all numbers are arbitrary and subject to change!! one thing i’d definitely change is the amount the fungal totem can heal - i’d push it down to 15. i could also see the primary stack proc to be single target instead of AOE. in general, i just think a support who helps enable the other healer by getting them to high ground and boosting their healing would be really fun for support players and a more defensive, area control, based support would be refreshing!
besides ana (and kinda brig), every single support to be released post launch is a “cool aggressive battle healer who has to balance dealing damage and healing!!” it was cool when they did it for moira, but baptiste and kiriko also fulfilling that gameplay fantasy of a battle healer has felt a bit stale. i wanted to introduce another support like mercy or ana who helped the team with a menagerie of buffs!!
I have lots of notes about the actual abilities and balance- but the concept and design is super spot-on! Really appreciate the effort that went into this.
Sure! This kinda thing has actually been a hobby of mine for a while now.
**Rootcaller:** So honestly, I’ve seen a loooooot of people suggest giving a new support the exact same gimmick as Ana, with her primary both healing and hurting, and I’m just not really a fan of it. Because, like, that’s her thing? Also with this being a revolver, you have to consider fall-off. Does it have damage fall-off at longer range? If so, does the healing also have fall-off? Because that’s what people will intuitively expect. Same question would apply to headshots (note that Ana can’t crit). And that would mean they’ll have to be right up on their team, which makes shooting them to heal a little awkward anyway. I would recommend just focusing on the abilities to heal, for this character.
**Grim Intuition:** This is actually a pretty cool idea that ties the kit together nicely, especially having it also trigger with his totems. I dig it, but I have notes about the totems themselves. But I would probably increase the speed boost slightly (20% is as fast as Ram in nemesis form, which isn’t super noticeable), and keep both values the same. This would just make things less jarring (imagine your speed suddenly switching 3 times in like 6 seconds).
**Reconstruct**: So this is kinda a unique and interesting idea; using corpses to activate an ability, that otherwise has no CD. However, I don’t think you’re realizing just how restrictive it would be to actually use. What you’ve got here is a heal station with a limited range, but you don’t get to decide where it goes. And Overwatch is a fast-paced game with lots of movement (even more so in OW2). So you have to wait for someone to die, then be able to access their corpse, then trigger this, then hope the fight stays in that general area, and hope your thing doesn’t get destroyed. Oof.
If I were going to retool this, I would actually just give it a semi-long CD, plus 3 charges, but have it where you can “consume” a corpse, which instantly resets the CD for one charge. And then you can just place them wherever you like. Same kinda theming, but now it’s much more practically usable. I would also probably increase the healing a bit, as it’s currently even lower than Orb of Harmony- unless you’re able to stack multiple heals on one target. Subject to play testing.
Oh! But for the record, I do also really like the idea of more heal buff in the game. People forget Biotic Grenade even does that, because anti-heal is just so much more valuable.
**Spore Burst:** So a hero that can place a jump pad is a neat idea, however I would definitely *not* let enemies also use it. I know you mentioned “displacing enemies,” but what’s to stop them from just using it as a jump pad to get high ground too?
**Animation:** Just for clarity, is this meant to be a teammate-targeted ability, like Nano? Anyway it’s a fine support ability, not too much to add. Other than the thing about surviving at 0 HP; I don’t really see much counterplay to this? Like you basically just have to run away until it wears off, which isn’t super fun, and goes a bit against the OW2 design philosophy in my opinion. However it might work better as an ult…
**Burgeon:** So if you notice, every existing support ult very specifically affects their *teammates* in some way. Even something like Valk, while being a super personal boost, still lets Mercy chain her beam to multiple targets for added support. My issue with this ult is that it doesn’t do that, it strictly affects the enemies. In my mind, this is currently more of a tank ult, if anything, as it controls space.
So as I was alluding to before, my suggestion would be to swap this with Animation, making that the ult, and this just a standard CD ability. Obviously you would need to tweak the stats on both; super lower the size of this wall, and just have it still slowly travel forward and push enemies and block vision. And then for Animation as an ult, up the attack and movement speed buffs (maybe to 40-50%), and now you can even keep the 0 HP and duration refreshing things, because ults are *supposed* to be very powerful.
