Overwatch's Competitive Skill Rating is Broken for Healers Right Now

[Steven Bogos]

Overwatch's Competitive Skill Rating is Broken for Healers Right Now

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Due to a change on how "on fire" status is calculated, healers are getting considerably lower SR gains in Overwatch's competitive mode.

Are you primarily a healer in Overwatch? Have you noticed that no matter how well you play, your Skill Rating never seems to increase as quickly as your Tank and DPS brethren? You're not going crazy, as a behind-the-scenes change has made it exceedingly harder for dedicated supports to climb the ranks in Overwatch's competitive mode.

The report from subreddit [http://kotaku.com/overwatchs-skill-rating-system-is-busted-for-healers-1794345756?IR=T], where players have anaylzed the flaw. Essentially, players' individual Skill Rating gain from an Overwatch competitive game is determined by the percentage of the game they spend "on fire". For DPS and tanks getting on fire is pretty easy - just make a bunch of kills without dying. For dedicated healers like Mercy its a bit more complicated. Previously, healing done and assists contributed to "on fire" status. Now, they don't. At all. So, the only way for a Mercy player to get on fire is to whip out her pistol and start capping fools, or to waste her ultimate rezzing as much as possible.

The end result of this is that dedicated healers like Mercy and Ana are gaining considerably less SR regardless of their performance. This change also encourages Mercy players to play badly. A good Mercy should save her rez for an opportune moment that can resurrect multiple teammates, while a Mercy who wants to increase her SR gain should rez as soon as she has her ultimate and a single teammate dies.

Blizzard has somewhat from the community [https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753686603?page=25#post-486] certainly seems to confirm it.

In short, maybe don't play competitive Overwatch for a while if you're a dedicated healer.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/overwatchs-skill-rating-system-is-busted-for-healers-1794345756?IR=T]

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[Kungfu_Teddybear]

So healers don't get the on fire status for doing their job? Did the person at Blizzard responsible for these changes get fired from his last job as a window cleaner for leaving tongue marks?

 

[Erttheking]

So I can go fuck myself according to Blizzard? Or am supposed to act like a child and demand someone else play Mercy?

 

[DaCosta]

"Right Now"

HA!

It has always been broken.

 

[Chronologist]

Blizzard has somewhat acnklowadged [https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753686603?page=25#post-486] the problem

I think you mean "acknowledged". Also, as a Support main in MOBAs this fills me with impotent rage. Keeping your team alive is often a thankless job, but now it seems the game itself is treating it that way as well.

 

[bjj hero]

Healers are for players who cannot get head shots, they had it coming. DPS for life!

 

[Rednog]

As a support main:
All I can say about this season, is please go fuck yourself Blizzard.
Seriously, what a cluster fuck.
Forcing players to play 7 comp game a week or face decay, streak changes, now this. What stupid decision will they think of next. I'm thankful I got over my Overwatch obsession and significantly cut back.

 

[hentropy]

Really, the entire on-fire system is broken and has been since launch, healers just get screwed the hardest by it. The system seems to want you to be fighting and killing things all the time and it only seems to value death, instead of accounting for clutch shielding, healing, and tactical crowd control. Me eating Zarya's ult as D.Va may have very well saved the team and won the game, but only get a slight uptick in it for the on-fire system, where the Soldier who presses Q to get 2-3 easy kills gets it so easy. Healing assist kills don't even get nearly as much credit as it deserves.

The culprit of the problem is that Blizzard only seems to give a crap about competitive when pros and Master+ players who take up a tiny amount of the playerbase start complaining. Since many of them (especially support mains) play in groups, they don't care as much about individualized SR gain. So they're quick to go after smurfs and the win streaks that enable them, but not willing to fix the massively broken SR and MMR system quickly or at all.

 

[Frankster]

Just another day in the life of a healer main. Well mercy and anna players in particular, zen's half a dps and not like he has to choose between heals and hitting things, can do both just fine. Lucio's value has always been in his boops, speed buff and just being more survivable by himself, he is a mediocre healer unless your team bunches up.
This does explain why I've been struggling to get on fire lately though -^

But yeh cmon, we know the job when we signed up:
To be utterly screwed over in every possible way by the enemy, your own team, and the game itself.
I have a theory healer mains are sadomasochists at heart who like getting screwed over hard even as they protest "yamate!". I mean, why else would we persist? We practically get off on being on a team with zarya and winston on it yet still get 0 help when a genji is chasing us around the map.

I mean heck remember when Mercys potgs was weighed a lot more so you could actually see them fairly regularly? :O
That almost made playing mercy rewarding, and we can't have that, which is now they nerfed it to the point even a quintuple rez is usually overidden by a triple kill, and now you can't even see a mercy potg anymore unless everyone else is uber noob.

 

[XenoScifi]

This season has left a very ugly taste in my mouth in general. This just made it worse.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Yeah this sucks pretty hard.

On the plus side, I just played a comp game as Lucio where I got 4 golds, including gold elims and gold objective kills, so Lucio has gotten a lot more beast lately.

 

[Rednog]

As a support main:
All I can say about this season, is please go fuck yourself Blizzard.
Seriously, what a cluster fuck.
Forcing players to play 7 comp game a week or face decay, streak changes, now this. What stupid decision will they think of next. I'm thankful I got over my Overwatch obsession and significantly cut back.

Blahblahblah.

You and others need to stop pretending to be outraged. It's an unplanned side-effect from on-fire changes. It'd acknowledged and will be fixed.

If it bothers you so much, just don't play healer in ranked. It's only a temporary inconvenience.

I actually do put my money where my mouth is. Like I said I significantly cut my playtime from Overwach, I stopped playing this season, hell I refuse to finish my placements. This season has has numerous shit decisions which pushed me away from Overwatch, I don't even bother getting my first win of the day bonus anymore. so take your blahblahblah and shove it. Seriously stop defending the
shit decisions this season.