Supporting has rarely been a gamer's first choice in a team-based game. Often, the support is seen as a character that only has its uses in healing, leading to everyone forgetting about it when compared to the flashy attacks and abilities of the tank and DPS classes. For a team to work properly though, a support is often needed to be the unsung hero that keeps the other players alive so objectives can be captured and matches can be won. In Overwatch 2's case, many are finding the support class fairly unchanged from the original Overwatch, and largely unenjoyable.
Many of the complaints around support characters in Overwatch 2 stem from Blizzard's huge changes to DPS and Tank characters such as Bastion, Doomfist, and Orisa. Where these heroes have new abilities and entire reworks, supports are left largely feeling like they did in the original Overwatch. For some fans, this has led to supports feeling somewhat uninteresting and underpowered. While some supports like Mercy were broken at the beginning of Overwatch 2's beta, others like Lucio and Zenyatta are leaving players not wanting to pick them.
With multiple Overwatch YouTubers and the fan community questioning why Blizzard left supports with little to no changes, the company has recently addressed fan concerns over the heroes in Overwatch 2, hoping to calm the fears that this will be the permanent case for supports. Blizzard's primary solution to the support problem is to simply add more heroes to the roster. In a blog post, the Overwatch developer stated that the team hopes to add some "exciting new support heroes" into the mix. This could be a good way to experiment with new ideas, such as even including a non-healing support in Overwatch 2.
Blizzard acknowledges that the major problems with Overwatch 2's supports stem not from them being underpowered, but feeling less exciting due to their lack of changes and reworks. Alongside new heroes being added to the game in the long term, the short term solution Blizzard is looking into is to add "new and refreshed abilities" for some support heroes. Already fans have had some ideas about new abilities that could be added to support heroes such as Brigitte.
While Blizzard has acknowledged that the support role needs changing in Overwatch 2, some fans of the game are still divided over whether this lies as a player problem or an issue with the game itself. There are those telling support players to simply get better while others empathize with the fact that not every team has a professional level of play, leading to the support role being underwhelming.
The Overwatch 2 PvP Beta is now available for PC from April 26 to May 17. Overwatch 2 is currently in development.
Source: Blizzard