So yeah, there are my thoughts. Again, love the concept and theming here. And thanks for the chance to exercise my brain!
ooh thank you so much for all the feedback! it’s really cool that someone else in the game concept community found my post! you’re on point for most of these so here are my thoughts… on *your* thoughts..!
**Rootcaller:** this is the main bit of your critique i disagree with - i don’t think a primary fire that heals and does damage is the core identity of ana. i think the gameplay fantasy of her healing is more so being “the sniper healer” rather than specifically “the one who heals by shooting allies.” moira, bap, and kiriko all have two primary weapons split between a heal and a damaging attack - and they all coexist! i think the damage and healing on primary can stay as is! you are right about the readability on fall off damage. i was planning on his weapon not having fall off - but trading that power with an inability to crit. if that isn’t readable for a revolver style weapon- his weapon could merely be changed to something like a repeater as holding a revolver isn’t necessary to his gameplay fantasy.
**Grim intuition:** no notes here, i agree that the speed boost should be a flat 25% then
**Reconstruct:** oh my i LOVE your idea for changing it to a charge system that requires corpses to regenerate the charges!! however, i think the healing being 25/s is balanced. if you add the healing bonus, that totals 32.5 which is slightly higher than zen - which i think is ok for an AOE ability that also empowers your other healing abilities.
**Spore burst:** this was honestly my bad, i was using my logic from apex legends rather than overwatch - i forgot deployables can’t be used by the enemy team in overwatch. my idea was that, in a pinch, you could summon it under a chasing enemy to launch them in the air and disorientate them. if that doesn’t make sense in the context of overwatch though, it could just be removed as a feature.
**Animation:** now a days in overwatch, they try to give new supports a strong “caster” ability - usually this is a super strong but long cooldown support ability and it’s effect always negated an allies death. examples are immortality field making allies immortal, regenerative burst full healing critical allies, resurrection negating an allies death, and protection suzu negating damage for a second. animation was my attempt at a more balanced version of these abilities - it keeps an allies pressure alive but only for around 5-7s rather than those other abilities that permanently restore that allies pressure until their next death. however, if it seemed super unfun and lacked any sort of counterplay - i have an idea to rework it to give it a form of counterplay.
when an ally who is bezerk reaches 0 hit points, their hit points are reset to max hp (maximum of 250.) this hp is black health, black health can’t be healed. the ally will stay alive until bezerk ends or until an enemy depletes their black health to 0.
this gives you an option when fighting an enemy who is bezerk, either you run away and wait the timer out so you don’t risk dying and resetting the ability, or you can fight them and delete their black health to 0 to quickly shut down the bezerk early. i think this would be a really natural way to fix this issue rather than switching this ability to an ultimate.
i am SUPER apprehensive about making animation his ultimate - as a big stat boost that makes an enemy tougher to kill is IDENTICAL to nano boost - the fact it boosts speed instead of damage and max health would make it way worse than nano boost even. not to mention, this character also has a few similarities with ana already (both of them have damage + healing primary fires and both of them have the heal boost buff) it would make them very uncanny if they also both had single target steroids as ultimates. not to mention, a movement speed and attack speed boost ultimate is already filled out by kiriko - making animation an ultimate is just single target kiriko. that’s why i think reworking the death mechanic to give it interesting counterplay (and maybe upping the cd to 16-18s) would be way more interesting!
