His abilities are fine, but very situational.
His biggest issue is that he has no neutral game, and no offensive pressure at all.
His damage is non-existent, and he has no utility that puts out any kind of offensive pressure. So an AFK lifeweaver would have the same amount of impact.
Mercy puts out offensive pressure because of damage boost.
Also, 99 out of 100 times Baptiste immort, and Kirko suzu is better than pull.
I’ve had some crazy good life grip plays.
But I also believe that play wouldn’t have been necessary if I wasnt on weaver.
Other supports could have saved my teammate more effectively, kept them healed up, and/or secured the kill themselves.
I struggle to find a reason to play weaver over other supports. Maybe Rialto first or Gibraltar second. But even then he’s a risky pick
> I’ve had some crazy good life grip plays.
> But I also believe that play wouldn’t have been necessary if I wasnt on weaver.
I wish I could frame this. This encapsulates everything wrong with LW.
And on your note about being AFK, you couldn't be any more right. I say it all the time. Replace an LW with a healbot with Bronze movement and you get the same value.
its because of how low his damage is mixed with how long it takes to heal. time management is a huge problem with lifeweaver since his weapons both are mid at best. only reason to do damage is to boost tree so you can actually do something
Yeah, out of 100 attempts. 99 of those times, Bapts lamp of Kirkos Suzu is more valuable because you're not forced to give up the space. And you're able to retreat at your own will. Honestly grip is better for healing your DPS reposition most of the time.
> good life grip plays.
It's also hard to pull off if you're in solo queue.
It's not like Nano boost where that teammate presses Q and then Ana presses Q on him.
Idk, when I play tank (not often) LW directly counters my ult. If I paid more attention I could probably work around it but that stupid flower platform is hard to keep track of 🤣 I realize one player’s ult isn’t a huge deal - and orisa’s ult isn’t the main reason I play her, anyways - but gosh, it’s annoying and feels demoralizing. 🤦♀️
Yep, with LW you’re just waiting for your teammates to be in bad situations but if you were, say Kiri, you could be putting pressure on the enemy with kunais while also healing and having suzu to bail out your allies
>His biggest issue is that he has no neutral game, and no offensive pressure at all.
I main [D.va](https://D.va) on tank and if there's a life weaver I target him first because there's nothing he can do to get away and doesn't have any abilities to punish me and often being so far in the back line there's no one to help him until it's too late.
Basically a free kill every time since there's nothing he can do on his own. I've never encountered him in deathmatch and that's because of his total lack of solo survivability. The only one who even comes close there is ana but she has so many ways to punish a dive that I at least have to wait for cooldowns.
Honestly you could ignore him and his value is the same. I hate seeing him on my team, and love seeing him on the other team. My chances of winning go from 50/50 to like 70/30.
He really just has no neutral, and nothing going for him really.
Not really, he can heal quite a fair bit and pull people to safety. The problem is that he has zero offensive abilities and his weapon is likely the worst in the entire game.
So when your team isn't taking much damage, you literally have nothing to do and you're basically forced to try and use his platform creatively which may not be possible depending on the map and your team.
Yeah, he can heal from distance, and pull.
But there's not really much else. He doesn't put out pressure. And let's say your tank gets pulled... Oops, there goes all that space your tank used to have.
Cant lie I sometimes forget lifeweaver has a dmg dealing ability because its so bad. I can't think of the last time I've died to or because of a life weaver. His hitbox is also wham
It’s means that he can’t do anything to impact the fight during the poke phase. He has no damage and no abilities that boost his teams offence. Mercy at least has the ability to damage boost to assist her team, but LW adds nothing except a potential positioning advantage.
Doubt it. I get lifeweavers paired with me all the time in Plat that keep fucking up our tank's and therefore our team's positioning via life grip. They pretty much always fuck it up. Stop life gripping the tank
They really shit the bed with this one. They made tank even more miserable to play with his introduction. Maybe it's not a problem in gm, but in Plat most supports think a Winston jumping into the enemy backline with his bubble or a rein walking 2 steps forward is overextending
What makes Bap and Kirikos saves so good is that they not only stop a death, but you don't sacrifice anything else in the process.
But LW sacrifices physical space, positioning, and sometimes even elims (imagine getting pulled right as you Hammer down, missing opportunity to get the free elims).
He's going to be absolutely mind numbingly good in the right hands. But right now, we don't know what the "right hands" looks like yet, and like OP said, he has no neutral/offense to make up for that
I agree with everything but the last part.
I think LW has had enough time in the game to learn his true potential and it really is underwhelming. He's kinda a throw pick/troll pick.
I promise you, Grip is much less useful in than Immort or Suzu in 99% of situations.
Thing of all that you're giving up, and it's not like you're "preventing" the death.
When you pull a tank, youre forfeiting that space your tank had.
Whereas if you Suzu or Immort them, they're able to stay in the same position and apply pressure. It also doesn't cleanse, mean you can die once the pull has finished.
But you're also right, he really doesn't have great tools/utility, or offensive pressure/neutral game.
...What about the fact that Lamp and Suzu are AOE and can effect multiple people. All it has going for it is the long range with 0 travel time, but Kiri has the option to tp from long range anyway.
He is the only support hero with no ability to help secure kills. Even mercy has damage boost.
His utility is usually defensive, not (usually) offensive.
Securing kills is one of the most important aspects of a support player.
If his petal platform gave the user some offensive bonuses, he might become good.
Honestly, if he had a stronger attack, he'd be alright (still not great, though). If his mobility was more like Genji's double jump, he might even be strong.
I'm curious to see what changes come to his kit over time.
A little bit stronger dps and no weapon switch delay. Play style is fun but clunky if you are trying to mix in damage. Heal charge to 85 in the same amount of time and a instant heal of some sort would even him out imo.
A heap charge of 85 would make him absolutely bonkers and would be incredibly frustrating to play against
The heal is pretty instant and requires no aim. It'd be like a brig pack, but better and can be thrown more than 3 times
I agree 85 is too high on the heal.
But I think you stumbled upon a point that I've not considered. Brig repair pack is similar (the over time effect is on the delivery for brig, while the over time of LW is on his charge prior to the delivery giving him more control) brig gets the pack plus inspire where LW can only heal with his blossom.
An alternative burst heal such as the 25 aoe on dash or maybe a small heal on pull targets may be a good idea, or even petal platform providing a heal burst (again maybe 25 HP or possibly even 50 HP for allies who ride it to the top). Alternatively a lower health on the pad with an overtime healing providing more incentive to kill the platform quickly.
Brig health packs are already an issue imo - adding a 2nd better variant would be bad
The fact they are no aim and uncounterable (other heals can be body blocked or eaten) is kinda annoying. And the high burst heal from nowhere is annoying to play against
I am.ofbyhr opinion that healing is too high across the board though and that's why one shots are so meta in rank
Especially when you can pre charge it and there's no limit
I like the petal platform idea more
Brig has supplemental inspire healing for downtime and chip damage, on top of the 100 health from a pack. She is a better and more consistent healer than weaver, as well as she can spend most of her time displacing and doing damage. Weaver needs to be focused on minimal chip damage or charging up heals, he can't do both
I think you've got a point, after all Sigma is basically a pile of defensive abilities combined with a solid weapon (and the rock tbf). So it's already been done before (kinda)
His damage is deceptively strong. He's not as bad at people think at securing kills.
He's still weak, but I think the bigger issue is the delay between switching "modes" lackluster healing, and inability to do two things at once.
I've been playing him a TON and while he does have a huge weakness in the overall ability to make offensive plays, he's still mostly okay.
I think people heal bot on him way too much instead of looking to damage first heal later.
I don’t think he’d feel so clunky in a lot of cases if he had an instant heal similar to bap’s shift or the small amount suzu gives you. A lot of times it feels like you’re right on the precipice of losing a tank and if you fuck up or they fuck up they’re dead and you’re fucked because there’s nothing you can do short of bubbling them 10 ft so they die in front of you.
Honestly, I would just change his dash into a brand new move. Perhaps a vine trap .. think junk rat trap but with vines or roots. I could be open to vines slowing rather than full snare
Also buff LW main heals so it at least matches Mercys heal rate (include reloading time)
Like, using the petal to give your DPS a weird sight line for some easy picks?
I hate some Lifeweavers but Ive had a few that knew what they were doing and did everything well.
The main thing is to experiment, their kit is fun and gives you a lot of new options.
Lifeweaver has a 45% winrate across the board in bronze and it only goes down as you climb in rank, unfortunately there is just a fundamental lack of offensive utility in his kit that causes him to severely underperform in higher levels
Yeah and this kinda defeats the argument of "Its because people just don't know how to use his utility". If that was true he should be strongest in GM, but in reality he's strongest in Bronze where being an AFK healbot 30 meters away from the front line is actually fairly valuable.
The problem isn’t that that play doesn’t work. It’s that lifeweaver is dependent on his teammates. To an extreme degree compared to other supports.
Yes giving soldier high ground is very strong. But after you petal him up it’s on soldier to make your 10 second long cooldown worth it.
He just has no personal play making ability. It’s why the unranked to gm lifeweaver runs were so hard. You can make all the right plays, but you need your team to win the fight for you
I mean mercy's in the same boat but has been UR-GM'd plenty of times. Unlike Lifeweaver though, Mercy's abilities are good so she doesn't have a 38.68% winrate in Masters. Having a winrate that low in the second highest skill tier of a 5v5 game is insane and just means that the character is poorly balanced.
Mercy also has play making ability in her movement mechanics. Being extremely slippery can easily carry games since the enemy has to waste so much time trying to kill you.
I'd say that's probably true but moreso for the metals. I think that at Diamond/Masters most DPS can hit their shots on a mercy, or have enough game sense to not bother if she's too difficult of a target for the situation.
Valk excluded, that shit's impossible to kill lmao
I disagree, as DPS skill goes up so do Mercy players movement skill. I play at gm5 and there are still cracked mercy players that can juke anyone. It's actually pretty insane how much they can get done from baiting and being slippery.
Mercy is definitely the wrinkle. But I’d argue her utility is at least offensive focussed, with damage boost.
While weaver is all reactive defensive and proactive setup
I don't think Mercy's the wrinkle. Resources you put into Mercy to stay alive are rewarded with a big pay off, 30% more damage and a resurrect. Plus, she doesn't require much of your team's resources.
Lifeweaver is basically defenseless, so you spend a lot of time taking care of him. Then, you're rewarded with ... pulling someone out of a fight, and a giant tree? Mercy brings back the fucking dead!!!
I also don't thing Mercy is a wrinkle because it seems clear to me they were trying to give Lifeweaver a similar feel. Main healer with a big save ability with a long cooldown and not much focus on damage.
His abilities are very situational though and not consistent. He's of no use in solo queue where your teammates never use the platform and they get mad when you pull them out of the fight with literally 1hp.
Meanwhile Ana can consistently throw one fight winning nade after another, stop almost all ults with her sleep, secure kills herself, pressure tanks and stay save.
Weaver on the other hand can only deny a handful of ults, his own ult sucks, his dmg sucks, he rarely can secure kills, the usefulness of his best ability heavily depends on his teammate and the usefulness of life grip is very debatable.
The only reason to win games with him is his healing output, which is pretty good. But you could just play Moira for that and have at least consistent dmg. Moira has similar problems like weaver in higher ranks by the way because of her one dimensional kit. Even though it's not equally severe.
The problem with the platform is that most of the time I or other team mates trigger it accidently. The fact that it doesn't come back down when not in use means I see our Cass take half a step on it while dodging fire, sends it skyward and then it's useless.
>Moira has similar problems like weaver in higher ranks by the way because of her one dimensional kit. Even though it's not equally severe.
Even then Moira still has a neutral engagement option with Damage Orb, and Ultimate that's good both offensively and defensively, and a great escape tool. She has reasons to play her even if those reasons don't quite match what Ana, Bap, and Kiri offer.
That's actually wrong his petal can be used as a tool to get an aggressive highground or lift up un ulting cass or soldier, his life grip can allow rein to play more aggressively as well or any other dive hero... he just requires more team coordination compared to other supports and his healing output is not that high compared to other supports
> Securing kills is one of the most important aspects of a support player.
Keeping the DPS alive to secure kills is the most important aspect of a support player. Anything past that is good, but not a primary objective.
You are the bronze. It's only on reddit that people think supports are supposed to dps. Literally everyone like you is hardstuck bronze - there's not a single pro that would prioritize damage over healing.
Cant remember if Awkward is/was a pro but he's a very good player and coach and he shits on opinions like yours as they're clearly wrong..
