(For your convenience, the TL;DR is right after the 
emojis way below. Feel free to skip the specifics if you just want that.)
So,
Lifeweaver.
A very “based” character that a lot of people have mixed opinions on.
On one hand he has great healing uptime and range, and his poke/drill damage is decent, and he’s an excellent survivability hero for teammates when utilized correctly for game tempo…
On the other, he severely lacks in his versatility beyond those points.
- His healing can be out performed by the majority of other supports overall. As you have to be very consistent with how you apply your healing(even stepping away from the experience gap you need to develop to properly understand its use effectively), it doesn’t feel like it offers much differentiating value from charging it all the way to doing the half-charged shots for more immediate and reliable healing except that the former is better for out of combat and the latter is better for in combat.
Also, if you spam it at its minimum you might as well be wasting your effort unless you’re pitch perfect at determining how much damage your teammate is taking(like a tank to keep their armor up), and even then it’s still worse than applying more charged shots.
- Although his thorns are considered drill and are decent when nailing the critical headshots, his damage is very “scattered” and outright detrimentally bad against good speed/high burst heroes like Genji, Hanzo, Tracer, Sombra, Cassidy, etc… especially when you get into the higher ranks.
Against them at a range because there is no falloff, it’s a decent attack for pressure application… but up close you’re at such a disadvantage that your only hope of getting a kill is either by sheer luck prediction when trying to get them to trail into your projectiles, or by unloading into someone who’s attention is being held by a teammate. Alone, he’s severely outmatched by most of the roster.
(This is the big one below)
- His play potential is very weak. Outright in the majority of fights across the spectrum of players from high rank to low rank, Lifeweaver has almost no capabilities to create plays in a game other than the moments his teammates create one for him. He has no resources to actually hinder his opponents other than his situationally unreliable thorns; his whole kit is dedicated to getting his opponents to exhaust resources so his teammates have more opportunities for advancement than they do.
As I’ve iterated already in the part about his damage(but not as bluntly), he is near completely reliant on his teammates effectiveness in combat to actually be useful.
His weapon is not enough to get more than one or two kills at a time, and even then thats a stretch especially when in higher ranks when the opponents are actively zoning supports. His survivability helps somewhat with this(namely his petal and dash combo), but that’s as far as it goes.
And now, taking account of all of these points as determined by my own research from forums, in-game players, and content creators(as well as my own biases),
I have some solutions I would like the community to consider(especially the devs to at least try):
For Healing: Add a slope effect to the blossom’s fire rate and heal amount depending on the charge. When spammed, the healing would be low and the shot cooldown could be lower so the healing could be distributed more effectively to multiple teammates at an accelerated rate, and when charged… though the cooldown would be slightly higher, the healing for one or two targets would be more effective.
The upside would be more spread healing across the board when the whole team is getting mass attacked at the cost of faster ammo drain, and more effective healing when protecting singular units at the downside of cooldown being higher when charged.
And to clarify; spam = rapid fire mini spread heals, charge = slow big burst heals.
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Charging offers outright more direct healing for single targets that’s effective for ammo,
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Spamming offers more immediate healing for single OR multiple targets at the cost of quickly draining ammo.
Conclusion: Charging heals more overall, Spamming heals more in an instance.
And if this sounds like it would make his healing too strong: They could nerf the reload speed. This would entice the player not to just unload constantly to conserve ammo, and also supports the rhythm of using both situationally(since charging would give more healing throughout the whole “mag” anyways)
For Damage and Play Potential: Simply allow his thorns to stick into objects to do reduced damage that would apply similar to virus, and also add an arc to the thorns. By allowing missed shots to cascade into obstacles instead of just shattering, they could be used for a wide variety of unique and helpful situations. I also have an idea for how the Petal Platform should work, but I’ll go over that later.
(Also, to clarify early because people get scared by new ideas easily… the thorns would apply like virus(an over-time effect)because it would help avoid stacked thorns to immediately shred an opponent without giving supports a chance to react.)
Now, back to the “sticking into objects” idea:
Thorns being able to stick into objects would allow Lifeweaver to have an alternative way to deal with his opponents, both on the offensive and defensive, in a very versatile way.
I’ll go over some possible defensive uses, then some for the offensive. I’ll also go over balancing after.
DEFENSIVE:
- When being attacked by a speed hero, like Tracer for example, unless Lifeweaver is willing to try for the better damage by hitting her directly… he can run and dash away while applying thorns into the floor or his petal when in the air to hinder her from approaching too close, or also move around and through them as a sort of deterrent to keep her from getting super close for high damage.
This could be applied against almost any other approach hero besides flyers, but Tracer fits the point the clearest. It’s also important to note that the thorns could still be jumped over as they’re quite small compared to a lot of other object hit-boxes.
Also, this could apply to your teammates if you’re protecting them from an attacker or when you’re trying to help your team get away.
- When you’re escaping an enemy, you could apply a large volley into the ground at a corner that your opponent could potentially walk into. This along with following it up with actual hits could allow you to fight back a lot better than just the standard attack alone. Getting swarmed will still probably get you defeated, but you’ll at least be able to deal with one or two people chasing you down relentlessly.
Again, I’ll go over balancing for this below after offense.
OFFENSIVE:
- When attacking your opponent(s), you could barrage your thorns at them like you normally would… but missed shots that get stepped on would deal extra lesser damage that you would’ve normally missed entirely.
