My Thoughts on the Lifeweaver Changes

Hey all. Feel free to ignore this post, as I'm mostly just ranting.

Regarding the nerfs that they just gave LW, I actually feel that they were warranted. I feel that Lifeweaver has been getting overbuffed in one area, which is his healing. The reason everyone healbots on him is because there isn't much incentive to do anything other than that. When the devs explained what they were going for when designing him, they mentioned looking to create a hero that was similar to Mercy. What are the main things that Mercy has up her sleeve, I ask? She has pretty strong single target healing output, good pocketing potential, and ways to provide some defensive and offensive utility to her team (in the form of revive and damage boost. On top of all that, she has VERY good mobility that makes her a hard target to hit.

Now, what did Lifeweaver have on release to make him similar? For starters, he had strong single target healing output, and good pocketing potential (Look, I don't care what people say about release Lifeweaver. His healing output and healing potential was ALWAYS good). As for mobility, his dash was on a longer cooldown than Guardian Angel, but it healed him for a small amount and gave him access to a bunnyhop tech to allow him to be fairly mobile. Add petal platform to the mix, and he has mobility that is somewhat weaker than Mercy's, but has one major difference: it's self-reliant. You don't need a teammate to dash to or petal. If that wasn't enough, he had a large hitbox on his back, and while it did mean that he was easier to hit than he should have been, he also had VERY GOOD headshot protection from behind (so if you were retreating, you could avoid those 2x multipliers). For defensive utility, he had Lifegrip, and while it wasn't the best on release, it could have some tremendous impact. As for offensive pressure... Well, his potential damage output was actually nice, but it incentivized him to play as a front liner because of the spread. Along with the autoreload, it made it possible for him to quite literally weave between heals and damage, and the way it played felt more intriguing than someone like Baptiste or Kiriko.

Then came his first patch. They gave us the newer control scheme. In said control scheme, they removed his bunnyhop tech (it's still present in-game, but you have to use the old control scheme in order to do it since you have to be grounded in order for it to work). Okay, big whoop, I guess. Not really a huge issue. It makes him more accessible to players altogether. However, one small change was present in there that I feel like a lot of people haven't been making a big enough stink about: They increased the time it takes for his auto-reload to take effect. At the time that this change was introduced, Lifeweaver was quite literally the only hero that had an auto-reload speed that was slower than his manual reload speed (at least that I am aware of. The change to Wrecking Ball's reload was made in a later patch). This meant that you were less incentivized to swap off of heals and shoot a few thorns. By the time you needed to swap back to heals, your auto-reload may not have taken effect yet, which would make you fall behind on heals much too easily. The whole time, the balance team tried to focus on the healing numbers for Lifeweaver when they were never the problem. This led them to overcorrect and caused the nerfs that he has currently. While it does solve the issue of him having too much healing output, it doesn't solve the inherent issue that made them increase the numbers in the first place.

I have always been saying that they should either increase the projectile speed on Thorn Volley, or they should just revert the auto-reload nerf that they gave him on his first patch. All that nerf did was make him feel worse to play for people who had already grown accustomed to the original control scheme. The thing about every other support in the game is that it's simple and easy for them to contribute some form of damage along with their healing. Lifeweaver is the only support in the game that is actively incentivized to not contribute damage in a teamfight. That isn't to say that you can't be the reason that your team wins a fight because you popped a few thorns right between the eyes, but it is to say that the game doesn't give you much reason to feel like you should even attempt to do so. He doesn't need a number change in his damage values. They are fine where they are (and possibly even a tiny bit overtuned, if I had to be perfectly honest). Supports often deal too much damage, but Lifeweaver is consistently going to be contributing the least offensive pressure out of any other support (other than someone who picks Brigitte into like a sniper comp or something like that, where she won't have a chance to get close and do her job). Mercy doesn't even have to swap weapons to deal damage because she can just damage boost her teammates. LW is the only support who is required to weapon swap to deal damage, so he shouldn't be the only hero in the game to have such a strong auto-reload downside.