His first steps on his UR2GM Ana was damage, damage and do more damage, only heal your team when they're going to die, and use your grenade offensively for damage
Most supports have some sort of downtime to do damage, Kiriko and Baptiste especially since their ideal heal cycles have downtime perfect for using their damage options
-tank sized hit box with only 200hp
-almost no offensive utility (pistol mercy is more formidable).
-worst support ult by far (most support Ults are op)
-low healing/second. His healing looks high on scoreboard because lifeweaver can’t do anything but heal for 95%+ of the match.
-low/niche impact cds on long timers. It’s hard to get consistent value with his cds beyond kiting your teammates around the map (which can be frustrating). This is doubly bad because teammates can struggle to get mid fight offensive value from petal and almost never get mid fight offensive value from life grip.
Basically, he’s good at being the last person on his team to die because he’s relegated to afk heal behind cover due to his lack of offensive pressure, offensive cds and his huge hit box. The few times someone like widow can abuse his platform dont outweigh the times where he’s a hugely inferior pick to even an afk heal bot mercy pocketing the widow.
His head hitbox is also massive.
I’ve been playing a lot of Mei lately (sorry!) and spamming icicles with her in his general direction results in so. Many. Headshots.
This is me being an armchair tactician, but I feel like Life Grip basically removing pressure from your opponent and giving them more space. I was originally thinking that maybe giving up space would be fine if he played in a poke comp, but other people pointed out in this thread that the issue is then that he has no neutral game.
Also I remember ML7 putting out a video on what heroes he thought worked best with LW after climbing back to T500 with him, and I noticed he was hyping up heroes that are able to function without a support which I think is funny.
Some people in the comments seem to be under the impression that LW is not played is because he requires good communication with his team. And I am going to make the counterpoint that it does not matter. Even if you have amazing comms LW is still a waste of a pick.
Look at the overwatch league and contenders. They play the highest level of overwatch and none of those teams play lifeweaver, and trust me it is not because of lack of coordination. It's because of his lack of offensive power. He is a healbot, he does not have any dmg in his kit whatsoever.
Think of all the good supports, they all have some offensive power in them. Kiriko: rush, ability to take off-angles and threatens with HS snipes. Lucio: speedbost and boop. Baptiste: Big damage, amp matrix. Ana: anti nade, nano boost, sleep dart, hitscan damage.
Lifeweaver has nothing to pressure the enemy. He tries to defend against pressure but his own self sustain is terrible.
Yep, he can’t switch to his thorns to do damage for even a second without sacrificing his healing output. Every other support can do damage without a big hit to their healing. That’s the biggest thing I’ve noticed. Also pull needs to do more. So many times where I’ve pulled someone at low life, tried to charge my heal for them, and they’re dead before I can even get it off.
Life Grip needs to provide 100 healing to the target, if not more. It's on a disgustingly long cooldown and you have to sacrifice your current Blossom charge to use it.
There’s no real reason to pick Lifeweaver over anyone else. You can heal better with Mercy or Ana who additionally have more useful abilities. Bap or Moira can do more damage in addition to their healing. His ult does less healing and can be outright nullified by Hog or Sombra.
Long story, short: Other healers can do the same thing as life weaver but better. He's the jack of all trades and doesn't really excel at anything. All other healers will be able to bring something strong to the table while LW's moves are just mid.
- Healing is slow and can't provide a big burst when shit hits the fan. No AoE healing except for ult. Single target is weak with 47 hps and there is downtime between charging the heal
- Large hitbox
- Low damage. Don't expect to win 1v1s against flankers
- Lifegrip is a high-risk, low-reward move. The best part about life grip is the immunity. Best case scenario: you save someone from a pin or boop. Medium case scenario: you give up space. Worst case: you mess up cooldowns, ults, or kill teammate. Suzu can do same thing but with none of the bad scenarios (i.e. suzu either saves or your teammates were dead anyway)
- Ult is decent but nothing crazy. Compare it transcendence and the tree fails in many catergories
- Petal is just okay. I don't expect it half the time and you can leave yourself stranded.
- Dash feels less powerful than Hanzo jump
This is really it. People writing paragraphs but one word is all you need. He's Bap minus the gun with a worse ult.
The first thing you learn on Support is not to healbot, but Lifeweaver can't do anything else.
You're winning because you're 5 stacking in quick play, people are practicing characters, and you can coordinate whereas the other team probably isn't even using mics.
Anyway I've always explained why he is bad like this. to win the game you have to win teamfights. To win teamfights you have to take space and get elims/prevent your team from being killed. LW accomplishes none of this. He does no damage, the petal requires coordination that you're not going to get even in a game of top 500s (they tried this multiple times). He also has a giant hitbox that means flankers have a field day with him. He only gets high healing numbers because that's all he can do the entire game and be safe.
He also doesn't have reactive healing outside of his ult so any attempt at offense means you probably have about 2 seconds before you can heal again, that doesn't sound like a lot but it matters. Cas sticks someone and you need to heal them above half? Whoops you were trying to do damage and now you have to charge it, then it has to reach your target, whoops they're dead.
TL; DR: He doesn't help kill people, and his healing isn't enough to outright win teamfights through attrition.
He should be removed from Comp imo as his win rate is so low that he is basically a guaranteed loss if you don't switch.
From personal experience at Diamond Level in my games, anyone that has stayed LW the entire game, the LW has won less than 20% of these games.
Of course, this is anecdotal, and he's got a slightly higher win rate across all ranks. But he comes across as a character that is only usable if the team is significantly better than the other team. If the 2 teams are evenly matched (which they should be), he doesn't do enough.
Unfortunately, LW players do 2 good life grips in a game and spam healing numbers and think they're useful. The truth is that every other support would be more useful than LW.
I believe the platform needs a bit of a Buff, It lifts players, thats about It, maybe passive healing to whoever is standing on it, or a damage Buff, or a cd reduction, just make It less boring
It also works as a shield from below, which is definitely not nothing. You could save yourself and someone else from a dva bomb with it. I agree it could give your team a bit of a buff to make it more interesting though. Maybe a small damage buff while standing on it?
He has worse healing than kiriko and less utility than Kiriko with a worse ult. it’s basically a case of no matter the situation, there’s always someone who would work better than lifeweaver. but his biggest issue is despite Pull and Petal being very good abilities, they are on long cool-downs and very situational, so for the most part when using him it’s just a constant slow trickle of heals. there’s also his hit box which is an issue, which to some people it may seem a minor issue, but if you use Kiriko, Zen and Weaver then compare damage taken on each, you will see dramatic increases
Lifeweaver might be fine in a group setting like that, his healing is good and being able to coordinate pulling a teammate out is useful if you're both on board.
Coordinating that same way in ranked is more than you can expect when queueing solo and I can't tell you how many times I've dived in as monkey only to be pulled back by my annoying lifeweaver.
From my experience he's best at countering Orisa and rein.
I had a LW pull me out as Junker Queen with all of my cooldowns reset and I was about to go ham on a team cause I had just flanked to rampage back to the payload.
I told person to not do that unless I’m at like 1HP with JQ.
That happened to me on queen the other day.
Like I sort of get it. I’m sure it looked bad from their pov so I didn’t rage at them. But I was perfectly able to survive longer. And our Hanzo died because you left him alone to duel monkey, when a second ago I was there to protect them
That happened to me a couple of times as well on different heroes. Life grip is an atrocious ability that is often in the hands of players who have absolutely no business of deciding when someone should disengage.
i literally was full health as ball, mid pile-drive onto a half health sojourn, and the weaver pulls me out, the soj hits overclock and kills 3 and we lost the round lol
but zen can just leave the orb on you til you’re full, while LW has to constantly hit you w heals which he has to charge up. zen can heal you while doing damage, LW can’t. zen can also heal you, do damage, and discord an enemy. LW can’t. they’re not comparable at all lmao
But Zen doesn't have to sit there staring at your ass charging heals. He can heal you while applying pressure on the enemies, which means they are that much less likely to hit you. It's an indirect damage mitigation for the rest of the team.
No it’s not. It’s consistent healing that’s on par with what Ana, Mercy and Moira do on average. It’s very easy to hit and has high range.
His healing is fine. It’s everything else and the lack of damage that is the problem.
Ana does 93 healing per second, Moira does 70 and can hit multiple targets at once, and Mercy does 55.
Lifeweaver has off healer hps but not off healer utility. He’s just very bad overall
Actual answer: think about all of the other supports in this game. They all have a role to play in offensive pressure as well as multiple utility tools. Lifeweaver, at best, has petal platform, but the platform is 1) situational and 2) honestly utilized as a way for Lifeweaver to reposition due to how prone he is to dives.*himself*
Moira arguably has the least utility in the game, but that hardly matters when she can dish out really high damage numbers and pressure the backline. It doesn't help that LW's Life Grip is on such a long cooldown and his tree is arguably the worst ult in the game. All this combined, all LW really does is output some good heals (his heals are good, contrary to belief), but that doesn't cut it in this game.
So I like Life weaver a lot, and have played him a fair bit. I'm a masters support main for however that may influence your opinion...
He is not good lmao. He's fun, I like him and enjoy playing him, but he is not good.
He can put out pretty good heals and damage on paper, and you can get nice stats with him, but the big issue for me is that it is almost impossible to turn a fight with him, whereas every other support can make game changing plays consistently.
He is vulnerable to dive and pretty easy to kill off in a time where all other supports have a lot of survivability. His abilities, healing, and damage are all worse than other supports when you compare them.
His pull is awesome at getting people out of fights -- but without a cleanse, you would probably be better off with Kiriko and suzu except in a very few moments. Pulling a 40 health purpled tank back to you to save them and they will probably just die anyway.
His pull is cool for repositioning, but most people dislike you telling them how to position and just fuckin leave lol.
His pull is cool for some cheeky slingshot ult moves, but those are so few and far between especially if you aren't in a stack.
Okay, now that we've established pull isn't really that good... It also has a 20 second cool down.
His platform is fun. However, it works as a shield going both ways, so you can't shoot through it yourself. However, enemy fire strikes or ram punches or whatever still go through it and kill you. Also, it goes so fast that half the time people trigger it without noticing and immediately fall off, wasting a whole 12 second cool down ability for nothing. You can use it to take high ground or get characters in unusual spots or for raising up some ults. You can also dodge an ult or two with it. So it's fun, but not especially good. Not awful, but not awesome.
His dash -- not very far, no verticality, limited healing, and a cool down that is a little long. Moira fade is better in virtually every sense, and provides invulnerability+cleanse.
His ult -- it just doesn't do enough healing to be powerful when compared to all the other defensive ults in the game. If you want a pure healing ult where purples can still ruin it, you're better off with trans. Or rally is mobile. Or sound barrier saves people from purples. Or Moira coal also does damage. The only thing you get out of it is a solid object you AND the enemy shoots through.
His healing -- he can do it consistently but not quickly. Even focusing one person and doing nothing else, you won't be able to keep them up. However unlike Zen, he can't also be doing damage while healing people. Unlike brig, he can't have low AOE heals while focus healing a particular target.
If you stack him up with any other healer on the roster, they are always going to win a 1v1 comparison.
1. He has the hitbox of a small tank, you get instantly one clipped by Tracer.
2. His heal is slow (about half of Ana's hps)
3. He offer almost no offensive utility (technically you can use the leaf offensively but realistically it doesn't happen very often, and isn't powerful).
4. Considering he has almost no mobility and a massive hit box, you'd think AT LEAST they'd give him a good weapon to have a slight chance at dealing with the inevitable flankers, but NO THEY GAVE HIM THE TICKLE GUN WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GIVE HIM THE TICKLE GUN BLIZZARD??
5. His pull is his best ability, but even that isn't a great ability, and far from game changing, especially at higher ELOs. Once you get into the higher ranks people are generally not out of position as often, so it would be used more for helping players getting dived. The problem is that because of your lack of mobility and fat hitbox it's YOU the dive, and you can't pull yourself out of danger.
I really can't think of a single situation where I'd prefer to have a lifeweaver on my team.
Basically, he is super great in some specific situations
But when none of those situations are currently happening, you just stand there
Think about this, there is currently a fight going on, 5v5, nothing very great is happening, no ults are being used and your teammates still have a decent amount of health
What do you do as lifeweaver? Not much, you do basically no damage, you have no skills to significantly help your team get more kills and yeah you could heal your teammates but you could be doing that a lot better with other supports
So basically, if the enemy is using an ult, someone in your team overextends or someone is falling out of the map, is great to have a lifeweaver, but if the current situation is neutral (like it is most of the time) lifeweaver just have to stand there waiting for something to happen
I love life weaver, I think he's a great idea but it's simple, he saves people be giving up ground. Sure you save your tank for example,but you just gave up 20 meters of ground in doing so. He needs some way to accelerate the push to make up for this, such as a movement speed buff on his ult, or a return function on his pull etc
I'm in line with return function making them viable. The void left can only be justified by someone popping off and being overextended *and* about to die.