You could either focus on hitting body/head-shots for stronger damage on singular targets, or spread your volley across them in a “wave” to scatter them all over the floor and deal wide damage. This is mainly effective when trying to hit multiple people at once, and overall add a lot more pressure for your team.
- You could stack your thorns on top of your Petal Platform, and make it rise up in the air. When enemies walk below it, you could trigger the platform to shatter, and the thorns could drop down onto the enemies unsuspectingly for a nice surprise attack.
You could probably do tricks like this in other fashions as well for unique and unexpected plays… but outright it would give Lifeweaver the attack capabilities he needs without actually increasing his damage, and would give him a unique play style in combat.
(This will go over both changes for the thorns and the Petal Platform.)
BALANCING:
- “Active Thorns”(aka, ones that are currently in objects) will have a max active limit in game as his ammo capacity.
For example, you could shoot all your thorns into the ground and they’ll stay as long as you want or until you swap characters… but if you reload, and try to shoot more, the previous thorns will shatter from the oldest thorn first for every new thorn that attaches to the ground.
“Active Thorns” will not shatter when landing new thorns on an enemy or in an enemy shield/device/object. They will shatter from enemy attacks(but still hurt when melee’d besides things like Brig, Venture, or Reinhardt and anyone whose main attacks are melee based).
They will also shatter when colliding with an enemy, which will in turn apply “stacking” damage similar to virus. Enemy Shields and other objects that hit them will break thorns, but they’ll still apply the stack damage effect to those objects.
Thorns cannot stick in enemy objects/shields, they’ll just do normal damage like they do now.
Also, maybe giving Lifeweaver a passive called “Light Footed” or something where he can’t be hurt by his own thorns would be important. He’d finally have his own passive again and also wouldn’t just knock himself out.
- Thorns can be stacked for more direct damage. A max of 10-12 thorns(depending on what the reduced damage effect is) can be stacked into a single spot(more or less after testing to assure balance). Active Thorns that are stacked together or unstacked will deal 20-30% of Lifeweaver’s damage in a similar effect to how Virus from Sombra works; a slow working damage effect.
When a thorn is collided with, the damage will apply over 1.8~ seconds. Any extra thorns will individually apply additional damage, so each thorn will apply it’s 20-30% damage over its own 1.8~ seconds.
- Lifeweaver’s volley could Arc with some gravity to allow new poke angles, air barrages similar to Junkrat but less Arc and no explosions, and also easier application of thorns onto the ground in places above you or over walls.
Although it would sacrifice the outright heavy range that compliments the zero-falloff damage, it would still have really good range since the gravity wouldn’t be too strong(just a new arc to play with and get used to)… and outright wouldn’t change the gameplay too much especially in medium to close range battles. Also, it would compliment the sticking thorns a lot better.
- Petal Platform could be more manually controlled.
Most people use the platform by preemptively just placing it on the ground, and though it’s great for high ground and escapes… it could be more effective. Instead of throwing down a platform, and letting one recharge in your pocket… I think we could retune this to be more useful, both for defensiveness and combat.
First off, when you throw down a platform… instead of the cooldown starting, you could instead MANUALLY activate the platform. It would still trigger from someone hopping on it, but now you can send it up without needing to trigger it.
After the platform has been triggered or destroyed, the cooldown will begin. Maybe it could change a bit if balancing is needed to avoid platform spam.
When the platform is triggered and reaches its max height, its decay timer begins… but it lasts for double/triple the time if nobody is stepping on it. If anyone is stepping on it, the decay timer will go down at double/triple the speed. Objects do not count.
Finally, if Lifeweaver clicks the ability button again(with or without the Petal Platform cooldown being done), if a platform is not destroyed and currently hovering… it will shatter early like it does now.
The purpose of all of this is to allow more use of the platform overall without needing to rely on preemptively placing down a platform, and also adds to the thorn’s new sticking effect for better synergies.
Here’s the foreseen improvements:
-Less chance of teammates stealing the platform since preemptively placing to start the cooldown isn’t effective anymore.
-More use of the platform since after it triggers and begins hovering, if you’re not just standing on it… you can keep it longer for more versitality.
-Manual Triggering outright improves movement techs, offers more trapping/blocking potential especially with big tanks in corridors if placed correctly, and if manually triggered in combination with thorns… you could setup detonatable air traps that have thorns fall easier without needing to directly get close, they’ll stay up longer to give the trap a chance to work since no players would be standing on it, and you could even use it as a reverse trap by sending enemies up INTO thorns.
So to sum up everything I’ve went over in a big TLDR:
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Healing slopes would offer more relevance to small blossoms and change his healing mechanics for versatility without dramatically changing the fundamentals of his kit.
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Sticking Thorns would make his play potential better for outright being able to be more included in combat, as well as moderately increasing his balancing in defensiveness against chasers/flankers.
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Arcs would improve his thorn sticking, and offer new potential attack advantages + strategies.
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Petal Platforms could be more manually controlled for unique approaches to defense and combat, and be more active depending if people are standing on them for longer and better capabilities.
With these changes, I know Lifeweaver would be a much more capable hero with the love he deserves.
These ideas certainly need testing and balancing, and my variables for percentages or values aren’t super accurate for what would work best… but this was made to just relay a good “feel” that he deserves.
If you support this, or have any comments on what would make this better, please feel free to let me know…
Or better yet, maybe be that absolute Top 500 CHAMP that you are and send this topic to the devs, your discords, or some content creators that could review it.
Either way… thank you for reading. I spent a long time on this.