Tips for Support Players Struggling with Dive

[DoT]

You know those matches where you have a solo Thing tank, who is running into rocket / punisher team-up and insta dying. And then they have the audacity to blame the heals for that?

This is the equivalent of blaming your team for not babysitting you.

I play all roles. And I've been on the receiving end of celestial Venom / spiderman / bp dives. I Just always have an escape option as Loki on the ready.

I know the dps is gonna be focused on me, so healing my team at all times isn't that urgently important. I can spare to go invisible for a couple seconds. I can spare a few seconds looking around to check my surroundings. I can spare a Loki clone to be out of LOS behind cover to teleport to since I won't need all 3 for healing. I can spare holding onto crystal for myself.

Cycling between all of these options will give dives a very hard time.

As soon as you get into the mindset that you don't need to be constantly always be healing your team, that you don't need to try and get your ult as quickly as possible by spamming your cooldowns to heal every tiny instance of damage instead of saving them for when it's important, to depend on your team to take advantage of cover while you reset yourself, you will be fine. Adjust your position, you don't need to chase your teammates in the open where you are most vulnerable to dive.

Ironfist can hit you out of your invisibility when you try jumping as invis woman. Look for his approach and go invisible before he jumps you. Enemy footsteps and voicelines are typically louder. So if you are unsure, or hear some louder then usual footsteps, you can go invisible and observe. You're teammates can handle you not healing them for a couple seconds.

If they get mad that you have less healing then usual, that's on them for not being able to take cover. I've had those turds in my teams in every rank. So just ignore them and focus on your own survivability, you can't heal anyone when you're dead after-all.

C&D can throw her healing field down and keep it for herself. If you don't have it available and notice a dps wanting to dive you, you can swap to cloak so you can disappear and reposition yourself. Her regular healing and your 2nd support will be enough to keep your front line tank alive in most cases. As long as they aren't running thing straight into punisher-rocket combo.

Those are just a few examples for some of the other support characters.

When I play my 66% winrate ironfist in those games where we have support covered. The hardest matches that I've lost aren't when the enemy team runs anti dive, I can adapt and play around that. What I can't play around though, is when the supports are impossible to kill, even when nobody turns to help them, because their teammates are busy killing my supports instead, If I swap to defending my supports in that scenario, with no pressure on their back line, it becomes a very unfavorable losing scenario where we can't push, we aren't making progress, or are constantly having to fall back.

These are just some general tips that I hope you will be open minded about to help you become a stronger support player. This isn't me saying skill issue, this is advice telling you that you have more options then you might think for those 'oppressive dive characters', and that incorporating them will improve your survivability once you get a hang for it.

[ksanathome]

When I see Iron Fist coming I force Push him away and then go Invisible.

[KumoriKyomu]

Good tips. Also, for anyone trying to get better, you're a strategist, not a healer. Yes, healing is good, and what you should do, but sometimes you have to think outside the box and look out for yourself. Be smart.

[Necessary Evil]

he's wrong, don't listen to him

[JG2thend]

Don't run away from the guy trying to save you is also a good tip.

[Rauf]

Originally posted by Necessary Evil:

he's wrong, don't listen to him

hes saying things that make sense but this post reminds me of spiderman mains putting others down in posts where people ask for spiderman to be nerfed lol

[DoT]

Originally posted by Rauf:

hes saying things that make sense but this post reminds me of spiderman mains putting others down in posts where people ask for spiderman to be nerfed lol

I don't think he deserves a nerf, or at least a very game changing one since there are plenty of characters that can make it very hard for him.

[Dark Consort]

all of this is nice on paper but once in game this is very different and the main issue is cooldowns. SMs are so short that none, even his so called "counters" can't stop him anymore at some point.

If SM fails to kill a support he can just leave then come back immediatly and there is nothing to do

BP is also a very strong diver, but you don't see everyone asking nerfs on him all the time because he actually has risks if he misses, SM not

[Rauf]

in the end like i said as a support you need to rely on your team your character strength doesnt match vanguards or dps because it went into the ability to heal

[Mewsha]

You should care for your backline because they're responsible for your heals.

The roles should be thought of as an ecosystem. If your backline is getting wiped off the map, you're soon to follow. Therefore it's in your best interest to make sure you turn around when you see the Spiderman dive your Luna. It's either that or play something with anti-dive for Vanguard, or play a duelist that naturally sits in the backline and isn't suited for diving.

It's either that or don't complain about heals. For me, when I'm support I'm fine with people not helping me. In fact, I expect it, but I'm also going to put me first, and if I need to use abilities and heals that I was going to use on you to protect myself, I absolutely will, and you may end up deleted as a result.

I do agree that for the most part being a good support is about learning to survive. However you also have to take some personal responsibility. If you want more heals, your supports need to feel safe enough to push up with you. It's as simple as that.

There are matches where you get comp diff'd and it is what it is. There's nothing you can do when you got all dive DPS and dive tanks running into a Groot Peni death trap. We're given the ability to switch in respawn for this reason. If the enemy is running heavy anti-dive, then maybe that's not the match where you're going to get a lot of diving done and if the returns aren't there, why is that still your sole focus?

Dive is extremely strong right now, but it's not without its counters, and in that case the strategy and comp needs to change to meet the demand of the situation unless you're just so much better than the other team that it doesn't matter.

To further talk about why people are saying strategist is horrible, and why some people are trying to organize a strike, it's because they're primary targets that had little to defend themselves to begin with (apart from Invisible Woman), but they got significant nerfs last patch, particularly to their survivability. Making a post about how nobody is going to help you while playing the weakest role is wild, and certainly won't help the situation.

The other issue with dive is it's not fun to have matches be constantly about who can last the longest being knocked around the most by BS in the game like Spiderman, and then to deal with that kind of pressure and get ♥♥♥♥ from your teammates makes it a very unpopular role.

We're in a support shortage right now, and topics like this don't help. Strategists already understand survivability is crucial to their role, it's the entire conversation they've been having since the dive meta emerged, and it recently became a hot topic with the nerfs across the board this season.

[RawwkinGrimmie64]

Had a Lord Magik go 3-7 for n Domination complaining about not getting heals while the entire team was breaking off in three different directions that the backline couldn't follow and none of them were on the objective.

To tell Strategists that they should be fully responsible for defending themselves against divers is going to lead to even more fools like that blaming their healers. There will more Peni Parkers turning their back from a fight to run for a health pack as their healer actively healing them is getting attacked, and more Duelists will demand healing when they are two feet away from a health pack.

While these are all great tips, you should not treat this as if it is a hard and fast mandatory rule. The team needs to be more or less grouped together and everyone needs to be able to assist each other when necessary. Those are the games you will win. Being hung out to dry by your teammates is always going to be a loss.