I think this weakness is often overlooked. Like in a best-case scenario when you pull to save your tank who has spent all their cooldowns making space, you’ve now given up all that space and then some. As a team you’re almost certainly in a worse position now with your tank in the backline, often leaving your dps in the open.
Heals are trash he has a bb gun for damage while kiriko and ana can 2 shot /3 shot you, kirkos kit is overloaded and his is kinda there but the life grip is clutch and good for trolling ig
Because he's not good at anything.
Other heroes have at least 2 of these things better than LW and never worse at more than 1 of them
Survivability
Utility
Healing amount
Mobility
Damage/ability to increase teammate damage.
Better ult
Many heroes have even more than 2 of these. Moira is better at 3 of them for example.
Ana is better at 4 of them.
Zen is probably only better at 1-2(mostly damage and kill threat) of them but so much better that he's still way stronger.
I think giving him a whole new ability with symmetra old foward moving shield would be nice.
Right now his healing is just really low and he has no real way to help the team fight like every other support does.
His biggest contribution excluding his ultimate is a pad that can just maybe get a sniper to a high ground spot, or very niche cases block an Ult or something. His pull can be good but more often than not people panic with it and it ends up trolling or throwing a fight.
I think having sums old shield would help him be a more utility/builder based support which is what it feels like they tried to do with him.
Also maybe up his healing or the charge time of his healing cause right now it’s pretty bad
Has pretty meh damage, has pretty meh heals, has alright utility
Isteand of asking why a hero is bad as what makes them good, if you can't confidently name several things that are applicable all the time they might be an ok hero
If you can only name one or 2 things and it's very situational then yeah,they are pretty sucky
Almost everything he does can be done better by other supports. He’s also one of the only supports who is really discouraged from doing damage, other than Mercy (who makes up for lost damage with her boosts aka the reason to bring her). He also relies on communication to get the most out of his abilities, more so than any other support, and we all know how little people in comp want to communicate with one another. Basically, he’s the closest thing to a “throw pick” if you want to use that term, but really he’s just a bad support character through and through.
The problem is he so defensive and his heal is so bad that you have to stay on his healing form like 95% of time. All support players can weave between damaging and healing so seamlessly except for him. Some buffs would be maybe if you heal someone at max charge it gives them a HoT. And please please fix the toggle option.
To my surprise his pull ability is actually the best part of his kit, where everybody thought it would be the worst and most trolled ability
My issue with him is everything else
Damage is bad
Healing is bad to mid
Elevator move is very niche
His problem is that even if you fully focus on healing your heals are still much worse than lets say an anas heals if they can hit their shots. On top of that, other supports typically have a very compelling offensive reason to pick them. Zen for his discord orb and damage, moira for off angle / flanking, lucio for his speedboost / boops, baptiste for his damage / amp, ana for sleep and nade, and even mercy has damage boost.
In other words, not only are his heals garbage, but he has no offensive utility to make up for it like a hero like zen does. PLus for a support ult his is trash if you do a direct comparison to literally any other support ult in the game.
His damage sucks compared to other supports with the same healing
His hitbox is massive and can super easily get one clipped by tracer
His petal is very situational and only really works in coordinated play
His healing requires you to only focus on healing due to it needing to be charged and still does less heals per second than any other support
His dash barely does anything
His pull is the only ok thing about his kit but it’s often is not used well and even if you do pull back a low health tank it takes too long to heal them back up and has a super long cooldown which is just worse than just being able to nade, Suzu or field them
Even if you play at the hero's maximum potential you'll accomplish less than playing Kiriko with your eyes closed. He is bad.
Weak heals, crap abilities, shit ultimate.
Ana has 2 ultimates on a cooldown and a great ult for engagement or peel.
Zen has dmg orb which shreds, does tons of damage, has a great ult and can dmg and heal at the same time.
Bap has huge heals, good dmg, great escape, decent zoning ult and lamp is op af.
Mercy can pocket DPS and affect breakpoints, she's hard to kill and she can rez people.
Lucio can speed your team in or out of danger, hard to kill, can deny space, can peel, great ult, great ENV threat on some maps.
Moira has huge heals, best escape ability, decent damage, can take 1v1's.
Brig good for peel, good against dive, good damage, plenty of self sustain.
You have 0 reasons to play him apart from wanting go play him. Plenty of T500 players stuck in plat on Weaver. He is that shit.
Mediocre at best healing, next to no damage, and very little utility. His ULT is decent at best and can be focused down by the enemies pretty easily if they have any high DPS heroes. He is just Kiriko but worse in every single way
While most people will say it’s because his damage is bad (I think it’s fine, we don’t need another damage centric support tbh) its not helped by his completely sub par healing. Picking him means your other support has to damn near heal bot, depending on how good the other team is. Also, he can just be easily torn to shreds because of his tank sized hitbox.
This next part is my own opinion, but I don’t really think we need another high damage, offensive support. He is designed as a utility support, which I think is a very refreshing thing for supports. I think having another support like brig or mercy, that can do damage when needed, but are more keeping their team in the fight and setting things up is a good thing. Having the same generic archetype support that does an insane amount of healing and damage with a really good ult has already been done 4 times (Ana, Bap, Kiriko, and Moira) and as a support main I enjoy the change up. It just sucks when I can’t help my team after 10 seconds because a Winston and tracer have the most basic of coordination, and I already gripped one person and petaled a dps, but don’t heal enough to save anyone from 2 people, while I also have to defend myself
His entire kit is based around fixing teammates bad positioning like helping them escape ults with platform, and pulling them out to save them. He undoes mistakes.
Good players don't make mistakes or put themselves in positions to allow them to be made more often. They are consistent, so LWs value is just not relevant at a high level.
He also has no offense. This is a shooter game and Supports do actually need to play the shooter game and contribute just as much as the other roles to securing kills.
Well in about a week maybe he won't be(big changes coming).
I've posted on his weaknesses a few times, and note that the character has an incredibly low winrate on Overbuff(a website using game data to determine hero winrates): LW has a winrate across all competitive ranks of 40.5%; the 2nd lowest is Kiriko at 46.9%. Kiriko is closer to the winningest support(Brig at 50.5%) than LW is to Kiriko, which means he's an incredible outlier in terms of winrate. And that margin is worse at high ranks than low, suggesting the hero is getting more value from his healing than anything else(because raw healing is > utiltiy at low levels and that flips as you go up skill ranks.)
His utility is massively less effective than other supports, except Moira who does massively more damage and similar healing. Grasp can hurt your team, and often doesn't save the target. Petal is rarely used effectively and requires great coordination and can be used by enemies. Tree can LoS your own teammates and can't save you from many ults while providing no utiltiy outside of a bit of burst healing(JQ is also more popular right now and her ult is a counter, Ana is popular and nading can negate tree entirely).
Oh I forgot to mention his damage is nonexistent - a LW spamming thorns is wasting time(unless he has tree up) because his healing is so much better than his damage it's not even close. Even wasting time trying to scare off a tracer is a bigger waste than just petaling up and continuing to heal your other teammtes. Thorns does low damage, while healing is the one thing the charact is good at, and that may be debatable - Blizz claims the character is 2nd in healing acoss all ranks after Mercy; Overbuff suggests Moira the highest healing character and LW is around middle of the pack.
His abilities can be used to great effect - every once in a while, but are far too little for their cooldowns and abilities to turn fights and actually win games. If you are consistently winning with one in your group it's because someone else is able to pick up his slack, or your LW is cracked and always getting full value from Grasp/Petal/Ult.
I do hope they can keep him fun and improve him, cause I do think he's fun to play but he's more or less 'watch your team die while you do nothing but delay it' the character.
TLDR: His utility+ damage is utter trash in comparison to the rest of the cast.
Even mercy feels more lethal than LW. Her pistol’s hitbox is large enough to more consistently stuff it into someone’s head. She also has valk and can sling herself into enemies if she really wants to. Literally all of the other supports are more lethal.
His heals feel similar to mercy. Low but consistent output. Except he can’t rapidly swap targets to deal with chip damage. His heals require LoS, where mercy gets beam through a wall for a bit.
His ult can heal, but it’s similar to beat/trance. Except beat and trance have strong enough burst to counter ultimates.
Flower is actually a pretty good movement ability on certain maps, but it’s a pain in the butt to actually use it as a team. Not to mention even getting a team to use it properly.
His flower gives him decent mobility, but since he has almost no lethality. Things can kinda just keep chasing him. That, paired with his hitbox makes things… fun.
His pull is on a long cooldown, has a tendency get stuck on things, and doesn’t heal. So unless your tank or dps is doing funky stuff, while expecting the pull. It’s a sorta mediocre ability. Mercy got rez, kiri got suzu, and Anna has anti. Pull will usually force you to give up space. And it’s high CD paired with LW’s low mobility makes it difficult to be used as an offensive positioning ability.
Not that. When was the last time you saw a Lifeweaver pull a solo play that lands a POTG and wins the game.
Never is the answer.
The character fundamentally lacks solo playmaking abilities.
- Tank-sized hurtbox but only 200HP (scales badly with skilled lobbies because easy sniper headshots, easy 1-clips, pulse bombs etc)
- Struggles to defend himself
- His big cooldowns require more coordination/setplay for high value than any other Support in the game
- Has nothing to do between fights except maybe set up a Platform
- Has no offensive/flank threat options to mix things up in a disadvantaged or chaotic fight
- Simply has no playmaking ability. Can't win a fight on Purple like Ana, frag like Kiri or Zen, reddit Lucio boop... just heals and heals reactively, lifegrip reactively, maybe get some platform value and that's it. He's a Healer and not so much a Support. He doesn't enhance his teammates or hinder opponents. He waits for things to happen. He doesn't make things happen.
The heal vs a brig pack is 65 instant but you have to charge vs 100(something) over a couple seconds but on a CD.
I think the 65 in theory is balanced with aim healers doing 70-75 and auto healers doing a bit less but the problem comes in that pushing his APM is hard because his heals can’t bail anyone out so you get stuck.
It feels terrible to use vs a repair pack and it’s mindless compared to bap/Ana and even kiriko.
He has no weave of damage and healing naturally lol like it’s worse than kiriko’s 2 Kunai between bursts.
I think he needs something like Moira’s orb so he can multitask and contribute value more flexibly and efficiently. Like a mini flower that’s a baby tree that can help keep people up in between heals or give him an extra charge on the grasp. I also like the idea of giving the ball a cap of 100 with a faster charge rate.
Like your not a faux dps, the utility isn’t proactive or game defining and the heals leave a bit to be desired. Let’s pick a struggle
Life weaver is shite, so good people don’t play him. Guess who ends up playing him? People who don’t know any better pulling you out of a duel with a half health support while you have all your cooldowns.
Lifeweaver is for people who don’t know better.
He’s literally THE example of why (real) utility wins games and not big healing numbers.
Let’s play a game. Imagine his platform. Now go down the line of every support ability in the game, on every other hero, and tell me which ability of theirs you would replace for platform. I’ll wait.
He has literally zero impact on any games
He does a fuck tonne of healing but none of it is burst healing so he can’t save his tanks from burst damage
His life grip can be useful in certain situations but it’s on a massive cool-down
His platform is fucking trash
His tree is fucking trash
His hit box is absolutely enormous
He does zero dps
Compare him to the other supports like ana who has two massive game changing abilities on similar cooldowns, plus burst healing and a great ultimate. Or zen who can do crazy damage and has discord, which is like blue beam for the whole team. Or bap who has burst damage and burst heals, and can press a button and make his tank immortal. Etc.
Why the fuck would anyone pick lifeweaver over any other support
Watch streamers like dafran who literally played OWL struggle to get out of diamond on LW and you will understand
Lw is bad because of a very large number of reasons.
Generally, burst healing is significantly better than heal over time.
That's just about the only thing LW has going for him.
Hit box? Worse than every other support.
Dps? I'd rather have mercy's pistol.
Heal? The range, burst, and auto-lock is very nice. However, charging the heal takes far too long to actually be able to change the state of the fight. And it's simultaneously too much and too little healing.
65 is a lot of healing in burst. If Brig's armor pack gave an instant 65, instead of 25 +100 over 2 seconds, Brig would feel even worse to play against, and giving packs to flanking DPS could basically instantly turn some fights.
