Why does nobody want to play support?

Just a simple question. It feels like the more I play competitive the more I solo heal and get flamed (necessary side effect I suppose?). I wish more people healed too instead of being the 5th DPS on our team.

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Its unrewarding.
Healers generally serve a much needed role but get very little out of it in return.
Take the quintessential healer, Mercy, as an example. You are expected to heal everyone on the team, often as a Solo healer from the moron who just tried to dive into a 1 v 6 to the person standing at the furthest point in the rear. You are expected to rez people the nanosecond they hit the dirt often without cover or support and are commonly blamed for any real failure to pocket heal people who insist on dying on every return to map.

The game mechanics dont reward you for your efforts. DPS is always going to glean greater rewards with far more satisfying play and you’ll commonly find your impressive game-changing plays overshadowed by a Junkrat tire that pewfed over 2 people rounding a corner.

The sad fact is that unless you’re playing a combat ready healer, like Brigitte or Moira, its just not fun to play. Moreso with nerfs hitting Mercy and people often throwing fits if you A: cant kill people if they were severed at the waist. Or B: you dont heal adequatly enough to meet the exacting standards of certain douchebag individuals.

When Jeff arranges for Mercy, who is still considered the Quintessential healer even after the heavy nerfs to be far more rewarding in terms of playstyle and the post-game rewards more forgiving for those who lack the sheer killing power of a roid addled reinhardt with a grudge THATS when we’ll see the supports be taken up in spades

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I don’t do it because I fall asleep whenever I do.

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+1.
And look at how activis… i mean blizzard,treat their healers. Let it neeeerf, let it neeeeeeerf, cant heal anymoreee. this is a dps game. What gives them money, 10 happy main healers, or 100 exclusive dps players that buys 8 accounts each one and then pays $$$ changes their names to " deletebrigite" because they dont have anything more interesting to do?

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For me it was the mere fact that I had zero impact on the game. I’m dependant on the rest of the team to get that win, I can’t do it on my own. Then it’s all the insults if you don’t heal as they think you should (but never actually do cause they’re all dps pros).

Furthermore, I find that I don’t feel any need to heal the people who are quick to remind me that I have no skill and thus play mercy or moira. That I belong in bronze with the rest of the “unwanted” people. That only skilled people with aiming are worthy of respect and praise in this game, and really wtf am I doing in their game. Yeah, those ppl, I don’t feel like healing at all nowadays.

I’ve also become extremely tired of asking dps or tanks to just help me out when all the enemy team is on me and perhaps they should peel for me instead of trying to kill the enemy genji who is happily jumping over their heads three staring them to death.

I’m also so so so bloody tired of the dps who feel it’s their duty and obligation to spam the I need healing button non stop until I drop whoever I’m healing and heal their massive 10hp wound they’ve suffered from 2 diva pellets while moving.

I’ve had enough of begging and pleading the team to just pick a shield tank so at least I have something to hide behind and not die to random arrows, rockets, grenades etc. And I’ve also had enough of begging my team to pick a second healer to help out cause one is just not enough.

I’ve also grown super tired of all the people who celebrate the massive nerfs to the characters I like playing and then have the nerve to ask me to play them and heal them.

That’s why I play dps now. I only switch off when asked, and I mostly play mercy. It’s their punishment. I pick that one character they hate, that one character they rendrered ineffective and watch them die with a super satisfying smirk on my face as my lowly 50hps can barely keep up with a winston. And the best part is they can’t say a word. They’re gonna stand there dying one after another and me last while my beam is on them and they can’t say a single word to me. That is the ONLY joy I get out of healing theese days. I look forward to the obliteration of brigitte so I can play her more and tell them that brig is now a tank/healer hybrid and that her heals were buffed. It’s gonna be glorious.

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I don’t have problems finding supports in my games. Usually at least 2 of those. It’s the chronic lack of main tanks in comp. Supports are fun, especially ana/zen … that is until the enemy start running doomfist/tracer/sombra at least.

Nobody wants to play rein and be booped around the entire game or just deleted as winston however. And Orisa is too… static and boring for a lot of people.

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Why do you want to be a teacher? Sure, you do the most important job around, something that most people can’t do because you need total control over yourself, everyone else and perfect awareness. It’s tiring, it requires a long and multi-dimensional education. Yeah, you don’t get a proper reward for it, everyone will hate you (except for the people you’re teaching) and constantly belittle you, which often feels unrewarding, and you’re always the first to be blamed when the whole system has issues.
Oh, you said healer, not teacher. Same thing though.

It doesn’t take as much mechanical skill. Even Ana has much more forgiving hitboxes than let’s say a mccree headshot.

You can ask the same question for tank. There are WAY more support players than tank players.

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This is so true. I get so much joy just knowing that they wanted these nerfs so now when they beg me to heal and I just float like a beautiful butterfly over their corpses. It’s oddly satisfying.

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@Porcelain Eve - Preach :raised_hands:t3:

I must be playing a different game, because in my Overwatch it’s waaay easier to find a support player, than it is to find a player who is willing to play a Main Tank.

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Let me rephrase that :
It’s easier to find a support that is good than a tank that is good.

I really think if everyone would just shut up about “the dreaded DPS main” then we’d all be just a little happier

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Main Tank with the emphasis on the word “Main”. In my games, there’s plenty of people who are willing to play Hog/Dva/Zarya/Hammond but it feels like they don’t quite do the Main Tank’s job.

  • dps + tanks blame healers when they get killed, even when they run in solo.
  • Tanks blame dps when there are to less or no enemies dying, even when they don’t even know what create space mean.
  • healers dont complain because they on the lowest rank of the food chain of overwatch :stuck_out_tongue:

They have to deal with most of the shi…
Just wierd tanks arent played most.

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Wierd at my rank it is very rare to see a good main tank.
Playing a dps that stays behind the shield is almost impossible in high gold.
Most reins will charge as soon they see an enemy… So bye bye shield in first second of the group battle.
Or i even seen a rein vs orisa battle, where the rein was waiting(and blaming the dps for not being able too) for the dps to destroy the shield and the orisa/dps behind it, by just standing still with his shield up from range(at the choke). So its dps could destroy it from behind his shield… Instead of closing the gap

It’s because 3 or 4 out of the 5 dps cannot really dps, which forces the 5th to go dps also.

Now seriously, the reason and the problem is that Blizzard created a 6 vs 6 game and not a 5 vs 5 or 4 vs 4 which makes it hard when it comes to some adjustments like “Role Queue”.

That’s the only thing this game is missing at the moment. As long as they don’t implement a real Role Queue system don’t expect anything better than a clown dps fiesta.

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I see plenty of support mains, what I don’t see is tank mains.

By the way I’m a support and tank main myself.

Given that I main Ana I don’t notice this as much as you but, yeah, relatively few want to play support. I fill as much as I can, knowing it won’t be as fun as playing my main but that is just how it goes. Suck it up and soldier on is all I can do. You can win games with 5 dps but it is no picnic…not at all. I guess people need to be more openminded and try other heroes, not just the dps which everyone wants to be a top 500 player at.

Well I switch but I main dps (soldier) and to be honest it’s such a crap job, no thanks, no extra reward (actually less reward!) and the healers are really boring to play.