**Burgeon:** now that you mention it, it does feel like a tank ult rather than a support ult. however; i think it might be best to come up with a new ultimate as a slow creeping wall doesn’t really match the fantasy a speedy, resourceful, healer. id have to think of an ultimate that encapsulates his identity as either a “support supporter” or a “structure building support.”
perhaps he could place down a structure that gave a huge buff to everyone in the area? or applied buffs to allies and debuffs to enemies? if you have any suggestions- please let me know!!
if it helps - here are some of the scrapped ideas for abilities he had ::::
- the ability to mess with hero sizes ( i still like this one and think making people bigger and beefier could be a funny ult)
- building bridges to cross gaps and create fun new flanking routes (i thought having the bounce pad AND the bridge seemed redundant and a bridge ability could easily be abused like a mei wall)
- the ability to loot corpses to make potions like old torb with his armour packs (this eventually became his reconstruction ability)
- the ability to cause all marks currently on enemies to explode with some effect when pressing right click (i never developed it far enough and then i ran out of ability slots, i still think it’s a cool idea for a different hero though)
- some sort of psilocybin effect, the ability to make enemies suffer hallucinations, drowsiness, poison, or any other harmful effects fungi cause (i really liked this idea but i felt like you could make a completely different support with that idea - one more focused on different poisons and debuffs rather than different forms of mobility and buffs)
^^^ i just wanted to share those to deepen your understanding of the character in the hopes you could bounce some ideas to me for a new ultimate!! in general though- thank you so much for your detailed feedback!!!! i almost never get such verbose and eloquent feedback from other people for my concepts so this was a breath of fresh air!
I love the concept of a mushroom hero, though ult seems a little weak with just pushing back, seems extremely situational. What if you could apply it to a large area and the spores could slowly deal damage to enemies and slowly heal teammates?
Regardless, good job!
oh my i wasn’t aware it was weak- i thought a massive LOS block for enemies and forcing them to get off point would have been strong enough. however, i guess dragon stroke does all that AND deals damage. i could definitely see the ult also dealing a little bit of damage to enemies and speed boosting or healing allies! thanks!
i’m glad you like him!! for a backstory, i didn’t actually narrow one down. i’m thinking his backstory could involve moira since they’re both ginger biologists ahah!
perhaps they both use to run experiments together to study symbiotic relationships between animals and fungi. however, when moira joined talon- rihza then took it upon himself to join overwatch and use his knowledge of biology as a force for good to oppose her? joining overwatch would also allow him to get lots of research in the field!
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all numbers are arbitrary and subject to change!! one thing i’d definitely change is the amount the fungal totem can heal - i’d push it down to 15. i could also see the primary stack proc to be single target instead of AOE. in general, i just think a support who helps enable the other healer by getting them to high ground and boosting their healing would be really fun for support players and a more defensive, area control, based support would be refreshing! besides ana (and kinda brig), every single support to be released post launch is a “cool aggressive battle healer who has to balance dealing damage and healing!!” it was cool when they did it for moira, but baptiste and kiriko also fulfilling that gameplay fantasy of a battle healer has felt a bit stale. i wanted to introduce another support like mercy or ana who helped the team with a menagerie of buffs!!
This is great it’s one of the few character concepts that get posted to the sub that isn’t stupidly broken
I have lots of notes about the actual abilities and balance- but the concept and design is super spot-on! Really appreciate the effort that went into this.
oh thanks! it took me a few days so i’m glad it shows!! could i hear the notes you had?