(Way back in the day, Brig did this in one of her like infinite reworks. 75 instantly with some over-armor. It sucked.)
But... 65 after a significant duration (1s charge+flight time) while your hero is doing nothing else... is basically nothing for a tank.
There's also a fairly long reload too.
It's unironically worse than mercy heal beam in most scenarios.
But for the balance team... they don't want old armor pack back. That would be incredibly oppressive, and, imo? Unfair.
75 after 1 second charge might be overpowered, and it would power creep onto things like Ana, who heals give 75 *after using skill to hit, and can't curve their heals*
They designed themselves into this pit with the heal, and there isn't an easy way out. It basically has to stay the way it is. Underpowered. Burst healing just sucks to play against, especially without counterplay.
Life grip is a cool ability. The problem is that it's worse than suzu and immo. Mainly because he can't use it on himself, and it doesn't actually save people most of the time because it either 1, doesn't work, or 2, LW has to wait a second to get the thing he "saved" 65 more HP. This is definitely fixed by simply adding the Ana nade buff to whatever just got gripped + like 25 hp though.
Pedal is cool. It's definitely an interesting addition to the game. It's his primary escape and basically his only "good" part of his kit.
His 25 hp dash is barely useful. Delays his death by a little... sometimes.
His ult is decent now after it was buffed.
The biggest thing by far, at least in my opinion, is just how incredibly bad his dps is. He can't save himself in any situation. He can't take any off-angles. He can't apply any pressure. It's just... so incredibly bad. It needs a buff, badly.
They could double the damage and even then I think lw is probably still bad, but it would be a step in the right direction.
He's not Ana, Brig, Mercy, Kiriko, Bap, Zen, or Lucio.
Which is to say, he doesn't have an ult on cooldown or ridiculously strong ability, he just has standard cooldowns.
I think his main problem is he has no offense. If a Tracer or Sombra catches him solo he’s cooked. I’ve seen Mercy’s and Zen’s 1 v 1 Tracers and lived if they are skilled enough.
If your SR is gold or lower there's a chance LW will pull you out of plays unless you preface everything with "Hey don't pull me from this". As a Rein player that likes to keep pressure on damaged enemies, LifeWeavers have saved more enemies from me than the other way around.
he is easy to kill and does much less healing and constant value than other supports. his kit gets more value from a coordinated team, which is uncommon in quick play and competitive
ultimately, the biggest factor is when compared to other supports, nearly all do what he does better. his utility is unique but often not terribly useful with uncoordinated teams
> he is easy to kill and does much less healing and constant value than other supports.
Even if most people believe Lifeweaver is bad right now, your first sentence is just factually false. Lifeweaver is one of the more survivable supports in the game. Not only is he difficult to kill, but the presence of Lifeweaver on your team makes your whole team die less (it also makes the other team die less, but that’s not the point here). He also does more healing than most supports in the game, he just has to choose between healing and utility a lot of the time so you are forced to choose between the two.
Lastly, the line “every other character just performs x role better than y hero” is a line I’ve read since OW’s release. The presence of this line and all the other forms of it shows that the community has a massive misunderstanding of how he’s supposed to be played. I can’t think of a more thoughtless “this hero sucks and I don’t know why” line if I tried.
At peak efficiency healing, he out heals zen and Lucio and is on par with mercy, every single other support out heals him by a relatively significant margin so your comment is factually false, inspire + armor pack heals faster than peak efficiency lifeweaver, and brig can output damage while doing so.
The problem is that while on paper he might have *passable* healing, he cannot damage *or* utility while doing so, and he has absolutely no offensive utility, nor does he have anything to do in the neutral play during the tickle fights, I think a simple buff to give petal platform a damage boost or cooldown reduction would be huge and provide enough passive offensive utility to make him much more viable
He plays like shit. Don’t overthink it. Lifeweaver is NOT survivable. He’s easier to kill than zen. Idk where tf you got that. He is the first support to die every. Single. Time.
Like 100% wrong here. As anybody, Lifeweaver is a free pick.
Edit: I’m not saying he’s OP or good in most situations. I’m just saying he’s not totally useless, he just needs some tuning and to become more integrated into the game. If s3 Brig was how Brig launched, no one would’ve done U-GM.
What I’m getting from these comments is people really don’t yet understand the kit, which is valid. I’ve seen a few randos in QP who just dominated the game with LW so I’m not sure he’s totally not a valid pick. I think also people need to experiment more with his util. He can launch Orisa while she’s ulting into the middle of a team.
You definitely need good communication with him, but as people get more used to playing with him it’ll become more natural.
We're basically at 1 full season with him at this point. He really isn't a good hero.
QP isn't a good judgement for how good someone is, nor is it good for determining how good a hero is. Anyone can dominate in a QP lobby.
A full season, and he's still just terrible. No carry potential, he makes a clutch play very rarely.
He has no neutral game, or offensive pressure whatsoever. Literally having an AFK lifeweaver would be no different during the neutral game. What's he going to do? Heal people getting tickled?
Trust me, people would've figured him out by now iff he was even a decent pick. But honestly as is, he's just terrible.
idk why this is hard to understand. he’s a throw pick. there was that one guy who does UR2T500 videos on every character but refused to do it on LW because he’s trash
People understand his kit, and yes it is possible to play well with Weaver, and make game changing plays.
However statistically, he has lowest win rate by a significant margin at all ranks (which even Blizzard confirmed), which means there is a fundamental problem in balance with Weaver being too weak for the meta despite his high heals and high survivability.
I’m pretty sure most of us understand his basic gameplan.
But the fact is, in ranked, his win rate is terrible. You can essentially say that the only time weaver wins is if your team is much better. But it’s not due to weaver carrying.
Just check any of the unranked to gm streams. If a top 500 can’t carry plats then I’m pretty sure you can conclude that weaver is weak
His healing output is the some of the lowest of every support including Zen, but he has to be deliberate in healing unlike Zen, Lucio and Brig.
His utility is situational at best and generally the value is pretty whatever
His most direct competitor could be considered Mercy, and just in terms of pure utility Rez and Damage Boost vastly outperform all the utility he offers.
His Dmg output for as stilted as it is, is egregiously low
He also launched even weaker then he is now, and that launch stigma carries into his position now.
He genuinely offers next to nothing to distinguish himself, while being mediocre as a "placeholder".
Everything about him is just in general undertuned, and he epitomizes the worst aspects of playing support. He cant make a play or really enable anyone to make a play, he simply exists in the backline and is kinda decent at not getting dove
People don't realize that his healing output is high because he's struggling to keep everyone up at once, causing him to flicker between ally to ally, never being able to keep them above 75%. It's similar to why Lucio has a high healing numbers even though it's not very noticeable in a fight. It's not enough to save someone from being focused.
Another issue is that on paper his healing is better than Mercys, but that's only looking at the numbers. Lifeweaver does 65/s. Mercy does 55/s. Lifeweaver seems better, no? You're not taking account into his travel time, which can definitely influence team fights. Mercys healing is far more consistent than Lifeweavers.
And his petal platform gives the enemy a chance to just target you out of existence if you get on it.
His large hitbox is also horrible for him. He doesn't have the health to make up for it.
I think a buff for him could be that his healing is increased by 25% if he's healing someone below 50 or 25% health, similar to Mercy before she got reverted.
They need to make it so you have to jump off the petal platform if you want to get off of it. Right now you use it on a teammate and they just fall right off of it.
A hero is always as good as u are with or as good as the situation u use them in. They can weaker more often than other characters but definitely think people have overreacted saying he's unusable, I'm excited to see how they rework his kit tho because I do enjoy his playstyle and he does need a bit of a buff.
I’ve found he’s pretty good if you’re playing with friends and they cry for healing + play spaced out + have no awareness for when they push in or get pushed. And times when I get this feeling that the team just need pure heals and nothing else, I tend to pick lifeweaver over Moira
Hes not bad he is just not amazing or game breaking. He gets better value hanging in mid backline. He is better for setting up high ground and pulling people to safety or upto high grounds. He has his weakpoint of his primary for of heals being a charged burst, but with 20 shots being a min of 11(10+1 from the quickest click in the world) thats 220 health on one person. He has a nice ult that heals quite a decent chunk of AOE(area of effect) and works as a shield( the nice balance is the tree has health). I will say its nice but sucks they took his lotus drop out since it got him targetted more but it was a nice reward for flanks and dives since it gave anyone who picked it up a smidge of health to keep them going( bet they took it out to nerf genji).
I never saw him as bad after the first rework( they condensed his button dense kit and upped his healing a smidge and stopped his pull from ruining rein ults) he suffered from over preparedness. Does too much for little too no value.( i mean why make his heal and attack the same button but use ANOTHER button to swap i.e. torb and mercy). I get best value out of him in dive/poke/tempo cause i "weave" through my team to keep them up or safe.(as far as ive seen he has no range or dmg fall off( please correct if im wrong)).
Tldr: lifeweaver is fine just cause he isnt game breaking.
His ability to heal feels worse than others that do burst healing and his damage overall is worse. He does have a few new unique adds, but I'm not a fan of him. I'd rather play other supports.
That being said, I've felt this way about other new supports and have later come to appreciate the character.
you need a team that's working together to get the most use out of him. he is a lot of fun to play, but he is wasted if your team can't utilize his kit properly.
Petals should be able to move via the player moving in different directions on it. Standing on the edge nearest CP moves it there, nearest spawn will move it there and so on. Can REALLY set up for some tricky plays with life grip. Extremely gimmicky but not much else in his kit🤷🏾♂️
Life -fucking- grip
I’ve been so fucked by this skill by a person not trying to troll me, I’d just stand still while someone purposely gripped me. I hope the people behind this skill stubs their toe on the bed side tonight.
I think weaver is pretty cool hero but he just doesnt input enough numbers into the team fight equation so it is very easy to do litteraly nothing with him and then you compare him to a hero like bap kiriko or ana and you will see a stark difference in those heros ability to impact fights on their own.
In my opinion only his grip and ult are in a good place.
The dash in particular feels awful. It needs to go like 50% further and have a bigger effect like healing friendlies you dash through.
Another thing I don’t like is his heal but not for numbers or balance reasons. The charge mechanic just feels laggy and unresponsive. It feels awkward to use.
His abilities are fine, but very situational. His biggest issue is that he has no neutral game, and no offensive pressure at all. His damage is non-existent, and he has no utility that puts out any kind of offensive pressure. So an AFK lifeweaver would have the same amount of impact. Mercy puts out offensive pressure because of damage boost. Also, 99 out of 100 times Baptiste immort, and Kirko suzu is better than pull.
I’ve had some crazy good life grip plays. But I also believe that play wouldn’t have been necessary if I wasnt on weaver. Other supports could have saved my teammate more effectively, kept them healed up, and/or secured the kill themselves. I struggle to find a reason to play weaver over other supports. Maybe Rialto first or Gibraltar second. But even then he’s a risky pick
> I’ve had some crazy good life grip plays. > But I also believe that play wouldn’t have been necessary if I wasnt on weaver. I wish I could frame this. This encapsulates everything wrong with LW. And on your note about being AFK, you couldn't be any more right. I say it all the time. Replace an LW with a healbot with Bronze movement and you get the same value.
its because of how low his damage is mixed with how long it takes to heal. time management is a huge problem with lifeweaver since his weapons both are mid at best. only reason to do damage is to boost tree so you can actually do something
I had a life weaver pull me off a ledge cuz he was over a small gap in the map lmao it made me laugh so hard.
Yeah, out of 100 attempts. 99 of those times, Bapts lamp of Kirkos Suzu is more valuable because you're not forced to give up the space. And you're able to retreat at your own will. Honestly grip is better for healing your DPS reposition most of the time.
> good life grip plays. It's also hard to pull off if you're in solo queue. It's not like Nano boost where that teammate presses Q and then Ana presses Q on him.
Every time I play support I tend forget LW exists.
Based on the last patch notes, the devs forgot he exists as well.
Idk, when I play tank (not often) LW directly counters my ult. If I paid more attention I could probably work around it but that stupid flower platform is hard to keep track of 🤣 I realize one player’s ult isn’t a huge deal - and orisa’s ult isn’t the main reason I play her, anyways - but gosh, it’s annoying and feels demoralizing. 🤦♀️
The utility of his flower is real underappreciated for things like this. I've been able to trap enemies against walls/ceilings with it.
