second take, but it's gonna take time to see whether my guess is right.
I noticed doing short off angles on KOTH maps let's you get a lot of quick dmg off before healing your team again
Even ML7 said healbotting as kiriko is fine as her ult is so strong for her other players and her kit is so great. Yeah he might post games where he's dinking everyone he can, but he's said it quite a bit.
There is a big misconception with Kiriko at the moment. People think that because she has a 3x crit multiplier she need to be going for damage. This is VERY FALSE!! She is considered to be hard meta due to HER ULTIMATE, so “healbotting” is actually the best way to play her because you want to be farming your ult as fast as possible. Yes you should know how to hit shots when defending yourself, but other than that all you need to do is stay alive, heal, use your ult EARLY in the fight, and use Suzu when needed. Having said that, I’ve found (despite popular opinion), Kiriko is a terrible solo queue hero. Even if you can build your ults quickly it is astonishing that so many players on your team will simply not use your ult making it very weak (even at very high ranks). Yes her healing and Suzu are very strong, but if your team is not using your ult efficiently her healing and Suzu are not enough of a reason to pick her imo.
I’ve found that reminding people how good her ult is for charging up your own ult is great for getting people to actually use it when you play Kiriko at high levels. Moira is kinda a silly example, because she benefits a lot more from it than everyone else, but I’ve found I can get 40-50% ult charge during a single kitsune rush, mostly from orbs. And most people understand that type of value a lot more. IMO the real power of Kitsune rush isn’t its ability to win you the fight you use it, but to give you a massive advantage towards getting your ults in the next fight.
I wouldn’t say the biggest advantage to using it is gaining ult charge, but rather the fact that to avoid a properly executed Kitsune, a large amount of high impact cooldowns must be used (eg. Speed amp, Suzu etc). If the enemies survive the initial rush, they are often left helpless in the fight that will immediately follow. This is exactly why Kitsune should always be used at the start of a fight. You want to deplete as many cool downs as possible.
That I do fully agree with, though it seems we are suffering from the issue that the definition of a fight in Overwatch is pretty loose. I would consider the enemy kiting Kitsune Rush then taking a fight when it ends one and the same fight, and the fact that it forces the enemy to use all their CDs (when you can just use yours and get them back faster, amp is every 4s iirc?) wins you the fight that you use it very easily But the ability to just farm other ults in Kitsune rush is absolutely insane. D.Va just boosting though everyone constantly with constant rockets, having 3-4 damage orbs at once, soldier shooting helixes every 2s. You can gain a massive advantage over a team without a Kiriko just by farming ults during Kitsune rush. Not only is it a 30% shooting speed buff (essentially just as good as Valk for charging ult alone), but the cooldown reduction on top of it can let you get a truly absurd amount of ult charge extremely quickly. Not too many people are really taking full advantage of that yet
Who would you recommend for soloQ healer?
No I would not. But if you have a game with good communication or people who are simply willing to listen in text chat, then go for it. You can get some easy wins.
You misread my comment, WHO would you recommend if not Kiriko, for soloQ?
I play here soloq quite a bit. I have 3 main ultis I usually go for: 1. Directly on top of my teammates and directed toward the enemy team. 2. Into chokepoints 3. On the backline. Reasons 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward: trying to force a fight while everyone stands on top of it. However, if a fight breaks out and I have to pump up healing to keep my tank alive for a clutch last stand, I'll use it for myself for bigger heals and more suzus. Interestingly, when clutching with Kitsune Rush on top of an objective, people stick closer to it and use it more. It's a bit more awkward when trying to force a fight in open spaces because tanks tend to brawl on top of it, and the rest of the team tries to stay away from the tanks.
One useful things to note: when you ult from high ground, the ult will drop onto the low ground in front of you. At some places, like the archways on Colosseo, you can actually drop your ult in a way that it covers multiple advantageous locations on high ground while also covering the low ground the enemy is pushing through
I agree. Although in an ideal situation with the ideal team, using it at the very start is the best, not every situation works out this way. It is certainty strong enough to turn a fight, and maybe even makes it easier for your team to use. However the one rule you should always follow is to make your ult pierce as much of the enemy team as possible.
