Support's over-healing: can't get no love?

This thread is about the lack of reward that a support gets for over-healing a teammate. As the game is right now, a support will get about $5 for fully over-healing (150% health) a tank. The "team" benefits are clearly there (more likely that guy survives and pushes the bot lane), but the "individual" benefits are not (not worth the support's time if he is looking out for himself).

This causes two issues:
1) Support players get a disproportionately low amount of money for the help they provide.
2) In turn, many supports play selfishly and don't bother over-healing their teammates as it doesn't benefit the support directly.

Suggestion:
Supports should be rewarded not for over-healing, but for the damage an over-healed teammate receives while over-healed. If multiple supports have over-healed, reward goes to the most recent over-healer.

For example, say I overheal a tank fully. If he stands there and waits for the over-heal to diminish, the support gets $0. If he instead charges out and gets shot a few times, the damage being taken off the extra health, the support now gets $$$ proportional to how much damage that over-heal absorbed.

This would not only make supports happier, but more importantly it would encourage team-oriented play like the support is supposed to do. No more supports running past you with their shotguns out. It would also encourage healing before a battle, when you non-supports need it most.

Thoughts?

Support gets juice for healing

I don't think a non-intuitive reward mechanism (why am I making money? is what I'm hearing already) will help new/bad players play Support better. I think this class is extremely powerful in the right hands and any tweaks this early in the metagame development would be a step in the wrong direction, no matter how small, especially if they're tweaks that were made primarily because of what bad players were doing (ie not healing, thus trying to incentivize heal).

I think if we're going to be adding more methods of generating cash then they should be added to classes who have trouble generating money on par with other Pros. As it stands now a well played Support keeps tabs with his team. Is more money-whilist-healing really necessary, when the innate reward of simply dominating a fight while supporting a friend is incentive enough?

As it is, support doesn't seem to be on par with other classes when it comes to money generation. He's not as focused on killing bots or turrets. At best he can get a lot of assists on both bots and pros, but that's only if his firebase can't be taken down easily. Rewarding him for keeping his teammates alive is a good idea, but I think it should more be along the lines of making twice the money from healing when the teammate you're targeting has taken damage, rather than only rewarding overhealing. It provides incentive to take risks to keep your teammates alive and their streaks intact, rather than stay safe and buff people out of spawn.

I was going to post a response, but then I read this. I hereby post the most sincere /thread ever seen on a forum.

/THREAD

Actually, I think in most cases this isn't incentive enough. The support is very poorly rewarded for healing teammates.

I myself am a pretty decent player and as support I usually place 1st or 2nd on my team. Even in my best games, I don't feel over-healing is rewarded fairly.

It's rewarded by having a juggernaut teammate than can kill the enemy for you, as well as a constant, safe juice gain.

Problem is this:
early game, its all about getting to your happy zone.

For Assaults, its about getting bomb3, fly2, charge2
For Sins, its about getting to passive 3, and cloak/dash 2
For Gunners, its passive 3
For Support, it differes greatly from player to player im sure and I don't play him often enough to say, but i'm sure its not cheap... you probably need at least 2 lvl 3 skills to be good..

So the early game is all about getting the cash you need to get going, so yeah a lot of selfish play. Ive seen clans come on that utterly WRECK because the support is healing a gunner into the enemy base really early.. so its not that it isnt effective, its just not worth it to the solo player, as they cant be sure that the guy they overheal is gonna do anything.. and most times they DONT..

So yeah we need an incentive:

I suggest better cash gain.. I would love it if there was a system in place that gave the support cash, when ever his overshield takes dmg..

IE: over heal a turret, turret gets hit, if the dmg is negated by over shield, than support gets cash based on how much dmg is negated.. Same for players.

This would have supports over healing everything, which is good, but it would not allow supports to abuse the system, as overhealing structures and players who are not using the over shield, would not add cash.. Also the cash gained for healing players (below normal health) should be increased, right now its simply not enough..

I think this would help ALOT, as right now most supports tend to let lvl 3 firebases do the healing, and they focus on attack.. because there is just not enough reward for healing/overhealing ironically theres not enough reward for "Supporting" lol..

now dont get me wrong, the reward is the WIN, and healing = Win I know that.. but its also important to reward the player whos doing it with a little something extra.. like money or a place on the scoreboard.. i'm sure some will argue that the win is all that matters.. but thats not the oppinion I have.