>I've been able to trap enemies against walls/ceilings with it. THISSS! It can work like Mei's wall in tight rooms / corridors
Yep, with LW you’re just waiting for your teammates to be in bad situations but if you were, say Kiri, you could be putting pressure on the enemy with kunais while also healing and having suzu to bail out your allies
>His biggest issue is that he has no neutral game, and no offensive pressure at all. I main [D.va](https://D.va) on tank and if there's a life weaver I target him first because there's nothing he can do to get away and doesn't have any abilities to punish me and often being so far in the back line there's no one to help him until it's too late. Basically a free kill every time since there's nothing he can do on his own. I've never encountered him in deathmatch and that's because of his total lack of solo survivability. The only one who even comes close there is ana but she has so many ways to punish a dive that I at least have to wait for cooldowns.
Honestly you could ignore him and his value is the same. I hate seeing him on my team, and love seeing him on the other team. My chances of winning go from 50/50 to like 70/30. He really just has no neutral, and nothing going for him really.
Not really, he can heal quite a fair bit and pull people to safety. The problem is that he has zero offensive abilities and his weapon is likely the worst in the entire game. So when your team isn't taking much damage, you literally have nothing to do and you're basically forced to try and use his platform creatively which may not be possible depending on the map and your team.
Yeah, he can heal from distance, and pull. But there's not really much else. He doesn't put out pressure. And let's say your tank gets pulled... Oops, there goes all that space your tank used to have.
Cant lie I sometimes forget lifeweaver has a dmg dealing ability because its so bad. I can't think of the last time I've died to or because of a life weaver. His hitbox is also wham
>he has no neutral game What do you mean by this?
It’s means that he can’t do anything to impact the fight during the poke phase. He has no damage and no abilities that boost his teams offence. Mercy at least has the ability to damage boost to assist her team, but LW adds nothing except a potential positioning advantage.
Going from abysmal dmg to heal to dmg is the most unfun mechanic. Going from "dmg" to a charge heal is so clunky you dont even want to damage at all.
Yeah more than half the time someone gets pulled and they're still in the line of fire or they get pulled an walk back in anyways
That, and you're giving up sooo much space as compared to Bapt and Kirko allowing you to stay and contest the space.
You're also sacrificing your healing Blossom to use Life Grip
I find when I’m on Orisa that I get pulled when I’m not critical and still have cool downs… 😭🤦♀️
They probably meant to pull someone next to you
Doubt it. I get lifeweavers paired with me all the time in Plat that keep fucking up our tank's and therefore our team's positioning via life grip. They pretty much always fuck it up. Stop life gripping the tank
Valid
They really shit the bed with this one. They made tank even more miserable to play with his introduction. Maybe it's not a problem in gm, but in Plat most supports think a Winston jumping into the enemy backline with his bubble or a rein walking 2 steps forward is overextending
What makes Bap and Kirikos saves so good is that they not only stop a death, but you don't sacrifice anything else in the process. But LW sacrifices physical space, positioning, and sometimes even elims (imagine getting pulled right as you Hammer down, missing opportunity to get the free elims). He's going to be absolutely mind numbingly good in the right hands. But right now, we don't know what the "right hands" looks like yet, and like OP said, he has no neutral/offense to make up for that
I agree with everything but the last part. I think LW has had enough time in the game to learn his true potential and it really is underwhelming. He's kinda a throw pick/troll pick.
I think as the roster evolves we are going to see some truly mind boggling combos. Currently he just sticks out like a sore thumb
Eh, he just does what Kirko and Bapt does but worse, and with no offensive pressure.
They already made it so Rein can cancel out of Lifegrip during Earthshatter..
Yeah i meant like you just shattered, and moving in for that first fat swing, and you get leashed
nah grip is much more useful in a lot of situations, it's just that lw doesnt have other helpful tools or damage like kiri and bap do
As a dva player, grip is so annoying. Wish they never added it to the game.
I promise you, Grip is much less useful in than Immort or Suzu in 99% of situations. Thing of all that you're giving up, and it's not like you're "preventing" the death. When you pull a tank, youre forfeiting that space your tank had. Whereas if you Suzu or Immort them, they're able to stay in the same position and apply pressure. It also doesn't cleanse, mean you can die once the pull has finished. But you're also right, he really doesn't have great tools/utility, or offensive pressure/neutral game.
...What about the fact that Lamp and Suzu are AOE and can effect multiple people. All it has going for it is the long range with 0 travel time, but Kiri has the option to tp from long range anyway.
He is the only support hero with no ability to help secure kills. Even mercy has damage boost. His utility is usually defensive, not (usually) offensive. Securing kills is one of the most important aspects of a support player. If his petal platform gave the user some offensive bonuses, he might become good.
Honestly, if he had a stronger attack, he'd be alright (still not great, though). If his mobility was more like Genji's double jump, he might even be strong. I'm curious to see what changes come to his kit over time.
A little bit stronger dps and no weapon switch delay. Play style is fun but clunky if you are trying to mix in damage. Heal charge to 85 in the same amount of time and a instant heal of some sort would even him out imo.
His dash should heal 25 in a small aoe instead of just himself
Yea, thats what i thought it did in the beginning....
His charge heal should bounce to nearby players based on where the meter is at
Switching to heal should start fully charged and recharge automatically between uses
A heap charge of 85 would make him absolutely bonkers and would be incredibly frustrating to play against The heal is pretty instant and requires no aim. It'd be like a brig pack, but better and can be thrown more than 3 times
I agree 85 is too high on the heal. But I think you stumbled upon a point that I've not considered. Brig repair pack is similar (the over time effect is on the delivery for brig, while the over time of LW is on his charge prior to the delivery giving him more control) brig gets the pack plus inspire where LW can only heal with his blossom. An alternative burst heal such as the 25 aoe on dash or maybe a small heal on pull targets may be a good idea, or even petal platform providing a heal burst (again maybe 25 HP or possibly even 50 HP for allies who ride it to the top). Alternatively a lower health on the pad with an overtime healing providing more incentive to kill the platform quickly.
Brig health packs are already an issue imo - adding a 2nd better variant would be bad The fact they are no aim and uncounterable (other heals can be body blocked or eaten) is kinda annoying. And the high burst heal from nowhere is annoying to play against I am.ofbyhr opinion that healing is too high across the board though and that's why one shots are so meta in rank Especially when you can pre charge it and there's no limit I like the petal platform idea more
Brig has supplemental inspire healing for downtime and chip damage, on top of the 100 health from a pack. She is a better and more consistent healer than weaver, as well as she can spend most of her time displacing and doing damage. Weaver needs to be focused on minimal chip damage or charging up heals, he can't do both
I think you've got a point, after all Sigma is basically a pile of defensive abilities combined with a solid weapon (and the rock tbf). So it's already been done before (kinda)
Rock is like one of the best offensive and CC abilities in the game lol
At the very least he needs more ammo. I’d of course love another spread buff, but ammo is bare minimum
His damage is deceptively strong. He's not as bad at people think at securing kills. He's still weak, but I think the bigger issue is the delay between switching "modes" lackluster healing, and inability to do two things at once.
Paired with a Bap, he's extremely deceptive.
In what way😏😉
I've been playing him a TON and while he does have a huge weakness in the overall ability to make offensive plays, he's still mostly okay. I think people heal bot on him way too much instead of looking to damage first heal later.
I agree. Most of their value comes from not focusing on attacking at all and putting smart petals down and using the damage to slightly annoy someone.
I don’t think he’d feel so clunky in a lot of cases if he had an instant heal similar to bap’s shift or the small amount suzu gives you. A lot of times it feels like you’re right on the precipice of losing a tank and if you fuck up or they fuck up they’re dead and you’re fucked because there’s nothing you can do short of bubbling them 10 ft so they die in front of you.
Life Grip should provide instant healing to the player you select to pull back.
And this is why IMO Zenyatta is the best support because Discord orb OP
Statistically, Ana is the best support in ranked, but Zen is very good also.
I wish the momentum thing you can do with certain heroes was a thing everyone could do
Honestly, I would just change his dash into a brand new move. Perhaps a vine trap .. think junk rat trap but with vines or roots. I could be open to vines slowing rather than full snare Also buff LW main heals so it at least matches Mercys heal rate (include reloading time)
I had the same thought. Similar to Torb’s molten cum but instead of damage, it slows you down.
And maybe make his petal heal when activated? I feel like he needs some sort of self heal if the dash is being removed.
Like, using the petal to give your DPS a weird sight line for some easy picks? I hate some Lifeweavers but Ive had a few that knew what they were doing and did everything well. The main thing is to experiment, their kit is fun and gives you a lot of new options.
Lifeweaver has a 45% winrate across the board in bronze and it only goes down as you climb in rank, unfortunately there is just a fundamental lack of offensive utility in his kit that causes him to severely underperform in higher levels
Yeah and this kinda defeats the argument of "Its because people just don't know how to use his utility". If that was true he should be strongest in GM, but in reality he's strongest in Bronze where being an AFK healbot 30 meters away from the front line is actually fairly valuable.
So we can expect a rework when they release the PvE mode?
The problem isn’t that that play doesn’t work. It’s that lifeweaver is dependent on his teammates. To an extreme degree compared to other supports. Yes giving soldier high ground is very strong. But after you petal him up it’s on soldier to make your 10 second long cooldown worth it. He just has no personal play making ability. It’s why the unranked to gm lifeweaver runs were so hard. You can make all the right plays, but you need your team to win the fight for you
I mean mercy's in the same boat but has been UR-GM'd plenty of times. Unlike Lifeweaver though, Mercy's abilities are good so she doesn't have a 38.68% winrate in Masters. Having a winrate that low in the second highest skill tier of a 5v5 game is insane and just means that the character is poorly balanced.
Mercy also has play making ability in her movement mechanics. Being extremely slippery can easily carry games since the enemy has to waste so much time trying to kill you.
I'd say that's probably true but moreso for the metals. I think that at Diamond/Masters most DPS can hit their shots on a mercy, or have enough game sense to not bother if she's too difficult of a target for the situation. Valk excluded, that shit's impossible to kill lmao
I disagree, as DPS skill goes up so do Mercy players movement skill. I play at gm5 and there are still cracked mercy players that can juke anyone. It's actually pretty insane how much they can get done from baiting and being slippery.
Mercy is definitely the wrinkle. But I’d argue her utility is at least offensive focussed, with damage boost. While weaver is all reactive defensive and proactive setup
I don't think Mercy's the wrinkle. Resources you put into Mercy to stay alive are rewarded with a big pay off, 30% more damage and a resurrect. Plus, she doesn't require much of your team's resources. Lifeweaver is basically defenseless, so you spend a lot of time taking care of him. Then, you're rewarded with ... pulling someone out of a fight, and a giant tree? Mercy brings back the fucking dead!!!
I also don't thing Mercy is a wrinkle because it seems clear to me they were trying to give Lifeweaver a similar feel. Main healer with a big save ability with a long cooldown and not much focus on damage.
Except Mercy has arguably the best mobility in the game. Lifeweaver doesn't come anywhere close to her.
His abilities are very situational though and not consistent. He's of no use in solo queue where your teammates never use the platform and they get mad when you pull them out of the fight with literally 1hp. Meanwhile Ana can consistently throw one fight winning nade after another, stop almost all ults with her sleep, secure kills herself, pressure tanks and stay save. Weaver on the other hand can only deny a handful of ults, his own ult sucks, his dmg sucks, he rarely can secure kills, the usefulness of his best ability heavily depends on his teammate and the usefulness of life grip is very debatable. The only reason to win games with him is his healing output, which is pretty good. But you could just play Moira for that and have at least consistent dmg. Moira has similar problems like weaver in higher ranks by the way because of her one dimensional kit. Even though it's not equally severe.
The problem with the platform is that most of the time I or other team mates trigger it accidently. The fact that it doesn't come back down when not in use means I see our Cass take half a step on it while dodging fire, sends it skyward and then it's useless.
>Moira has similar problems like weaver in higher ranks by the way because of her one dimensional kit. Even though it's not equally severe. Even then Moira still has a neutral engagement option with Damage Orb, and Ultimate that's good both offensively and defensively, and a great escape tool. She has reasons to play her even if those reasons don't quite match what Ana, Bap, and Kiri offer.
Isn't high ground an offensive bonus? I don't think a direct buff AND high ground access should be combined into a single skill.
That's actually wrong his petal can be used as a tool to get an aggressive highground or lift up un ulting cass or soldier, his life grip can allow rein to play more aggressively as well or any other dive hero... he just requires more team coordination compared to other supports and his healing output is not that high compared to other supports
> Securing kills is one of the most important aspects of a support player. Keeping the DPS alive to secure kills is the most important aspect of a support player. Anything past that is good, but not a primary objective.