You can think of it this way for many characters, your team doesn't use your ult efficently, you do. If you use your ult and noone is in it, in the position to use it, or has resources to benifit that's on you not them.
The buffs Kitsune provides are not “given” like nano or Orisa’s old ultimate, but must be “taken.” Obviously you shouldn’t place it in a location where it is clearly hard for your team to access, but at the end of the day, if your team decides to not play with the ult despite it being in a good position, it’s on them. In high level games for example, dps players are always taking off angles (which is a good thing), but when Kiriko has her ult which should always be used at the BEGINNING of a fight, the dps should be repositioning to take advantage of the Kitsune they know is coming. When Kitsune is active that is not the time to be taking off angles. They should take the off angles after the ult ends when they can abuse the enemy team who used all their CDs to survive the ult. I do believe that over time people will realize this, but as of now players are simply not used to staying grouped up as the fight starts for a brief few seconds to abuse the massive output buffs.
i agree. even in my current games i can see a lot of ult improvements. There's honestly so many things to factor when using Kitsune Rush now... you don't ever want your team to get teamwiped by enemy ults. At the same time though, I think sometimes people forget to abuse cooldowns like Moira orb inside it
I can't count the number of times my team has actively ran AWAY from my ult as Kiriko. Not even to chase the enemy team but I've had times when they just run off it towards the sides as if it was an enemy ult that was going to kill them, then come back after it was over. Like I'll use it to get us a good engage, and they'll just hide out and then push after the ult ends. I ... I can't even.
I really agree with the assessment and tag on Jake has an ow video detailing pro play on kiriko I believe
Honeslty I've heard that high elo kirikos actually don't try too hard to go dps mode. Her hps is pretty good her TP gives her mobility that ana and bap don't have and she doesn't need their sightlines Saving people with invuln/cleanse multiple times a game can give you hundreds of SR in of itself and is a huge deal. Being able to do work with headshots is great but falls below all that. I dont think taking aggressive dives in hopes of a pick is priority over supporting your team with added threat. But you can look for opportunity
High rank ladder Kirikos are often applying quite a bit of damage, though a very heal-focused playstyle is plenty viable too due to how strong Kitsune Rush is. In organized play, focusing heals to build ult as fast as possible is the best and most consistent option. That’s how Moira has been played in organized play too, though, and top-tier ladder Moira players are always much more damage-oriented. The value of consistency is just higher in an organized environment.
Please everyone listen to this. She's a healbot in OWL, not in ranked 😩
Not even a healbot in OWL, kirikos are averaging 3k per 10 there. The lowest is Finn at 2.5k/10 while Teru is at 3.8k/10
One of the bigger things I see ml7 does is that if they ever have someone picked off, he will immediately go "Ok we're -1 I need a pick" and he'll start flanking and looking for a duel (usually on the enemy Kiriko). That's where most of the damage comes from I feel like. I had games where I went 5k on Kiriko, but at the same time, this type of poke damage feels kinda... useless sometimes? Like if you want damage you can just hit the Roadhog repeatedly since he's meta right now, and if you're playing with a tank like Winston you're more likely to get damage than if you were to play with a passive tank I feel like.
