Healer "Saviors" Infuriate Me

[RawwkinGrimmie64]

Replay ID is 10775325837

TL;DR: Doctor Strange says I'm not healing enough, switched to a third healer, throwing team comp out of whack. I end the match with 31k healing and 4 kills off 7k damage. If you aren't comfortable enough to confidently play at least 3 different Strategists, stop whining about not getting heals at every given second.


I was told part way through round 2 by our Dr. Strange to "stop doing damage and start healing" to which I responded "I've been doing nothing but healing all game". Another teammate had the GENIUS idea to say "go triple support then", obviously meant to be taken sarcastically or as a biat threat by the tone, to which Strange says "Alright, bet." And proceeded to do 466 healing as Luna, die to a Venom ultimate, switch to Loki, and never ult in the endgame.

Match ended with me going 4-10-32 with almost 7k damage and 31k healing (most in the match). But in the meantime, Mr. Healer Savior took our 1-3-2 and turned it into a 0-3-3 before ending on a 2-2-2 because our Rocket with 29k healing and 30 assists swapped out to a Vanguard.

And a HUGE sigh of exasperation from the guy who was supposed to heal us to victory and make up for my absurd No Heals ganeplay after we lost the match.

Turns out the guy is also a Cloak & Dagger main, which further grinds my gears. How the hell are you, as a C&D main going to try and boss around another C&D player? And then to throw the match by playing 2 Strategists you have never played in a Competitive match before???

I am so sick and tired of people bossing their teammates around and acting like everyone but themselves is the problem while they have a sub 50% winrate. I had 3 kills, 5k damage, and 24k healing when I was told to "stop doing damage and start healing", but I guess I threw the match by autolocking someone else's Lord character, despite also being a Lord on the character and 100+ more hours of play.

Again, Replay ID is at the top. Go judge for yourself if I was doing too much damage, or not enough healing. Let me know your thoughts.

[Nanashi]

Maining Cloak & Dagger is like running in the Special Olympics. You know despite the gold medal you are still...

Biases aside healing inflation is a thing. That number says nothing about the value of a support. Bad players take a ton of damage without actually making plays. If your plan is "My healer will bail me out" then your plan is bad. Supports are there to enable plays, I often find myself in the situation where this is better done by dealing damage to another player's target and only healing when its really needed.

Now the actual problem is one of inflated ego. Players who know how a character is played (or at least think they do) are more likely to react poorly to things they wouldn't do because in their mind they know better. This is actually increasing with experience not the other way around. Constantly in their mind it echos "If I had that character we would have won by now".

Let's make a thought experiment and imagine an alternate reality where you two played the same game but he picked Cloak & Dagger instead of you. How would you react? What would change?

Personally I believe that your 'healer savior' simply had no character he was comfortable playing as, happens in all ranks and game modes. Don't make his problem yours unless there is an easy fix to it.

[Terotrous]

So I watched your replay, you generally played okay but there are some significant misplays here and there.

The #1 thing I noticed was that you tend to always toss out your bubble the second it's off cooldown, even if not much is going on. The bubble is an extremely powerful heal on a fairly long cooldown, you should usually be trying to preserve it for emergencies. Pretty much every time the enemy Hela ulted your bubble was down (I suspect she may have been waiting for you to bubble), which resulted in that ult teamwiping almost every time, if you preserved bubble a bit more you could have probably saved at least 1 more person from that ult. Overall though your attack run was ok, the fight was certainly still winnable at the switch.

The biggest misplay of the match is probably at 12:00, where you turn around to heal the Punisher when both your tanks are heavily engaged, which results in both of them dying. The Punisher was not in any danger and Rocket could have easily healed him. At the very least, you should have given the tanks your bubble in this situation, as it was available. This snowballs into the loss of point 1. Your ult at 13:21 was also unnecessary and got basically no value, and you were forced to burn your bubble to escape, which later results in the entire team being wiped by the Punisher ult as you don't have it available to save them. These back to back lost teamfights are likely what convinces your Strange to switch. This is a misplay, but your back is definitely against the wall right now and he needed to do something. I feel like swapping to another tank would probably have been a better play but trying to change things up was not unreasonable and triple support is pretty good on point 3 on this map.

The ult at 15:21 is also very bad, there's literally nothing going on at the time. This opens up an easy push that secures the win for the other team. If you still had it available after you came back out you might have been able to push the other team back off.