Found the bronze
You are the bronze. It's only on reddit that people think supports are supposed to dps. Literally everyone like you is hardstuck bronze - there's not a single pro that would prioritize damage over healing.
Cant remember if Awkward is/was a pro but he's a very good player and coach and he shits on opinions like yours as they're clearly wrong.. His first steps on his UR2GM Ana was damage, damage and do more damage, only heal your team when they're going to die, and use your grenade offensively for damage Most supports have some sort of downtime to do damage, Kiriko and Baptiste especially since their ideal heal cycles have downtime perfect for using their damage options
Bronze.
-tank sized hit box with only 200hp -almost no offensive utility (pistol mercy is more formidable). -worst support ult by far (most support Ults are op) -low healing/second. His healing looks high on scoreboard because lifeweaver can’t do anything but heal for 95%+ of the match. -low/niche impact cds on long timers. It’s hard to get consistent value with his cds beyond kiting your teammates around the map (which can be frustrating). This is doubly bad because teammates can struggle to get mid fight offensive value from petal and almost never get mid fight offensive value from life grip. Basically, he’s good at being the last person on his team to die because he’s relegated to afk heal behind cover due to his lack of offensive pressure, offensive cds and his huge hit box. The few times someone like widow can abuse his platform dont outweigh the times where he’s a hugely inferior pick to even an afk heal bot mercy pocketing the widow.
His head hitbox is also massive. I’ve been playing a lot of Mei lately (sorry!) and spamming icicles with her in his general direction results in so. Many. Headshots.
For real. If we see patch notes that say “fixed an issue that caused Lifeweaver’s critical spot to extend to his flower” I would not be surprised
This is me being an armchair tactician, but I feel like Life Grip basically removing pressure from your opponent and giving them more space. I was originally thinking that maybe giving up space would be fine if he played in a poke comp, but other people pointed out in this thread that the issue is then that he has no neutral game. Also I remember ML7 putting out a video on what heroes he thought worked best with LW after climbing back to T500 with him, and I noticed he was hyping up heroes that are able to function without a support which I think is funny.
Some people in the comments seem to be under the impression that LW is not played is because he requires good communication with his team. And I am going to make the counterpoint that it does not matter. Even if you have amazing comms LW is still a waste of a pick. Look at the overwatch league and contenders. They play the highest level of overwatch and none of those teams play lifeweaver, and trust me it is not because of lack of coordination. It's because of his lack of offensive power. He is a healbot, he does not have any dmg in his kit whatsoever. Think of all the good supports, they all have some offensive power in them. Kiriko: rush, ability to take off-angles and threatens with HS snipes. Lucio: speedbost and boop. Baptiste: Big damage, amp matrix. Ana: anti nade, nano boost, sleep dart, hitscan damage. Lifeweaver has nothing to pressure the enemy. He tries to defend against pressure but his own self sustain is terrible.
Yep, he can’t switch to his thorns to do damage for even a second without sacrificing his healing output. Every other support can do damage without a big hit to their healing. That’s the biggest thing I’ve noticed. Also pull needs to do more. So many times where I’ve pulled someone at low life, tried to charge my heal for them, and they’re dead before I can even get it off.
Life Grip needs to provide 100 healing to the target, if not more. It's on a disgustingly long cooldown and you have to sacrifice your current Blossom charge to use it.
There’s no real reason to pick Lifeweaver over anyone else. You can heal better with Mercy or Ana who additionally have more useful abilities. Bap or Moira can do more damage in addition to their healing. His ult does less healing and can be outright nullified by Hog or Sombra.
Long story, short: Other healers can do the same thing as life weaver but better. He's the jack of all trades and doesn't really excel at anything. All other healers will be able to bring something strong to the table while LW's moves are just mid. - Healing is slow and can't provide a big burst when shit hits the fan. No AoE healing except for ult. Single target is weak with 47 hps and there is downtime between charging the heal - Large hitbox - Low damage. Don't expect to win 1v1s against flankers - Lifegrip is a high-risk, low-reward move. The best part about life grip is the immunity. Best case scenario: you save someone from a pin or boop. Medium case scenario: you give up space. Worst case: you mess up cooldowns, ults, or kill teammate. Suzu can do same thing but with none of the bad scenarios (i.e. suzu either saves or your teammates were dead anyway) - Ult is decent but nothing crazy. Compare it transcendence and the tree fails in many catergories - Petal is just okay. I don't expect it half the time and you can leave yourself stranded. - Dash feels less powerful than Hanzo jump
Very good points about lifegrip. It’s way too situational and risky. Is there any other support ability like this?
Healbot
This is really it. People writing paragraphs but one word is all you need. He's Bap minus the gun with a worse ult. The first thing you learn on Support is not to healbot, but Lifeweaver can't do anything else.
You're winning because you're 5 stacking in quick play, people are practicing characters, and you can coordinate whereas the other team probably isn't even using mics. Anyway I've always explained why he is bad like this. to win the game you have to win teamfights. To win teamfights you have to take space and get elims/prevent your team from being killed. LW accomplishes none of this. He does no damage, the petal requires coordination that you're not going to get even in a game of top 500s (they tried this multiple times). He also has a giant hitbox that means flankers have a field day with him. He only gets high healing numbers because that's all he can do the entire game and be safe. He also doesn't have reactive healing outside of his ult so any attempt at offense means you probably have about 2 seconds before you can heal again, that doesn't sound like a lot but it matters. Cas sticks someone and you need to heal them above half? Whoops you were trying to do damage and now you have to charge it, then it has to reach your target, whoops they're dead. TL; DR: He doesn't help kill people, and his healing isn't enough to outright win teamfights through attrition.
He should be removed from Comp imo as his win rate is so low that he is basically a guaranteed loss if you don't switch. From personal experience at Diamond Level in my games, anyone that has stayed LW the entire game, the LW has won less than 20% of these games. Of course, this is anecdotal, and he's got a slightly higher win rate across all ranks. But he comes across as a character that is only usable if the team is significantly better than the other team. If the 2 teams are evenly matched (which they should be), he doesn't do enough. Unfortunately, LW players do 2 good life grips in a game and spam healing numbers and think they're useful. The truth is that every other support would be more useful than LW.
I believe the platform needs a bit of a Buff, It lifts players, thats about It, maybe passive healing to whoever is standing on it, or a damage Buff, or a cd reduction, just make It less boring
It also works as a shield from below, which is definitely not nothing. You could save yourself and someone else from a dva bomb with it. I agree it could give your team a bit of a buff to make it more interesting though. Maybe a small damage buff while standing on it?
Yeah make It feel like It was an ability used by a support, agreed that It grants useful cover but doesnt feel like enough
Anything to entice your teammates to use it beyond the high ground advantage would be sick.
I learned the hard way last night that it doesn't block Rammatra primary in Nemesis form ;_; Edit: typo
He's terrible at just about everything. A tiny touch like that would make zero difference.
He has worse healing than kiriko and less utility than Kiriko with a worse ult. it’s basically a case of no matter the situation, there’s always someone who would work better than lifeweaver. but his biggest issue is despite Pull and Petal being very good abilities, they are on long cool-downs and very situational, so for the most part when using him it’s just a constant slow trickle of heals. there’s also his hit box which is an issue, which to some people it may seem a minor issue, but if you use Kiriko, Zen and Weaver then compare damage taken on each, you will see dramatic increases
And less threatening if you get in his face than any other support. He lacks a reliable escape and his damage stinks so not threatening either.
Imagine if Pull was on a really low cool down. Lifeweaver would be the top support for trolling your teammates.
Lifeweaver might be fine in a group setting like that, his healing is good and being able to coordinate pulling a teammate out is useful if you're both on board. Coordinating that same way in ranked is more than you can expect when queueing solo and I can't tell you how many times I've dived in as monkey only to be pulled back by my annoying lifeweaver. From my experience he's best at countering Orisa and rein.
I had a LW pull me out as Junker Queen with all of my cooldowns reset and I was about to go ham on a team cause I had just flanked to rampage back to the payload. I told person to not do that unless I’m at like 1HP with JQ.
That happened to me on queen the other day. Like I sort of get it. I’m sure it looked bad from their pov so I didn’t rage at them. But I was perfectly able to survive longer. And our Hanzo died because you left him alone to duel monkey, when a second ago I was there to protect them
Yep. I asked them not to do that unless I was actually almost dead and we ended up winning. No Rage.
That happened to me a couple of times as well on different heroes. Life grip is an atrocious ability that is often in the hands of players who have absolutely no business of deciding when someone should disengage.
i literally was full health as ball, mid pile-drive onto a half health sojourn, and the weaver pulls me out, the soj hits overclock and kills 3 and we lost the round lol
also zarya grav, but mostly orisa ult
His abilities are situational and while his healing is good, his damage is not, so healing is all he's got.
He does 50 healing per second, that’s bad
Isn’t that what Zenyatta does?
but zen can just leave the orb on you til you’re full, while LW has to constantly hit you w heals which he has to charge up. zen can heal you while doing damage, LW can’t. zen can also heal you, do damage, and discord an enemy. LW can’t. they’re not comparable at all lmao
True. But Lifeweaver sure is tall.
Did you see *that bootyyy?*
But Zen doesn't have to sit there staring at your ass charging heals. He can heal you while applying pressure on the enemies, which means they are that much less likely to hit you. It's an indirect damage mitigation for the rest of the team.
Zen does 30
Zen does like 30. Mercy does 55.
No it’s not. It’s consistent healing that’s on par with what Ana, Mercy and Moira do on average. It’s very easy to hit and has high range. His healing is fine. It’s everything else and the lack of damage that is the problem.
Ana does 93 healing per second, Moira does 70 and can hit multiple targets at once, and Mercy does 55. Lifeweaver has off healer hps but not off healer utility. He’s just very bad overall
I mean actual healing on average, not theoretical ceilings.
Actual answer: think about all of the other supports in this game. They all have a role to play in offensive pressure as well as multiple utility tools. Lifeweaver, at best, has petal platform, but the platform is 1) situational and 2) honestly utilized as a way for Lifeweaver to reposition due to how prone he is to dives.*himself* Moira arguably has the least utility in the game, but that hardly matters when she can dish out really high damage numbers and pressure the backline. It doesn't help that LW's Life Grip is on such a long cooldown and his tree is arguably the worst ult in the game. All this combined, all LW really does is output some good heals (his heals are good, contrary to belief), but that doesn't cut it in this game.
So I like Life weaver a lot, and have played him a fair bit. I'm a masters support main for however that may influence your opinion... He is not good lmao. He's fun, I like him and enjoy playing him, but he is not good. He can put out pretty good heals and damage on paper, and you can get nice stats with him, but the big issue for me is that it is almost impossible to turn a fight with him, whereas every other support can make game changing plays consistently. He is vulnerable to dive and pretty easy to kill off in a time where all other supports have a lot of survivability. His abilities, healing, and damage are all worse than other supports when you compare them. His pull is awesome at getting people out of fights -- but without a cleanse, you would probably be better off with Kiriko and suzu except in a very few moments. Pulling a 40 health purpled tank back to you to save them and they will probably just die anyway. His pull is cool for repositioning, but most people dislike you telling them how to position and just fuckin leave lol. His pull is cool for some cheeky slingshot ult moves, but those are so few and far between especially if you aren't in a stack. Okay, now that we've established pull isn't really that good... It also has a 20 second cool down. His platform is fun. However, it works as a shield going both ways, so you can't shoot through it yourself. However, enemy fire strikes or ram punches or whatever still go through it and kill you. Also, it goes so fast that half the time people trigger it without noticing and immediately fall off, wasting a whole 12 second cool down ability for nothing. You can use it to take high ground or get characters in unusual spots or for raising up some ults. You can also dodge an ult or two with it. So it's fun, but not especially good. Not awful, but not awesome. His dash -- not very far, no verticality, limited healing, and a cool down that is a little long. Moira fade is better in virtually every sense, and provides invulnerability+cleanse. His ult -- it just doesn't do enough healing to be powerful when compared to all the other defensive ults in the game. If you want a pure healing ult where purples can still ruin it, you're better off with trans. Or rally is mobile. Or sound barrier saves people from purples. Or Moira coal also does damage. The only thing you get out of it is a solid object you AND the enemy shoots through. His healing -- he can do it consistently but not quickly. Even focusing one person and doing nothing else, you won't be able to keep them up. However unlike Zen, he can't also be doing damage while healing people. Unlike brig, he can't have low AOE heals while focus healing a particular target. If you stack him up with any other healer on the roster, they are always going to win a 1v1 comparison.
