Competitive Lifeweaver Experience (and some extra)

Wall of text incoming, TL;DR at the bottom. Sorry if the format's shit, coming from mobile.

Who am I? I'm a support main that climbed from Bronze 2 to Diamond 2 from Season 1 through Season 3. I have 570 hours in the game, 294 of which are in competitive.

Why am I making this post? I have put 15 hours in to Lifeweaver competitively, and have dropped from Diamond 2 to Gold 5 doing so. This post is to share personal thoughts around the character, clear some misunderstandings with the community, and hopefully we can all share some thoughts on how we can make this character viable.

How it feels to be Lifeweaver. It's frustrating, to say the very least; his utility isn't strong enough to justify having a character that can create negative value by using his abilities. Everyone has already had they're experience with a bad pull, but I'm going to get in to the nitty gritty of what I mean by "negative value".

With the control remapping and auto-reload mechanic when swapping between modes, it feels like you should be able to "weave" healing in while putting damage out. This is made null very quickly by the fact that you have to charge your heal for it to be effective at all. If you try to deal damage, you're punished with a weapon swap animation TWICE, as well as having to let your heal charge for that team mate that's already dead. The needler itself isn't great either, with a massive fire rate but terrible projectile speed and magazine size. So you and your team are punished for you even trying to do damage, thus creating negative value. Ok, we'll try to be like Mercy then.

Mercy does everything better than LW. The idea is since you can't deal any damage, you want to give your DPS as much of an advantage to secure kills and keep them safe while evading the enemy team through your mobility. If were looking at it like this, then Dash = GA, Petal Platform = Damage Boost, Grip = Rez, Healing Blossom = Heal Boost, and Tree = Valk.

GA is way more useful and mobile than Dash, and on a lower CD/ similar CD if you use a movement tech. Mercy can fly to any team mate, alive or dead, within range and then activate it again to either shoot straight up and slowly descend or slingshot in any direction. LW dashes 5 meters in any direction while in the air, force starting his role passive as well as 25 burst healing. This forces LW to use Petal Platform selfishly to avoid damage and stay mobile, missing out on giving his team an advantage.

The "advantage" Petal Platform gives is not even close to damage boost. The hitbox of the platform makes it where you'll get headshot as you poke out to shoot from above. Team mates aren't even aware of its existence unless you put it underneath them or pull them to it, but the result is always the same once they are on it; they walk off 1-10 frames afterwards. I know that they work fundamentally differently, and this can be said about the characters as a whole as well, but the end result is the same; you're using that ability (character) to try and give your team the edge over the enemy team. Damage Boost is more consistent, its clear what its doing, gives a statistical edge over the enemy team, and available at a moments notice. Petal Platform is wonky, can be activated by anyone (especially unintentionally) and immediately forgotten about, as well as being on cd for as long as suzu.

Life Grip is a scary ability, for everyone involved. With a targeting system similar to nano it's not a matter of if you yoink the wrong team mate, but when. Not to even get in to how you may be screwing over your team mates play, or the motion sickness and disorientation they experience afterwards. The only benefit this has over Rez is that you get it 10 secs faster, and you don't have to commit to one spot for 4 secs while doing nothing else. Unless its early in the fight or you can pull them to your other support, the person you pull is going to die anyways. Rez brings you back with full health, you know full well its about to happen, and you know the situation you're coming back to.

Finally, to the meat and potatoes of supports, the healing. Healing in bursts isn't a problem, its the fact that you are doing functionally nothing between the burst because you have to charge them to be effective. This leaves him constantly charging heals, with 0 opportunities to deal damage because it takes 1ish secs to fully charge a heal, alongside a 1 sec weapon swap animations both ways. This combo'd with that it travels as a projectile leaves you in many instances where even when you're not swapping to damage and you're sending heals out as soon as they hit 65, your teammates will still die due to the rhythm of your healing being too slow. With Mercy, you hold primary fire on a team mate and you know they're getting 55 hp per sec.

Last for the comparisons, the ultimates. Valk force starts support role passive, gives Mercy 360° flight, and makes her beam chain to other team mates. This not only makes her near unkillable, but also allows her to win team fights by being able to swap between damage boosts or 55hp per sec heals for the whole team at a moments notice. Tree is probably the most underwhelming support ult to date. The most interesting thing about it is the its a physical object that can block sightlines/passages. The 75hp per 2 secs is an abysmal tick time, the area on it makes you confined to playing within a tiny space, and if you plan on using it to block a sightline/passage you can guarantee it'll be deleted within 3 seconds.

All of this to say, LW is currently just a worse Mercy. But how do we make him viable? Buffing numbers really isn't going to give a good result; his gameplay loop is clunky, underwhelming, and can create negative value trying to force his playstyle. Having another character like Mercy is possible, but Lifeweaver ain't it. For another character like her to exist, something on par with Damage Boost has to come with them, and no version of Petal Platform will ever compete with Damage Boost. So instead of trying to compete with Mercy, we tweak the kit so that it appeals to a different team comp.

In my personal opinion, the biggest change Lifeweaver needs is the removal of Healing Blossom as a weapon. Instead of having 2 weapons to switch between, keeping track of 2 magazines and having to charge the heals actively, just combine them. Make Thorn Volley as the Primary Fire, with Healing Blossom charging passively on Secondary Fire. Up the magazine size to 80 on Thorns, change the reload mechanic to everytime he fully charges a blossom he gets 10 thorns back. Keep the charge time the same, get rid of the slow on full charge, get rid of the weapon swap animations.

As much as I hate to say it, Grip might be the most ok part of his kit. The only changes I would give it would be to turn the person you gripped to face the direction you were when you gripped them, to get them oriented back to the fight and to see what you saved them from. As well as being unable to grip anyone within 5m of you, to prevent unintended grips or checky dive techs.

The tree should work like his heals. Instead of the area around it healing every 2 secs, it should send a Healing Blossom to every one in line of sight, with the same charge time as Lifeweaver's heals. Health buff would help too, but probably not necessary.

Dash would be in an good place after the weapon changes. Since it's primarily used to escape right now it feels like it needs something, but if LW can duel and fight for himself then the dash would be a great way to reposition mid-fight and keep healthy without having to break off and wait for his passive to kick in.

Petal Platform is definitely the hardest part of his kit to try to rework, because its the entire point of picking him in the first place. There's a clear advantage to using the platform, but there no incentive to get on it or to stay on it. I played around with the idea of it giving burst healing on activation and healing over time for the duration, but that may lead to to people hopping on for the heals and ditching it quickly afterwards. It has to provide some kind of buff or safety while on it to get people to actually use it.

Oh, and obviously make his hitbox in line with the rest of the supports, or buff his Hp to compensate.

These are just some thoughts and ideas, I'd love to hear what others have to say about the subject.

TL;DR: Spent 15 hours in comp learning LW is just a worse Mercy, please make his heals charge passively with no weapon swap animation Blizzard.