Overwatch Healers: Unsung Heroes
Recently I got a copy of Overwatch: Origins Edition. I’ve been busy trying to level up and get those sweet, sweet rewards: loot boxes. However, I’ve already begun to see a trend in the game to ignore or gloss over the importance of the “support” characters, especially the healers.
Guys, I’m gonna be blunt: played well, those healers are the real heroes. They can make or break a game.
So far I’m still new to the game and I “main” Reaper, so I usually don’t need healing so long as there’s plenty of wholesale slaughter going on, since every death pops out a tasty soul to replenish health with. But while I was binge-playing the other day, I kept my eye on the healers. The good ones work swiftly, rarely stop moving, and heal anyone who needs it. It’s amazing. Instead of just up and dying, characters with low health have a means to keep going. In some of the matches I was in, the team’s healer was quite seriously healing someone almost all of the time, since we were taking heavy damage. Without the healer, I doubt most of those missions would have succeeded.
Yet I don’t see much appreciation for these unsung healers. First off, good luck getting “Play of the Game” as a healer. I hate that. Sure, another freaking Bastion turned into a turret or tank and wasted a bunch of dudes, or Torbjörn hammering his stupid turret (that’s another rant altogether by the way), but that doesn’t matter as much to the team’s success as a whole; in many games I’ve played, the healer was the glue holding the whole team together. There was one match in particular I am thinking of, where someone was playing Lúcio. In that entire match, NOT ONE SINGLE TEAMMATE DIED. He was one of the best healer players I’ve seen, moving constantly, surfing walls to stay out of direct combat, healing EVERYONE. In one part of the match I am pretty sure he kept like four people from dying in rapid succession. I would LOVE for that to have been “Play of the Game!” I mean come on, it was a real turning point for us! How many players in any game session can claim that NOBODY DIED ONCE?! But sure, let’s watch another “Play of the Game” of a freaking turret. Makes me see red! Just because that Lúcio didn’t kill a bunch of people, they get passed over.
Secondly, I don’t see much appreciation from players themselves. Seriously, there’s a way to toggle a “thanks” for a reason!!! In one match I ended up super low on health with no souls to reap, so I asked for healing. A moment later, full health! I made sure to say thank you, because it’s the polite thing to do. Now if there’s outright combat, I can see skipping the “thanks” but several times after we did a total-party-kill, dudes would be standing around while the healer went around and topped everyone off, and almost NOBODY said thanks. How rude!
Along those lines, I also get really cross when people don’t vote up the good healers at the end of the game. Sure, insert-combatant-here wracked up a ton of kills or had X% of the kills or total team damage. But when a healer goes above and beyond to keep the team in one piece, vote for that! To my way of thinking, if a dude gets a massive kill streak, it’s probably partly because the healer is keeping them alive. Nothing ends a kill streak like SUDDENLY DYING, am I right?!
Now, that being said, I’m talking about amazing and awesome healers here, not the garbage ones. There ARE some crappy ones, though. Like for real, if you are playing Mercy or Lúcio, please be careful when trying to directly kill enemies. If you die, you can’t heal the rest of us. And on that note, please don’t just camp next to one teammate while everyone else dies. That’s something I’ve seen a couple times, where someone playing Mercy parks their butt next to Bastion or D.Va and just funnels health and damage bonuses to their chosen heavy hitter, and left the rest of the team hanging out to dry. Please don’t do that. Lastly, to you Mercy players...you don’t have to wait until everyone is dead to revive them. Could you be a little more liberal with that particular Ultimate? I had one person playing Mercy who would revive one or two key heroes and that team was much more successful than the norm.
Bottom line, value your healers, take care of them so they can take care of you, and hopefully someday Blizzard will figure out a new or improved algorithm to more fairly judge “Play of the Game” so healers have a chance to shine.