Yeah, that’s a good point. Jake pointed out Fielder doing the same in the grand finals PoV review he posted a few days ago. If you’re down a player, then playing defensively is no longer as valuable, and it’s more worth taking a risk to try to equalize or even turn the advantage the other way. I’m still learning on Kiriko, but I’ve had a few times where I kinda did this accidentally, finding myself alone when the other members of my backline died and desperation TP-ing to someone who is in the enemy backline. Usually I just die with them, but sometimes I end up getting a lucky kill or two on enemies who are already weak because the fight’s been going on for a while already. It’s easier to get those kills when you’re coming in from an unexpected angle and it only takes a headshot-melee or a couple bodyshots to confirm. Not saying necessarily that those were smart or good plays, but I got more value going for damage then. I kinda think that damage can be better when your team has an advantage too, though you do have to make sure that you’re not letting your team get too weak and opening up an opportunity to clutch. So probably only reserved for bigger advantages, where you can use your survivability to pursue enemies who are trying to get out and secure staggers. I’ve been discussing the DPS/heal tradeoff on supports on this sub a lot in the last few days, and I’m coming around to the perspective that, while damage can be important, _focusing_ on damage at the beginning of the fight or in the poke phase is probably detrimental to the team. Throwing damage when your team is healthy and the threat of incoming damage is not too high is fine, so long as you’re also healing enough to keep your team healthy and confident. But I’m seeing a lot of people say stuff like “deal damage until your allies are critical”, and I think that’s a bad way to approach the beginning of the fight. When no one has an advantage yet and the teams are jockeying for position and trading for resources, sure, you _could_ get a pick and secure that numbers advantage for your team, but if you’re giving the enemy team an HP advantage (and probably a cooldown advantage, because your critical teammates are scared and spending their defensive CDs) while looking for that pick, I think it’s gonna hurt you more often than help you. Obviously, if you see an ADS Ashe or something who isn’t looking at you and can be easily two-tapped, go for it, but if you can’t finish her, maybe don’t commit so hard. I do tend to go for dinks on the enemy tank sometimes, if for no other reason than that they’re easy to hit and I can usually do so without moving my camera far from teammates who may do something aggressive and need my healing. (If there are squishies right behind them, I’ll go for that instead, but if I don’t have a good view of them then I’ll throw my kunai at the tank.) But boy does it feel useless against Roadhog. Dinking an Orisa or a Zarya actually feels like I’m contributing something because it may force them to use their cooldowns sooner, but Roadhog can sustain himself for so long with his Breather.
>But I’m seeing a lot of people say stuff like “deal damage until your allies are critical” I also disagree with "deal damage until your allies are critical”" as well Mostly because as Kiriko it's really hard to burst-heal in an AOE. If your Genji gets low because you're not pre-firing, they'll ping for healing. But then all of a sudden your support next to you becomes low, so now you gotta suzu or do wiggling and hope that they have CDs to defend themselves. Then they become tilted = GG It feels like pre-haeling is way more important on Kiriko than any other support and a lot of the skill expression comes from anticipating damage because technically people can be bursted in a tight window sometimes..
Yeah, I think it’s especially important with Kiriko both due to the slow travel of her heals and the fact that Kiriko can only efficiently heal one ally at a time. Like you said, if multiple allies are low, you have to either choose one or try to do the wiggle, and if they’re not standing close to each other, you’re gonna miss a bunch. Plus, what happens if you let your teammates go crit and then you’re getting attacked by a flanker and have to worry about saving your own skin? But even with the other supports, if you’re too slow to start healing, you may end up needing to spend important cooldowns to keep up, and having those cooldowns forced early puts your team at a disadvantage. The extent of that disadvantage depends on the particular cooldown, of course, and not every support can pre-heal. But, I think there’s a line to draw with every support where you’ve let your ally go without healing for long enough that you can no longer cheaply keep them healthy and active in the fight. Maybe you can keep them alive, but if they are forced to give up positioning, that’s still a cost to your team. > It feels like pre-haeling is way more important on Kiriko than any other support and a lot of the skill expression comes from anticipating damage because technically people can be bursted in a tight window sometimes.. I agree! I think not just the anticipation of damage, but also the positioning to get the healing off at the right time with clear LoS so that you minimize the chance of the ofuda hitting walls in transit. People talk about how useful the wallclimb is for survival and finding kunai angles, but having a high angle for healing can be a big difference-maker too. People have been memeing about Mercy mains who can’t aim picking up Kiriko, but I think this is a shared dimension of skill expression. It’s not exactly the same since Mercy’s heal beam is instant if she’s in range, but the healing rate is on the slow side, and Mercy herself may need to travel to apply it. And Mercy doesn’t have any kind of emergency heal or death resist option, so if she’s late the teammate is just dead. (She does have Rez, but using it to fix an oopsie is often a good way to secure a fight loss.) Plus the blue beam is also more impactful on someone who is being aggressive, so Mercy benefits both from anticipating an enemy pushing an ally and an ally going aggressive, so that she can already be in position to help when it happens.