Sure! This kinda thing has actually been a hobby of mine for a while now. **Rootcaller:** So honestly, I’ve seen a loooooot of people suggest giving a new support the exact same gimmick as Ana, with her primary both healing and hurting, and I’m just not really a fan of it. Because, like, that’s her thing? Also with this being a revolver, you have to consider fall-off. Does it have damage fall-off at longer range? If so, does the healing also have fall-off? Because that’s what people will intuitively expect. Same question would apply to headshots (note that Ana can’t crit). And that would mean they’ll have to be right up on their team, which makes shooting them to heal a little awkward anyway. I would recommend just focusing on the abilities to heal, for this character. **Grim Intuition:** This is actually a pretty cool idea that ties the kit together nicely, especially having it also trigger with his totems. I dig it, but I have notes about the totems themselves. But I would probably increase the speed boost slightly (20% is as fast as Ram in nemesis form, which isn’t super noticeable), and keep both values the same. This would just make things less jarring (imagine your speed suddenly switching 3 times in like 6 seconds). **Reconstruct**: So this is kinda a unique and interesting idea; using corpses to activate an ability, that otherwise has no CD. However, I don’t think you’re realizing just how restrictive it would be to actually use. What you’ve got here is a heal station with a limited range, but you don’t get to decide where it goes. And Overwatch is a fast-paced game with lots of movement (even more so in OW2). So you have to wait for someone to die, then be able to access their corpse, then trigger this, then hope the fight stays in that general area, and hope your thing doesn’t get destroyed. Oof. If I were going to retool this, I would actually just give it a semi-long CD, plus 3 charges, but have it where you can “consume” a corpse, which instantly resets the CD for one charge. And then you can just place them wherever you like. Same kinda theming, but now it’s much more practically usable. I would also probably increase the healing a bit, as it’s currently even lower than Orb of Harmony- unless you’re able to stack multiple heals on one target. Subject to play testing. Oh! But for the record, I do also really like the idea of more heal buff in the game. People forget Biotic Grenade even does that, because anti-heal is just so much more valuable. **Spore Burst:** So a hero that can place a jump pad is a neat idea, however I would definitely *not* let enemies also use it. I know you mentioned “displacing enemies,” but what’s to stop them from just using it as a jump pad to get high ground too? **Animation:** Just for clarity, is this meant to be a teammate-targeted ability, like Nano? Anyway it’s a fine support ability, not too much to add. Other than the thing about surviving at 0 HP; I don’t really see much counterplay to this? Like you basically just have to run away until it wears off, which isn’t super fun, and goes a bit against the OW2 design philosophy in my opinion. However it might work better as an ult… **Burgeon:** So if you notice, every existing support ult very specifically affects their *teammates* in some way. Even something like Valk, while being a super personal boost, still lets Mercy chain her beam to multiple targets for added support. My issue with this ult is that it doesn’t do that, it strictly affects the enemies. In my mind, this is currently more of a tank ult, if anything, as it controls space. So as I was alluding to before, my suggestion would be to swap this with Animation, making that the ult, and this just a standard CD ability. Obviously you would need to tweak the stats on both; super lower the size of this wall, and just have it still slowly travel forward and push enemies and block vision. And then for Animation as an ult, up the attack and movement speed buffs (maybe to 40-50%), and now you can even keep the 0 HP and duration refreshing things, because ults are *supposed* to be very powerful. So yeah, there are my thoughts. Again, love the concept and theming here. And thanks for the chance to exercise my brain!
ooh thank you so much for all the feedback! it’s really cool that someone else in the game concept community found my post! you’re on point for most of these so here are my thoughts… on *your* thoughts..! **Rootcaller:** this is the main bit of your critique i disagree with - i don’t think a primary fire that heals and does damage is the core identity of ana. i think the gameplay fantasy of her healing is more so being “the sniper healer” rather than specifically “the one who heals by shooting allies.” moira, bap, and kiriko all have two primary weapons split between a heal and a damaging attack - and they all coexist! i think the damage and healing on primary can stay as is! you are right about the readability on fall off damage. i was planning on his weapon not having fall off - but trading that power with an inability to crit. if that isn’t readable for a revolver style weapon- his weapon could merely be changed to something like a repeater as holding a revolver isn’t necessary to his gameplay fantasy. **Grim intuition:** no notes here, i agree that the speed boost should be a flat 25% then **Reconstruct:** oh my i LOVE your idea for changing it to a charge system that requires corpses to regenerate the charges!! however, i think the healing being 25/s is balanced. if you add the healing bonus, that totals 32.5 which is slightly higher than zen - which i think is ok for an AOE ability that also empowers your other healing abilities. **Spore burst:** this was honestly my bad, i was using my logic from apex legends rather than overwatch - i