An odd thing that occurred to me in the shower was that you could get streak assists. If you've healed a dude to full health(or overheal) and he survives long enough to get a streak bonus, you get an amount proportional to half of what he receives for the streak, whether it be bot streaks or kill streaks. You can only get it once per heal, so in order to get it twice on the same person(for, say, a bot streak and an uber streak) you'd need to heal them fairly often.

Realistically speaking, it only rewards you when you help keep good players in a good way. Would also keep people trying to keep everyone alive, since you don't have to be currently healing a person to get an assist.

Not sure it's a good idea, but hey.

There is no reason why the support shouldn't be pushing the lane. When my firebase is giving me free money and the assassins have learned to respect my shotgun I have nothing better to do than heal teammates that aren't presently over-extended while my air-strike is recharging.

Would you also propose paying assassins to both not cloak and cease attempting to backstab everyone they see?

Competitive games are about rewarding good decisions and, this just as important if not more so to truly good games, punishing bad ones. What does a support that doesn't toss out the occasional heal have in common with any scrub assassin on the scoreboard with a 1:10 KDR, or somebody that habitually blows all their start-up cash on laserblazers? All three don't really care about winning or learning how to improve their game. If +$1000 isn't already enough to make bad players learn and step up their game, no paltry amount of chump-change will make them give a **** if somebody right next to them is on fire with seconds to live.

There are PLENTY of reasons he shouldn't be pushing the lanes, he could be hacking turrets and overhealing turrets in spawn to keep them from getting killed by enemy pros.. he could be holding a central area, like controlling the annihilator/juice dispenser. Or he could be healing/overhealing friendly pros as THEY push key lanes.. Support is NOT the best lane pusher, hes much better at holding key areas, and establishing forward operating bases.. and healing hurt teammates, and overhealing the pros who are sacking the base/bot lanes.

Comparing rewarding more cash for overhealing to awarding cash on cloak is a bit over the top don't you think? I mean they are hardly the same thing.

CASH = upgrades, what were really asking for is to help Supports who choose to play as medics, with a way of upgrading their skills on time.. your FIREBASE is hardly free money against any competent enemy team.. its just free juice to the enemies if you arent guarding it.. And they do NOT give out that much cash, an assault can spam nades and out earn you by about 100%.. unless the enemy teams just leaves it alone all game, while it destroys incoming bots.

Point being, support has a very KEY skill that is not currently rewarding cash, HEALING/OVERHEALING.. it rewards such a dismal amount that it honestly might as well not give any at all.. and that is encouraging new supports to NOT heal.. as its not worth it to them.

I mean you can argue that it shouldn't matter, because its about winning, but thats not the point.. the point is that gaining cash for doing your job is key in this game, it allows you to build turrets, use annihilator, buy juice, buy skills, use ejectors.. and right now if a support plays medic, he does all of those things MUUUCH slower than other class's which We feel needs a slight adjustment.

Now he can setup and guard a gun, toss airstrikes and fight assassins and do okay, but if hes mobile and behind a tank/gunner pair hes not earning much cash.. and thats not really fair, considering hes doing as much as they are.. if not MORE..

it would be like if an assassin earned no money or juice when he killed using a grapple.. or if a gunner didnt earn money when he killed using a slam.. its a key skill that is being denied money gain..

IMO: if they just gave supports cash, every time overhealing absorbed damage.. that would be fine.. so they overheal a tank, he gets hit, and what ever amount of damage the overhealing soaked up = an amount of cash.. it wouldn't be abusable since you dont earn money for JUST overhealing, you have to be overhealing targets that are taking damage.. and the same algorithm would be used for giving money when you heal.. which currently gives almost none as well....

its not asking that much.. right now if you over heal during matches as a priority you level FAR slower than other class's..

The idea of overhealed teammates that absorbes damage => $$$

APPROVED

Yeah i really think it will do 2 things

1) allow supports who want to play medic to earn cash on time with other teamates

2) not allow abuse by supports. Meaning they cant sit in corner overhealing stuff for no reason to make cash.

It'll work, but its gotta reward cash when a teamate has overheal AND that overheal absorbs dmg.

I'm not talking about a huge amount of cash, itll need balancing, to ensure its not too fast or slow. The ONLY way to abuse this, would be to have a tank stand in turret range, and constantly take shots whlie the medic overheals.. but to be fair thats a viable strategy, that should reward cash to the support, because it certainly rewards juice/cash to the tank if hes deployed.