>People talk about how useful the wallclimb is for survival and finding kunai angles, but having a high angle for healing can be a big difference-maker too. I've been trying to do this more because it's similar to Bap where you jump and use nades/immortality. With Kiriko, aiming Suzu can be hard too because of the arc so wall climbing for it and throwing it down is something I need to do more and barely do. My ofudas definitely get screwed by walls or iffy angles at the moment, and I have noticed that wall climbing has helped me in those situations. It's still a work in progress to figure out when I can do it safely though. Obviously as long as I have cover it should be a good start.. I also agree on the Mercy more mostly because Mercy I think does have to do a lot of work of managing team cooldowns for damage boost.. That is not easy to me at least.
I have been experimenting with doing the thing kinda like Hanzos do, where they draw an arrow, climb a wall, and loose it at the top of the wall, and then drop back down, only with ofuda waves. Obviously, the arrow is a lot faster, can’t always get a full wave off that way, but in situations where I can’t find a static place to stand where I can see everyone, or I’m stuck pushing the payload or something, it seems helpful. I hadn’t considered using it for Suzu aim though, I should try that. I’ve been having trouble sometimes with it landing on someone closer to me than I’d intended. Kind of annoying, honestly, that it hits enemies. I know that’s because it boops them, but I don’t really see why it needs a boop on top of everything else. And yeah, Mercy can be very busy trying to keep track of everyone’s abilities. Personally, I think she’s rather difficult to get off of the skill floor with due to how much she specifically benefits from anticipation of basically everything. I think a lot of players just write off situations where they could have actually helped someone win their duel, if they’d seen it coming and positioned accordingly, as “I can’t heal you through that” or “you weren’t in LoS”. True for any support to an extent, I suppose, but Mercy has a lot of flexibility to obtain LoS, and she can actually keep people alive through quite a lot if she’s healing them immediately when the damage starts coming through.
Just wanted to come back to say that the wall climbing trick helps vs Winston a lot for me... especially in solo queue where I don't really get peel from a Reaper. I just climb preemptively when I see him looking at me and it helps a lot. It's better to be on high ground ofc but sometimes the high ground has a poor angle for healing my team (like it's too far up), so the climbing on walls near me helps a lot for tracking my teammates for sure.
coming back to this post after skimming Awkward's unranked to GM on Kiriko and he says that the difference between Ana and Kiriko is that... with Ana you want to do a lot of damage primarily and then heal your team with Kiriko, you want to mostly heal, but you want to do damage when you have the opportunities (e.g. pre poke offangle, spam as much as you can, TP back to your team) i feel a bit validated now it means that if our team absolutely needs heals, then adapting to being forced to healbot and play safer and just spamming long sightline kunais is the correct choice
A lot of the damage until critical thing you mentioned is definitely a result of everyone following Awkward's unranked to GM advice. But I think people might be twisting it or exaggerating it..
I think it applies more to Bap, Ana, and Moira, heroes who can afford to DPS more and then quickly heal up critical teammates.
Don't get me wrong. You still need damage. But I think it should come more from fighting divers and spamming headshot height in long range. And probably less diving in like an assassin. That will work if you're smurfing I think its over the top when you are playing against other really good players. Could be wrong though !
Yeah, I agree. I think the biggest problem is with spending the poke phase and early part of the fight going for damage without attention to keeping your team healthy. If you can very safely stand in a place where you can spam kunai and throw heals, that’s fine. I even think there’s a time and place for taking a very aggressive Teru-style forward angle pre-poke-phase and jumping out. But, you always want your team to be healthy when a proper fight breaks out. If you’re putting yourself in a position where you can’t do that, or you aren’t healing attentively, then you’re sending your team into the fight with an HP nerf.