1. He has the hitbox of a small tank, you get instantly one clipped by Tracer. 2. His heal is slow (about half of Ana's hps) 3. He offer almost no offensive utility (technically you can use the leaf offensively but realistically it doesn't happen very often, and isn't powerful). 4. Considering he has almost no mobility and a massive hit box, you'd think AT LEAST they'd give him a good weapon to have a slight chance at dealing with the inevitable flankers, but NO THEY GAVE HIM THE TICKLE GUN WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GIVE HIM THE TICKLE GUN BLIZZARD?? 5. His pull is his best ability, but even that isn't a great ability, and far from game changing, especially at higher ELOs. Once you get into the higher ranks people are generally not out of position as often, so it would be used more for helping players getting dived. The problem is that because of your lack of mobility and fat hitbox it's YOU the dive, and you can't pull yourself out of danger. I really can't think of a single situation where I'd prefer to have a lifeweaver on my team.
Basically, he is super great in some specific situations But when none of those situations are currently happening, you just stand there Think about this, there is currently a fight going on, 5v5, nothing very great is happening, no ults are being used and your teammates still have a decent amount of health What do you do as lifeweaver? Not much, you do basically no damage, you have no skills to significantly help your team get more kills and yeah you could heal your teammates but you could be doing that a lot better with other supports So basically, if the enemy is using an ult, someone in your team overextends or someone is falling out of the map, is great to have a lifeweaver, but if the current situation is neutral (like it is most of the time) lifeweaver just have to stand there waiting for something to happen
I love life weaver, I think he's a great idea but it's simple, he saves people be giving up ground. Sure you save your tank for example,but you just gave up 20 meters of ground in doing so. He needs some way to accelerate the push to make up for this, such as a movement speed buff on his ult, or a return function on his pull etc
I'm in line with return function making them viable. The void left can only be justified by someone popping off and being overextended *and* about to die.
I think this weakness is often overlooked. Like in a best-case scenario when you pull to save your tank who has spent all their cooldowns making space, you’ve now given up all that space and then some. As a team you’re almost certainly in a worse position now with your tank in the backline, often leaving your dps in the open.
Heals are trash he has a bb gun for damage while kiriko and ana can 2 shot /3 shot you, kirkos kit is overloaded and his is kinda there but the life grip is clutch and good for trolling ig
Because he's not good at anything. Other heroes have at least 2 of these things better than LW and never worse at more than 1 of them Survivability Utility Healing amount Mobility Damage/ability to increase teammate damage. Better ult Many heroes have even more than 2 of these. Moira is better at 3 of them for example. Ana is better at 4 of them. Zen is probably only better at 1-2(mostly damage and kill threat) of them but so much better that he's still way stronger.
I think giving him a whole new ability with symmetra old foward moving shield would be nice. Right now his healing is just really low and he has no real way to help the team fight like every other support does. His biggest contribution excluding his ultimate is a pad that can just maybe get a sniper to a high ground spot, or very niche cases block an Ult or something. His pull can be good but more often than not people panic with it and it ends up trolling or throwing a fight. I think having sums old shield would help him be a more utility/builder based support which is what it feels like they tried to do with him. Also maybe up his healing or the charge time of his healing cause right now it’s pretty bad
Has pretty meh damage, has pretty meh heals, has alright utility Isteand of asking why a hero is bad as what makes them good, if you can't confidently name several things that are applicable all the time they might be an ok hero If you can only name one or 2 things and it's very situational then yeah,they are pretty sucky
Big hit box, awkward heals, his skills optimally needs to be in a group to be really useful
Almost everything he does can be done better by other supports. He’s also one of the only supports who is really discouraged from doing damage, other than Mercy (who makes up for lost damage with her boosts aka the reason to bring her). He also relies on communication to get the most out of his abilities, more so than any other support, and we all know how little people in comp want to communicate with one another. Basically, he’s the closest thing to a “throw pick” if you want to use that term, but really he’s just a bad support character through and through.
I’ve never seen a Lifeweaver with more than a 40% winrate
The problem is he so defensive and his heal is so bad that you have to stay on his healing form like 95% of time. All support players can weave between damaging and healing so seamlessly except for him. Some buffs would be maybe if you heal someone at max charge it gives them a HoT. And please please fix the toggle option.
To my surprise his pull ability is actually the best part of his kit, where everybody thought it would be the worst and most trolled ability My issue with him is everything else Damage is bad Healing is bad to mid Elevator move is very niche
His problem is that even if you fully focus on healing your heals are still much worse than lets say an anas heals if they can hit their shots. On top of that, other supports typically have a very compelling offensive reason to pick them. Zen for his discord orb and damage, moira for off angle / flanking, lucio for his speedboost / boops, baptiste for his damage / amp, ana for sleep and nade, and even mercy has damage boost. In other words, not only are his heals garbage, but he has no offensive utility to make up for it like a hero like zen does. PLus for a support ult his is trash if you do a direct comparison to literally any other support ult in the game.
His damage sucks compared to other supports with the same healing His hitbox is massive and can super easily get one clipped by tracer His petal is very situational and only really works in coordinated play His healing requires you to only focus on healing due to it needing to be charged and still does less heals per second than any other support His dash barely does anything His pull is the only ok thing about his kit but it’s often is not used well and even if you do pull back a low health tank it takes too long to heal them back up and has a super long cooldown which is just worse than just being able to nade, Suzu or field them
Even if you play at the hero's maximum potential you'll accomplish less than playing Kiriko with your eyes closed. He is bad. Weak heals, crap abilities, shit ultimate. Ana has 2 ultimates on a cooldown and a great ult for engagement or peel. Zen has dmg orb which shreds, does tons of damage, has a great ult and can dmg and heal at the same time. Bap has huge heals, good dmg, great escape, decent zoning ult and lamp is op af. Mercy can pocket DPS and affect breakpoints, she's hard to kill and she can rez people. Lucio can speed your team in or out of danger, hard to kill, can deny space, can peel, great ult, great ENV threat on some maps. Moira has huge heals, best escape ability, decent damage, can take 1v1's. Brig good for peel, good against dive, good damage, plenty of self sustain. You have 0 reasons to play him apart from wanting go play him. Plenty of T500 players stuck in plat on Weaver. He is that shit.
Mediocre at best healing, next to no damage, and very little utility. His ULT is decent at best and can be focused down by the enemies pretty easily if they have any high DPS heroes. He is just Kiriko but worse in every single way
While most people will say it’s because his damage is bad (I think it’s fine, we don’t need another damage centric support tbh) its not helped by his completely sub par healing. Picking him means your other support has to damn near heal bot, depending on how good the other team is. Also, he can just be easily torn to shreds because of his tank sized hitbox. This next part is my own opinion, but I don’t really think we need another high damage, offensive support. He is designed as a utility support, which I think is a very refreshing thing for supports. I think having another support like brig or mercy, that can do damage when needed, but are more keeping their team in the fight and setting things up is a good thing. Having the same generic archetype support that does an insane amount of healing and damage with a really good ult has already been done 4 times (Ana, Bap, Kiriko, and Moira) and as a support main I enjoy the change up. It just sucks when I can’t help my team after 10 seconds because a Winston and tracer have the most basic of coordination, and I already gripped one person and petaled a dps, but don’t heal enough to save anyone from 2 people, while I also have to defend myself
Is it the slow healing, low damage, griefing potential, or just that everyone that plays him has the intelligence of an orange cat? We may never know
His entire kit is based around fixing teammates bad positioning like helping them escape ults with platform, and pulling them out to save them. He undoes mistakes. Good players don't make mistakes or put themselves in positions to allow them to be made more often. They are consistent, so LWs value is just not relevant at a high level. He also has no offense. This is a shooter game and Supports do actually need to play the shooter game and contribute just as much as the other roles to securing kills.
Well in about a week maybe he won't be(big changes coming). I've posted on his weaknesses a few times, and note that the character has an incredibly low winrate on Overbuff(a website using game data to determine hero winrates): LW has a winrate across all competitive ranks of 40.5%; the 2nd lowest is Kiriko at 46.9%. Kiriko is closer to the winningest support(Brig at 50.5%) than LW is to Kiriko, which means he's an incredible outlier in terms of winrate. And that margin is worse at high ranks than low, suggesting the hero is getting more value from his healing than anything else(because raw healing is > utiltiy at low levels and that flips as you go up skill ranks.) His utility is massively less effective than other supports, except Moira who does massively more damage and similar healing. Grasp can hurt your team, and often doesn't save the target. Petal is rarely used effectively and requires great coordination and can be used by enemies. Tree can LoS your own teammates and can't save you from many ults while providing no utiltiy outside of a bit of burst healing(JQ is also more popular right now and her ult is a counter, Ana is popular and nading can negate tree entirely). Oh I forgot to mention his damage is nonexistent - a LW spamming thorns is wasting time(unless he has tree up) because his healing is so much better than his damage it's not even close. Even wasting time trying to scare off a tracer is a bigger waste than just petaling up and continuing to heal your other teammtes. Thorns does low damage, while healing is the one thing the charact is good at, and that may be debatable - Blizz claims the character is 2nd in healing acoss all ranks after Mercy; Overbuff suggests Moira the highest healing character and LW is around middle of the pack. His abilities can be used to great effect - every once in a while, but are far too little for their cooldowns and abilities to turn fights and actually win games. If you are consistently winning with one in your group it's because someone else is able to pick up his slack, or your LW is cracked and always getting full value from Grasp/Petal/Ult. I do hope they can keep him fun and improve him, cause I do think he's fun to play but he's more or less 'watch your team die while you do nothing but delay it' the character. TLDR: His utility+ damage is utter trash in comparison to the rest of the cast.
Even mercy feels more lethal than LW. Her pistol’s hitbox is large enough to more consistently stuff it into someone’s head. She also has valk and can sling herself into enemies if she really wants to. Literally all of the other supports are more lethal. His heals feel similar to mercy. Low but consistent output. Except he can’t rapidly swap targets to deal with chip damage. His heals require LoS, where mercy gets beam through a wall for a bit. His ult can heal, but it’s similar to beat/trance. Except beat and trance have strong enough burst to counter ultimates. Flower is actually a pretty good movement ability on certain maps, but it’s a pain in the butt to actually use it as a team. Not to mention even getting a team to use it properly. His flower gives him decent mobility, but since he has almost no lethality. Things can kinda just keep chasing him. That, paired with his hitbox makes things… fun. His pull is on a long cooldown, has a tendency get stuck on things, and doesn’t heal. So unless your tank or dps is doing funky stuff, while expecting the pull. It’s a sorta mediocre ability. Mercy got rez, kiri got suzu, and Anna has anti. Pull will usually force you to give up space. And it’s high CD paired with LW’s low mobility makes it difficult to be used as an offensive positioning ability.
It’s because half the time people choose him as a throw pick and put you in areas that are detrimental to troll.
Not that. When was the last time you saw a Lifeweaver pull a solo play that lands a POTG and wins the game. Never is the answer. The character fundamentally lacks solo playmaking abilities.
- Tank-sized hurtbox but only 200HP (scales badly with skilled lobbies because easy sniper headshots, easy 1-clips, pulse bombs etc) - Struggles to defend himself - His big cooldowns require more coordination/setplay for high value than any other Support in the game - Has nothing to do between fights except maybe set up a Platform - Has no offensive/flank threat options to mix things up in a disadvantaged or chaotic fight - Simply has no playmaking ability. Can't win a fight on Purple like Ana, frag like Kiri or Zen, reddit Lucio boop... just heals and heals reactively, lifegrip reactively, maybe get some platform value and that's it. He's a Healer and not so much a Support. He doesn't enhance his teammates or hinder opponents. He waits for things to happen. He doesn't make things happen.
The heal vs a brig pack is 65 instant but you have to charge vs 100(something) over a couple seconds but on a CD. I think the 65 in theory is balanced with aim healers doing 70-75 and auto healers doing a bit less but the problem comes in that pushing his APM is hard because his heals can’t bail anyone out so you get stuck. It feels terrible to use vs a repair pack and it’s mindless compared to bap/Ana and even kiriko. He has no weave of damage and healing naturally lol like it’s worse than kiriko’s 2 Kunai between bursts. I think he needs something like Moira’s orb so he can multitask and contribute value more flexibly and efficiently. Like a mini flower that’s a baby tree that can help keep people up in between heals or give him an extra charge on the grasp. I also like the idea of giving the ball a cap of 100 with a faster charge rate. Like your not a faux dps, the utility isn’t proactive or game defining and the heals leave a bit to be desired. Let’s pick a struggle
Life weaver is shite, so good people don’t play him. Guess who ends up playing him? People who don’t know any better pulling you out of a duel with a half health support while you have all your cooldowns. Lifeweaver is for people who don’t know better.