Supports that just run and gun and neglect healing are bad; they're terrible. But some of the language used in this thread reinforces the overall issue at hand, which is tunnel vision. A support that wants to be a dedicated medic is falling into the same trap from the different side of the spectrum. They aren't making any money because they are neglecting every single one of their active skills for the sake of being lazy and following around people actually getting stuff done (and who in all likelyhood don't need a support tagging along anyways). This problem of fixating on one simple duty isn't by any means unique to the support. Every player is susceptible and has to find a way to overcome getting stuck on the idea of performing one duty at the cost being a detriment to their team. I'd argue this is the only substantial difference between a good player and a bad player in MNC.

As awesome as Scathis is, there's no way in hell he can balance bad behavior and force people to learn to be better players by tweaking small rewards here and there for any class. Some people are going to be happy going into pubs and getting stomped, contentedly doing whatever is they want to, as is their right.

If you use all your skills as circumstances dictate you will have no problem at all making money and leveling up skills at a good pace.

Ok example

I play many games as support, where i just put the firebase in a position to defend/deny the annhilator / juice dispencer, and set up a sort of mid point, base camp for my team, overhealing and healing pros who fall back to my defensive point.. using airstirkes to deny enemy pushes on my base camp..

how is that BAD PLAY? or tunel vision?

and yet on average, when I play this way, I earn about HALF the cash I earn just running around toss airstrikes on bots and turrets and dropping my firebase in random areas where it can hit passing bots.

I really dont think its fair to say that there is one STANDARD way to play a support, and that other ways are simply bad, and so dont deserve cash gain..

Again, from healing supports get juice. Why is that not good enough? You're the only class that can go supersaiyen without having to do any damage to enemies.

And yet that's exactly what you're advocating. You apparently either build a base and focus on defending the juice or the annihilator and heal OR you run around utilizing air-strikes and killing bots, and are for whatever reason incapable of doing both. In both instances you gimp yourself and your team.

Hold on, you are using a fact out of balance here.

Yes you gain juice for healing.. but lets not pretend its any where near the amount of juice other class's get for using their abilities. Its in fact quite small, and caps out (stops happening) as soon as they hit full overheal. Its not a reliable way to gain juice, its not really fair to supports get juice for doing nohting, its not as if you can simply spam overheal on things and gain juice on par with other class's who are actively in the fiight..

A supports job is not like other class's IMO, its not to attack its to hold areas and allow your friendlies to fall back to you for "support"

I'm sure you do fine run and gunning, and you can gain juice/cash on time doing so, but its not to the benefit of your team, any more than playing say a gunner.. I like playing support the way I want to play it.. and I usually can force a win for my team by doing so.. but my leveling is very slow this way.. I would like to see CASH gain from overhealing be added/increased.

supports have NO way of killing bots with any type of regularity.. Compared to other class's our ability to make cash/juice off bots and turrets is a joke.. we have to rely on our firebase and juice drops to gain juice (or airstrikes on bad player) Airstrikes are about assaulting fortified positions, and denying area access, dcent players dont even die to being stuck.. heck My main is assault and I can usually use his air strike to kill him and survive if hes tossing it from high ground.

My point is not to say you are wrong, its just to say that you are kind of using a few small facts to prove a point, and I dont believe those facts are fair.

we gain juice for nothing, but its not a large amount of juice.. if u overheal 4 pros, you gain as much as one juice drop.... or one wave of bots for an assassin/tank not including the juice drops they get.. so its not a reason to say.. well you get that, so its all good..

IMO: right now supports are being rewarded for bad play, and punished for conservitive play.. and conservitive play has its uses in team dynamic..

No i'm advocating both as viable strategies, and asking that both be rewarded equally.

and I hardly gimp my team by holding the annhilator/juice dispencer.. if you think that gimps the team.. you havent played with me as a support.. a good team does NOT need the support to control bot lanes.. thats not his role at all..

Control Bot lanes: Tanks, assassin
Assault base: Assault, gunner
Control areas: Support, sniper

Thats how I see it.. I feel that if a support is trying to kill bots, hes gimping his team..

Alright boys, we're getting away from the issue a bit. I can understand the gripe against gaining money after you've committed the "good deed" of over-healing.

The bottom line is this:

• MNC is a game designed to reward players (with money) for doing good things
• MNC does not adequately reward support players (with money) for over-healing teammates