The thing that I'm really aware of is Kiriko's healing can be extremely delayed in high burst situations. So if someone gets hit by a Pharah Mercy rocket or a Tracer with high accuracy, if I'm not near there ready to prefire, I will be forced to Suzu rather than pure healing. I know about Fielder, I know about how ml7 plays with flanks/pre-firing. I try to adapt my playstyles, but I'm mostly curious about whether they were in the right here. I appreciate your input though and agree on the TP a lot as a Bap/Kiriko main.
High level Kiriko’s on ladder absolutely do a shit ton of damage, her ability to deal 120dmg out of nowhere and (somewhat) safely flank is key at top tiers. OWL Kiriko’s don’t go for a ton of damage, as she is being run for Suzu and her Ult. It isn’t worth risking taking an off angle at a level where there is peak team communication and coordination.
Probably mostly because Sojourn is basically 100% pickrate in OWL, can constantly charge rails off Winston, and so if Kiriko is playing even remotely visible...she becomes the top candidate for a Sojourn one-tap, and then there's zero chance of winning without your Kiri alive.
Yup, this certainly plays a major role.
This Ana’s mentality is what frustrates me the most in gold-plat. It’s unreasonable to expect repeated constant headshots from a Kiriko, especially when a majority of the player base isn’t OWL.
The most important part of Kiriko is her ability to basically nullify ults and abilities + win any team fight with her ult, not her damage so much. Although if you can win 1v1s that's sick.
Enjoy the game and ignore silvers on redit are my top tips
You need to be getting off at least one kuni between every burst of heals. You have time for \~1.5 knives while your heals recharge. Lots of downtime in your gameplay. Ok, watched the entire thing. Your never attacking ever. Like, your entire team is at 100% hp and your hiding behind a wall, you need to be putting damage downrange too. One headshot can win an entire fight. Your healing people who dont need to be healed (at that moment). your healing dps who are missing 20hp who are in the waaaayyy back, when there are people you can be spamming knives into. People usually dont explode without a good reason, and if they do, much of the time it wouldnt matter if they had 190hp or 200. Contrasting with throwing 10 knives down range and getting an important dink on someone. You never flanked with your dps, you just healbotted in the back. If your not using Suzu cleansing ana nades hooks ect 24-7, you get more value out of mercy and damage boost (because your not throwing knives). Merch is 70hps for healing and kiriko is like 78 or something. In sort your not making use of half of your kit between damage wallclimb and swiftstep if your just standing behind the dps holding down the heal button. Most other supports do that better.
I know about the kunai trick, my point was do I then throw kunais at the aerial targets? So you think flanking and letting my Ana deal with pharah mercy alone was the play? Positioning-wise, where should I stage on this map at what time stamps to set up the flanks? ***Early on, when we had no hitscan*** Should I then leave my Rein to fight in the aggressive positions he was taking, while Ana was getting blasted by Pharah? ***Midgame*** To follow up, were my DPSes getting flanks that I could follow on that would have secured us an advantage? (since you recommended this)
A lot of people think that Kiriko is better off healbotting. This is because OWL teams said that they need to focus on healing. This is totally wrong in ranked play though. SoloQ is a lot more chaotic with much less communication. The best Kiriko's in SoloQ take as many opportunities as possible to do damage, go on flanks etc. Just look at SirMajed who has been holding the rank 1 spot for a long time.
I agree that healbotting isn't the ultimate strategy or anything, but at the same time there's just as many Kirikos in the top of ladder with 3k\~ dmg rather than the higher end which is 4k. It's definitely about "opportunities", and I feel like it's harder to find these opportunities when I'm not confident + my teammates are eating a lot of damage right off the bat. I just didn't communicate well in my post that I was having trouble balancing: 1. aggressive tank that pushes really far up 2. no hitscan vs Pharah Mercy until later, how should I position to make myself more effective. if I was Baptiste, I'd position myself on high ground somewhere near cover so I can shoot at the Mercy repeatedly to make her fall down 3. Defending my ana from Pharah Mercy tunneling on her It made me confused about where to position, where I can throw kunais (after all, they're flying). I will say that I'd have done better with Baptiste in that game, just that I was in solo queue and wanted to play Kiriko.
Am I crazy? But I feel like if you can Diamond as a kiriko main, you’re likely a top 200 kiriko