The Great Support Rework of 2021
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Double support is still a powerful foundation to any comp and Zerocool is the only realistic pick for a solo healer in high levels of play. Now, I stand by the thought process that any hero can work in solo queue. I've had many a success as a solo support playing Azrael, Kulev, or Miko but when it comes to the sweaty matches and customs those three are almost exclusively secondary supports to a Zercool. In this post I will be sharing my thoughts on how to rebalance/rework all the supports to both make them capable of solo healing while simultanesouly weaken double support.
For the most part the name of the game will be to lower the damage they deal across the board, increase the amount they heal across the board, and increase the risk of playing them across the board. For the sake of simplicity we will assume that any bugs and exploits (Azrael's first attack animation parry window for example) are patched out so we are only focusing on balance and changes. Also try to imagine the other problems in this game have been balanced like Makutu dps, cheese, Nid shredding and so on. This post focuses on supports and how to make them work as solo options.
Miko:
-Chain Heal- Increase Chain Heal healing amount by 50%: this will increase her ability to heal allies and herself without completely reverting her self sustain mechanic (casting Chain Heal on herself will heal more than it currently does without healing as much as it used to). This will allow her to heal her allies through massive punishment but still keeping herself squishy.
-Regenerator- Regenerator always heals herself and one ally: increasing her self sustain and overall healing as long as she isn't getting hitstunned.
-Health- Increase health pool to 675 and lower her mod to increase her health pool to 50: this way she has her base health higher without having a mod that brings her up to tank level health and keeping her susceptible to burst damage.
-Life Force- reduce the CD: I don't have a number value in mind but even with these buffs to healing she will need to use Life Force to keep her team alive through massive punishment. While casting she is defenseless so buffing Life Force by being able to cast it more often seems fair.Kulev:
-Sacred Ground- Increase rate of healing by 25%, increase health of Totem by 20%, and remove thr damage aspect: this will outright increase healing and survivability of the Totem and lower Kulev's damage. Although Sacred Ground deals next to no damage per second it adds up over the course of a fight/match.
-Good Omen- increase shield base health by 15% and reduce CD by 2 seconds: the mod that increases the shield health is mandatory for protecting your allies so giving it a small boost, in addition to a CD reduction will increase the amount of damage he can block.
-Curse- add a mod or make it so it has an anti heal aspect: if they take the mod route make it something substantial (40%) and if it becomes part of the base ability make it moderate (15-20%). This way Kulev becomes a counter to double support and his teammates are rewarded for focusing his Curse target since the opposing team would have a hard time healing them.
-Health- decrease the amount his health mod increases his health to 75: Kulev is already the tankiest support so he doesn't need to be capable of having 800 hp. A bigger reduction may be required but to fit with his theme of being tanky I don't think his base health needs any nerfs so instead I think lowering the mod is the best route.
-Supers- CD reduction on both: I don't have a number in mind but allowing him to CC a target a bit more often or use Boon more often would be a nice change and help him contribute in fights.Zerocool:
-Recharge Beam- increase healing while above 50% Recharge Bar by a small amount: this will enable Zerocool to sustain allies through burst as long as the player can manage their Recharge bar. This is also to help justify the nerfs that follow.
-Bot- increase the CD by 5 seconds: I cannot recall the down time that bot is inactive but to me it seems like he has it up very often. The easiest way to nerf Zerocool's dps is to nerf Bot and remember that Zerocool cannot use Basic Attacks while healing so there is no need to nerf his Basic Attacks.
-Defrag- increase healing per second by 50% and reduce the time it takes to activate by 2 seconds: this will allow Zerocool to heal himself as long as he isn't being constantly pressured. He does a decent job of healing himself with the mod Dual Bus while taking low damage but his passive rarely makes a difference and needs some serious buffs if he is to solo support with these other changes.
-Heath- lower his health pool to 675 and decrease his health mod to 75: this will substantially lower his survivability and is the justification for buffs to his healing and self healing. The mod Speed Run makes Zerocool pretty slippery but I don't think it needs nerfs, instead make him easier to kill once he gets caught.Azrael:
-Guardian- Increase healing per second by 12% and increase the amount Soul Eater stacks buff healing to 9%: Guardian is very inconsistent but this is mostly a "player skill" problem. By increasing the base healing his ability to heal in between fights will improve and buffing the amount each stack of Soul Eater increases Guardian's healing will help highly skilled players solo heal effectively.
-Soul Eater- reduce the damage per second down to 3 damage per stack and increase the self healing by 3 health per stack: Azrael flat out deals TONS of damage, by reducing the damage Soul Eater deals Azrael players won't be as scary in duels/team fights. By increasing the amount of self healing Soul Eater provides Azrael won't have to rely on residual healing from another support.
-Basic Attacks- reduce the damage the first attack animations damage by 25%: people spam this attack (for good reason) so if it gets easier to parry this will only help higher skilled players so a damage nerf seems to be in order as well. He is supposed to be a support after all.
-Health- reduce base health to 675 and reduce his health mod to 75: this will prevent him from having tank tier health while still making the mod a decent option. Additionally he is one of two supports with an escape so he really shouldn't have more health than Miko who has no escape unless she invests mods.
-Chrysalis- decrease CD by 25% and buff the amount it heals by 50%: people have only ever gotten success with Chryalis for damage and even then you have to get cheeky and fly above the fight to get it off without the shield getting broken. By increasing the healing players will want to use it to save allies and by reducing the CD it becomes a viable option.The supports that dealt the most damage lost the most damage (Kulev and Azrael). Everyone got some sort of healing buff. The supports with escapes lost durability (Zercool and Azrael) while the squishiest support that lacked an escape (Miko) gained some durability. So if you were to run double support with these changes your team would deal a fraction of the damage a more traditional team comp would deal while also being susceptible to burst damage. A Daemon air combo followed up by a Maeve Cage and Drain would kill any of these heroes even if they had a second support trying to save them or at least force the team running double support to heavily invest CD's to save an ally.
Obviously this isn't perfect and anyone can play the "but, if, when, how" prediction game so for the most part my intention is to create team diversity without instituting a "role lock" system to force a single team comp formation (double damage, solo support, solo tank for example).
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About Azriel, i agree in buff but only like 6 or 7% healing, this abilty is pruposed to gain more value in healing for each soul stack deal.
Soul eater shoul only be buff in terms of ensure more his self healing, soul eater already give a decent healing when you get like 3 stacks in each enemy.
Now his health doesn`t need to be changed,mainly nerfed because he badly can hold a fight alone,imagine if reduce his health, woulbe obrigate more two supps with him.
And one thing is,idk if already is possible without the mod buff healing, but buff void wave for give some small buff healing woulb help a lot.
Chirysalis a could have some buff, but less 25% of CD and more 50% of healing is too much for a super like that.
About Kulev, just his passive healing for ally woulb be thinking for buff.
His Good Omen is already annoying to fight against, in maximun reduce CD to 1s woulb be enought.
His Sacred Ground better increase only his range and a little of Totem´s health,the healing is already decent for a lazzy support. -
I would also add that the explosion time of Chrysalis needs to be significantly reduced so that the zone can be escaped with only two dashes from its center, and one dash from the middle. Now it is so slow that Gizmo walks out with a calm step, without stopping shooting.
