Nothing pisses me off more in Overwatch when a goddamn Hanzo main looks down on a healer or tells them what to do. More often than not in the general games I've played, it's usually the fucking useless Hanzo not getting picks or contributing that causes us to lose. I've seen some dominant Widowmakers but the useful Hanzo is extremely rare. Anytime a Hanzo player tells me what to do as a support character, I tell them to shut the fuck up abe mute them.
I've NEVER seen anyone switch to a Hanzo to turn the tide of a battle, but I have seen someone go support (specifically a healer) to win the game.
Zeke told me you mained Torbjorn though? Pretty sure I played Hanzo with you a bit early on during the launch days as well, and we won more often than not. Then again maybe you muted me back then too. You always didn't like the sound of my voice on the TF2 Jank.
Anyway the OP is correct in my opinion overall, but the glib general nature of the title set a lot of people off since folks have brought up healer archetypes from every kind of game under the sun. The OP specifically mentioned making the move to Splatoon which is an arcadey class based shooter. For those type of games, I agree wholeheartedly that
hard support healer classes are game design in bad faith.
The distinction of a hard support as supposed to a general healer is important. There's a reason why a lot of these healer examples being posted aren't full on healers for their respective games. The much beloved Warhammer Online healer built up healing juice by clobbering people with a big ass hammer. Ana from Overwatch is a character that uses a variety of skill shots to support her team both in healing and being aggressive. She shares the same gameplay loop as a conventional damage dealer--clicking on people. This is also true for many other games. The medic class in the battlefield series is a dude with a gun plus a medpack. This is not a Hacksaw Ridge archetype. Lots of people love playing that class because it has a high amount of self sustain since you can drink your own jar of healing pee as well as share it with others. Someone even posted the Team Fortress Classic medic. This was a class that used conc grenades to fly around the map. A very hard thing to execute and overall made it a high skill floor/ceiling character who used advanced movement...and none of it had to do with healing.
The kinds of healers that many people dread to play more resemble the Team Fortress 2 medic. A far cry from his ancestor, this medic has a health hose meant to attach to the butt of a damage dealer. He has limited ability to defend himself and his whole toolkit is designed to enable his team at his own expense. Mercy and Lucio are the Overwatch equivalents to this kind of healer. Mercy being the one most "inspired" by the TF2 medic (Lucio is sorta like a watered down version of a couple of different buff banners). These characters provide a large amount of unique utility in exchange for damage. On paper this makes sense balance wise; but in practice in an action game, it means that person can't leverage their individual skill in controlling the outcome of a game. This is why I feel like it's bad faith game design. Theses kind of healers are made in mind for "weaker players" so that they can contribute in SOME way while the big boys do all the work.
This extreme stratification between high level utility and combat impact creates a negative feedback loop in the game's culture. Or to put it simply, Healers develop a martyrdom complex and feel embittered towards those playing dps while they are playing the "responsible class." Meanwhile, people playing the high skill cap characters feel like hard supports are made up of the sad girlfriends of their neckbearded beau pockets because they aren't good enough to do anything better. Both sides are filled with misconceptions here.
The title change to this thread is proof positive of that. For those who aren't familar with Overwatch. Hanzo is a high damage mid range marksman built around a finicky projectile weapon. It's something that takes a lot of time and practice to do well, and is probably one of the hardest characters in the game if not the hardest character in the game mechanically when it comes to aiming and shooting because of it. Because the character is hard to play, you will see some support players freak out because they think it limits their potential to be carried by this character. But the problem isn't with the character, itself. Hard to play characters like Hanzo are healthy for the game. The problem is, is this need to be carried that exists because you have characters that are so limited to what they can do on their own. This is the crux of the issue and why healers, specifically the hard support hose medics, are bad design.
