I will never understand why most people don’t like healing in hero shooters. most healer characters in hero shooters seem designed as damage dealers who can also offhandedly heal - with the idea (I think?) being that players don’t “have to” spend too much time healing instead of attacking the enemy team

but I always loved Furia in Paladins, for example, because you can literally just heal as her and you don’t have to attack the enemies at all (unless you suddenly have to defend yourself). healing is great because you get to feel like you’re helping your team and saving them from death. you get this sense of managing the chaos of battle as you prioritize who to help and try to time your heals just right to keep everyone alive

but of course whenever randoms are playing as healer, they just play them like it’s another DPS lol. which really sucks when you’re the tank

which, tbh I also really like to play as a tank (it feels really nice to protect the team) but not when the healer is played by a random who’s just going to go off and try to get kills

I feel like TF2 did healing perfectly with the medic. if that game didn’t have nearly 2 decades’ worth of skill creep I would go right back to healing in it because it was perfect

@kasdeya I love to play medic/healer in various games. I don't know, it just feels very rewarding to help your allies with heals and buffs.

@kasdeya our experience here has been that it depends a lot on how much the tank/healer trust each other

tanks don't want to get into trouble unless they know the healer will back then up, so the healer focuses on other things, so the tank plays even more cautiously, etc

@tempest hm that makes sense! to be honest I have very little awareness of my team in a hero shooter (I’m used to singleplayer games where that isn’t a factor and I haven’t picked up the skills to maintain that awareness yet. plus these games are just so fast that there isn’t enough time to think about anything consciously) so I always play as a tank under the assumption that I’m going to get healed - which makes me play very aggressively as I try to pressure as much of the enemy team as possible. and if the healer isn’t interested in healing me then I tend to get melted pretty fast when I do that lol

@kasdeya *nods* depending on the game and the character in question that can be a pretty good strategy, and speaking as someone who mostly plays healers in stuff like OW . . . i'd rather have a tank who i occasionally have to remind something like "hey wait up, i can't heal you if you get ahead of me" than one who errs on the side of being timid and unwilling to take risks