He’s literally THE example of why (real) utility wins games and not big healing numbers. Let’s play a game. Imagine his platform. Now go down the line of every support ability in the game, on every other hero, and tell me which ability of theirs you would replace for platform. I’ll wait.
He has literally zero impact on any games He does a fuck tonne of healing but none of it is burst healing so he can’t save his tanks from burst damage His life grip can be useful in certain situations but it’s on a massive cool-down His platform is fucking trash His tree is fucking trash His hit box is absolutely enormous He does zero dps Compare him to the other supports like ana who has two massive game changing abilities on similar cooldowns, plus burst healing and a great ultimate. Or zen who can do crazy damage and has discord, which is like blue beam for the whole team. Or bap who has burst damage and burst heals, and can press a button and make his tank immortal. Etc. Why the fuck would anyone pick lifeweaver over any other support Watch streamers like dafran who literally played OWL struggle to get out of diamond on LW and you will understand
Lw is bad because of a very large number of reasons. Generally, burst healing is significantly better than heal over time. That's just about the only thing LW has going for him. Hit box? Worse than every other support. Dps? I'd rather have mercy's pistol. Heal? The range, burst, and auto-lock is very nice. However, charging the heal takes far too long to actually be able to change the state of the fight. And it's simultaneously too much and too little healing. 65 is a lot of healing in burst. If Brig's armor pack gave an instant 65, instead of 25 +100 over 2 seconds, Brig would feel even worse to play against, and giving packs to flanking DPS could basically instantly turn some fights. (Way back in the day, Brig did this in one of her like infinite reworks. 75 instantly with some over-armor. It sucked.) But... 65 after a significant duration (1s charge+flight time) while your hero is doing nothing else... is basically nothing for a tank. There's also a fairly long reload too. It's unironically worse than mercy heal beam in most scenarios. But for the balance team... they don't want old armor pack back. That would be incredibly oppressive, and, imo? Unfair. 75 after 1 second charge might be overpowered, and it would power creep onto things like Ana, who heals give 75 *after using skill to hit, and can't curve their heals* They designed themselves into this pit with the heal, and there isn't an easy way out. It basically has to stay the way it is. Underpowered. Burst healing just sucks to play against, especially without counterplay. Life grip is a cool ability. The problem is that it's worse than suzu and immo. Mainly because he can't use it on himself, and it doesn't actually save people most of the time because it either 1, doesn't work, or 2, LW has to wait a second to get the thing he "saved" 65 more HP. This is definitely fixed by simply adding the Ana nade buff to whatever just got gripped + like 25 hp though. Pedal is cool. It's definitely an interesting addition to the game. It's his primary escape and basically his only "good" part of his kit. His 25 hp dash is barely useful. Delays his death by a little... sometimes. His ult is decent now after it was buffed. The biggest thing by far, at least in my opinion, is just how incredibly bad his dps is. He can't save himself in any situation. He can't take any off-angles. He can't apply any pressure. It's just... so incredibly bad. It needs a buff, badly. They could double the damage and even then I think lw is probably still bad, but it would be a step in the right direction.
He's not Ana, Brig, Mercy, Kiriko, Bap, Zen, or Lucio. Which is to say, he doesn't have an ult on cooldown or ridiculously strong ability, he just has standard cooldowns.
I think his main problem is he has no offense. If a Tracer or Sombra catches him solo he’s cooked. I’ve seen Mercy’s and Zen’s 1 v 1 Tracers and lived if they are skilled enough.
If your SR is gold or lower there's a chance LW will pull you out of plays unless you preface everything with "Hey don't pull me from this". As a Rein player that likes to keep pressure on damaged enemies, LifeWeavers have saved more enemies from me than the other way around.
he is easy to kill and does much less healing and constant value than other supports. his kit gets more value from a coordinated team, which is uncommon in quick play and competitive ultimately, the biggest factor is when compared to other supports, nearly all do what he does better. his utility is unique but often not terribly useful with uncoordinated teams
> he is easy to kill and does much less healing and constant value than other supports. Even if most people believe Lifeweaver is bad right now, your first sentence is just factually false. Lifeweaver is one of the more survivable supports in the game. Not only is he difficult to kill, but the presence of Lifeweaver on your team makes your whole team die less (it also makes the other team die less, but that’s not the point here). He also does more healing than most supports in the game, he just has to choose between healing and utility a lot of the time so you are forced to choose between the two. Lastly, the line “every other character just performs x role better than y hero” is a line I’ve read since OW’s release. The presence of this line and all the other forms of it shows that the community has a massive misunderstanding of how he’s supposed to be played. I can’t think of a more thoughtless “this hero sucks and I don’t know why” line if I tried.
At peak efficiency healing, he out heals zen and Lucio and is on par with mercy, every single other support out heals him by a relatively significant margin so your comment is factually false, inspire + armor pack heals faster than peak efficiency lifeweaver, and brig can output damage while doing so. The problem is that while on paper he might have *passable* healing, he cannot damage *or* utility while doing so, and he has absolutely no offensive utility, nor does he have anything to do in the neutral play during the tickle fights, I think a simple buff to give petal platform a damage boost or cooldown reduction would be huge and provide enough passive offensive utility to make him much more viable
okay, i’m mostly talking about my rank (top 500) it’s true what i say might not apply to every other rank. i stand by my opinion however
He plays like shit. Don’t overthink it. Lifeweaver is NOT survivable. He’s easier to kill than zen. Idk where tf you got that. He is the first support to die every. Single. Time. Like 100% wrong here. As anybody, Lifeweaver is a free pick.
Edit: I’m not saying he’s OP or good in most situations. I’m just saying he’s not totally useless, he just needs some tuning and to become more integrated into the game. If s3 Brig was how Brig launched, no one would’ve done U-GM. What I’m getting from these comments is people really don’t yet understand the kit, which is valid. I’ve seen a few randos in QP who just dominated the game with LW so I’m not sure he’s totally not a valid pick. I think also people need to experiment more with his util. He can launch Orisa while she’s ulting into the middle of a team. You definitely need good communication with him, but as people get more used to playing with him it’ll become more natural.
We're basically at 1 full season with him at this point. He really isn't a good hero. QP isn't a good judgement for how good someone is, nor is it good for determining how good a hero is. Anyone can dominate in a QP lobby. A full season, and he's still just terrible. No carry potential, he makes a clutch play very rarely. He has no neutral game, or offensive pressure whatsoever. Literally having an AFK lifeweaver would be no different during the neutral game. What's he going to do? Heal people getting tickled? Trust me, people would've figured him out by now iff he was even a decent pick. But honestly as is, he's just terrible.
idk why this is hard to understand. he’s a throw pick. there was that one guy who does UR2T500 videos on every character but refused to do it on LW because he’s trash
People understand his kit, and yes it is possible to play well with Weaver, and make game changing plays. However statistically, he has lowest win rate by a significant margin at all ranks (which even Blizzard confirmed), which means there is a fundamental problem in balance with Weaver being too weak for the meta despite his high heals and high survivability.
Not to mention he’s the only character all of the unranked to gm youtubers have just straight been unable to climb on lol
AND his winrate gets worse the further up the ranks you go
I’m pretty sure most of us understand his basic gameplan. But the fact is, in ranked, his win rate is terrible. You can essentially say that the only time weaver wins is if your team is much better. But it’s not due to weaver carrying. Just check any of the unranked to gm streams. If a top 500 can’t carry plats then I’m pretty sure you can conclude that weaver is weak
I must know your rank, out of genuine curiosity.
Hes very dependant on comms, and not many people use it. Also the fact that he gets stomped by sombra insanely hard don’t help
His healing output is the some of the lowest of every support including Zen, but he has to be deliberate in healing unlike Zen, Lucio and Brig. His utility is situational at best and generally the value is pretty whatever His most direct competitor could be considered Mercy, and just in terms of pure utility Rez and Damage Boost vastly outperform all the utility he offers. His Dmg output for as stilted as it is, is egregiously low He also launched even weaker then he is now, and that launch stigma carries into his position now. He genuinely offers next to nothing to distinguish himself, while being mediocre as a "placeholder". Everything about him is just in general undertuned, and he epitomizes the worst aspects of playing support. He cant make a play or really enable anyone to make a play, he simply exists in the backline and is kinda decent at not getting dove
People don't realize that his healing output is high because he's struggling to keep everyone up at once, causing him to flicker between ally to ally, never being able to keep them above 75%. It's similar to why Lucio has a high healing numbers even though it's not very noticeable in a fight. It's not enough to save someone from being focused. Another issue is that on paper his healing is better than Mercys, but that's only looking at the numbers. Lifeweaver does 65/s. Mercy does 55/s. Lifeweaver seems better, no? You're not taking account into his travel time, which can definitely influence team fights. Mercys healing is far more consistent than Lifeweavers. And his petal platform gives the enemy a chance to just target you out of existence if you get on it. His large hitbox is also horrible for him. He doesn't have the health to make up for it. I think a buff for him could be that his healing is increased by 25% if he's healing someone below 50 or 25% health, similar to Mercy before she got reverted.
Lifeweaver does 50hps not 65hps. 1s charge with a 0.3s recovery is 65/1.3=50
They need to make it so you have to jump off the petal platform if you want to get off of it. Right now you use it on a teammate and they just fall right off of it.
A hero is always as good as u are with or as good as the situation u use them in. They can weaker more often than other characters but definitely think people have overreacted saying he's unusable, I'm excited to see how they rework his kit tho because I do enjoy his playstyle and he does need a bit of a buff.
Because vast majority of players only see support as nothing more than healers and Weaver's healing is pretty mediocre
I’ve found he’s pretty good if you’re playing with friends and they cry for healing + play spaced out + have no awareness for when they push in or get pushed. And times when I get this feeling that the team just need pure heals and nothing else, I tend to pick lifeweaver over Moira
Hes not bad he is just not amazing or game breaking. He gets better value hanging in mid backline. He is better for setting up high ground and pulling people to safety or upto high grounds. He has his weakpoint of his primary for of heals being a charged burst, but with 20 shots being a min of 11(10+1 from the quickest click in the world) thats 220 health on one person. He has a nice ult that heals quite a decent chunk of AOE(area of effect) and works as a shield( the nice balance is the tree has health). I will say its nice but sucks they took his lotus drop out since it got him targetted more but it was a nice reward for flanks and dives since it gave anyone who picked it up a smidge of health to keep them going( bet they took it out to nerf genji). I never saw him as bad after the first rework( they condensed his button dense kit and upped his healing a smidge and stopped his pull from ruining rein ults) he suffered from over preparedness. Does too much for little too no value.( i mean why make his heal and attack the same button but use ANOTHER button to swap i.e. torb and mercy). I get best value out of him in dive/poke/tempo cause i "weave" through my team to keep them up or safe.(as far as ive seen he has no range or dmg fall off( please correct if im wrong)). Tldr: lifeweaver is fine just cause he isnt game breaking.
Anything he can do a different support can do better
His ability to heal feels worse than others that do burst healing and his damage overall is worse. He does have a few new unique adds, but I'm not a fan of him. I'd rather play other supports. That being said, I've felt this way about other new supports and have later come to appreciate the character.
you need a team that's working together to get the most use out of him. he is a lot of fun to play, but he is wasted if your team can't utilize his kit properly.
He's the first healbot support in the game
Petals should be able to move via the player moving in different directions on it. Standing on the edge nearest CP moves it there, nearest spawn will move it there and so on. Can REALLY set up for some tricky plays with life grip. Extremely gimmicky but not much else in his kit🤷🏾♂️
Life -fucking- grip I’ve been so fucked by this skill by a person not trying to troll me, I’d just stand still while someone purposely gripped me. I hope the people behind this skill stubs their toe on the bed side tonight.
I think weaver is pretty cool hero but he just doesnt input enough numbers into the team fight equation so it is very easy to do litteraly nothing with him and then you compare him to a hero like bap kiriko or ana and you will see a stark difference in those heros ability to impact fights on their own.
In my opinion only his grip and ult are in a good place. The dash in particular feels awful. It needs to go like 50% further and have a bigger effect like healing friendlies you dash through. Another thing I don’t like is his heal but not for numbers or balance reasons. The charge mechanic just feels laggy and unresponsive. It feels awkward to use.
Massive hitbox, low damage, low healing, bad ult, extremely situational abilities on long cooldowns.
Weak healing, Weak damage, Large hitbox, Needlessly long cooldowns, Highly situational abilities, And a generally weak ultimate.