Over there, over where, Overwatch

I love playing support in Overwatch, but am disappointed to only see 4 choices when Offence and Defence get 6 and Tanks get 5.

So I was thinking what other types of support could there be, and what type of abilities they would have.

I started looking at other similar games likes MOBA’s for inspiration. With Lucio being

 similar to Sona and Mercy close to Soraka, both from League of Legends (LoL), this seemed and obvious place to start.

Then I thought about Guild Wars 2 (GW2) with its classes all being able to play multiple ways, offence, defence or support.

Now I had a whole range of skills to look at and see what would fit the world of Overwatch best and work in the FPS view and faster paced battles that happen.

In games like LoL and GW2 a lot of abilities are repeated. I can think of three champions in LoL that all have a grab move for instance, similar to Roadhog. In GW2 loads of skills can either buff or remove buffs.

In Overwatch so far there are no two skills that are the same. Mercy, Lucio and Zenyatta all heal but in a different way and to a different degree.

So maybe we can look at other skills and use them over in a different way. Like Mercy’s solo damage buff, we could have an aoe buff that works like Soldier 76’s heal. Not as effect per person and not mobile but certainly useful.

Maybe we could have a hero that takes damage and passes it of as healing to other heroes, ether over time or when a certain damage point is reached.

Other skills that are useful for the supports are shields, like Lucio’s ult, Symetra and Zyra (I know she’s not support but it’s a support skill) provides.

Lucio has a great alternate fire that knocks back, same as Roadhog’s ult. Maybe we get another flying character that can land Superman style and cause all enemies to be knocked back.

There are talks of a support sniper in various forums. Maybe this character has a gun designed by Mercy and they can shoot allies to provide a buff of some sort. Like a damage or speed booster or maybe make them temporarily invulnerable.

I think maybe some sort of aoe slow would be good, or a single target knockdown, i.e. a weaker form of Reinhardt’s ult.

The potential for skills is high but at the same time you want the heroes to maintain their individuality like they have now. No two heroes play the same even within the same class; it’s what makes swapping heroes such a vital part of the gameplay.

With the games release later today I’m hoping they’ve left a surprise or two for players and maybe we’ll see a new hero sooner than we think.

I’m excited to see what the designers bring to the table and hope that the class number disparity isn’t just because they ran out of ideas.

Overwatch will probably be taking over a small part of my life for a few weeks. Though if my love for League of Legends is anything to go by I can definitely see this game being on permanent rotation for a long time to come.

Except to see more blog posts about the game in the future.