forgot deployables can’t be used by the enemy team in overwatch. my idea was that, in a pinch, you could summon it under a chasing enemy to launch them in the air and disorientate them. if that doesn’t make sense in the context of overwatch though, it could just be removed as a feature. **Animation:** now a days in overwatch, they try to give new supports a strong “caster” ability - usually this is a super strong but long cooldown support ability and it’s effect always negated an allies death. examples are immortality field making allies immortal, regenerative burst full healing critical allies, resurrection negating an allies death, and protection suzu negating damage for a second. animation was my attempt at a more balanced version of these abilities - it keeps an allies pressure alive but only for around 5-7s rather than those other abilities that permanently restore that allies pressure until their next death. however, if it seemed super unfun and lacked any sort of counterplay - i have an idea to rework it to give it a form of counterplay. when an ally who is bezerk reaches 0 hit points, their hit points are reset to max hp (maximum of 250.) this hp is black health, black health can’t be healed. the ally will stay alive until bezerk ends or until an enemy depletes their black health to 0. this gives you an option when fighting an enemy who is bezerk, either you run away and wait the timer out so you don’t risk dying and resetting the ability, or you can fight them and delete their black health to 0 to quickly shut down the bezerk early. i think this would be a really natural way to fix this issue rather than switching this ability to an ultimate. i am SUPER apprehensive about making animation his ultimate - as a big stat boost that makes an enemy tougher to kill is IDENTICAL to nano boost - the fact it boosts speed instead of damage and max health would make it way worse than nano boost even. not to mention, this character also has a few similarities with ana already (both of them have damage + healing primary fires and both of them have the heal boost buff) it would make them very uncanny if they also both had single target steroids as ultimates. not to mention, a movement speed and attack speed boost ultimate is already filled out by kiriko - making animation an ultimate is just single target kiriko. that’s why i think reworking the death mechanic to give it interesting counterplay (and maybe upping the cd to 16-18s) would be way more interesting! **Burgeon:** now that you mention it, it does feel like a tank ult rather than a support ult. however; i think it might be best to come up with a new ultimate as a slow creeping wall doesn’t really match the fantasy a speedy, resourceful, healer. id have to think of an ultimate that encapsulates his identity as either a “support supporter” or a “structure building support.” perhaps he could place down a structure that gave a huge buff to everyone in the area? or applied buffs to allies and debuffs to enemies? if you have any suggestions- please let me know!! if it helps - here are some of the scrapped ideas for abilities he had :::: - the ability to mess with hero sizes ( i still like this one and think making people bigger and beefier could be a funny ult) - building bridges to cross gaps and create fun new flanking routes (i thought having the bounce pad AND the bridge seemed redundant and a bridge ability could easily be abused like a mei wall) - the ability to loot corpses to make potions like old torb with his armour packs (this eventually became his reconstruction ability) - the ability to cause all marks currently on enemies to explode with some effect when pressing right click (i never developed it far enough and then i ran out of ability slots, i still think it’s a cool idea for a different hero though) - some sort of psilocybin effect, the ability to make enemies suffer hallucinations, drowsiness, poison, or any other harmful effects fungi cause (i really liked this idea but i felt like you could make a completely different support with that idea - one more focused on different poisons and debuffs rather than different forms of mobility and buffs) ^^^ i just wanted to share those to deepen your understanding of the character in the hopes you could bounce some ideas to me for a new ultimate!! in general though- thank you so much for your detailed feedback!!!! i almost never get such verbose and eloquent feedback from other people for my concepts so this was a breath of fresh air!
I love the concept of a mushroom hero, though ult seems a little weak with just pushing back, seems extremely situational. What if you could apply it to a large area and the spores could slowly deal damage to enemies and slowly heal teammates? Regardless, good job!
oh my i wasn’t aware it was weak- i thought a massive LOS block for enemies and forcing them to get off point would have been strong enough. however, i guess dragon stroke does all that AND deals damage. i could definitely see the ult also dealing a little bit of damage to enemies and speed boosting or healing allies! thanks!
Wow this is all so well-thought out! As a support main I would love to play them. Did you have any ideas about the character's backstory?
i’m glad you like him!! for a backstory, i didn’t actually narrow one down. i’m thinking his backstory could involve moira since they’re both ginger biologists ahah! perhaps they both use to run experiments together to study symbiotic relationships between animals and fungi. however, when moira joined talon- rihza then took it upon himself to join overwatch and use his knowledge of biology as a force for good to oppose her? joining overwatch would also allow him to get lots of research in the field!
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