So yeah, just keep an eye more on ability timings / cooldowns, this was definitely a winnable match but a couple small mistakes kind of just snowballed it. If you are used to "tempo ulting" with C&D you need to unlearn that as your ult is now vastly more costly after the patch and must be used much more strategically. This is doubly important when the other healer is Rocket as he does not have a "be invincible" ult and thus you are the only line of defense against many enemy ults.

[Lunar Fang]

Most players in the lower elo's have no idea how to play at all. They just mindless wander to the obj, no one takes high ground, no one turns to help with flankers. It's not a oh dps need to kill flankers, your whole team needs to turn and deal with it.

This is why most players get hard stuck, they just shrug and say well I'm the tank and I'm sponging damage, that's not the tanks role to just sit there and take damage.

The other issue is players trying to imitate what the GM+ level of players are doing, forgetting they're on a team with similarly skilled players. So in theory they're on a team where the support is also GM+ and the DPS is GM+.

Another issue is people can only play one role, maybe two. So you get support players getting stuck on DPS or Tank and have zero clue what they're doing because oops everyone on your team is a support main because they don't have the confidence to DPS or Tank.

This game needs role queue plain and simple.

[RawwkinGrimmie64]

If you are used to "tempo ulting" with C&D you need to unlearn that as your ult is now vastly more costly after the patch and must be used much more strategically.

Can you define what "tempo ultimg" is? I'm not familiar with that term

[Terotrous]

Originally posted by RawwkinGrimmie64:

Can you define what "tempo ultimg" is? I'm not familiar with that term

It refers to using your ult as soon as it's available rather than holding it for a situation where it would get maximum value. The idea is to sort of "keep the momentum going" with a steady stream of ultimates that doesn't give the opponent much time to get re-established. It also allows you to get more ultimates total since you quickly cash out the ult and start building it again. Some characters do this pretty well, like Rocket for example, it's rarely worth holding Rocket's ult, you should just pop it at the beginning of a teamfight to gain an advantage. C&D used to be able to do this since their ult was up so often, but after the nerf this is much riskier, especially if your second healer doesn't have a be invincible ult. It can still be decent in triple support comps though, where the idea is simply to cycle the healer ults so you have limited windows of vulnerability between ults.

Of course, the opposite of tempo ulting is to use your ult "reactively" or "situationally" (depending on whether your ult is defensive or offensive) where you try to hold it until it can get big value. For a be invincible ult, this usually means using it in reaction to a key DPS ult like Starlord or Storm. Of course, you don't want to be stuck holding your ult too long and sometimes it is worth using it to snowball a team fight. Knowing exactly when to use ult is a manner of game sense and even the pros don't always get this right, but generally I probably wouldn't use C&D Ult to engage unless you have absolutely no other choice (ie, overtime is about to end or you're about to lose), it's best used in the midfight so the healing mist is most useful to the team.

[RawwkinGrimmie64]

Originally posted by Terotrous:

Originally posted by RawwkinGrimmie64:

Can you define what "tempo ultimg" is? I'm not familiar with that term

It refers to using your ult as soon as it's available rather than holding it for a situation where it would get maximum value. The idea is to sort of "keep the momentum going" with a steady stream of ultimates that doesn't give the opponent much time to get re-established. It also allows you to get more ultimates total since you quickly cash out the ult and start building it again. Some characters do this pretty well, like Rocket for example, it's rarely worth holding Rocket's ult, you should just pop it at the beginning of a teamfight to gain an advantage. C&D used to be able to do this since their ult was up so often, but after the nerf this is much riskier, especially if your second healer doesn't have a be invincible ult. It can still be decent in triple support comps though, where the idea is simply to cycle the healer ults so you have limited windows of vulnerability between ults.

Of course, the opposite of tempo ulting is to use your ult "reactively" or "situationally" (depending on whether your ult is defensive or offensive) where you try to hold it until it can get big value. For a be invincible ult, this usually means using it in reaction to a key DPS ult like Starlord or Storm. Of course, you don't want to be stuck holding your ult too long and sometimes it is worth using it to snowball a team fight. Knowing exactly when to use ult is a manner of game sense and even the pros don't always get this right, but generally I probably wouldn't use C&D Ult to engage unless you have absolutely no other choice (ie, overtime is about to end or you're about to lose), it's best used in the midfight so the healing mist is most useful to the team.

Yeah, I'm starting to get the hang of that. I've often used the ult to push points or contest them, but I am realizing that isn't as effective anymore. Still, breaking the habit is something to work on.